The Messiah Secret

The faintest shadow of uncertainty clouded Angela’s face, and just as quickly vanished. ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘I tried to analyse what the writer was describing, and then match his description with the geographical features that I know still exist in the Nubra Valley.’

‘And it worked?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ she repeated. ‘Let’s see if you agree.’ She pulled a sheet of paper out of her bag and unfolded it. ‘Right. The first line is, “With their shadows ever before them”. Any idea what that might mean?’

Bronson thought for a few moments. ‘I suppose it means they were walking north, with the sun behind them, because that would cast their shadows forward, so they would always be visible to them.’

‘Very good.’ Angela applauded silently. ‘That was exactly what I thought as well. The second line is slightly easier, I think. It reads, “from the rising to the setting”.’

‘That has to mean the rising and setting of the sun, so what the writer is saying in those two lines is that they walked north for a full day, which means they probably covered about twenty or thirty miles, no more. But to make any sense of that, you obviously need to know the starting point – the place they set out from.’

‘And that,’ Angela said, ‘is given in the third line. It says, “beyond the meeting point where waters tumble”. I took that to mean either a crossroads near a waterfall or, probably more likely, a place where two streams or rivers merge to become one. The problem is that the whole of this area, including the Nubra Valley, is punctuated by rivers and streams. That could have meant almost any location around here.’

‘And?’ Bronson asked.

‘I figured that the same thought must have occurred to the author of this text, so I looked at the next line to see what else he told us. This reads, “towards the mighty river that flows never”, and that marks the end of the first sentence, so that’s the entire description.’

‘Maybe he meant a dried-up river?’ Bronson suggested. ‘Did you check to see if there are any in the area?’

Angela shook her head. ‘I thought the same thing as you at first, but then I quickly realized it didn’t make sense. If he really was describing a dried-up river, why would he use a word like “mighty” to describe it? Actually there is a huge river near the Nubra Valley that never flows. Or, to be exact, it flows incredibly slowly.’

Bronson took his eyes off the road for a second or two to look where she was pointing on the map. Beside the end of her finger was a small patch of white.

‘What is that?’ he asked.

‘That’s the Siachen Glacier up on the Saltoro Ridge. It feeds the River Nubra, and from the dimensions given on the topographical chart, it looks as if it’s about a mile wide in some places. I reckon that fits the description quite nicely. It’s certainly “mighty”, and it flows so slowly it’s almost as if it doesn’t flow at all.

‘If we put that lot together, what we end up with is a description of a group of people walking northwards for between twenty and thirty miles, heading towards a glacier and starting at a point where two streams or rivers join.’

‘And you found somewhere that matches that account?’ Angela nodded.

‘That’s where we’re heading right now. I said we’d cross the river at this place called Thirit. Just north of that village, the two rivers that define the Nubra Valley, the Nubra itself and the Shyok’ – Angela pronounced it ‘Shay-ock’ – ‘meet. The road that we’ll be following runs almost directly north from there, so that fits the description of their shadows being in front of them; and about twenty-five miles north of Thirit is a road that branches off to the east, and I believe that fits the second part of the verse.’

She took another look at the piece of paper in her hand. ‘The third verse begins with the line “Then turned to face the glory”. I think that has to be another reference to the sun, the rising sun, meaning that when they set off the next day they headed east, into the sunrise, and that also more or less matches the direction that the present road follows. From what I can see on the topographical map, there aren’t that many other routes the road could take, so it’s a reasonable assumption that the track they followed two thousand-odd years ago runs in pretty much the same direction as the road that’s there now.’

Angela paused briefly. Up to that point, she’d been reasonably happy with her interpretation of the meaning of the three verses they’d found. But she was really guessing about the end of the last verse and that, of course, was the most important bit of all.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘the last three lines, which read, “between the pillars and beyond their shadows / into the silence and the darkness formed of man / to rest forever”, are, shall we say, a little more open to interpretation.’

‘Basically, you don’t know what they mean?’ Bronson suggested.