It seemed to take a long time for him to cross the room toward Hostene’s bed. He paused, listening to his friend’s peaceful breathing, gazing at the objects he held in his hands. He had removed the large feather from inside his vest, the feather he had brought from home, found a short stick, and tied the feather to it with thread taken from the sheet, inserting several smaller colorful feathers around the base of the larger one. Clasped in his fingers at the base of the feather stick was the small leather pouch Shan had seen hidden inside his vest. Devout Navajos, Hostene had told him, carried with them a pouch of soil from the Navajo sacred mountains.
With another stab of guilt Shan retreated into the stairwell. But then he read the note again, went back inside, and shook his friend’s shoulder. Hostene shot upright, squinting at Shan in the dim light.
“Get dressed,” Shan said, handing him the verse. “Abigail has gone back to the kora, to the path of the murderer.”
Outside, the motion detectors had been pushed over so that they faced the ground. The granary door had been left open. The pack that had contained Abigail’s field equipment was gone. Several cartons of canned goods had been ripped open and some of their contents removed.
“She wouldn’t steal,” Hostene said in a worried voice.
“What do they mean,” Shan asked, “the words she wrote?”
“They are from a prayer used by my people, for summoning the holy ones,” Hostene replied.
They moved quietly, pausing at every outcropping that offered cover, aware that Gao had promised to put a guard at the passage, not knowing how far in front of them Abigail was, but knowing that she was not alone. Thomas’s bedroom had been empty as well.
They waited for a cloud to cover the moon before they ventured to the last outcropping before the summit, then watched, waiting. As the moon reappeared, Hostene uttered a hoarse gasp and pointed to a shape lying beneath the cartoonlike painting of the Buddha. Shan thought it could be a rock at first, then saw the glow of teeth near the ground.
Hostene rushed forward. “My God!” he moaned. “What have they done?”
Shan’s stomach almost turned as he saw the small fleshy kernels oozing out of the soldier’s hairline. But then he sniffed. As he took the man’s pulse he noticed two cylinders lying on the ground. “It’s not what you think,” he explained to Hostene. “Someone threw cans of corn at him. One hit the rocks and exploded. He probably bent to investigate and was hit on the head with the second. But his pulse is strong.”
Hostene helped Shan to clean the man’s head and prop him up. Shan took the rifle that lay beside the soldier, removed the clip of bullets from the weapon, pulled the spare clips from the man’s belt, and threw them all high overhead, out of sight. Hostene removed a small, high-power flashlight from the soldier’s belt and switched it on. Together they entered the shadowy passage.
They moved quickly, both men stumbling frequently on the loose gravel underfoot, Hostene pausing sometimes to shine the light behind them, certain he heard sounds of pursuit.
When they reached patches of soil, Shan took the flashlight and examined the ground. The first prints, of Abigail’s boots, were single sets. A second set appeared later, often superimposed on the first. But after a mile the tracks proceeded side by side. Thomas had followed, then caught up with Abigail.
“He’s running away from his uncle,” Hostene said.
“Not exactly,” Shan replied. “Running away is part of it. But he could have gone in any direction, all of which would have been safer than this one. He followed her to protect her. A brave thing, considering he has seen the killer’s work up close.” Shan paused. “What is it, Hostene?” he asked. “Why is it so urgent for Abigail to complete her work on the other side?”
But Hostene didn’t answer as he passed Shan and entered the darkness.
The Navajo waited for Shan to cross the ladder bridge first, then began his transit, upright this time. He was nearly at the far end when he froze. An owl, the biggest Shan had yet seen on the mountain, came flying straight at him, nearly touching his scalp with its talons as it swooped by, then wheeled and returned in the direction from which it had come. Hostene began to lose his balance, his arms flailing the air, his body swaying, the flashlight flying out of his grip.
Shan darted back onto the ladder, grabbing Hostene’s arm an instant before it seemed he would surely fall onto the sharp rocks below. But as he did so, the dry old wood began to crack under their combined weight. When they reached the end of the ladder Shan pushed Hostene forward and leaped onto the rocks.
Hostene soon assumed the lead again, moving more rapidly, as if he sensed a destination close ahead. When they emerged from the cleft in the rock wall, the sky had taken on a bright predawn blush, lighting three lanky shapes lurking at an outcropping fifty yards away. The wolves were hesitant to leave, not reacting to the first stone Shan threw at them, only trotting away when both men moved closer and began pelting them with gravel.
As Shan watched, the animals stopped and looked back with fear in their eyes, not at him, but at the shadows beyond the outcropping.
It wasn’t fear Shan felt as he saw what lay behind the rocks, it wasn’t fear that sapped his strength so quickly that he fell to his knees. It was the black mood that had seized him the night before, his bleak despair now redoubled, hitting him like a club, roiling his stomach, numbing him.
Thomas had a slight grin on his face, frozen in place, as if he thought his assailant had been joking with him. His eyes stared vacantly into the dawn sky. A stream of blood trickled from his scalp, though it seemed unlikely the blow to the head had killed him, for the large pools of blood at the ends of his outstretched arms and the stains on the adjoining rocks showed that his heart had still been pumping when his hands were severed.
Chapter Eight
Shan meant to stop Hostene from entering the little rock-walled chamber but he was unable to make his body act. The old Navajo stood beside him uttering an anguished moan then, staggering, dropped onto a rock. When Shan was finally able to move, he looked up to see Hostene staring at the corpse, a single tear rolling down his cheek.
“Abigail,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“This time,” Shan said, “I think the killer did take her.” He gestured into the shadows where a pack of hair ties, a small battery, and a toothbrush lay on the ground. Someone had tipped over Abigail’s pack.
Hostene wiped his cheek. “We have to follow, quickly.”
“There will be no trail. And if he wanted her dead, she would be lying here beside Thomas. Can you find that cave again, Rapaki’s cave?” Hostene nodded. “Then you must go there and bring back Yangke, as fast as you can. But if you see any miners you must hide.”
Hostene nodded again. Before he left the rock circle he picked up Abigail’s toothbrush and pocketed it, then surveyed the sky, wary not of killers but of owls.
Swallowing his despair, Shan studied the scene, retracing the two sets of boot prints that led from the passage to the cluster of rocks. Abigail and Thomas had stopped, taken several small, shifting steps as if undecided about something, then walked straight to the rocks, as though someone had called them. While the killer was performing his grisly work, what had he done with Abigail? She owed Thomas a debt. Shan did not think she would have fled if she had seen him attacked. Had the killer knocked her unconscious, then bound and gagged her? Or had she been bound and gagged but awake, forced to watch as the killer stretched out each of Thomas’s arms and butchered him?
Shan fought down another wave of nausea, then forced himself to study the bloody stumps at the end of Thomas’s arms. The left had been taken off with one clean chop, the right with two, leaving an uneven line on the bone where the blade had stopped the first time. The edge of the blade had been chipped, which probably meant it was made of either cheap steel or old, brittle, forge-worked metal. The tight pattern of blood reached across the ground onto a rock five feet away, leaving no doubt that Thomas had been alive when his hands had been amputated. But even with such ghastly injuries, a youth in prime health might have survived. Shan bent over Thomas’s head, noting for the first time the burst capillaries in his corneas, the discoloration around his mouth. With another chill Shan looked back at the hair ties and the battery on the ground. He remembered seeing them in the granary. They had been in a plastic bag. The killer had been patient, proceeding as if he had all the time in the
