The Wheel of Darkness Read Free Page A

Extremely well. The abbot is pleased.”
    “Yes.” Her voice was soft, almost detached.
    He laid a hand on hers, his touch as light and airy as a leaf’s. “We haven’t spoken of this before, but I wanted to ask if . . . everything went well at the Feversham Clinic. If there were no complications to the, ah, procedure.” Pendergast seemed uncharacteristically awkward and at a loss for words.
    Constance’s gaze remained aimed deep into the cold, snowy mountains.
    Pendergast hesitated. “I wish you would have let me be with you.”
    She inclined her head, still remaining silent.
    “Constance, I care for you very much. Perhaps I haven’t expressed myself strongly enough on that point before. If I didn’t, I apologize.”
    Constance bowed her head further, her face flushing. “Thank you.” The detachment vanished from her voice, replaced by a faint tremor of emotion. She stood abruptly, looking away.
    Pendergast rose as well.
    “Excuse me, Aloysius, but I feel the need to be alone for a while.”
    “Of course.” He watched her slim form move away from him until it vanished like a ghost into the stone corridors of the monastery. Then he turned his gaze to the mountainous landscape beyond the window, falling deep into thought.
    As darkness filled the pavilion, the sounds of the
dzung
stopped, the last note sustained as a dying echo among the mountains for many long seconds. All was still, as if the coming of night had brought with it a kind of stasis. And then a figure materialized in the inky shadows at the foot of the pavilion: an old monk in a saffron robe. He gestured at Pendergast with a withered hand, using the peculiar Tibetan shake of the wrist that signified
come
.
    Pendergast walked slowly toward the monk. The man turned and began to shuffle off into the darkness.
    Pendergast followed, intrigued. The monk took him in an unexpected direction, down dim corridors toward the cell that held the famed immured anchorite: a monk who had voluntarily allowed himself to be bricked up in a room just large enough for a man to sit and meditate, walled up for his entire life, fed once a day with bread and water by means of moving a single loose brick.
    The old monk paused before the cell, which was nothing more than a featureless dark wall. Its old stones had been polished by many thousands of hands: people who had come to ask this particular anchorite for wisdom. He was said to have been walled up at the age of twelve. Now he was nearly one hundred, an oracle famed for his unique gift of prophecy.
    The monk tapped on the stone, twice, with his fingernail. They waited. After a minute, the one loose stone in the façade began to move, ever so slightly, scraping slowly over the joint. A withered hand appeared, white as snow, with translucent blue veins. It rotated the stone into a sideways position, leaving a small space.
    The monk bent over to the hole and murmured something in a low voice. Then he turned to listen. Minutes passed, and Pendergast heard the faintest whisper from within. The monk straightened up, apparently satisfied, and gestured for Pendergast to step close. Pendergast did as requested, watching the stone slip back into position, guided by an unseen hand.
    All of a sudden, a deep scraping sound seemed to come from within the rock next to the stone cell, and a seam opened up. It enlarged to become a stone door, which grated open on some unseen mechanism. A peculiar scent of some unknown incense wafted from within. The monk held out his hand in a gesture for Pendergast to enter, and when the agent had passed over the threshold, the door slid shut. The monk had not followed—Pendergast was alone.
    Another monk appeared out of the gloom, holding a guttering candle. During the past seven weeks at Gsalrig Chongg, as well as in his previous visits, Pendergast had come to know the faces of all the monks—and yet this one was new. He realized he had just entered the inner monastery, whispered about but never