Restless Soul (4 page)

Zakkarat led them into a tight passage with a roof barely six feet high. His voice echoed softly against the stone. “They found pots and pieces of pots, some made with woven cords to make them stronger, some with evidence they were used over a fire. Found lots of tools. My father called them adzes, and they were polished, those tools. You know, the Chinese learned how to polish stones and tools from us, not the other way around.”

He stopped when the passage forked, one route rising steeply, the other passage twisting down at a sharp angle. He took off his helmet, scratched his head and then put the helmet back on. “It has been quite some time since I took people here. I’m not sure—”

“I vote for down,” Luartaro said. “If it’s wrong, we can backtrack and take the other one.”

Annja nodded in agreement. She and Luartaro had discussed last night the possibility of going without a guide, as they were both reasonably good cavers. In the end, they had decided to stick with Zakkarat.

“Down, then,” Zakkarat said, leading the way with Annja right behind him.

The rock was so thick, she could no longer hear the rain, and they were going deeper still. She tried to imagine what living in these caves must have been like centuries upon centuries ago—without such modern conveniences as flashlights and Zakkarat’s gas lantern.

Their course leveled off, then descended again, and the passage became so low they had to crawl. Water covered the floor by several inches.

Annja was struck by the cold air and the stink of patches of guano that floated on it. The floor was alternately squishy and slick with mud, and she struggled to keep her face and shoulders out of the water. Farther, and the air became heavy and saturated with water, the smell of mud hitting her like a wall.

“Underground rivers in these mountains,” Zakkarat said. “Maybe they are rising because God needs to wash away still more dirt.”

The rock floor was sharp in places, evidence that few people came this way, and it bit into Annja’s legs through her now-soggy jeans. Despite it being summer, it was cool in there, and she wished she’d brought a jacket.

“My sister is terribly claustrophobic,” Luartaro said. He was a few feet behind her.

Annja realized she knew actually little about him; she’d never asked about his family. Now she knew his father was a teacher, and he had at least one sibling.

“My sister…she wouldn’t… What is the American expression?” Luartaro continued.

“Be caught dead in here?” Annja suggested.

“Yes, be caught dead. Here, or in any of the other caves I’ve been to. Still, you’d like her, my sister. I hope you get a chance to meet her. Even though she is claustrophobic, you would get along.”

Caught dead.
Annja froze. She felt certain that whatever was bothering her had something to do with death.

Free me.

She twisted in the tiny space, looking left, then right, then back over her shoulder. Was someone there?

Zakkarat kept crawling ahead, dragging the lantern with him, the jostling and sloshing of the base of it in the water sending shadows dancing maniacally across the walls and reflecting off the wet stone. He was careful to keep as much of it out of the water as he could; if it got too wet, it would go out. Fortunately, the lantern had a reflector in it, which made its light fairly bright.

Annja felt an icy jab rise up from her knees. Had she heard something, or was her imagination dancing in time with the shadows.

“Something wrong? Something I said?” Luartaro asked.

“No, Lu,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong.” She hurried to catch up to their guide.

The passage twisted sharply and, for several yards, Annja and Luartaro had to crawl on their stomachs, their packs scraping against the ceiling, their faces just above the water. Then the passage rose again, and they were back to crawling on dry stone.

“It cannot be far now.” Zakkarat’s voice bounced off the walls. “I believe we are near. But it has been too long since I’ve been to this cave. Nothing looks familiar.”

“He’s earning his baht,” Luartaro said. A moment later he added, “I’ve a thought, Annja. He’s taking us to see more of these teak coffins, right?”

She nodded, but realized he couldn’t see her.

“But there’s no way those coffins could have fit through this twisting tunnel. So the ancient Thai people couldn’t have brought them down here. We should have taken the other passage. This is my fault. I suggested we take the downward slope.”

“We’re all in this together,” Annja replied.

A few minutes later they were standing in a chamber that stretched at least thirty yards across and at least twice that high. There was a massive crystal flowstone immediately to their right. It ran nearly the height of the chamber and was dotted with delicate calcite and aragonite crystals.

“This cave,” Zakkarat said, “if it is the cave I am thinking of, is known for two different species of blind cave fish. I read about them in one of my father’s magazines. They share the same river, and one of them is scaleless and colorless and uses fins to walk up the banks. I have a picture of one at home.”

He gestured for them to keep moving. The next cavern was not as physically beautiful, but it contained what they had come to see.

One wall was lined with coffins, and another had larger coffins stacked against it. The air was stale, but clean, and there was no evidence that bats had ever frequented the place. It contained a natural chimney that rose on one end, and Annja would have enjoyed climbing it were it not for the coffins.

“You’re right, Lu. There’s no way the coffins were carried along that tunnel we came through,” Annja said. “All of these coffins had to be brought here another way. They’re massive, some of them. And teak is very heavy. Maybe an earthquake changed the passages through the years. Maybe a rock slide. Caves change. Rivers change them, too.”

“Change, yes. But—” Zakkarat held the lantern in front of him. The light casting up and out haloed his puzzled face. “This is not a part of Ping Yah I remember. I’ve seen coffins, but not these. I’ve not been here before. Perhaps this is not Ping Yah at all. Perhaps we should have taken the other way, and went up. Perhaps that was Ping Yah with the blind cave fish. Not this cave.”

He made a tsk-tsking sound, took his helmet off, scratched his head and put the helmet back on. “But you wanted to see coffins, and there are plenty here.”

“Yes, we wanted to see more coffins,” Annja said softly, gritting her teeth as a wave of cold washed over her.

She stepped to the closest coffin. There were intricate carvings on it, some tugging at her memory, as if she’d seen something similar in a book. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her digital camera. The plastic bag had kept it dry. She took several pictures, and then moved to the next coffin.

What is bothering me? she wondered. Something she couldn’t explain had her feeling very unsettled.

Like the coffins from Tham Lod Cave, these held no bodies. Scientists and explorers who had been there before had likely removed them—if there were any to remove. They may even have taken some coffins, too, for it looked as if there were odd gaps between some of them. There were pots inside some of the coffins, probably heavy by the thickness of the clay. They were intact and looked as if they should be in a museum.

“No, maybe this is not Ping Yah at all,” Zakkarat repeated. “I am so sorry. The rain, not coming out here for some time…so sorry. I should have looked at a map and my father’s notes. I have gotten us lost. Nothing here is familiar to me. I will not charge you so much. We can go back and—”

“I’m not sorry,” Luartaro said. “These are magnificent. You did just fine, Zakkarat.” He let out a low, appreciative whistle and retrieved his own digital camera. “In fact, you did very well.”

Annja’s fingers hovered above the teak. She peered inside and used the flashlight to better illuminate a large coffin’s interior. Though there was no trace of a body, there was evidence one had been there. The wood was slightly discolored in the shape of a prone person.

What were these people like? What was their view of life and death? And did they believe in an afterlife? How a society treated its dead often reflected the extent to which they valued life. Annja was certain the primitive people placed great reverence on life—or at least on the lives of the people they had interred in the cave.

“So very sorry,” Zakkarat repeated, shaking his head. He let his pack slip to the ground. “Should have realized this was the wrong way. These coffins would not have fit in the tunnel we crawled through.
We
barely fit.”

“Maybe an earthquake changed things.” Luartaro voiced what Annja had said earlier. “There have been earthquakes throughout Thailand and all of Asia. Or maybe—”

“Or maybe they brought the coffins in through there.” Zakkarat pointed halfway up the wall, where a wide cleft in the rock looked like the opening to another passage.

Luartaro took a picture of Zakkarat pointing, and then snapped several of Annja and the wall of large teak coffins.

“Let’s hope that’s a passage,” Annja said. She turned away from the coffins and looked back the way they’d come.

Water was spilling into their chamber, meaning the tunnel they’d taken to get there was completely flooded, and the chamber was going to fill next.

“All the rain,” she said, her voice cracking with nervousness. “Yesterday, and today. That underground river is rising quickly. We might soon be dealing with a considerable flood.”

Again she felt for the sword at the edge of her mind. This time its presence offered no comfort. It couldn’t do anything to keep the rising water at bay.

“Up! This is flooding!” Luartaro headed toward a section of the chamber wall that looked the most uneven. “Annja, Zakkarat, come on! Move!” Despite his shouts, his voice registered authority rather than panic.

Zakkarat began to chatter nervously in Thai.

It was nothing Annja could decipher, though she felt the fear in his voice. He scrambled toward Luartaro, the light from the lantern he carried bouncing and creating a dizzying effect.

Annja watched the water.

It rose noticeably in the passing of a few heartbeats.

She cursed silently. When she started out that morning, it hadn’t crossed her mind that all the rain would affect her exploration of the caves. She should have considered the possibility. She should have realized there could be flash floods—especially since the cave they visited yesterday had a river running through the middle of it, what the pamphlets called “active.” Being on vacation had made her mind numb.

They should be reasonably safe, she hoped, as the water likely wouldn’t reach the top of the chamber—the roof was so high. Nevertheless, she knew they must look for a way out just to be certain. There was no telling how long the water would remain high and keep them prisoner.

She heard a scuffing sound and turned around.

Luartaro was climbing up the wall toward the dark cleft. The muscles in his back and arms strained and rolled. He glanced back and called to her again.

She looked at the nearest coffin, then back at the water.

The river could conceivably reach the coffins or perhaps completely cover them. Would it damage the ancient teak?

Annja winced at the thought. They should be all right, she decided. No doubt this chamber had flooded in the past, what with the annual rainy season and the monsoons. Perhaps all the rising river was the explanation for no bodies—the water had washed them away and left behind only the heavy teak coffins and the most cumbersome pieces of pottery. Maybe the water had even rearranged where the coffins had been originally placed.

Free me.

She hadn’t imagined the voice. She distinctly heard those two words now. They hadn’t come from the coffins, though. It was as if they’d traveled through the very stone of the cave and seeped into her head. It echoed like a child calling down into a canyon.

Had Luartaro heard it?

“Lu, did you hear—”

“Annja! Now! We have to get out of here!”

The water swirled around the soles of her boots.

Zakkarat continued to babble in Thai, his words laced with anger.

There was another scuffing sound, and a heartbeat later Luartaro’s hand touched Annja’s shoulder. He’d climbed back down to get her.

“Annja, we have to leave. It isn’t safe here, and that tunnel’s flooded. I used to free dive, but not even an Olympic swimmer could hold his breath long enough to get back out that way. Come! The water isn’t going to bother the coffins. No doubt they’ve been flooded before.” He shook her. “Please hurry.”

She focused her thoughts and turned to face him.

The light was low, as Zakkarat had set his lantern inside one of the coffins by the far wall. Luartaro’s face was heavily shadowed, making the angles and planes of it more pronounced and striking.

Did she love him? The question seemed to materialize in her thoughts as mysteriously as the voice did.

His unblinking gaze caught hers.

“The water is—”

“I know,” Annja said. “Rising fast. This might as well be a monsoon.”

She let out a deep breath and hurried to the wall and started climbing. There were pitons in her pack; she’d discovered that while she investigated the contents during the ride in the Jeep. She didn’t need them, however, as she was able to wedge her fingers and the toes of her boots into crevices; natural handholds were abundant.

The muscles in her arms strained as she pulled herself higher. Below her, the water made sounds like the gentle, sonorous noise of a wave meeting a beach.

Zakkarat still chattered, though now she could make out a few English words in the mix.
Hurry. Drown. My fault.
The words were mixed with an interesting mishmash of Thai and English profanity.

Annja certainly understood his frustration. She wasn’t overly afraid, but she was disappointed. She would have liked to examine the coffins and the carvings she’d noted on one wall. She could have spent hours ruminating over what the people might have been like. She’d intended to take plenty of pictures. And then there was the echoing voice begging for her help….

Within the passing of a few heartbeats she was at the mouth of the dark corridor, grabbing her flashlight and shining it in.

“This tunnel looks to go on for a while,” she called down to Luartaro and Zakkarat. “And it’s wide enough that they could have easily brought the coffins in through it and lowered them into the chamber. There’s a painting on the wall, too, like the one in Tham Lod Cave. The ancient people came this way.”

She turned and peered over the edge. Luartaro grabbed the lantern and waited patiently behind Zakkarat, who had started to climb but nearly slid back down.

Annja cringed when she saw Zakkarat step onto the edge of one of the coffins for a boost.

She’d been so distracted by her thoughts and the water—and the odd, cold sensation that had plagued her off and on—that she hadn’t been thinking clearly.

She should have taken one of the coils of rope from the men. She could be lowering it down at this very moment and helping Zakkarat. He was in good shape, but his large pack made him clumsy and off balance.

She should have come out here alone and not put anyone else in jeopardy. “Wake up, Annja,” she muttered.

She knelt and extended her hand as far as she could reach. “Grab it!” she called out.

A few moments later Zakkarat did just that, and she tugged him up to the narrow shelf.

She took some rope from him and started to drop it over the side.

“I don’t need it,” Luartaro said. Pack over one shoulder, coil of rope over the other and lantern in one hand, he managed roughly the same hand-and footholds that Annja had used. He expended more energy than her, however, as the rings of sweat under his arms were deep by the time he reached her.

“Annja, I watched you in my country and thought you were athletic then. Beautifully so. But here…seeing you climb this stone…you are very impressive.”

She shrugged. “I like watching you, too. I like the outdoors. And I work out a bit.” She smiled and stared down into the chamber.

The water had covered nearly the entire floor and shimmered darkly under the light from the lantern. Annja took a few pictures of the coffins from her high vantage point, knowing they would turn out dark but wanting to preserve the memory of this place.

“After you, Annja.” Luartaro gestured at the opening. He smiled. “Ladies first, as they say.”

Ladies first just so I’ll get going, Annja thought. “How thoughtful, Lu. Thanks,” she said. Not that she minded; she preferred leading the way.

She stuffed the flashlight in her pack, camera into the plastic bag in a pocket, then took the lantern from him and stepped through the opening.

The air was close and musty and she picked up a trace of guano. Bats had been there, but not for quite some time or not in any great numbers.

She ran the fingers of her free hand along the wall as she walked. The stone was smooth and cool, and she would have allowed herself to linger and enjoy the sensation were she not in a hurry.

The ascent was so steep that at first she thought the corridor was an aven, a passage that rises toward the surface. But after fifty or so yards it took a steep downturn and a gentle crook to what she guessed was the east.

“Watch your step, Zakkarat.” The guide was right behind her. “The floor’s uneven, and there are some hollow spots.”

“I have not been here before,” he told her. “I would have remembered this. And all those coffins…I would have remembered them, too. I have not been in this particular cave. I took a wrong turn somewhere. Should have brought a map, I know. I should not have trusted my memory. So very sorry, miss. This is not Ping Yah.” He rattled off more words in Thai.

She realized he’d never said her name, nor had they ever been properly introduced. He probably never bothered to learn the names of tourists he guided—no practical reason for it, as there were so many and they were only briefly in his life.

“Annja,” she said. “My name is Annja Creed. And don’t be sorry, Zakkarat. The coffins are magnificent. In much better shape than the ones you showed us in Tham Lod. I hope we can find more.”

“I have never been this way, Annjacreed,” he said. He made a worried tsking sound, and she heard him tap his helmet. “Not that I remember, at least. I have gotten us horribly lost and—”

“I say again, I’m not worried,” Annja cut in. She truly meant it.

“Me, neither.” Luartaro said from behind them. “I consider this just a grand adventure, Zakkarat. Something to make my vacation more remarkable. We’ll find a way out of here. Lost is just a temporary condition.”

Despite her confidence, Annja’s stomach clenched several minutes later when the passage led down into a small chamber flooded with river water.

She couldn’t say why, but she instantly thought of Roux as she glanced at the surface of the water. It looked as black as oil, still and mysterious. Annja hadn’t seen Roux in quite some time, and she knew that he would admonish her when she met up with him again and told him about her Thailand excursion. And she
would
tell him all about it.

He’d say that she shouldn’t have ventured into active caves after there’d been so much rain and that she certainly shouldn’t have taken Zakkarat and Luartaro with her, risking their lives. That if she was going to investigate whatever it was that niggled at her brain, she should have done it on her own.

No doubt he’d also grill her about Luartaro, and perhaps scold her for being so impetuous and flying halfway around the world with a man she’d only known for a few days.

The “old man” as she thought of him sometimes took a great interest in her personal life, like a father might. But they were bound together by history and the sword, not by blood. Maybe Roux wouldn’t care about her relationship with Luartaro.

She shook her head to chase away the thoughts and tentatively waded forward into the water. It was cool, but not uncomfortably so. She was thankful it was summer, as at any other time of the year she would be shivering from being so wet and so far under the mountain.

The ground continued to slope down and soon the water was around her knees, and then her thighs.

She reached into her back pocket for her digital camera. Even though it was in plastic, she didn’t want to take a chance it would get ruined. She put it in her shirt pocket and moved ahead.

Behind her, Zakkarat chattered anxiously and softly in Thai—it had the phrasings and rhythms of a prayer.

“We’ll get out of here,” Luartaro reassured them. His voice didn’t carry quite the confidence it had held before. “We’ll find a way out of this. It won’t be too long.”

Annja moved the lantern in a steady arc as she went, and when the water swirled around her waist she spotted another dark slash in the rocks directly ahead. She took a couple of steps toward it, and the current tugged her gently in that direction.

“Follow me,” Annja said as she headed toward the only apparent exit. She went slowly, feeling forward with each step and encountering jagged rocks here and there.

Faint squeaks came from overhead. “Bats.” She gestured upward with the lantern. “A lot of them from the sound of it. They got in here somehow, and if they can get in and out, hopefully we can find a way out.”

The guano hadn’t been fresh enough in the passage behind them, so the bats had to have flown in another way.

Roux would definitely chastise her about this, she decided, and it would be justified. But maybe he would also smile when she told him they’d been saved by bat droppings.

She ventured into the next tunnel that she came across, this one wider at the base and roughly egg-shaped. She thought for a moment the route was taking her deeper still, but it was only a depression she had stepped in. After a few more yards, the floor rose again and the water dropped back down to her thighs.

Bats rustled above her. A good sign, she thought. Several of them flew away, in the direction Annja was traveling. A better sign.

Moments later, the water was only to her knees and she emerged in a chamber. The wider end of it rose above the waterline, and a half dozen of the teak coffins were evenly spaced on a limestone shelf.

Annja headed straight toward them, shrugging off Zakkarat’s hand on her arm.

“Annjacreed,” Zakkarat said, “the passage continues over there. See? And we—”

“And we will follow it,” she said. “In a minute.” She paused. “Give me just a minute, please.”

“These coffins are magnificent!” Luartaro took the lantern from Annja so she could more easily take pictures of the coffins. He held the lantern high and turned it up to improve the lighting.

“No bones in these, either. Wait—” He stepped forward, climbing onto the shelf and standing between two of the coffins. “Here’s one, a body! It’s small and like a mummy. A body!”

Annja climbed up next to him and took several pictures. “Mummified,” she observed. “Look how tight the skin is…what’s left of it. This is amazing. They must have done something to preserve the flesh because otherwise in this damp climate it would have rotted away.”

A silence settled, save for the squeaking of bats hanging in crevices in the ceiling and the soft shushing sound Zakkarat made by pacing in a shallow strip of water.

“I don’t think anyone has been here for a very long time,” Annja said. She pointed to another coffin that held an even smaller body. It was a skeleton with pots arranged around its legs. “Local archaeologists would have moved these things to a museum. The bodies would have been studied and medically scanned.”

“Or looters would have stolen them.” Zakkarat slipped forward and peered into the far coffin. “Old jewelry here. Ugly, old jewelry. But someone would think it is worth something because it is old and ugly. Historical significance. Maybe we are the first here since…since these people died.”