Free The Cloud Maker (2010) by Patrick Woodhead

to his shoulder, he spread it out on the kitchen counter, using the empty bottle of Coke to hold down one edge. A beautifully detailed pen-and-ink drawing filled the entire piece of A3 paper. It had been rather clumsily photocopied, so that the bottom right-hand corner was missing, but as Luca realised what he was looking at, he felt his pulse quicken. A disbelieving smile crept across his face.
    ‘Holy shit, Jack! Where the hell did you find this?’
    ‘I thought you’d like it,’ he replied, a smile in his voice. ‘After you mentioned the word beyul , I did a little bit of research myself. That scroll is just the half of it.’
    The picture showed eight snow-capped mountains forming in a perfect circle, and at its centre another mountain shaped like a pyramid. The artistry of the original work must have been spectacular. The detail was meticulous, every inch crowded with finely inked images and complex symbols.
    In the centre, at the very summit of the pyramid, a priest was depicted, staring out from the page with the otherworldly detachment of someone deep in meditation. In his open hand was a symbol: a circle with eight points merging into a central triangle.
    ‘It’s called a thangKa ,’ Jack continued. ‘They were originally teaching scrolls, drawn by Tibetan Buddhist monks and passed on from monastery to monastery. And I found your pyramid mountain when I was looking though the Mahayana Sutras .’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘It’s a philosophical doctrine adopted by a certain sect of Buddhists. I was put on to it by one of the lecturers here in Cambridge, but they said the real people to talk to were from the Asian Studies Department.’
    Luca’s voice rose in pitch. ‘But that pyramid is exactly what I saw from Makulu. This proves that the mountain actually exists!’
    Jack laughed. ‘As a scholar, I can assure you that it doesn’t prove anything. You’ll need to find a few other corroborating sources before you can claim that.’
    ‘But Bailey’s book in the library,’ said Luca excitedly, his eyes falling on the photocopies stacked by his bed, ‘it mentioned that the pyramid mountain was in one of these beyuls .’
    ‘Again, that’s anecdotal. But you’re right, it is beginning to get interesting. Listen to what I discovered in the Sutra s.’ Jack paused, trying to find the right place in his notes. ‘So, according to this, the ring of mountains is supposed to depict the eight-fold path of a lotus flower. And then, right in the centre, is this mythical kingdom.’ He paused again as he tried to decipher his own spidery handwriting. ‘It’s called Shambhala .’
    ‘A mythical kingdom?’
    ‘Apparently so. It’s a place where the Lamas have moved on to some kind of higher spiritual plane. You know, total enlightenment and all that.’
    Jack reached out one shaking hand and picked up his mug of coffee. Kingdoms of total enlightenment – Jesus, he could do with a bit of that around here.
    ‘What do you think this means?’ asked Luca.
    ‘Like I said, it might not be anything more than coincidence, but I thought it would give you a bit of a boost. I know how you get when you come back from a trip.’
    Luca traced his fingers over the picture, his eyes fixed on the focal point. A ring of mountains with a pyramid at the centre . . . It just seemed incredible.
    ‘Thanks, Jack. That’s the best news I’ve had all day.’
    ‘Pleasure. And, in the meantime, I’ll send you this Mahayana book and you can read up about it for yourself. If you are serious about finding out some more, then I’ll make a few more enquiries and see if I can’t arrange a meeting or two.’
    Putting the phone down, Luca walked over to his bedside table and fished out the folded satellite map. With a handful of drawing pins and a thick black marker pen in his left hand, he unfolded it and pinned it up on the patch of wallpaper at the end of his bed. He then wrote a single word in the bottom right hand