Prayer of the Dragon

The word tugged at his memory, as if he should recognize it.

Shan stuffed the sticks into his pocket. Lifting his tattered hat from the peg where he had left it, he went outside. The brilliant late-afternoon sunlight exploded against his retinas. He jerked his hat down and staggered, nearly falling as a rush of small hooves surrounded him. By the time he recovered his balance, the sheep had sped by, led toward the grassy slope above by a herder. Neither Lokesh nor the intruder could be seen.

The village was called Drango, Tibetan for Head of the Rock. It consisted of perhaps forty structures, most of them built in the traditional fashion-compact two-story houses with quarters for livestock below and humans above, each with a rear courtyard defined by crumbling rock walls, many of which contained goats cropping at weeds. The whitewash on most of the houses was faded, their maroon trim bleached to pinkish gray. Two round stone granaries for storing barley stood near the paths to the fields. Beyond the houses lay the stone foundations of a much larger building inside of which vegetable gardens had been laid out, a familiar sight in the mountains. The Chinese army, deeming such places too remote for infantry, had allocated enough aerial bombs to such hamlets to ensure that each local temple was destroyed.

Shan wandered along the paths between the buildings, admiring the lotus blossoms carved on a roof beam, the small richly colored rug hanging half completed on a well-used loom, the stack of handmade baskets awaiting the grain harvest. No motor vehicle could reach closer than fifty miles, and taking goods to market would mean a backbreaking trek with yak and mule. The village must feed and clothe itself, as it had for centuries. He followed a small maze of winding walls past a forge, an oven, storage bays for dung and wood, and rows of large clay jars holding pickled vegetables. The pungent scent of yak milk being churned floated in the cool late-summer air, intermingled with the earthy scents of soil, dung, and tea.

Drango village was remarkable for what he saw and for what he did not see. It was frozen in time-a proud, peaceful community little changed in fifty years. But the only evidences of Buddhist tradition were a small strand of tattered prayer flags flapping from a rock cairn above the village, faded emblems painted beside half a dozen doorways, decrepit wooden altars at the rear of a few houses, and a huge pile of dried juniper, the fragrant wood burned to attract deities, at the end of the only street. There were none of the prayer flags that often hung between buildings in such hamlets, no prayer wheels, no effort to rebuild what the Chinese army had destroyed when it invaded Tibet decades earlier. With increasing foreboding he paced around the back of the village, studying the wide circle of packed earth at the end of the street, devoid of rocks and barley. It could have been a place for winnowing grain. It could have been a helicopter landing pad. He felt an uninvited twitch, the stirring of the old instincts that refused to die, honed by twenty years as special investigator for the inner circle of Beijing’s top officials.

From the shadows he studied each of the houses. At first glance he had seen a dozen empty poles from which prayer flags would have traditionally hung. But then he saw that the pole beside the largest, best maintained of the houses had a radio antenna strapped to its side. He continued to wander among buildings until he encountered two boys of perhaps four years of age playing on the stone step of a house. His stomach went cold, and he retreated. They were playing with small clay figures of Buddhist saints, lifting them one at a time and pressing them with their thumbs until the heads popped off, erupting with laughter each time. The headless bodies were lined up on the step.

Shan found Lokesh sitting cross-legged on a long, flat rock fifty yards up the slope, a perch that offered not only a view of the entire village, its fields, and the stream that flowed past them, but also of the lower mountain ranges that cascaded toward the south and west. Shan paced around the rock as he reached Lokesh, taking in the long view before turning toward the huge rugged peak that towered over them, the highest point for dozens of miles.

Lokesh seemed to read his mind. “They call it the Sleeping Dragon. It is a sacred peak,” he declared in a tired voice, “home to a powerful land spirit. Some of the villagers say it is why they are so blessed.” It was the kind of announcement that Lokesh normally would have offered with great excitement. The last time he and Shan had visited such a mountain they had spent a day climbing toward the top, making rock-cairn shrines along the way, then meditating near the summit as the moon rose. But the children of this mountain laughed as they snapped off the heads of saints.

“They were surprised to see us when we arrived,” Lokesh said abruptly. “Chodron, the headman, said no one had sent for us. He was angry when an old woman declared it was destined we should be there and led us into the stable. Since then, Gendun has left his vigil only for a few hours’ sleep while I stayed to continue reciting the mantras. Whenever I go outside, the villagers follow me with tea and tsampa, as if to tempt me away from something. They will not speak of what happened. All they say is that two men are dead and they blame the outsider in the stable. Chodron barely lets us out of his sight. He has posted that man near the stable door to watch everything we do.”

“But someone did send for you,” Shan stated. He had been on a solitary meditation and had returned to their secret mountain hermitage to find both his friends gone. Later, two teenage herders had arrived, panting from their race across the ranges, with an urgent message from Lokesh for Shan to accompany the youths to Drango.

Shan sat beside his friend, wondering at the weakness in Lokesh’s voice, worried that he might be ill. He followed Lokesh’s gaze along the rock wall that enclosed the nearest field. Nearly two hundred feet away, where the wall turned to accommodate a windblown juniper, was a sight so strange it took a long moment for Shan to comprehend it.

A woman in a traditional aproned dress was feeding a man of perhaps thirty, patiently placing small morsels in his mouth, pieces of fruit perhaps, or clumps of tsampa. The man was incapable of feeding himself because his arms were clamped by a five-foot-long beam of wood that encircled his neck.

“A canque,” Lokesh explained. “I have not seen such a collar since I was a boy. Until now that man has stayed on the slope above town.” A large brown dog, one of the mastiffs used to guard the sheep, appeared from behind the canque-bearer, gazed at Shan and Lokesh, then toward a small flock on the slope above, before settling beside the man.

Shan had never seen such a device but had heard of it in the tales prisoners in their gulag had told on long winter nights. Old Tibet had had no prisons, and almost no criminals. When punishment had been necessary it varied according to local practice. Lesser criminals were sometimes locked into such devices, then released, to carry their prison with them. “Surely,” Shan said, “it can’t be. .” His question died on his tongue. Can’t be real? But he saw it, was witnessing the ordeal the man faced to avoid starving. Can’t be permitted? The government paid little attention to such remote communities.

“Crime is rare in Drango,” Lokesh said. “But when a crime is committed, the headman decides on the punishment. He has an old book he consults. Thieves are sentenced to the collar.”

Shan was beginning to understand his friend’s anguish. “And killers?”

“There has never been a murder in anyone’s lifetime. They consulted their book. They are not fully decided but they are making preparations.”

“Preparations?”

“They have resolved that if the stranger dies or continues in his blissful state it will prove he is joined with the gods. If he awakens. .” Lokesh looked toward the shadows behind the nearest house, where a man bent over a grinding stone. His voice cracked as he explained. “They are sharpening spoons.”

“Spoons?”

“If he awakens they will either throw him from the cliff or gouge out his eyes.”

A chill ran down Shan’s spine. He stared around the quiet little village. “That is why you have not tried to heal him,” he concluded.

“If I wake him, I condemn him to their punishment.”

The air itself seemed to have grown colder. Shan pulled the collar of his quilted jacket more tightly around his neck. “What is known of the ones who died?”

“Two men from away, they say,” Lokesh told him. “Some villagers found the man who is in the stable up on the mountain, propped against a rock as if meditating. He was sitting close to the bodies. An image of a sacred vase was drawn beside him.” It was what a hermit might do-sit at the base of a high rock with the drawing of a sacred image nearby on which to focus his meditation.

“No writing?”

“Only the vase, and another sign they could not understand. It was drawn in blood. Chodron says the killer drew it to show remorse, that it is as good as a confession. His fingers were covered with blood, and there was a hammer at his feet.”