The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [236]
He called out to her, and once again the cave filled with echoes that fought with the weird drone of the wind as a dozen voices shouted from different points in the darkness, some close and some far away, their words lost in the clamour. The echoes faded but the noise of the wind remained, and Ash did not know if Juli had answered him or not, for her voice would have been drowned in the medley of sounds. But suddenly and unreasonably, half-a-dozen hideous possibilities sprang into his mind, and his heart contracted in a spasm of sheer terror. He had warned her to be careful, but suppose there was a pit in the floor of the cave? – a well, even? Or some deep fissure that went far down into the rock, into which she could have fallen? Or were there other caves heading out of this one in a chain of caverns and passages going back and back into the hillside, branching and twisting so that anyone groping through them would soon become hopelessly lost…? And supposing there were snakes…
Panic gripped him and he ran forward into the darkness, his hands outstretched, calling, ‘Juli, – Juli. Where are you? Are you all right? Answer me, Juli!’ And the echoes reverberated round him, mocking him; now fading, now rising above the deafening croon of the wind: Juli… Juli… Juli ..
Once he thought he heard her answer; but he could not be sure where the sound had come from and he would, at that moment, have sold his soul for a light or a few seconds of silence. Straining to listen, he could hear nothing but the bagpipe drone of the wind and the maddening echoes of his own voice, and he stumbled on blindly, groping in the inky blackness and meeting only rock and rough earth, or emptiness.
He must have turned a corner into a side cave without knowing it, because all at once the volume of noise diminished as sharply as if a door had closed behind him, and the air was almost free from dust. He heard no new sound and the blackness was still as impenetrable; but suddenly he knew that it was from here that Juli had answered him, and that she was still here, for there was a faint fragrance of rose-petals in the stale, cool air. He turned towards it, and caught her in his arms.
Her arms and shoulders, her breasts and her slender waist were smooth and warm and naked against his own bare flesh, for having thrown the achkan over her head as a protection against the choking dust, she had pulled it away in order to call to him, and lost it somewhere in the darkness. The cheek that was pressed to his was wet with tears and she was breathing in hard gasps as though she had been running, for she had heard him shouting and had turned back to go to him, afraid that it had been a cry for help, because there had been so much urgency in the sound. But confused by the echoes she had lost her bearings and blundered round in the dark, bruising herself against unexpected outcrops of rock and sobbing and calling as she searched for him in the clamorous darkness.
They clung together for a long minute, not moving or speaking, and then Ash turned his head and kissed her.
24
If the dust-storm had not blown up so quickly… If they had noticed its approach earlier… If the cave had been smaller and they had been able to see; or hear…
Much later, Ash was to think of that and to wonder if it would have made any difference? Perhaps. Though not if old Uncle Akbar, after whom he had been named, had been right.
Uncle Akbar and Koda Dad had both assured him that all men are born into the world with their fate tied about their necks, and cannot escape it.
‘What is written, is written.’ How many times had he heard Koda Dad say that? And Akbar Khan had said it before him – once when Ash stood looking down at the dead body of a tiger, shot five minutes earlier from the machan where