At the mouth of the cave Yangke was stirring the soup. Dried branches had been added to the fire. Hostene was gathering twigs. As Shan lowered himself beside the fire he saw that Yangke was now cleaning containers in which to serve the soup. He had three of Rapaki’s empty cans beside him and was cleaning three others.
“There’s no need-,” Shan began, then broke off as Yangke nodded into the shadows.
“She wouldn’t let me join them,” Yangke said. “She still blames me for Tashi’s death.”
In an instant Shan was on his feet, the butter lamp raised as he walked along the wall of the outer cave, pausing every few steps, fingers extended to catch any moving air. He found a fold in the rock, barely big enough for a man to crawl through. After four feet it opened into a wide passage. Juniper smoke hung about the roof of the tunnel.
They were in a chamber near whose center was a cluster of four candles, and half a dozen butter lamps were scattered around. They sat facing a wall lined with old wicker chests and huge clay jars. Lokesh was gesturing, speaking in the soft, patient voice of a teacher. Dolma was learning a mantra. Lokesh was using his own method to help Gendun and save the people of Drango village.
Feeling like a trespasser, Shan extinguished his lamp. Dolma did not trust Yangke. If Lokesh had seen Yangke, he would have assumed Shan was nearby, but still his friend had remained hidden.
Lokesh paused in midsentence, raised his eyes toward the ceiling, then twisted slightly and without looking back extended an open, uplifted palm in Shan’s direction.
Shan approached uncertainly, painfully aware that he had been disappointing his old friend ever since arriving on the mountain. He had been in many secret chambers since he had been released from prison, had thrilled with discovery as Gendun and Lokesh explained the significance of old relics in hidden shrines, often felt satisfaction that he could now explain much of their content on his own. But here he was just another intruder.
More objects came into view. Holes had been hand chiseled into the rock and pegs inserted to hold equipment. But not the equipment of worship Shan had often seen in such rooms, not robes, not the twenty different hats used to signify roles and functions in the big gompas, not symbolic offerings. On the wall were ropes and staffs of wood, short yak-tail whips, manacles with hand-forged links, ritual axes and iron goads, wooden collars that looked like shorter versions of the canque Yangke had worn, many old leather bags with long drawstrings, and, even more strangely, felt vests with many pockets.
Shan lowered himself to the floor beside Lokesh. His friend was in a state of reverence. Shan would no more interrupt him than he would have interrupted Gendun in a meditation, though the more he listened the more uneasy he felt. A chill crept down his back. Lokesh was going to the same unlikely place Shan had visited the night before in Tashtul, when the little deities had seemed to push him to where he would not have gone on his own.
Shan listened, strangely scared. This was not the patient, forgiving Lokesh he had known for so many years.
The old Tibetan chanted the mantra invoking emptiness, then with a flying bird gesture recited
A bead of sweat rolled off Lokesh’s cheek, his hand trembled. Fear began building in Shan’s chest. His heart began rising up in his throat. There was indeed something in Lokesh he had never seen before. There was no gentleness now in the old man beside him, but rather a dark power, a raw emotion that came close to fury. Lokesh was secretly invoking fierce protective demons and barely tolerant of Shan’s presence, as if Shan were part of what he was protecting against.
He studied the room again, trying to understand, frightened for all of them now. Was it possible that the biggest of the wicker chests was glowing? Lokesh began new mantras, calling upon the tiger-riding Mahakala, then three-eyed Shridevi and snake-bodied Rahula. He wasn’t merely trying to summon a deity to protect Gendun. It was as if he were trying to rip the world apart and start over.
Then the demon rose up. With a wrenching moan Shan threw himself backward.
It was the serpentine Rahula, and it rose from the largest of the wicker chests, one that was nearly four feet high and six long. The thing gazed at the two old Tibetans then seemed to notice Shan sprawled behind them. It cocked its scaly head to study him.
The mantras had finished. Dolma and Lokesh seemed pleased at their work, nodding to the creature as it climbed out of the chest. It had a human shape beneath its demon head, human hands floated along its sides. Beginning to regain his breath, Shan watched as it kneeled in front of Lokesh and bowed. Lokesh uttered a solemn greeting, then pulled off its head.
“It’s only us,” Dolma whispered to Shan. She was at his shoulder, helping him to his feet. “We were not able to explain. The words had to be finished. There is probably not a man in all Tibet who remembers them so well as Lokesh. We are truly blessed.” She brushed off his sleeve, like a mother tidying a small son. “You remember our Trinle, the town carpenter.”
The shadow under the headdress resolved itself into the countenance of the most senior of the elders who had sat with Shan and Lokesh their first night in Drango, the silent one with the wispy beard who kept looking into the sky, the father of the guard Dolma had summoned to her house.
“Trinle has been working on the old costumes. That one’s straps had rotted away. He used some yak-hair cord to fix it.”
The carpenter grinned shyly. “Lha gyal lo,” he whispered.
Shan studied each of the old Tibetans. They too were addressing the violent mysteries of the mountain but they saw them in a completely different way, as disturbances in the natural harmony, as an imbalance among deities. There were no words he could use to reach them, no possibility he could bridge what he was doing and what they were doing. “Lha gyal lo,” he repeated.
“He is the only one left,” Dolma added.
“Left from what?”
“He knows about these things because he used to help store them away each autumn and attended the rituals in spring to awaken them.”
“I thought all the monks at the village temple were killed.”
“They were. They all ran to pray in the sanctuary when the bombs started falling. Trinle was the groundskeeper. He was up in the orchard that day when the Chinese planes came.” Her voice dropped. “He is all we have left. He made a drawing of the old temple that he keeps hidden from Chodron. Sometimes we get it out in the night and sing the old songs.” Her voice became barely audible. “Because we have forgotten most of the mantras.”
Trinle was busy adjusting the headdress again. Lokesh still did not acknowledge Shan. He had formed the Diamond of the Mind mudra. His entire being seemed focused on the top of the spire formed by his two fingers.
Shan walked along the row of chests and boxes, not daring to open any, but seeing two more demon costumes within those that were open. He looked back at the strange objects on the adjoining wall. A dozen questions sprang to mind but he dared not attempt them. “There’s soup,” he finally declared.
Dolma nodded and leaned close to Trinle’s ear. The former groundskeeper reverently laid the Rahula headdress on top of its wicker chest and joined them. Shan paused, looking awkwardly at his old friend.
“Lokesh is not eating today,” Dolma said, and gently pulled Shan away. They rejoined the others.
Hostene’s near frantic concern for his niece impelled him to ask blunt questions of Dolma and Trinle. “My niece said that early pilgrims-people searching for something-came here, long before the other pilgrim circuits in Tibet were constructed. But she told me there was no clear route, no way back for those who set out. You must know the way up and the way out. Where is it?”
Trinle and Dolma listened, then glanced at each other. Hostene’s mistake was that he thought they had come to help him find his niece.
