Prayer of the Dragon (40 page)

He asked, “What does it signify?”

“The color blue,” Yangke said, “And the direction north. And—” The sound grew louder now, accompanied by something new, a low rushing rumble.

The image of the white sticks below flashed through Shan’s mind. “Run!” he shouted, pushing Hostene and Gao forward, pointing Yangke toward the entry. They were halfway down the chamber when the shelf below the hole erupted. There was indeed one more meaning to the seed syllable. Water.

It burst out of the wall with the force of a tsunami. As the makers of the chamber intended, they would not have time to run down the path to safety below. Shan pushed Yangke into the shadow behind the north pillar. The Tibetan understood instantly, and pulled Hostene into the narrow cleft before the wall of water reached them. Shan grabbed the collar of Gao’s jacket as the scientist was swept off his feet, then braced himself in the opening of the cleft. He had to extract Gao from the torrent, he had to get them both higher, for the water was rapidly rising and would not stop, he knew now, until it reached a level just below the old paintings, eight feet from the floor of the chamber.

He pulled on Gao’s collar, not daring to use both arms for fear of losing his balance. By the time he had pulled Gao inside the cleft, their heads were under water. Blind in the swirling blackness, Shan let his feet lead him. They found a narrow step, then another, and another. He slipped, almost losing Gao. Then hands reached down and tugged him upward.

He found himself lying on the floor of another cave. He struggled to his hands and knees, his stomach heaving up the water he had swallowed, Gao beside him coughing up water too as Hostene slapped his back.

“They weren’t white sticks,” Gao said once he regained his breath.

“No,” Shan agreed. They were the flotsam of centuries of pilgrims who had not been so fortunate, the bones of what had been perhaps twenty or thirty bodies.

They spoke hurriedly, in tones of disbelief, comparing theories, until at last they understood what the ancient monk engineers had done. The bell. The bell rope would always be pulled by a pilgrim, for bells drove away evil spirits. But the rope not only tipped the bell, it activated a mechanism, releasing a cover over the wind funnel and then something else above, releasing a gravity-activated gate on a dam that connected to the wide opening at the end of the cave. The path had been paved at the top to endure the occasional floods without being washed away. The sidewall had not crumbled away but had deliberately been built that way, to make a death trap for those who were unlucky enough to be washed out of the cavern. They had found the missing spring melt, the water that had been diverted from the passageway they had used to enter the summit kora.

The excitement of their discovery, and of their survival, was soon replaced by the grim realization that all of their equipment, including that brought by Gao, had been swept away by the water. They had no food, no pilgrim bags, not even a butter lamp. A staff that Hostene had clutched during the ordeal and the contents of their pockets were all that remained. They took inventory. Gao’s phone. A flint. Two pocketknifes. A few pencil stubs. Several feathers Hostene had collected along the way. And, Shan knew, the secrets secured inside Hostene’s vest. Yangke, in his soaked clothes, starter to shiver, rubbed his arms, and looked at Shan expectantly.

Hostene gazed toward the narrow stairs that had saved their lives. He had no way of knowing whether Abigail had been so lucky. He rose, then began walking toward the light at the end of the passage.

They clambered up trails fit only for goats. As the day faded, they made a fire of goat dung under a deep overhang, surrounded by rocks blackened by lightning strikes, beside the painting of a dragon god. “When we capture this crazed monk,” Gao asked as he stared at the vivid painting, “what will happen to him?”

“I don’t know,” Shan replied. “That depends on you.”

“You mean because of Thomas.”

“Because you are the only one among us who might report him to the authorities.”

“If I don’t, what then?”

“We take him back to Drango village, to save the life of Gendun.”

This was the impossible dilemma that had been gnawing at Shan since they had begun their strange pilgrimage. Gendun would never forgive Shan for saving his life by sacrificing that of the hermit, however deranged Rapaki might be.

“I don’t think it matters what I do,” Gao said. “Major Ren is involved now.”

The words quieted them. There were no pilgrims on this mountain, Shan realized. There were only fugitives. Their pasts had overtaken each of them, and their lives were changing. Every man there, including Shan, was beginning to glimpse the hollow shape of his future.

“Why did you do that?” Gao asked Hostene, and pointed to an object Hostene clutched between his hands. The Navajo had gleaned a splinter of wood from an old prayer flag stand and, with thread unwound from his shirt, had fastened some feathers to it.

“We’ve run out of mountain,” Hostene said. “In the morning there will be an end to it. It is time to call on the deities.” He had stripped off his shirt, wore only his vest, and had coated his bare arms with dust again.

Gao stirred the fire. “You have to understand,” he said in a patient voice, “I am a man of science.”

“And I used to be a judge,” Hostene replied earnestly. “But I learned something on this mountain. Here it isn’t about what we have put into our heads, it is about what we have put into our hearts.” He rose and took a new seat fifty feet away, where he had a better view of the sun setting over a hundred miles of horizon.

“Perhaps Heinz had to cross the border to fix his problems,” Shan offered a moment later. “You said the firm does a lot of business in India.”

Gao, his head cocked, was watching Hostene. “This is where you play the part of the clever detective trying to trick me into telling secrets. Didn’t you hear what Hostene just said?”

“I’ll tell you a secret, Doctor. Thomas may have presented many complex challenges but the reason he died was simple. He was trying to find the truth.” Shan explained Thomas’s fastidious work at the murder scene.

“There is a warehouse, in Bengal somewhere,” Gao finally said, “and that house on the ocean, in the south. Beautiful beaches. You saw the photo.”

“Who arranges the schedules and cargo of the trucks going south?”

“I don’t know. Heinz would know. He takes care of details. He’s probably in Tashtul now, taking care of Thomas’s body for me.”

“Only one more thing. Where did Heinz go, that year he was away?”

Gao did not reply. The fire died away. Soon Shan could see nothing but two dim eyes staring at the stars.

THE END OF the world came after midnight. There was no warning by wind or rain, only a massive bone-shaking clap of thunder that physically pushed Shan and his friends toward the back wall of the overhang, then a blinding explosion of light. They had come to the place where lightning was born. They had come to the home of the lightning god.

The bolts came one after another, with a deep rending force that seemed about to split not only the sky but the mountain as well. The air seemed to boil, churning in and out of their little cavity with the rhythm of the bolts, like the breath of some huge beast.

“Your eyes!” Shan shouted above the din, waving his hands. “Cover your eyes!” They looked at him in mute confusion, and he suddenly understood why. He was deaf, and, judging by their expressions, so were his friends. He crawled to each of them, pushing their forearms over their eyes, gesturing for them to face the wall, away from the flashes.

It seemed it would never stop. They could die so easily. One tongue of the lightning could leap into their confined space and leave them as bent, charred artifacts for some future pilgrim to consult as he passed by.

On it went, the explosions numbing not just his ears but his entire body, the light so intense that even facing the wall, the air smelling of metal, his arm over his eyes, Shan could sometimes see the crimson tinge of his flesh. He found himself slipping toward a place he had never been before, a destination perhaps intended by the path’s builders. He had no body left, no mystery left, no
him
left. There were only explosions and light and shuddering air, and one question that would assure that when they found his remains there would be a look of wonder on his face—was this how it felt to be a deity?

Chapter Fourteen

HIS FRIENDS WERE all dead. When the storm finally stopped he crawled desolately from man to man, probing them, touching their backs as they lay curled against the wall. They did not move. Their flesh was so hard and cramped it seemed they had been baked alive.

Shan fell back against the wall, his heart and body ravaged, then eventually took stock of his own senses. He could see the stars and moon, could feel the wind on his face, but could hear nothing. His arms and legs ached, the hair on the back of his neck and arms was singed. His shirt was stiff and brittle at the cuffs.

He curled up on the ledge, facing outward this time, still so numb he couldn’t even feel despair, only think about how painful it would be when it came. He glanced back at his companions. Each man’s hands were balled up in fists, tucked under their chins. In corpses this was called the boxer’s posture, the effect of prolonged heat, which caused the muscles to contract. His eyes welled with moisture as he gazed out over the moonlit ranges.

Suddenly a foot kicked him. Someone was testing to see if
he
were alive.

It was as if they had been frozen and were slowly thawing out. He could not see whose foot it was but he helped the struggling figure straighten his limbs, then dragged him into the moonlight. The man worked himself into a sitting position, trembling, squeezing Shan’s hand. It was Gao.

Shan sat with him, each man explaining with gestures to the other that he could not hear. Then he returned to the deeper shadows, leaving the scientist pondering the blackened edges of his clothing. He found the two remaining forms against the wall and felt each for a pulse. Hostene and Yangke were also coming back to life.

Half an hour later all four sat in the moonlight, Shan cradling Yangke’s head in his lap, Hostene holding one of the Tibetan’s hands. They were all deaf but Yangke was also blind.

No one argued when Shan took the lead in the morning, no one disputed their direction, still upward. After climbing for a while, Hostene leading Yangke by his hand, they reached a wide sheltered shelf that held not only small clumps of heather but also a few pools of water. They guided Yangke to a pool and after he had drunk his fill they sluiced it over his head and over his closed eyes, then let him roll onto sun-warmed moss and sleep. They washed themselves. Hostene found some small waxy blue berries that, though tart, provided a makeshift breakfast. They sat, still partially in shock, staring at each other, rubbing their ears, casting fearful glances toward the summit, within an hour’s reach now. If she had survived, Abigail could be up there, as deaf and blind as Yangke. But they were weary to the bone from the night’s ordeal. The warmth of the little hollow soon had them sprawled against the rocks, drifting into slumber.

A bird was calling in the distance when Shan awoke, perhaps two hours later. He saw it only ten feet away, languidly watched it eating some of the blue berries. Why did it sound so far away? Shan sat up as the welcome realization hit him. His hearing was returning. He turned to see Hostene bending over Yangke, whose face had turned yellow.

The Navajo had opened his precious sacred pollen from home. He had spread some on Yangke’s hands, and more on his cheeks and brow, and was bent over the Tibetan, speaking toward the crown of his head, waving his spirit feather in the air. The unintelligible words, which seemed to filter down a long pipe, made Shan worry again about his senses until he realized Hostene was speaking in his native tongue.

Shan stretched, stood, explored the beginning of the trail to the summit, then began picking more berries for Yangke, soon joined by Gao, who confirmed that his hearing was also beginning to return. When they brought the berries back, Yangke was sitting upright, cross-legged, moving his hand back and forth across his lap. “I see shadows,” he said in a hopeful tone. He could hear perfectly now, he explained, then ravenously consumed the berries they dropped into his palm.

HAVING PASSED THROUGH a corridor of natural stone covered with the most fearful paintings they had yet seen, they looked down on a quarter-mile-wide bowl directly beneath the summit. It seemed to be filled with debris, a jumble of jagged, lightning-scorched slabs that had sloughed off the pinnacle. In the center, at its lowest point, was an opening—not a crater but a jagged tear in the fabric of the peak, a crevasse perhaps a hundred feet long and thirty wide. All except the largest of the rock slabs had been cleared from around it. Its perimeter was outlined with tall cairns, some bearing the last threads of prayer flags from another century.

A wide pathway at one end of the fissure connected it to a shallow cave at the base of the summit, a twenty-foot-high indentation where a great piece of stone appeared to have been scooped out of the peak. Halfway between the cavern and the fissure were two figures, one in an oft-patched red robe who was prostrating himself as he advanced toward the hole. The other, wearing a long green vest with many golden bracelets and a tiered headdress, trudged behind him.

Hostene ran forward.

“No!” Shan shouted in vain. They had lost the benefit of surprise, lost all chance of comprehension before confronting those below. Gao hurried past, holding one of Yangke’s hands. The scientist was supposed to be leading the blind Tibetan but Gao appeared to be dragged by Yangke.

Shan lingered, trying to see the place as Lokesh might, as the builders had intended. They had experienced the end of the world the night before, and now had reached the home of the deities. For one who believed the supreme deities were lightning gods, such a place would be the gateway to heaven, and the proper final home for a wandering Tara. He studied the fissure, the prostrating monk, the strangely submissive Navajo woman, then ran to Gao’s side.

“Don’t,” he said, surprised to find himself panting for breath, reminding himself of the thinness of the air.

“Don’t what?” Gao asked.

“I don’t know,” Shan said, a terrible premonition building inside him. “Don’t believe anything is as it seems.”

“Tell
him
,” Gao said, pointing to Hostene, who walked beside his niece now, trying to get her attention.

Abigail Natay appeared to have aged ten years. Her skin was chalky, her eyes hollow, her hair dull and tangled under the old headdress of the Tara costume. She had been sprinkled with pollen. On one hand was a daub of white paint, tapered at the ends. She had acquired a third eye. Hostene seemed to be unable to touch his niece. As Shan halted a dozen feet away the Navajo extended his hand to within a few inches of her, withdrew it, then repeated the motion. She gave no sign of seeing him, staring straight ahead at the bobbing head of the pilgrim she followed.

Rapaki, moving at the snail’s pace of the prostrating pilgrim, seemed to be heading for a stone altar at the rim of the fissure, beside a long heavy slab that had fallen so it extended perhaps eight feet over the hole.

Shan turned to see Gao guiding Yangke to a ring of flat stones arranged like seats in front of the cavern. As he watched, Gao paused, his expression rigid as he looked at something on the floor of the cave. Shan took a step closer, and another, trying to see, then broke into a run. The leg of a man sprawled from behind a rock in the cave.

He sped past Gao. A moment later he reached the prostrate form, which was bound with rope.

“How could—,” Gao began as he saw the color of the man’s hair. “What have they done?” he groaned.

Shan pulled the man onto his back. It was Heinz Kohler.

The German’s temple was bleeding from a jagged cut. His arms were tied against his sides with yak-hair rope that had been wound around his body a dozen times. Gao bent over his unconscious friend, examining one arm, then the other. Satisfied that Kohler’s hands were intact, he began untying him. Leaning against the rock beside him was a short ceremonial ax, its four-inch blade stained brown. Shan lifted the blade. It matched the outline he had seen on the wall of the storage chamber at the hermit’s cave. At the center of the blade the metal was nicked.

They laid Kohler in the sunlight, Shan cupping rainwater from another of the natural bowls in the rock and splashing it over the German’s face as Gao hovered over him, wiping the blood from Kohler’s check with his handkerchief. The German’s eyes fluttered open and he gazed at Gao for a long moment before recognizing him. “They tied me up,” he explained in a weak voice. “Rapaki. He’s insane. He has her under some kind of spell.” Then his eyes came into focus and he sat up. “Abigail!” Kohler shouted, then he staggered to his feet and ran toward her.

He did not hesitate to touch her but grabbed her and thrust her toward Hostene, then ran toward Rapaki.

The hermit was nearly at the edge of the fissure now, before the little altar. Shan reached him first but hesitated.

“Anything from your old lamas about disturbing a lunatic killer who is pretending to be a pilgrim?” Kohler asked in a bitter voice.

For the first time, Shan saw that Rapaki carried a leather bag, a pilgrim’s bag, strapped to his belt.

“Rapaki,” Shan called softly. The hermit did not react.

Abigail was moving again, in tandem with Rapaki, as if bound to him by some invisible cord. Kohler, blood still trickling down his face, cast an impatient glance at Hostene, then charged toward Abigail, scooping her up onto his shoulder and carrying her back to the cavern.

The mantra Rapaki chanted grew louder, and oddly joyful.

“I don’t understand,” Hostene said. He had taken several steps toward his niece, now seemingly out of harm’s way, then paused, his troubled gaze on the hermit.

“He has an offering to make,” Shan said, gesturing toward the altar.

“To what?”

“To all the gods and saints who live below.”

“Below?”

“He’s been looking for it all his life. Abigail showed him the way. The bayal, the home of the gods.”

They looked back. Gao was with Kohler now, wiping Abigail’s face as the German covered her with a blanket.

“What are you waiting for?” Hostene called out. “He is the killer!”

“Let him finish,” Shan said. “After he’s come all this way, after all these years, let him touch the altar and make his offering.”

“He has to be brought to justice,” Hostene said. “We must take him back to the village. You have to think of Gendun and Lokesh.”

That, Shan did not say, is exactly what I am doing.

Shan advanced toward the altar, and lowered himself to the ground. Rapaki touched the altar, his face radiant, then stood and bowed his head. His pilgrim’s bag was heavy, with several bulky objects inside. From inside his robe he produced a small cloth pouch from which he extracted several ceremonial offerings, laying each on the stone altar. He absently glanced at Shan, went back to his work of stripping things from his belt, then paused and looked at Shan. He extended a single finger and pressed it against Shan’s chest, glanced at Abigail, now at the cave, then gazed uncertainly at Shan again.

Shan brought Lokesh’s old amulet box out of his shirt. Rapaki reacted with a smile, touching the box, nodding now as if he knew this much was real. He then stripped off his tattered shoes and robe, so that he wore nothing but a swath of cloth around his loins, a string of beads on his wrist, and a small silver gau around his neck. The hermit squatted for a moment, writing in the dirt below the altar, beginning the mantra for the Compassionate Buddha. He paused, touched Lokesh’s gau again, then resumed writing with his other hand. Rapaki had never gone to formal schools. He had taught himself to write with either hand. He was both right-handed, and left-handed.

“What is he doing?” Shan saw that Hostene had gone to Abigail’s side and been replaced by Gao.

Rapaki folded his tattered robe carefully. Advancing halfway down the slab that extended over the fissure, he dropped it into the hole. The robe fell only a little way down, then was lifted in an updraft, floating in the air fifteen feet, then twenty feet above them, rising, unfolding, appearing like a phantom monk hovering above them.

“The rope,” Shan said quietly to Gao. “Perhaps he could be tied.” The scientist offered a hesitant nod, looking uneasily at the still-hovering robe, and jogged toward the cavern.

As Gao retreated, Rapaki produced a scrap of folded leather from his waistband, unfolded it, and poured its contents into his hand. Pollen. The hermit was sprinkling pollen on his head. Shan reached into his pocket and lifted the little piece of gold he had found below, extending it on his palm. Rapaki saw it, glanced back and forth from the fissure to Shan, then stepped forward and with a small nod accepted the gold from Shan.

“Lha gyal lo,” Shan whispered. He raised his left hand to a forty-five-degree angle, his palm downward, his forefinger down, tucked under his thumb.

Rapaki looked more serene than Shan had ever seen him. “Lha gyal lo,” the hermit repeated in a scratchy voice as he studied Shan’s hand and nodded again. He dropped Shan’s gold into the pilgrim’s bag, then stepped to the end of the slab. As he did so, the wind ebbed and the robe slowly floated down. Rapaki held out the bag at arm’s length, speaking words Shan could not hear, and dropped it into the fissure.

Shan saw no actual movement by the hermit. It was as if the wind simply reached out for him. One moment he was on the slab, watching his bag drop, the next he was in the void, following it, passing his robe as it fluttered downward. His mantra seemed to grow louder as he fell. Shan could still hear it after he dropped from sight, leaving only his robe, empty, floating gently into the shadows.