Then, wide-awake—with the stench of fresh whiskey in his nostrils—he saw the man with the golden eyes.
Or at least he thought he was awake. And even as it happened, there was a certainty in his mind.
This is no dream.
He was standing, apparently unobserved, in a huge cave; a strange, fabulous place and the wonder of it caught at his breath and made his heart race.
The cave was high in the side of a mountain. It was as though a huge knife had cut horizontally into solid rock and sliced out a chunk nine feet thick, fifty feet wide, and one hundred feet deep. The walls and ceiling of the cave were of burnished black stone, the floor laid with thick, silken carpet.
Light came soft and shadowless from somewhere, seemingly sourceless, and from the outer lip of the cave where Lee stood, he could see a full, yellow moon riding the night-sky.
The scene—above and below—was one of ecstacy; an overwhelming sensation swept through Lee, something he had never known before. At his feet was a sheer drop of ten thousand feet straight down the face of the mountain to a green valley below. A silver river threaded delicately through a valley hemmed in by towering snow-covered giants. The air was like sharp wine and something within Lee said, I am not dreaming. I know I am here. I can feel the air in my lungs. I can feel a new life vibrating through my flesh. I am still drunk but now it's different. Now I'm drunk from a feeling of complete freedom. I know for the first time that I have never been really alive.
He raised his eyes to the stars above—steel-blue stars in the clear air. I know too, that these are the Himalaya mountains—that this is the roof of the world.
He turned and looked into the cave. A man stood nearby. He wore a white gown, yet his form was not hidden; a magnificent six-foot body supported a head of majestic proportions. The man's face was a magnet and Lee would never know whether or not he was handsome. He would remember that the mouth was firm, the nose straight, the eyes dark and arresting. They were not golden, yet the light that came from them, illuminating the face that would forever leave an impression of shining gold.