to hear her carefully crafted explanation.
She knelt, lit a dragon joss stick, and proceeded inside. The wall closed. A dim corridor stretched ahead, exhaling the smell of damp air, wet stone, and a cloying, resinous scent. The air was hazy with incense.
She took a step forward, holding up the joss stick. The flame flickered, as if in protest. She moved down the long passageway, its dark walls dimly frescoed with disturbing images of strange deities and dancing demons.
The inner monastery, she realized, must have once held far more monks than it did now. It was vast, cold, and empty. Not knowing where she was going, and without even a clear idea of what she was doing—beyond finding the monk Pendergast had spoken to and questioning him further—she turned several corners, passing through large, vacant rooms, the walls painted with half-glimpsed thangkas and mandalas, almost obliterated by time. In one room, a lone, forgotten candle guttered in front of an ancient bronze statue of the Buddha eaten away by verdigris. The joss stick she was using for light began to fizzle and she pulled another from her pocket and lit it, the scent of sandalwood smoke filling the passageway.
She turned another corner, then halted. A monk stood there, tall, gaunt, in a ragged robe, his eyes hollow and staring with a strange, almost fierce intensity. She faced him. He said nothing. Neither moved.
And then Constance reached up to her hood, drew it back, and let her brown hair fall across her shoulders.
The monk’s eyes widened, but only slightly. Still he said nothing.
“Greetings,” Constance said in Tibetan.
The monk faintly inclined his head. His large eyes continued staring at her.
“Agozyen,” she said.
Again, no reaction.
“I have come to ask: what is Agozyen?” She spoke haltingly, continuing in her poor Tibetan.
“Why are you here, little monk?” he asked quietly.
Constance took a step toward him. “What is Agozyen?” she repeated more fiercely. He closed his eyes. “Your mind is in a turmoil of excitement, young one.”
“I must know.”
“Must,” he repeated.
“What does Agozyen do?”
His eyes opened. He turned and began walking away. After a moment, she followed.
The monk wound his way through many narrow passages and convoluted turnings, down and up staircases, through rough-cut tunnels and long, frescoed halls. Finally he paused before a stone doorway curtained in frayed orange silk. He drew it aside and Constance was surprised to see three monks seated on stone benches, as if in council, with candles arrayed in front of a gilded statue of the seated Buddha.
One of the monks rose. “Please come in,” he said in surprisingly fluent English.
Constance bowed. Had they been expecting her? It seemed impossible. And yet there was no other logical explanation.
“I’m studying with Lama Tsering,” she said, grateful to switch to English.
The man nodded.
“I want to know about the Agozyen,” she said.
He turned to the others and began speaking in Tibetan. Constance strained to catch the thread of what he was saying, but the voices were too low. At last the monk turned back to her.
“Lama Thubten told the detective all we knew,” he said.
“Forgive me, but I don’t believe you.”
The monk seemed taken aback by her directness, but he recovered quickly. “Why do you speak this way, child?”
The room was freezing and Constance began to shiver. She pulled her robe tightly about her. “You may not know exactly what the Agozyen is, but you know its purpose. Its
purpose.”
“It is not time to reveal it yet. The Agozyen was taken from us.”
“Taken prematurely, you mean?”
The monk shook his head. “We were its guardians. It is imperative that it be returned to us, before . . .” He stopped.
“Before what?”
The monk merely shook his head, the anxious lines of his face gaunt and stark in the dim light. “You
“Let us close our eyes and meditate,” said the monk. “Let us meditate, and offer prayers for its speedy and safe return.”
She swallowed, tried to calm her mind. It was true, she was acting impulsively. Her behavior was no doubt shocking to the monks. But she had made a promise to Aloysius and she was going to keep it.
The monk began chanting, and the others took it up. The strange, humming, repetitive sounds filled her mind, and her anger, her desperate desire to know more, seemed to flow from her like water from a pierced vessel. The strong need to fulfill Pendergast’s request faded somewhat. Her mind became wakeful, almost calm.
The chanting stopped. She slowly opened her eyes.
“Are you still passionately seeking the answer to your question?”
A long silence passed. Constance remembered one of her lessons—a teaching on desire. She bowed her head. “No,” she lied. She wanted the information more than ever.
The monk smiled. “You have much to learn, little monk. We know quite well that you need this information, that you desire this information, and that it will be useful to you. It is not good for you personally that you seek it. The information is extremely dangerous. It has the potential of destroying not just your life, but your very soul. It may bar you from enlightenment for all of time.”
She looked up. “I need it.”
“We do not know what the Agozyen is. We do not know where it came from in India. We do not know who created it. But we know
it was created.”
Constance waited.
“It was created to wreak a terrible vengeance on the world.”
“Vengeance? What kind of vengeance?”
“To cleanse the earth.”
For a reason she could not quite explain, Constance wasn’t sure she wanted the monk to continue. She forced herself to speak. “Cleanse it—how?”
The man’s anxious expression now turned almost sorrowful. “I am very sorry to burden you with this difficult knowledge. When the earth is drowning in selfishness, greed, violence, and evil, the Agozyen will cleanse the earth of its human burden.”
Constance swallowed. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“It will cleanse the earth
of its human burden,” the monk said in a very low voice. “So that all might start afresh.”
7
ALOYSIUS PENDERGAST STEPPED OFF THE VAPORETTO AT CA’ D’ORO and paused, leather briefcase in hand. It was a warm summer day in Venice, and sunlight sparkled off the waters of the Grand Canal and glowed on
