friend awoke for a moment and beckoned Shan with his head. “The kora,” he whispered, then he lost consciousness again.
Ten feet away Hostene sat with the blue pack between his legs, fidgeting with the small video camera from the cave. They watched the small rectangular screen as a young woman with long black hair gathered at the back in a knot conferred with a thin Chinese man with graying hair beside the Tara that had just been obliterated.
“She always complained when I used the camera for casual shots. We are not tourists, she would say. She only brought it to obtain footage she could use in class,” Hostene explained. He turned toward Lokesh. “What did he mean, before he passed out?”
A kora. Lokesh had disagreed with Shan’s approach to finding the killer, to applying logic and deduction to the mountain, because he thought such tools useless, even misleading. He had his own way of understanding the mountain. “The statue and painted words were once part of a pilgrim’s path.” The little shrine would have been a way stop, probably a place of vigil for pilgrims, a rest station for those following a path laid out by lamas or saints in another century.
“Is that important?”
The words of the fleeing miner came back to Shan. The man murdered earlier that summer had been found in front of an old painting, as had the miner the year before. “It links all the murders.”
“Have there been others?” Hostene asked.
Shan explained. “Four people have been killed. All on the kora, the pilgrim’s path. All have had their hands severed.”
Hostene’s face darkened. He gazed at Lokesh again, then turned back to the camera and adjusted the volume so they could dimly hear a rich, energetic woman’s voice point out the features of the sacred rock. The Navajo’s eyes watched the little screen with affection, pride, and reverence. Once the woman’s head jerked to the left and anger flashed in her dark eyes. Someone off-screen apologized in Tibetan.
“Every day she was here she gained energy,” Hostene said. “She was making a great discovery. Professor Ma wasn’t sure what she meant. Something very old was here, she said. She told us it would be clearer to us in a week or two.”
“Where would she have gone?” Shan asked. “The night of the killings.”
Hostene stared at the screen as if he were watching a ghost.
“The moon was bright. That night as it rose she said there was a reason why many of the Navajo ceremonials are performed only at night. She was still there, by our fire, when I climbed into my sleeping bag.” He looked up at Shan. “If she thought we had all died, she might still be working, finishing her research.”
“Surely she would go home. Or at least go down the mountain, to notify the police,” Yangke interjected.
“Not Abigail. Not this mountain,” the Navajo replied cryptically. “Not this summer. She knew Tibet better than I do. She would have known there were no police who could help. She would continue working, thinking she could evade the killer. Her research was too important to her.”
“But she left all her equipment in the cave,” Shan pointed out.
“Not all of it,” Hostene said. “A digital camera with a small tripod is missing. She likes to travel light. Tashi and I usually carried the other equipment.”
“And she took her backpack,” pointed out Yangke.
“But may not have done so voluntarily,” Shan reminded them. He saw the anxiety in Hostene’s face and tried to force hope into his voice. “We need to keep all possibilities in mind.”
After a moment Hostene said, “The killer doesn’t have her, he can’t have her. She must have been sure we’d all died and so she kept working. It’s her way. She would have returned to the camp, been terrified by all the blood, and run to hide somewhere for a day or two. If she went back and found no sign of us, she knows what Tibetans do with bodies. She also knows she’ll never have another chance to complete her work. She knows what I would want.”
“Then the question is where is she working?” Shan replied.
They continued to watch the video with new, intense interest.
Abigail Natay, even in miniature, was an impressive woman. Like her uncle, she had a quiet strength about her. Shan could sense her confidence, see the fire in her eyes, as she was buoyed on a flood of exuberant commentary. Though the Tibetans had had the technology of the wheel for centuries, they used it primarily for prayer wheels, she explained. They chose to muster armies of monks instead of armies of warriors. Near the end of the scene she seemed to catch herself, glanced at the camera, and self-consciously brushed back a long black lock that had drifted across one high cheekbone.
Shan said, “You mentioned before that Tashi got drunk. Surely you didn’t bring bottles of liquor with you.”
“Just the brandy in my flask,” Hostene replied. “It was the miners. I never actually saw him drinking but twice I saw him come back to camp when he thought we were sleeping, and he was staggering.”
In the next video Abby stood before another smooth rock face, but this one was adorned only with barely legible words.
Yangke leaned forward, studying the image intently. “I’ve roamed this mountain for years,” he said. “But I have never seen this place.”
“You said nothing about a pilgrim path,” Shan said.
The Tibetan’s face clouded. “It’s not well known.”
“You mean the people of the mountain try to keep it a secret. Why?”
Yangke gazed toward the summit. “It’s from another time, another world.”
“Why?” Shan repeated.
“In the country we live in, when Tibetans reveal that something is important to them, those who watch us will destroy it. Besides,” he added after a moment, “the path is lost to us. It disappears into the grass a few miles up the slope. No one has ever found the rest of it. All those who knew its course died when our temple was destroyed fifty years ago.”
“Abby and Tashi would take the camera and disappear for hours,” Hostene said. “She was making new discoveries every day, finding Buddhist things, Bon things, ancient things.” The three men did not need to articulate the question that hung in the air. Had Abigail discovered the route of the ancient pilgrim path?
Hostene checked the bandage on Lokesh’s hand. Shan continued to watch the screen. “I thought you said no one was looking for gold,” he said after a moment. Abigail stood in front of a tunnel framed by old timbers. The camera panned, showing old metal implements, rusting to dust, and an old iron-framed chest whose boards were nearly rotted away.
“I said ‘not exactly,’ ” the Navajo replied. “Some of the very old prayers spoke about mining gold for the gods.” He paused, cocked his head, and looked out over the pile of rocks.
Shan thought he heard an insect at first, singing in the languid heat. Then, for a moment, he thought it was something on the tape. He touched the power button of the recorder. The sound came from just over the high rim of the rocks that had trapped them and grew louder as they listened, resolving into a familiar pattern. Someone was energetically reciting a mantra.
Moments later a scalp of shaggy black hair appeared, then a small surprised face, then shoulders draped in reddish rags. The chant faltered as the man peered at them over the edge, then ducked down. He repeated the motion several times, bobbing up and down, disappearing then returning, as if to get a better idea of the creatures trapped below. He disappeared and the mantra picked up again, this time with the rhythm of a cheerful song.
“Rapaki!” Yangke exclaimed. “Stay here or you’ll frighten him away,” he warned, then began scaling the loose, treacherous pile of rubble.
Shan and Hostene, sitting beside Lokesh’s prostrate form, waited as Yangke spoke in encouraging tones, gesturing as if to a skittish dog. When his words had no effect on the singsong mantra, he began pulling rocks from the top. They would have to clear a path if they were to carry Lokesh safely over the rubble.
After several minutes the strange ragged figure reappeared, veering in and out of view as he lifted and moved stones, gradually approaching Yangke, still chanting, until finally the two men were working side by side. He had the wild appearance of one who lived exposed to the elements, his skin leathery, his hair long and uneven. The rags on his back had once been a robe, though it now bore so many patches of different colors and fabrics that it appeared as if he had tied a quilt around himself.
When Rapaki finally noticed that Shan was slowly advancing toward him, he ducked behind Yangke, then
