Path of the Tiger, стр. 11

linked to the loudening roar of the valley’s main waterfall, which they were evidently approaching. Finally, they emerged from the dense forest into a large clearing, where they came across a spectacular and unexpected sight: an ancient building, which appeared to be a ruined temple of sorts. The structure itself was not enormous, but it certainly was large and imposing enough, and constructed of what appeared to be massive stone blocks, like those used at Stonehenge in Higgins’ native Britain. These stones, though, had been worked into smoother, more geometric shapes, and into them had been carved many animal forms, done in a primitive style that had an almost childlike element to it. What was more, the stone itself had a curious sparkle to it, indicating that it was rich in metal ore.

Dr Khan and the other scientist, a chubby middle-aged Brazilian researcher, charged headlong into the water, dashing around the outskirts of the sinkhole and releasing exuberant exclamations of awe and wonder, for this type of stone, they immediately deduced, was to be found nowhere else on earth. The large, square building had once supported a heavy stone roof, but this had long ago collapsed, as had the entire front of the temple, which had once sealed its interior off from the outside world by means of a pair of gigantic stone doors, which had also crumbled.

All of this had, at some stage over the last few centuries or even millennia, tumbled into the gaping maw of the huge sinkhole that had opened up in the ground beneath it. Now the streams that ran through this valley, all of which converged at this place, flowed into the roughly circular sinkhole, which was perhaps forty or forty-five metres in diameter. What was truly impressive about it, though, was not simply its depth – it was easily a hundred and fifty metres down to the bottom, where a pool of iridescent blue water, infused with high concentrations of rare minerals, glowed dazzlingly – but also the fact that the opening widened out into a vast underground cavern.

The interior of the grotto brought to mind images of some of the most glorious cathedrals, temples and mosques crafted by the hands of artistic and architectural geniuses throughout the various ages of humankind, but in terms of sheer, awe-striking beauty it outshone any of the aforementioned structures. The walls of this place, thick with stalactites and stalagmites in a near-infinite array of shapes, sizes and textures, were aglow with hues of every colour. The rainbow-coloured light was generated by bioluminescent fungi and mushrooms, which seemed to grow in proliferous abundance all over the cavern, and they illuminated it as brightly as if the entire place had been rigged with a thousand electric bulbs. Bats and birds and insects swooped and dived and soared in chaotic patterns of flight throughout the underground sky, their chirps and hoots and shrieks bouncing madly off the walls in a million echoing ricochets.

‘We’ve found it,’ Higgins murmured, overwhelmed with wonder as he walked cautiously up to the lip of the sinkhole and stared down into it. ‘My God, we’ve actually found it!’

Vasilevsky pulled a small telescope from his belt, stepped up to the edge alongside Higgins, and peered through the lens into the depths of the cavern. At the very far end of it, he saw a sight that sent a thrill coursing through his veins – the same thrill that any hunter of the most dangerous game on the planet knew well. Coming out of the edge of the bright blue pool onto the earth floor of the cavern were two parallel rows of statues, all carved from the same stone as that of the outer shell of the temple. Each statue, perhaps a metre tall, was of a different type of animal; fairly crudely carved but recognisable enough. A few hundred of these statues formed an avenue along the grotto floor, leading to a huge, throne-like chair hewn of stone at the very back of the cavern. Seated in the lotus position on this throne was the one for whom they had come all this way.

Only her face was visible: an impossibly old, heavily-weathered visage, near skull-like, with only the most paper-thin, translucent skin draped over the bone; the rest of her was completely covered in a living cloak made up of tree roots, wound tight around her limbs and torso like interwoven fibres. Indeed, their tips pierced her ancient skin in a thousand places and burrowed deep into her veins and internal organs – but they were not feeding on her body, they were feeding her body with pure life energy, photosynthesised from the rays of the sun. Her hair was immensely long; her snow-white strands snaked between the gnarled mesh of roots, giving the whole tangle a silvery glow until the hair emerged onto the floor below the root-cloak and covered the floor around her for many metres, like a fine carpet of spider silk.

The root-cloak that encapsulated her form was alive not merely in the long sense of tree life, with its imperceptibly slow movements, but also in the sense that it was actually moving; hundreds of insects, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals crawled and scuttled and slithered all over the root-cloak that covered her, each bringing a droplet of water, or a seed, or small nut, or a morsel of fruit or tuber or edible vegetation, chewed and regurgitated, as an offering to the being nestled beneath.

Up at the top of the sinkhole, Shanakdakhete – the prisoner – felt a jolt of electrical energy sizzling its prickly, invisible fire all along the surface of her skin. It was a sensation she knew well, for she felt it when she was close to any member of her kind. But this, feeling it here and now, with the being down there in that holy cavern, was by far the most intense she had ever experienced it. Indeed, it was so overwhelming in its relentless ferocity