basket over her head and broke open a pouch of sacred pollen. They say such a sin will affect the child who commits it later in life. Her parents asked for a chant, a purification, but the next week the old man got sick and never recovered. Abigail was due to go away to the government boarding school. The rite was never performed. They tried to bring her back for it but the government teachers wouldn’t permit it. They said that was exactly the kind of thing she had to stay away from. Later, we found out they had thrown away all her amulets.
“Abigail made light of it when she first heard the story, saying she would use it in her classes to illustrate the psychocultural elements of taboo. But it’s been troubling her recently. One night after we arrived on the mountain, she admitted she was worried that what had happened when she was young might affect her work here, might blind her to important signs here on the mountain.”
Shan said nothing. They retreated into their rock shelter. A cloud had passed in front of the rising moon. From somewhere higher on the mountain an owl called.
Hostene was awake at dawn. Shan had been tortured by nightmares, and been up for hours. Hostene declined the dried fruit Shan offered him for breakfast. They continued on to the next grove of trees, where they found only the remnants of dozens of small conifer cones consumed by the pikas. At a second grove there was only a ketaan stick jammed into a crack in a painting and broken off. Shan pointed to the many boot prints in the soil, and they each picked a set to follow. Shan went in the opposite direction from Hostene, after they’d arranged to meet back at the painting in ten minutes. But Shan’s trail soon disappeared at a rock ledge. He stood, staring at the treacherous-looking summit, still covered with small patches of snow. He was about to go back when a shadow appeared on the rock beside him and he heard muffled murmuring. He lowered himself to the ground and began to whisper a mantra.
The shadow moved one way, then another. Up, then down. When the hermit finally showed himself he circled Shan, who maintained his recitation. Rapaki finally squatted in front of him.
“On the summit,” Shan ventured, “wait the secrets of the Lord of the Mountain.”
The hermit’s eyes grew round. “At the top crouches the great one,” he said in the singsong rhythm he used for all his utterances. “His mane of turquoise flows everywhere. He spreads his claws upon the snow.” Rapaki’s head bobbed as he looked up and down the slope, as if searching for something.
“You are trying to reach him. I want to help too.”
“When there was a fertile field, there was no master.” Rapaki’s voice was like a machine in need of oiling. “Now the master has come and it is overgrown with weeds.”
The only intact book in the hermit’s cave, Shan recalled, had been the
“In strict seclusion without man or dog, you may have the torch to see the signs.” Shan also knew some of the verses.
Rapaki responded with a rapid fire of words. Those that Shan made out seemed to be disconnected.
The hermit squinted at Shan as if to see him more clearly, then circled him again. As he completed the circuit he gasped and bent, pointing at Shan’s arm. A tiny, brilliant reflection from a crystal in a nearby rock had appeared on the back of Shan’s hand. Rapaki gazed intently at the silver patch of light.
Shan was dumbfounded. It was not possible that the hermit knew Chinese. But he had perfectly pronounced four Mandarin syllables, an insult. Literally, it meant,
Shan could see the white surrounding Rapaki’s irises. The hermit seemed terrified. Something struck Shan’s arm as the hermit backed away. He was throwing sharp-edged stones at Shan. Each connected painfully with Shan’s arm or chest. Then the light shifted, the silvery reflection vanished, and Rapaki stopped. Shan raised his hands, palms outward.
“You may have the torch to see the signs,” Shan repeated.
The hermit cocked his head, clutching the prayer amulet suspended from his neck, his frightened expression changing to one of confusion.
Hostene called. Shan glanced over his shoulder. When he turned back, Rapaki was gone.
He did not mention the hermit to the Navajo, who was waiting at the painting. As Hostene began to walk toward the next grove, a quarter mile away, Shan put a restraining hand on his arm.
“No more trees,” Shan declared. “We must investigate elsewhere.”
“But Abigail-,” Hostene protested.
Shan countered, “Gendun is the reason you are alive. And last night I had nightmares about Gendun being tortured. When we catch the murderer, I think we will learn where your niece is. If we don’t catch the murderer, she may be his next victim. But it is certain that when Chodron does not get what he needs, Gendun will pay. And then you.”
Hostene gazed forlornly at the trees. For a moment Shan thought the Navajo was going to flee up the mountain alone.
“This mountain is more alive with activity than all the ranges around it,” Shan said, surveying the slope again. “But all its people have become skittish and secretive. They are only active in the shadows, shy of the open. It’s how you survive when predators lurk overhead. There is a nerve center here for the miners’ operations called Little Moscow. It cannot be far from this place. We must go there now.”
He pulled out the rough map Hostene kept in his pack, looking for somewhere central but hidden, where thirty or forty men might converge without being conspicuous, and focused on a shaded area low in the center of the slope, about three miles from where they sat.
“That’s a maze of ravines,” Hostene explained. “Tashi warned us to stay away because they were so dangerous.”
They began a cautious descent to the labyrinth of gullies that stretched below them. As they proceeded, vague scents of roasting meat and wood smoke told them they had guessed correctly, but they could not tell where in the maze the miner’s camp was located. Then Hostene pointed to a tiny blemish in the sky, a ragged thread of smoke rising from one of the ravines to the east.
They soon discovered a well-worn trail bearing the tracks of boots and bicycle tires that wandered around serpentine rock walls and spires and found themselves in the shadows at the edge of a wide clearing in the center of which was a smoldering fire. Huge rock slabs had split from the walls, falling upon each other, forming natural lean-tos and shallow caves. Awnings of canvas had been added to some, several had photographs of family or makeshift mileage signs to Chinese cities at their entrance. The square fronts of the makeshift structures, the laundry hanging on poles from several, the scent of fried rice and wild onions coming from a nearby brazier, the wooden birdcage that incongruously hung from a pole before one abode, the two men playing mah-Jongg on upturned buckets with small piles of cash beside them all brought an uninvited pang of nostalgia to Shan. The scene reminded him of a
From the shadows Shan counted sixteen miners. They had the wild look of men who took every advantage of living outside the law. Half of them stood near the dying fire, cursing, gesturing threateningly toward a forlorn, frightened figure sprawled on a blanket.
Hostene hung back, pulling on Shan’s arm. But when a tall lean man in a leather vest kicked the helpless figure on the blanket Shan stepped into the open.
“No-you mustn’t!” Hostene warned from the shadows.
“I have no choice,” Shan said. “They have my assistant.”
Within seconds more men emerged from the shelters, some brandishing shovels and picks like weapons. The rough faces that stared at Shan appeared to have come from all corners of China.
Some bore the mixed Tibetan-Chinese features that were becoming common on many Tibetan streets. But
