Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (34 page)

“Which means that we must be very cautious regarding what's lower and higher than the king's chest,” she concluded.

The prince and his friends pushed aside the skeletons and, treading on the snakes, stumbled to the next door, which opened into an empty, shadowy room.

“Wait!” Alexander called. “Here your father did something before he stepped in.”

“I remember! There is a pineapple carved in the wood,” said Dil Bahadur, feeling along the doorframe.

He found the button he was looking for, and pushed. The pineapple yielded, and immediately they heard a terrible rattle, and watched as a forest of lances fell from the ceiling, stirring a cloud of dust. They waited until the last lance buried itself in the floor.

“This is when we need Borobá. He could scout the way. Well, I will go first, because I am the lightest and thinnest,” Nadia decided.

“It occurs to me that possibly this trap is not as simple as it seems,” Dil Bahadur warned them.

Slithering like an eel, Nadia slipped past the first metal rods. She had gone six or seven feet when her elbow brushed one of them, and suddenly the floor opened before her feet. Instinctively she grabbed the nearest lance, where she clung, kicking above empty space. Her hands slipped down the metal as her feet
searched for some kind of support. By then Alexander had reached her, unmindful of where he was stepping in his haste to help her. He hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her up, holding her tight against his body. The whole room seemed to shudder, as if there was an earthquake, and several more lances fell from the ceiling, but none close to them. For several minutes the two friends didn't move, arms about one another, waiting. Then, very slowly, they moved apart.

“Don't touch anything,” Nadia whispered, afraid that even the breath they exhaled would provoke a new danger.

They reached the other side of the room and signaled Dil Bahadur to follow, though he had already started, because he had no fear of the lances: He was protected by his amulet.

“We could have died like a butterfly on a pin,” Alexander commented, cleaning his glasses, which were fogged over with sweat.

“But that didn't happen, did it?” Nadia reminded him, though she was as frightened as he was.

“If you take three deep breaths, let the air flow down to your stomach and then let it out slowly, possibly you will feel better,” the prince advised.

“We don't have time to do yoga. Let's keep going,” Alexander interrupted.

The GPS indicated which door they should open, and, as soon as they did, the lances rose and the room again seemed empty. Ahead of them were two rooms, each with a variety of doors but free of traps. They relaxed a little and began to breathe normally, but were as cautious as ever.

Ahead of them everything was dark.

“You can't see anything on the video, the screen is black,” said Alexander.

“What can it be?” Nadia inquired.

The prince took the flashlight and shone it on the floor, where they saw a leafy tree filled with fruit and birds, painted with such mastery that it seemed to rise tall in the center of the room, firmly rooted in the earth. It was so beautiful and so innocent-looking that it invited them to come closer and touch it.

“Do not take a single step!” Dil Bahadur cried, for once forgetting his good manners. “This is the Tree of Life. I have heard stories about the dangers of stepping on it.”

The prince pulled out the small bowl he used to prepare his meals, which he always carried with him, and threw it on the floor. The Tree of Life was painted on a length of delicate silk stretched across a deep pit. One step forward would have launched them into the void. They didn't know that one of Armadillo's men had perished in that very place. The bandit lay at the bottom of a deep well where rats were picking his bones.

“How do we get by?” Nadia asked.

“Perhaps it would be better for you to wait here,” the prince indicated.

With great caution, Dil Bahadur felt with one foot until he found a narrow lip along the edge of the wall. It was invisible, because it was painted black and blended into the color of the floor. With his back pressed against the wall, he inched forward. He moved his right leg a short distance, tested his balance, and then moved the left. In that way he reached the other side.

Alexander realized that for Nadia that would be one of the most difficult tests, because of her fear of heights.

“Now you must call on the spirit of the eagle. Give me your hand, close your eyes, and focus on your feet,” he told her.

“Why don't I just wait here?” she asked.

“No. We're going together,” her friend insisted.

They had no idea how deep the hole was and
did not mean to find out. The man who had fallen into the well had slipped before anyone could catch him. For an instant he had seemed to float in the air, held in the branches of the Tree of Life, spread-eagled, flapping in his black clothing like a giant bat. The illusion lasted only the blink of an eye. With a scream of absolute terror, the man disappeared into the black mouth of the well. His companions heard the thud of the body when it touched bottom, then a chill silence. Fortunately Nadia knew nothing of that. She clung to Alexander's hand and, step by step, followed him to the other side.

Upon opening another door, the three friends found themselves surrounded with mirrors. Mirrors not only lined the walls, they were also on the ceiling and the floor, multiplying images to infinity. To add to the illusion, the room was tilted, like a cube sitting on one corner. They couldn't walk, they had to crawl, clinging to each other, completely disoriented. They couldn't see the doors because they, too, were mirror-covered. Within a few seconds they felt nauseated; they felt that their heads were bursting and that they were losing their reason.

“Don't look to the side, concentrate on what's ahead. Follow me; stay in line and don't let go,” Alexander ordered. “The direction is mapped on my screen.”

“I don't know how we're going to get out of here,” said Nadia.

“If we open the wrong door, we could activate a lock that would trap us here forever,” the prince warned with his habitual calm.

“We have the most modern technology to help us,” Alexander said comfortingly, although he could scarcely control his own nerves.

The doors were all alike, but thanks to the GPS he knew in which direction to go. The king had
paused in several places before he opened the correct door. Alexander rewound the video to check the details, and noticed a distorted image of the king reflected in a mirror.

“One of the mirrors is concave. That's our door,” he concluded.

When Dil Bahadur saw himself fat and stumpy, he pushed; the door yielded and they were safely out. Now they were in a long, narrow corridor that spiraled back on itself. It was different from other areas of the palace in that there were no visible doors, but they had no doubt they would find one at the end, for that is what the video showed. Here there was no place to get lost, it was simply a matter of going forward. The air was thin and filled with a fine dust, which glittered like gold in the light of the small lamps hanging from the ceiling. On the video they could see that the king had moved along quickly, without hesitation, but that didn't mean they were safe, since there could be dangers the video didn't record.

They walked into the corridor, looking all around, not knowing where the next threat would come from but aware that they could not drop their guard for a second. They had gone a few steps before they became aware that they were sinking into something soft and springy. It was like walking on a long strip of canvas that gave under the weight of their bodies.

Dil Bahadur covered his mouth and nose with his tunic and desperately signaled his friends to do the same. He had realized that they were moving across a series of bellows. With every step they were pumping out the dust they had noticed on entering. Within a few seconds the air was so saturated that they couldn't see a foot ahead. The urge to cough was unbearable, but they controlled it as best they could, because when they breathed their lungs filled with the dust. The only solution was to try to reach the exit
as quickly as possible. They began to run, trying not to inhale, which was impossible considering the length of the passage. They feared a lethal poison, but they thought that since the king had passed through it more than once in his life, it couldn't be deadly.

Nadia was a good swimmer, because she had grown up in the Amazon, where life is lived on the water, and she could stay under for more than a minute. That allowed her to hold her breath longer than her friends, but even she had to gasp for air a couple of times. She figured that Alexander and Dil Bahadur had inhaled considerably more of that strange powder than she had. With four long strides she reached the end of the passage, opened the only door, and pulled the others toward it.

Without a thought for the dangers the next room might hold, the three friends burst out of the corridor, falling over each other, choking, gulping air, and trying to brush the powder off their clothes. They saw nothing menacing on the video; the king had moved through this room as confidently as he had through the corridor. Nadia, who was in better shape than her companions, signaled them not to move while she checked out the room. It was well lit, and the air seemed normal. There were several doors, but the screen clearly indicated which one to open. As she moved forward a couple of steps, she became aware that it was difficult to focus: Thousands of brilliantly colored dots and lines and geometric figures were dancing before her eyes. She held out her arms, trying to keep her balance. She turned back and saw that Alexander and Dil Bahadur were staggering, too.

“I feel sick,” Alexander muttered, suddenly sinking to the floor.

“Jaguar! Open your eyes!” Nadia shook him. “The effect of that dust is like the potion the
Indians gave us in the Amazon. You remember? We saw visions.”

“A hallucinogen? You think we've been drugged?”

“A hallucinogen?” asked the prince, who was still on his feet thanks only to his unusual control of his body.

“Yes, I think so. Each of you is seeing something different. It isn't real,” Nadia explained, taking her friends' arms to help them forward, never imagining that within a few seconds she would plunge into the hell of the drug.

Despite Nadia's warning, none of the three suspected the terrible power of the golden dust. The first symptom took the form of a psychedelic labyrinth of colors and iridescent figures whirling at dizzying speed. Making a supreme effort, the three kept their eyes open and lurched forward, wondering how the king had averted the drug's spell. They felt they were losing contact with the world and with reality, as if they were dying, and they couldn't contain their moans of anguish. By then they had come to the next room, which was much larger than the previous ones. When they saw what was ahead, they panicked, even though a part of their brains kept telling them that the images were the fruit of their imaginations.

They were in hell, surrounded with monsters and demons circling like a pack of snarling beasts. On every side they saw mangled bodies, torture, blood, and death. A horrifying chorus of cries deafened them, hollow voices called out their names, like ghosts hungry to claim them.

Alexander had a clear vision of his mother in the claws of a powerful, black, menacing bird of prey. He reached out to try to rescue her just at the moment the bird of death bit off her head. He screamed at the top of his lungs.

Nadia was standing on a narrow beam on the
top floor of one of the skyscrapers she had visited with Kate in New York, fighting to keep her balance. Thousands of feet below, everything was covered with red-hot lava. The vertigo of death invaded her mind, erasing her ability to reason, as the beam tipped more and more. She heard the fatal temptation of the call of the abyss.

As for Dil Bahadur, he felt his spirit separate from his body, race through the skies like a lightning bolt; it reached the ruins of the fortified monastery at the exact moment his father was dying in Tensing's arms. Then he watched as an army of bloodthirsty creatures attacked the defenseless Kingdom of the Golden Dragon. And the only thing standing between them was himself, naked and vulnerable.

The visions were different for each of them, but all were atrocious; they represented what each most feared, their worst memories, nightmares, and weaknesses, their personal journeys to the forbidden chambers of their own consciousnesses. However, it was a much less arduous journey for them than it had been for Tex Armadillo and the Blue Warriors; because the three young people had good souls, they weren't carrying the weight of the others' unspeakable crimes.

The first to come around was the prince, who had had many years of practice in controlling mind and body. With sheer will he broke away from the evil figures attacking him and took a few steps into the room.

“Everything we're seeing is illusion,” he shouted, and, taking his friends by the hands, he pulled them toward the exit.

Alexander was not able to focus on the screen to follow the instructions, but he was sane enough to realize that he hadn't seen anything on the video but an empty room, proof that Dil Bahadur was right and that these diabolical
scenes were nothing but his imagination. Leaning close together, they sat down on the floor to calm down enough to confront the horrendous hallucinogenic visions, even though they did not disappear. After a while, lending strength to one another, the three young friends were able to stand. The king had gone straight to the correct door, apparently without falling prey to any of the torments that had affected them; surely he had learned not to inhale the dust, or else he carried an antidote to the drug. In any case, on the video the king seemed to have escaped the psychological torture they suffered.

In the last room protecting the Golden Dragon, the largest of all, the demons and scenes of horror instantly disappeared and were replaced by a wondrous landscape. The ill effects of the drug gave way to an inexplicable euphoria. All three of them felt light as air, strong, invincible. In the warm glow of hundreds of small oil lamps they saw a garden enveloped in a soft, rosy fog rising from the ground toward the treetops. Angelic voices filled their ears and they smelled the penetrating fragrance of wild flowers and tropical fruits. The ceiling had disappeared, and in its place was a sky at the hour of sunset, crisscrossed by birds with vivid plumage. They rubbed their eyes, incredulous.