“It’s the holiest image in the whole of Tibet. People come from all parts of the world to visit it. Some travel hundreds of miles, measuring the ground by their own bodies just like these two. It takes months, even years. Sometimes they die before they reach the holy city. It’s a very good way to die.”
“Why do they do it?” he asked.
“To wipe out bad karma they have acquired in previous lives. To acquire good karma for their next life. So that they may be reborn in a condition nearer to the Buddha nate. That is all any of us can do.”
He looked at her.
“Is our journey worth any merit?” he asked.
She nodded, serious.
“Yes,” she replied.
“He is the Maidari Buddha. Our aim is to find him and bring him to his people. We are his tools: you will see.”
“Do you really think we’ll find him again?”
She looked at him a long time before replying.
“What do you think?” she said finally.
Christopher said nothing. But as they rode on, he wondered what sort of karma he would acquire if he rescued the boy from Zamyatin only to put him on the throne of Mongolia as a British puppet.
They caught their first whiff of Zamyatin at a small village near Nagchu Dzong, about one hundred and sixty miles from Lhasa.
The nemo at their rest-house there remembered a man and two boys who had come through about ten days before. They had been travelling by pony, hard. Zamyatin had been forced to risk visiting the rest-house in order to obtain much-needed provisions and fresh ponies.
“They came here with three of the scraggiest animals I’ve ever seen,” the woman said.
“All but dead they were. They’d driven them into the ground, riding them hell for leather, I could tell. It was the Mongol’s doing, I could see that. He was desperate to move on. Nervous he was, jittery, but I could tell he wasn’t the sort to argue with. The children were worn out, poor things. I said they should rest, but he swore at me and said he’d have none of it.
They had to be up and going; not even time to take tea.”
She scowled at the memory of such impolite ness
“I sold them new ponies, but I wouldn’t give much for the ones they
left. They’ll fatten up in time, no doubt; but one’s no use for riding
any longer he’s broken-winded and fit for the butcher. I
asked five hundred trangkas for the two I sold them, and he paid it over without so much as a whimper. That’s forty Hang in Chinese money. I said to my husband he must be up to no good I was half of a mind to send someone after them, to see were the little boys all right. But my husband said we’d best not interfere, and maybe he was right.”
“Did either of the boys try to get your attention at all?” asked Chindamani.
“Well, now you mention it, I think one of them did. I think he wanted to speak to me. But the man would have none of it and whisked him out of the room as quick as a flash.”
“Didn’t you try to do something? Protest to him?”
The nemo looked at Chindamani hard.
“If you’d seen him you’d understand. I’d no wish to cross him.
Perhaps I should have done, I don’t rightly know. But if you’d been in my shoes, if you’d seen him .. . But then, perhaps you have, my lady.”
Chindamani said nothing.
“Were the ponies you sold them healthy? Strong enough to take them far?”
The old nemo looked offended.
“Of course they were. Do you think I would sell anything but a sound animal? Would I cheat, would I pass off a sprained horse as fit for the road?”
He fancied she would, and for an inflated price as well.
“I meant no offence,” he apologized.
“But you had seen what happened to the beasts they came on. Perhaps you were reluctant to let your best animals into his hands.”
Somewhat mollified but only somewhat she snorted.
“I might have thought that,” she said.
“But he looked over all the ponies I had and chose three for himself. They were the best in my stable and worth a pretty penny too. He’ll do for them what he did for the others. But they’ll get him a distance. They’ll be twenty shasas or more away by now.”
A shasa was a full day’s march, between ten and twenty miles.
At Zamyatin’s rate of progress, they’d very likely be thirty full shasas ahead of them.
“They’re beyond our reach now, Ka-ris,” said Chindamani in a crestfallen voice.
“They’ll get to Urga before we do, that’s all,” he said. But he felt disadvantaged by his rival’s easy lead.
“We’ll catch up with them there, not before. Slow and steady does it. They still have a long way to go. There won’t always be fresh ponies when they need them. And they have to face the Gobi desert or go round it.”
“And so have we,” she said.
Dispirited at first, they continued their journey. They rode a little faster, rested less often, rose earlier to set off before dawn each morning. At least, Christopher reasoned, they were thus far on the right track. Zamyatin and the boys had passed this way; however much they deviated from the road, they would ultimately return to it there was only one destination for all of them.
They travelled across the broad steppe regions to the east of Chang Tang, the great central plateau of Tibet. Beyond the northern reaches of the Yangtse River, they passed into Amdo.
Always north-east, always towards Mongolia.
Each day, they passed small nomad encampments low black tents quite distinct from the round Mongol yurts of the north.
Shepherds grazed small herds of yaks in the valleys: they watched Christopher and Chindamani ride by, then turned back to their endless vigil.
Ten days after leaving Nagchu Dzong, they reached the southern shores of Koko Nor, the great lake that stands guard over the north-east border of Tibet. A few miles further and they would enter China’s Kansu province.
Christopher was nervous. The Chinese were on edge, feeling the pinch in Mongolia and toying with Tibet as a possible recompense should the former territory slip out of their hands again. If he were caught by Chinese guards and identified as an Englishman crossing into Kansu, he doubted very much if his captors would observe the diplomatic niceties. In all probability, his head would soon adorn a sharp, pointed stick on the battlements of Sining-fu.
These were the days of the great war-lords. China was torn by civil war, and no central authority was capable of returning the country to normal. The Manchus had gone, the Republic was little more than a name, and in the provinces chaos and bloodshed reigned. Armies of peasants marched and fought and were wiped out. And in their place, new armies were raised up. It was one of Death’s finest hours.
The steppe sloped down gently to the dark waters of the lake.
Thin waves moved across its surface, making Christopher think of home and the sea. To the north, the mountains of the Tsun-ula range stretched east and west out of sight. On several peaks, white caps of snow nestled against the sky.
In the centre of the lake lay a rocky island on which a small temple stood, cut off from the world now that the winter ice had melted. Chindamani sat still in her saddle for a long time, gazing out at the little temple, watching the dark waters tremble against the rock on which it stood, listening to the waves falling lifeless to the shore. A stiff breeze came down from the mountains suddenly and flattened the waves. Clouds scudded across the sky.
“Let’s ride on,” said Christopher.
But still she sat, unmoving, gazing out at the island. The breeze moved her hair, raising it like a dark prayer-
