Ethan looked up in awe at the sight of an immense, larger than life-size elephant that seemed to loom out of the forest before them. Lucy checked their position and nodded in satisfaction.
‘We’re getting close,’ she said. ‘Mount Kulen and Phnom Kulen isn’t far away now.’
Ethan glanced about at the jungle and suddenly he began to pick out stone structures hidden amid the dense foliage, isolated pagodas, monasteries and secluded shrines.
‘Mahendraparvata means the Mountain of Indra, King of the Gods,’ Lucy informed him as they climbed. ‘They worshipped this place as where the most superior of all divine beings resided.’
‘I thought that was supposed to be Buddha?’ Ethan asked, more than aware of his ignorance in such things.
‘Most of these temples were dedicated to Shiva, the supreme protector of the empire. Others were erected to worship Vishnu, an icon of universal order and harmony. Shiva had three eyes that represented the sun, the moon and fire, carried a trident in his hand and was borne upon an ox that carried him.’
‘Sounds like a mixture of Satan, Neptune and the Hydra,’ Ethan observed.
‘All the world’s religions have a common origin in much older civilizations,’ Lucy acknowledged. ‘Want to know who first fed thousands of people with nothing more than what he held in his hands? It was Buddha, thousands of years before Christianity was conceived. Vishnu was part of a triune religion with Shiva and Krishna, just like the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Krishna was born on December 25th of a virgin in a stable, an evil king tried to kill him when he was an infant, he preached to the people and predicted he would die to attone for their sins, was killed and resurrected, and all of it long before Christianity.’
‘Don’t shout that in the street in the Bible Belt,’ Ethan advised.
‘It’s the legends that pass down,’ Lucy replied, apparently not hearing Ethan’s last or not caring, ‘their names and locations changed to fit new times and new beliefs. Vishnu also carried a chakra, club and a ball representing the earth, and rode a garuda that was half a man and half an eagle, hardly Christian lore. The Khmers worshipped some pretty weird gods, but what if their representations of those gods was merely their way of explaining something for which they had no Earthly example or point of reference?’
Ethan could think of no sensible answer as he continued to follow Lucy up the hillside through the deep jungle. As they climbed they began to pass isolated vine-covered towers, massive moss-covered statues of elephants and lions, and sprawling carvings of lingas lying at the bottom of the streams. Ethan’s unpracticed eye could detect ornate inscriptions on porticoes and stelae variously standing or lying amid the undergrowth, but Lucy forged on past them with barely a second glance.
He realized belatedly that she was following a nearby small stream that flowed down the mountain into the distant Siem Reap River, and from there along canals to the massive barays and smaller ponds built to store water for the colossal city at Angkor Wat. Mount Kule, he guessed, was home to the quarries that provided the stone that built the immense complex and other temple cities, and the source of the water upon which the city’s population had depended.
‘The city was the birthplace of the Khmer Empire,’ Lucy said as she climbed. ‘It doesn’t get much more important than that. If there’s a place where our mysterious logo might carry a message of importance to us, this will be it.’
Ethan gazed at gigantic stone lions at Srah Damrei and a massive moss-covered elephant at Damrei Krap. There were the brick temples of O’Thma, Prasat Neak Ta and Prasat Chrei, surrounded by long grass and grown over with shrubs. The sun was sinking low towards the mountain tops when Lucy finally broke out of the forest into an open clearing. Ethan stumbled out the forest behind her and looked up, and he instantly froze as his jaw dropped and he surveyed the astonishing sight before him.
The lone tangerine-colored temple tower of Prasat O’Paong emerged from the jungle as though in defiance of nature itself, tufts of long grass sprouting between its stones. Carvings of Shiva, Vishnu and a row of rishis, or wise men, adorned immense lichen-covered stones at its base, half concealed by the vines and creepers snaking down the temple’s walls.
‘This is it,’ Lucy said as she produced her map and studied it closely. ‘The temple itself is a little further along the plateau.’
Ethan followed Lucy past the elaborate construction and back into deep jungle. ‘I thought you said this place had been excavated?’
‘I did, but was only discovered recently and its extent is unknown. It could cover literally hundreds of square acres and we haven’t even begun to examine what it contains.’
Lucy followed her map intensely until she arrived at what looked like the foot of a giant pyramid. Ethan looked up to see a gigantic three-tiered temple, the entire construction smothered in twisted vines as though green water had poured in torrents down its slopes and been frozen in time.
‘This is Prasat Rong Chen,’ Lucy said as he pocketed her map and looked at the temple before them. ‘We have to climb to the summit as the engraving is up there. There is a pedestal that once held the linga where the Brahman priest performed the rite that made Jayavarman II absolute monarch.’
Ethan peered up to where the tip of the temple towered above the canopy. ‘Ladies first,’ he grinned.
Lucy reached up and began climbing, moving from vine to vine as she scaled the side of the pyramid with Ethan close behind. In the intense heat and deep humidity even climbing the moderately-sloped sides of the pyramid required immense effort and they were both sweating heavily when they reached the top. Ethan clambered alongside Lucy onto a narrow plateau covered in thick moss and grass sprouting from between cracks in the stonework. Ahead, in the centre of the plateau, was a stone pedestal that looked not dissimilar to the one they had seen atop the Yonaguni Monument, thousands of miles away in the South China Sea.
Lucy hurried across to the pedestal, which was also entombed in mosses and lichen. She began hunting around the edges of it, peeling off small bits of moss until she found what she was looking for. Ethan watched as she uncovered an engraved image of the sun with its radiating beams of light, once again pointing down toward the earth.
Lucy pulled a compass from her satchel and set it atop the pedestal before she stepped back and used her cell phone to take a picture.
Lucy flipped a finger across the screen of her cell phone and selected the picture she had just taken. Then, she used one of the phone’s apps to place the image alongside the one taken at Yonaguni Island. She turned the phone in her hand and held it out to Ethan.
‘They’re both engraved with lines pointing in the same direction.’
Ethan observed the images carefully and shook his head. ‘Not quite. The engraving at Yonaguni is facing slightly more to the south.’
Lucy nodded, her face enraptured with excitement as she waved the phone up and down. ‘That’s my point, don’t you get it? If Mahandrapavarta’s icon is to the south and is pointing slightly north, and the icon at Yonaguni is vice-versa…?’
Ethan pictured a mental image of the separate locations of where they were standing now in Cambodia and the site of the monument at Yonaguni. Placed on a map of the Earth, he quickly caught on to what Lucy was getting out.
‘They might be referencing a single location.’
‘Not might be,’ Lucy emphasized. ‘Look at the longest line on each image of the sun beams.’