it up after him in order to delay any possible pursuit. Without it, there was no way she could get out through the hatch. The only other possibility was a second hatch nearby, a private hatch used by the abbot whenever he wanted to go to the lab rang or just spend time on the roof watching the clouds pass.
The ladder to the second hatch was in place. It was a matter of moments for Chindamani to get out on to the roof. She prayed no one would come and find the ladder and the open hatch, but there was no time to waste covering her tracks.
The cold seized her with vicious fingers, jealous of the time she had just spent out of its clutches. On the rooftop, the wind blew unimpeded by any obstacles. Pieces of dry snow whipped across her face out of the unrelieved darkness. The roaring of the wind combined with the pounding in her chest to blot out any other sounds. Like a swimmer swimming in green depths amid a terrible silence, she opened her mouth and called his name but heard nothing. The sound of her voice was swallowed up in the general din, thin and futile. Again and again she strained to be heard, shouting his name aloud in steady measures, a repeated mantra unheard and unheeded. He was here somewhere, there was nowhere else for him to go.
She wandered through the blackness calling him. It was a secret wonder to her, invoking his name like this, a man’s name, a name she could scarcely pronounce. It disturbed her that just to call his name in the darkness gave her such pleasure, even while the thought that he might have gone out here to his death disquieted her deeply.
She found him sitting on the plinth of an old bronze dragon set to guard the chortens, staring into the blackness, a dim shape in the night, scarcely distinguishable from his surroundings.
“Ka-ris To-feh,” she said, sitting beside him.
“We have to go. We have to get out of Dorje-la.”
“I’ve tried,” he said.
“But there’s no way out. And even if there was a way out, there’s nowhere to go. It’s all like this cold and bleak and meaningless. What does it matter if you’re alive or dead up here? There isn’t even anyone to care.”
“I care,” she said.
“You?” he exclaimed. A dry sound like a laugh leapt from his lips and was carried away on the wind.
“You care about nothing but your gods and your Buddhas and your child incarnations. You don’t know what the real world’s like. You don’t know what damage they can do, these gods of yours. What wounds they can inflict.”
“I care for you,” she said, drawing close lest the wind would snatch her words away.
“I love you.”
As soon as she spoke the words, she knew she had sealed her fate. Whether he heard or understood or remembered, it would not matter. If they succeeded in escaping Dorje-la, those few words bound her to him more intimately than any of her childhood vows had ever bound her to the Lady Tara or the dharma or the Buddha. She belonged to him now as she had never belonged to anyone, least of all herself.
They made it back to the hatchway, battling against a head-on wind. Inside, with the hatch closed and the ladder stored away, they stood together in the silence.
“We have to get to my room,” she said.
“There’s a passage near here that will take us there without being seen.”
“And then?” he asked.
She hesitated.
“I’ll .. . explain that when we get there,” she said.
If Tsarong Rinpoche had been worried before, he was now quite beside himself. The pee-ling had killed his guard and managed to get out into the monastery. He could be anywhere. If he succeeded in making his way to the woman’s room, she might find some way of hiding them both until the right moment came.
At least he might be able to do something to prevent that. The gun that Zam-ya-ting had given him was still in his pocket. He fingered it gently, sensing its mute perfection against his fingers. It was a message from another world, speaking to him of the possibilities inherent in earthly power. There was a mastery in it that he had sensed in nothing else. He remembered pulling the trigger when he killed the Nepalese boy on the pass: the thrill of that moment still lived with him, urging him to repeat the experience. Not even tonight’s hangings had brought him such a rush of raw excitement.
But, for all that, the presence of the gun in his pocket filled him with apprehension He had broken every vow he had ever made.
If there were other lives beyond this, he would pay a terrible price for the things he had done. He hoped Zam-ya-ting was right and that this life was the only one a man had. He had staked everything on that. Otherwise, what he was about to do would bring such suffering on his head that five hundred lifetimes would not suffice to bring him peace again.
He loosed the safety catch and set off in the direction of Chindamam’s room.
They wasted no time. Chindamani’s secret passage ran from a small chapel dedicated to Tara directly to her room. Only she and Sonam and Christopher’s father had known of its existence: it had been built centuries ago to allow the Tara incarnation to pass between her own quarters and her private chapel without being seen by anyone else. For Chindamani as, no doubt, for many of her predecessors it had played more than just an ancillary role to her devotions, providing as it did easy access to other parts of the monastery. From the Tara chapel, other passages connected with different floors: one to the main Lha-khang, where there was a curtained chamber from which the Tara incarnation could watch the services; one to the old temple-hall, now rimed with ice and frost, where Christopher had first met his father; and one to the gon-kang, in case the Tara trulku ever wanted to commune with the dark yet benign protector deities.
The passage led to a door concealed behind hangings on the wall of Chindamani’s bedroom. When she and Christopher emerged, they found Sonam and the two boys exactly as Chindamani had left them. William was sitting on the couch. Samdup was seated by the old woman, trying to comfort her while she wept.
“Ama-la,” said Chindamani, “I’m back I’ve brought Ka-ris Tofeh, the Dorje Lama’s son.”
At the sound of the younger woman’s voice, Sonam glanced up.
Her old eyes were red and filled with tears. In the act of weeping,
her distress had deepened and become potent, like a drug in her ancient veins.
“Little daughter,” she cried, ‘they’ve killed the Dorje Lama.
What are we to do?”
“I know, ama-la,” Chindamani whispered.
“I know.” Now that the moment to leave had come, she felt sick and guilty. How could she leave Sonam here with Tsarong Rinpoche and his followers?
The old woman had been like a mother to her.
She sat down beside the old woman and put one arm around her. Then she turned to look at Christopher, but he had already gone to his son, hugging him tightly, whispering words of reassurance and comfort. As she looked at them, she felt a sudden, unexpected pang of jealousy, an emotion she had never experienced before. It unsettled her to discover how she resented the child’s claim over his father.
Suddenly, there was a sound of footsteps in the corridor outside.
Christopher leaped to his feet. He looked round desperately for somewhere William might hide: having found him at last, he would die before he gave his son up again.
The door opened without a knock and Tsarong Rinpoche entered, closely followed by the monk who had been standing guard outside. The Rinpoche could not believe his luck. It occurred to him in a flash of inspiration that, with the man and the woman eliminated and the English boy in his hands, he really had no need for Zam-ya-ting at all.
“Sit down!” he ordered, addressing Christopher.
Christopher stepped towards him, but the Rinpoche took a gun from his pocket and jerked it menacingly in his direction.
“You’ve seen this gun before, Wylam-la,” he said.
“You know what it can do. Please sit down on that chest and keep quiet.”
The monk closed the door firmly. The draught caught one of the butter-lamps and set it flickering, sending oddly-shaped shadows across the faces of the two men.
Christopher was in no mood to sit. Since coming down from the roof, he had felt a sense of purpose
