The Skull Mantra (20 page)

Shan studied the monk with a chill.

Yeshe grabbed his arm and pulled. “No. Don't anger him. This drunkard cannot be who we want. Let us leave this place.”

Shan ignored him and moved back toward the woman.

“I could read your omens,” the woman said in a voice like that of a hen.

“Not interested in omens,” Shan said. There was a brass piece, a plate the size of his palm on the table. It was inscribed along the perimeter with small images of Buddha. The center was brilliantly polished.

“Your people like omens.”

“Omens just tell facts. I am interested in implications,” Shan said. He reached for the plate.

Yeshe's hand snapped up and grabbed his wrist before he touched it.

“Not for you,” the woman said with a chiding glance at Yeshe, as though she wished Shan had reached for the disc.

“What is it?” he asked. Yeshe turned with his back to Shan, as though Shan needed protection.

“Much power,” the woman cackled. “Enchantment. A trap.”

“Trap for what?”

“Death.”

“It catches the dead? You mean ghosts?”

“Not that kind of death,” she said enigmatically, and pushed his hand away.

“I don't understand.”

“Your people never understand. They fear death as an ending of life. But that is not the important one.”

“You mean it catches the forces that lay waste to the soul.”

The woman gave a slow nod of respect. “When it can be focused correctly.” She considered him for a moment, then pulled a handful of black and white pebbles from a bowl and tossed them on the table. She solemnly arranged them in a line, then extracted several after careful deliberation. She looked at Shan sadly. “For the next month you must not dig in the earth alone. You must light
torma
offerings. You must bow before black dogs.”

“I must speak with Khorda.”

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

Shan weighed his words. “Right now,” he whispered back, “I only know who I am not.”

She stepped around the table and took his hand as if he might lose his way if he tried to reach the corner alone. The monk moved to intercept him again, but was stopped with a sharp glance from the woman. He retreated to sit squarely in the entrance, facing outside. Yeshe squatted beside him at the doorframe, facing Shan, as if he might need to spring to Shan's rescue at any moment.

Shan sat on a crate in front of the table and studied the old man.

As he did so the man's eyes burst open, instantly alert, the way a predator wakens.

Shan had the fleeting impression of looking into the face of an idol. The eye on the ragged side of the man's face looked at him with a supernatural intensity. The eyeball was gone, replaced with a brilliant red glass orb. The right eye, the living eye, seemed no more human. It too gleamed like a jewel, lit from the back.

“Choje Rinpoche suggested I speak with you.”

The eye seemed to turn inward for a moment, as though searching for recognition. “I knew Choje when he was nothing but a brown-robe
rapjung,
an apprentice,” Khorda said at last. His voice was like gravel being rubbed against a rock. “They took his gompa many years ago. Where does he study now?”

“The 404th
lao gai
brigade.”

Khorda nodded slowly. “I've seen them take gompas.” The right side of Khorda's face twisted into a hideous grin. “You know what it means?” the sorcerer asked. “They eliminate it. They take it stone by stone. They eradicate its existence. They pound the foundation into the earth. Reclamation, they call it. They take the stones and build barracks. If they could dig a hole deep enough they would bury all of Tibet.” Khorda stared at Shan. No, he stared at a point behind Shan that he seemed to see through Shan's skull. After a moment his eyelids shut.

“I touched a dead body,” said Shan.

Slowly the left eyelid opened. The red jewel stared at him. “A common enough sin. Ransom a goat.” Khorda spoke with what seemed a shadow of a voice. It was hoarse and distant and gasping.

The penance was common among the herding people, who would buy a goat out of the herd to save it from the pot. “Where I live there are no goats.”

The cheek curled in another half grin. “Ransoming a yak would be even better.”

“The killer was wearing this.”

The sorcerer's face tightened. His good eye opened and transfixed the disc that Shan held out. He pulled it from Shan's hand and held it closer.

“Once he was awakened,” Khorda nodded knowingly, “he could not be expected to sit idle. When he sees everything he will have no more rest.”

“Everything? You mean the murders?”

“He means 1959,” the woman snapped from behind Shan. The year of the final Chinese invasion.

“I need to meet him.”

“People like you,” Khorda said, “people like you cannot meet him.”

“But I must.”

Half of Khorda's face curled into a hideous smile. “You will take the consequences?”

“I will take the consequences,” Shan said. He felt a tremor in his lips as he spoke.

“Your hands,” Khorda rasped. “Let me see them.”

As Shan laid them on the table, palms upward, Khorda bent over each one, studying them a long time. His eyes rose to meet Shan's. As he did so, he pressed Shan's hands together and dropped a rosary into them.

The beads felt like ice. They seemed to numb his hands. They were made of ivory, and each was intricately carved in the shape of a skull.

“Repeat this,” Khorda said. There was something new in his voice, a bone-chilling tone of command that caused Shan to look into the sorcerer's eye. “Look at me with the beads in your hands and repeat this.
Om! Padme te krid hum phat!
” he barked.

Shan did as he was told.

Behind him Yeshe gasped. The woman made a sound like the call of a raven. Was it laughter? Or fear?

They repeated the strange mantra at least twenty times. Then Shan realized Khorda had stopped and he was speaking alone. He felt light-headed, then an intense coldness clenched him and everything seemed to grow dark. The words came faster and faster, as though his voice was being controlled by another. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash that seemed to come from inside his head, and Khorda gave an immense roar. It was a sound of great pain.

Shan shivered violently. He dropped the beads and the room came back into focus. The shivering stopped, though his hands felt ice cold.

The sorcerer was gasping, as though from strenuous exercise. He looked warily around the chamber, especially into
the shadows of the comers, as though expecting something to leap out. He reached and poked Shan's chest with a gnarled finger. “You still alive?” he croaked. “Is it still you, Chinese?” He retrieved the rosary and studied Shan's palms again.

Shan's heart was racing. “How do I find Tamdin?” he asked.

“Follow his path. He won't be far now,” the sorcerer said with his crooked grin. “If you are brave enough. The path of Tamdin is a path of ruthlessness. Sometimes only ruthlessness reaches the truth.”

“What—” Shan's mouth was as dry as sand. “What if someone offended Tamdin? What would need to be done?”

“Offend a protector demon? Then expect to attain nothingness.”

“No. I mean a true believer did something in the name of Tamdin, pretending to be Tamdin. Maybe borrowing the face of Tamdin.”

“For the virtuous there are charms for forgiveness. Might work for the girl.”

“A girl asked to be forgiven by Tamdin?”

Khorda said nothing.

“Can they work for me?” If a nonbeliever used a costume, Shan realized, they would not ask for a charm. But surely a nonbeliever would have no reason to use the costume, unless they were framing the Buddhist monk. And then they would not be concerned with forgiveness. Shan sighed. He wished he could simply settle for attaining nothingness.

Khorda lifted his enchanter's cap and set it on his head. As if it were a cue, the woman appeared with a sheet of rice paper, ink, and a brush. Khorda lifted the brush and began to work on the paper. He inscribed several large ideograms, then closed his right eye and raised the paper to the jeweled eye. He shook his head sadly, tore the paper into pieces and dropped it all onto the floor. “It won't stick to you,” Khorda grunted in frustration, fixing Shan with his unearthly stare. “You require much more.” The sorcerer's hand, still clutching the rosary, began to shake.

“What do you see?” Shan heard himself say, as though from a distance. He massaged his fingers. They still seemed
icy cold where they had touched the skull rosary.

“I have known men like you. Like a magnet. No. Not that. A lightning rod. If you are not careful your soul will wear out long before your body.”

Khorda's hand was shaking violently now. It began to move. Khorda seemed to fight it, to try to restrain it, but without avail. It leapt at Shan and grabbed his pocket. Two bony fingers pulled out a paper. It was the charm from Choje. The shaking hand unfolded it, then abruptly dropped it, as though burned.

The old man studied the paper and nodded deferentially. “This Choje must love you well, Chinese, to give you such a thing,” he said solemnly. A hoarse laugh rose in his throat. “Now I know why you survived,” he said, wheezing. “But it cannot change the thing you did.” He gave a great sigh, as though he had been released from a powerful grip, and began to stare at the skull beads in his hand. An intense curiosity seized his face, as if he could not understand how they got there, or why.

“The thing I did? The mantra, with the skulls?” Shan asked.

But Khorda seemed not to hear. The woman pulled his arm urgently. “The summoning,” she hissed, pushing him out the door. “You summoned the demon.”

 

As they moved back through the maze of stalls, a two-wheeled cart filled with young goats turned in front of them, pulled by two old women. The women stumbled and the cart flew upward, tipping its contents directly onto Sergeant Feng. Feng went down, entangled in bleating animals. The alley exploded with activity. Merchants angrily shouted to keep the goats from their wares. Herdsmen moved in to help, adding to the confusion.

Three men, dressed in the fleece vests and caps of herders, materialized at Shan's side. They pushed Yeshe and Shan into a doorway six feet away. One of them turned his back to them, blocking the view to Feng; he began shouting encouragement to the herdsmen.

“We know you have Sungpo,” one of them said abruptly.
He pulled back his cap, revealing a familiar haircut. Several long scars crisscrossed his face.

“Isn't it a breach of the monastic rules not to wear your robe?” Shan asked.

The man gave him a sour look. “When you do not hold a license you are not so fastidious,” he said with a distracted tone. He was studying Yeshe. “What was your gompa?” he demanded.

Yeshe tried to push away. The man at his arm responded by squeezing the top of his shoulder. The motion seemed to take Yeshe's breath away. He bent over, gasping. It was a traditional martial arts pincer movement against a pressure point.

“What kind of monks—” Shan began, then recognized the scars. They were the kind left by Public Security batons, from a beating so savage it ripped open long gutters of skin. Sometimes Public Security glued sandpaper to their batons.

The man's companion held Yeshe by the upper arm.

“Purba!”
Yeshe warned.

“Some say you are among the
zung mag
protected by Choje Rinpoche,” the scarred-face man said.
Zung mag
was a Tibetan term. It meant prisoners of war. It was not a term Choje ever used. “Others say you are protected by Colonel Tan. It cannot be both. It is a dangerous game you play.” He silently pulled up Shan's arm, unbuttoned the cuff and rolled up his sleeve. He pushed the flesh around the tattoo. It was a test used in the prisons for infiltrators. Recent tattoos would not lose their color because of the bruising underneath.

The man nodded at his companion, who relaxed his grip on Yeshe. “Do you have any idea of what will happen if you execute another of the Five?” Inside his sleeve another garment was visible. He was wearing a robe after all, Shan realized, under the herdsmen's clothes.

For some reason the man made Shan angry. “Murder is a capital offense.”

“We know about capital offenses in Tibet,” the
purba
snapped. “My uncle was executed for throwing your chairman's
quotations into a chamber pot. My brother was killed for conducting rites at a mass grave.”

“You are talking about history.”

“That makes it better?”

“Not at all,” Shan said. “But what does it mean for you and me?”

The
purba
glared at Shan. “They killed my lama,” he said.

“They killed my father,” Shan shot back.

“But you are going to prosecute Sungpo.”

“No. I am making an investigation file.”

“Why?”

“I am a
lao gai
prisoner. It is the labor assigned to me.

“Why would they use a prisoner? It makes no sense.”

“Because I had a life before the 404th. I was an investigator in Beijing. That is why Tan chose me. Why he decided to do an investigation outside the prosecutor's office I do not yet know.”

The rancor began to fade from the man's voice. “There were riots before, the last time the knobs came to this valley. Many were killed. It was never reported.”

Shan nodded sadly.

“It seemed that they were beginning to move on. But then they started persecuting the Five.”

“Prosecution. There was a murder in each case.” As much as he disliked the man's violence, Shan desperately wanted to find common grounds with the
purbas.
“At least accept that murderers must be punished. This is not some pogrom against the Buddhists.”