A sneer rose on Fat Mao's face. "And who is fool enough to stand before these dragons? These are Beijing dragons. Cut off a head and two heads grow back."
"There is no magic weapon," Shan said in the silence that followed. "There is only the truth. Whoever killed Sui must accept responsibility for the action."
"You mean, go to the nest of dragons and be eaten," Fat Mao shot back.
"If that is what is necessary to protect the innocent."
Jowa stood with a sour expression and gestured for the other two purbas to join him. "We're leaving. All of us. My job is to keep us safe. All of us. That means all of us go back to Lhadrung. We're not going to die for someone else's fight. I fight for Tibet. I fight for Tibetans."
Gendun's eyes settled on Jowa. "It is only the chance of birth that made you Tibetan in this life," he said in a tentative tone, as if puzzled by the purba's words. "You may be Chinese in your next. You may have been Kazakh in your previous."
"It is enough, just to watch out for this life," Jowa said sharply, but as the words left his mouth regret was already in his eyes, as if he had forgotten whom he was addressing. "Rinpoche," he added in a low, awkward voice. His hand went to the dagger at his belt, not in a threatening way, but self-consciously, as if to hide the weapon.
Gendun frowned. A fresh silence descended on the room. The lama stood and filled everyone's tea mug. He moved to Jowa, who still stood, and slowly lifted the purba's hand and placed it, palm open, over his own heart. Shan had seen it before, among the more orthodox Buddhists. It was how some lamas conveyed truth to a student.
"We do not struggle for Tibet or Xinjiang or for any other lines on a map. We do not struggle for Tibetans or for Kazakhs. We struggle for those who love the god within and for those who can learn to do so." Gendun withdrew his hand and looked into Jowa's determined eyes, then into Shan's and Jakli's. He moved across the room and stood near one of the portals, where the covering had been tied back, and faced the open sky, the wind rustling his robe.
"If I had killed a man like Sui," Jowa said to Gendun's back, a pleading tone in his voice, "I would not hide. I would give them my head proudly. But it was not me, and so I will not offer my head." He looked toward the floor. Despair passed over his face, then his eyes grew hard again. "We have to return to Lhadrung. There are other fights to wage. Fights we have a chance of winning." His eyes shifted toward Shan, then he looked back at Gendun and hesitantly pulled a paper from his pocket, the one he had been reading earlier.
"And you," Jowa said to Shan, with an expression that seemed to mix resentment and pride, "you have been rescued. You have an appointment at the Nepal border." He sighed loudly and waved the paper toward Shan. "A UN inspection team got permission for a quick tour of gompas south of Lhasa. We have a way to get you across with them when they leave, and they will take you from there." He unfolded the paper and extended it toward Shan.
"You won," Jowa continued, a trace of bitterness in his voice. "A chance in a million. But we have only eight days to get you there. Barely enough time to make it." He looked about the room, surveying the faces of the Maos and Jakli, then back to Shan. "No need to worry about other people's business now."
Shan gazed at his companions. Jakli was smiling brightly at him. Lokesh was nodding. "It is everything you need," the old Tibetan said. Gendun just smiled at him.
"Our truck is at the head of the path," Jowa explained. "There are barrels in the back, and blankets, like before. Everyone goes, including Bajys. When the moon rises we will all go to the truck and sleep there tonight, and we will begin before dawn." He drained his cup of tea and looked at Shan as he laid the paper on the table. "If we see any dragons on the path we will be sure to wake you," he added in a taunting voice. Jowa's companions joined in his laughter and followed him out of the room.
Gendun wandered into the shadows of the corridor, followed a moment later by Bajys. Shan poured more tea for Jakli and Lokesh.
"I had a teacher once," Lokesh said after a moment. "He didn't believe that the human incarnation was particularly important in the chain of existence. He said humans come and go, they throw off faces all the time, that the whole purpose of humans was to keep virtue alive, to be a vessel for virtue. He said that if you lived enough lives that way, you became virtue, and then you had a chance at true enlightenment."
Jakli, Shan, and Fat Mao sat in silence, considering his words. Certainly Lokesh was right about one thing, Shan thought. Humans were throwing off faces all the time. Somehow life seemed even cheaper in Yoktian county than in the gulag. Jakli picked up the paper and read it, then pushed it toward Shan, with wide, excited eyes. He scanned it quickly. It was true. Someone had put a new life together for him. He was to be reincarnated once more. There was a community of Chinese exiles in England who would welcome him. He was to live with a professor of Chinese history in Cambridge until he was settled. Eight days. It would take six days of hard travel to arrive at the appointed place near Nepal.
A low rumbling sound rose from the corridor. Shan recognized it immediately. The prayer wheel.
"Bajys," Lokesh explained. "That first night we came he was still incoherent, and he barely had the strength to walk. But then he saw the wheel and began turning it. He was crying at first, then laughing, and he kept turning it all night long." The old Tibetan's eyes were wide and bright, as though he were describing a miracle.
They listened to the rumble for several minutes without speaking. Maybe all would be right, if Bajys just kept turning the prayer wheel. Some of the old lamas might have said that Shan's work was indeed finished, because he had found someone to turn the wheel that had not spoken for centuries.
Finally Lokesh rose. "I must prepare Rinpoche's blankets for the truck," he said and left through the rear doorway.
Shan found Gendun in the room of fragrant wood.
"It is right that you come back with us," the lama said. "This was all a mistake. We didn't understand. We will go to Lhadrung together. We can watch the moon from the truck, like before, and you can go to your new life."
"I have only just begun here," Shan said woodenly. It was happening too fast.
The lama shook his head. "Even without the letter Jowa gave you, you should have gone back south. The thing that dwells below, it's like a cloud that covers a beautiful moon. I have no words for it, except death. But that is too simple a word. If you were lost, Shan, without your soul in balance…" He studied his clasped hands a moment, then looked up with wide eyes. "It would be worse than losing Lau."
"Because she was prepared?" Shan asked.
Gendun nodded.
"Not just prepared," Shan suggested. "She expected it. She expected to die for her secrets." Gendun turned his head toward Shan as if about to correct him. Shan exchanged a long silent look with the lama. "Not her secrets, really," Shan said. "Her faith. She was Tibetan, but not just Tibetan. I think she had religious training. I need to know for certain, Rinpoche."
"It seems you already know, my son."
Shan nodded slowly. "She was an
ani
, a Tibetan nun."
Shan heard a sound behind him, a small murmur of approval. Lokesh was there, and came forward to sit with them.
Gendun offered a sad smile. "Once she was a nun, but her convent was destroyed."
"I have known many monks who lost their gompas to Chinese bombs," Shan observed. "Some said, Without my gompa, I am no longer a monk. Others said being a monk had nothing to do with a building. An old monk in my prison said it best. I carry my gompa on my back. It's all about serving the inner god, he said, and no bombs can destroy the god within. I think Lau found a way to serve her inner god in Yoktian."
Gendun didn't just look at Shan. He seemed to be watching him, as if something important was happening to Shan.
"She lived a Kazakh life these past years and was buried in Kazakh clothing," Shan continued slowly, "But she asked to be laid to rest near the teaching room of the old lama who posed as the waterkeeper. She taught Jakli the old Tibetan ways. She helped the lama with his secret teaching."
There was another sound at the door and movement behind him. He did not turn as the figure sat beside him. He knew it was Jakli.
"We used to meet on festival days," Lokesh said in a faraway tone. "The monks from our gompa and those nuns. Lau came from a small sect, from a tiny gompa built near a glacier north of Shigatse. We would unfurl a giant thangka down the hillside— a hundred feet long, it was. There would be archery contests and acrobats who climbed to the top of huge poles to bring back prayers tacked to the top. The nuns would sing to us, and we would serve special tsampa we made with cardamom spice." As he extended his long bony hand, spotted with age, toward the lights, Jakli reached out and clasped it between her own, as if to thank Lokesh. Or perhaps comfort him. "Later," he said with a sigh, "people came and burnt her gompa." He began humming one of the old songs as they watched the flames of the lamps, then paused. "It was a long way she went," he added, "to die like that in the desert."
"Now they have sent another Tibetan to teach the orphans," Shan said.
"Is he not also in danger, then?" Gendun asked.
No, Shan started to say, because Kaju works for the Brigade. "No," he said instead, "because the killer already found the orphans."
"You mean, at the camp of the Kazakh clan."
"And after that, the boy we buried by the road. First Lau, because Lau had to tell the killer about the orphans. Maybe," Shan said in a grim voice, "the killer is after all the orphans. The old Kazakh says it is a killer from the old days, returned to destroy the children of his enemies."
Lokesh shook his head, with a tiny, almost imperceptible motion. But Shan noticed.
"Or maybe he asked Lau about one boy, but then that boy was unexpected, was not right," Shan suggested. "The killer tore each boy's shirt open. He tore the pant leg. First with Suwan, then with Alta." He looked at Lokesh, still trying to understand. "He had gone for a boy at Red Stone camp, but the boy didn't have what he wanted. Maybe the killer was looking for something, perhaps something of Lau's that she had entrusted to an orphan. If he had found it, why would he go on to attack the second boy?"
"Maybe," Lokesh said slowly, "the children did something Lau, or her killer, never expected."
Shan looked at his old friend and nodded.
"If it is true, then maybe the demon isn't after all the children," Jakli said. "Just always the next one, until he finds what he needs. Or she," she added with a glance toward Shan.
They stared at the flames. A deep groan seemed to come from somewhere. It could have been the wind. It could have been the mountain, trying to make itself understood.
"You have the solved the mystery of Lau," Gendun said with a slow nod, looking back toward Jakli as he spoke. "That is enough, perhaps. To reveal Lau's secret teaching."
Jakli spoke Lau's name with a sound like a sigh and looked up with a nod. "Her path has been identified," she agreed. "Lau's truth can be told to those who were close to her, to close the circle of her life. She was a secret Buddhist. It should be enough to know that." Jakli looked at Shan and shrugged. "We know who is the enemy of secret Buddhists. I think it will be enough to persuade more herders to protect the zheli, to hide them for the winter at least." The demon was the government, she meant, and no one could stop the government. "It is all any of us can do," Jakli said to Shan, biting her lip as if she were in pain. "Now you can go on to your new life."
Gendun's eyes moved toward the floor and took on the distant look of deep meditation. Lokesh began counting his beads, appealing to the Compassionate Buddha.
The two Tibetans would not hear Shan even if he pressed on with the questions that burned on his tongue. Jakli too seemed lost in her own sort of trance, watching the two Tibetans so intensely she did not appear to notice when Shan rose. He picked up his lamp and wandered out, into the dark, silent corridors of Senge Drak. He longed to see all of the remarkable dzong and regretted that he had only a few hours to experience it. He passed down a long row of tiny rooms carved out of the rock, several with shreds of cloth hanging in front of them. Meditation chambers. He walked for over fifty yards without seeing an end to the rooms, and stopped, awed by the sheer number of the cells. Some fortresses had training grounds for their garrison. Senge Drak had meditation chambers.
He stepped to a cell that had most of its covering intact, slipped inside, and settled into the lotus position with the lamp at his side. He closed his eyes. He might not be able to speak with the mountain, but he could feel its serene power. The suspicion and fears, the possibilities swirled about his mind. He was more confused than ever. Everything was too unfocused. There were too many disconnected people, too many disconnected forces pulling him apart. Someone was going to rescue him, to give him a new life. Everything he needed, Lokesh had said. But that wasn't justice for Lau or her boys. Who would find her killer? Who would save the waterkeeper?
