end of the cave. The path had been paved at the top to endure the occasional floods without being washed away. The sidewall had not crumbled away but had deliberately been built that way, to make a death trap for those who were unlucky enough to be washed out of the cavern. They had found the missing spring melt, the water that had been diverted from the passageway they had used to enter the summit kora.
The excitement of their discovery, and of their survival, was soon replaced by the grim realization that all of their equipment, including that brought by Gao, had been swept away by the water. They had no food, no pilgrim bags, not even a butter lamp. A staff that Hostene had clutched during the ordeal and the contents of their pockets were all that remained. They took inventory. Gao’s phone. A flint. Two pocketknifes. A few pencil stubs. Several feathers Hostene had collected along the way. And, Shan knew, the secrets secured inside Hostene’s vest. Yangke, in his soaked clothes, starter to shiver, rubbed his arms, and looked at Shan expectantly.
Hostene gazed toward the narrow stairs that had saved their lives. He had no way of knowing whether Abigail had been so lucky. He rose, then began walking toward the light at the end of the passage.
They clambered up trails fit only for goats. As the day faded, they made a fire of goat dung under a deep overhang, surrounded by rocks blackened by lightning strikes, beside the painting of a dragon god. “When we capture this crazed monk,” Gao asked as he stared at the vivid painting, “what will happen to him?”
“I don’t know,” Shan replied. “That depends on you.”
“You mean because of Thomas.”
“Because you are the only one among us who might report him to the authorities.”
“If I don’t, what then?”
“We take him back to Drango village, to save the life of Gendun.”
This was the impossible dilemma that had been gnawing at Shan since they had begun their strange pilgrimage. Gendun would never forgive Shan for saving his life by sacrificing that of the hermit, however deranged Rapaki might be.
“I don’t think it matters what I do,” Gao said. “Major Ren is involved now.”
The words quieted them. There were no pilgrims on this mountain, Shan realized. There were only fugitives. Their pasts had overtaken each of them, and their lives were changing. Every man there, including Shan, was beginning to glimpse the hollow shape of his future.
“Why did you do that?” Gao asked Hostene, and pointed to an object Hostene clutched between his hands. The Navajo had gleaned a splinter of wood from an old prayer flag stand and, with thread unwound from his shirt, had fastened some feathers to it.
“We’ve run out of mountain,” Hostene said. “In the morning there will be an end to it. It is time to call on the deities.” He had stripped off his shirt, wore only his vest, and had coated his bare arms with dust again.
Gao stirred the fire. “You have to understand,” he said in a patient voice, “I am a man of science.”
“And I used to be a judge,” Hostene replied earnestly. “But I learned something on this mountain. Here it isn’t about what we have put into our heads, it is about what we have put into our hearts.” He rose and took a new seat fifty feet away, where he had a better view of the sun setting over a hundred miles of horizon.
“Perhaps Heinz had to cross the border to fix his problems,” Shan offered a moment later. “You said the firm does a lot of business in India.”
Gao, his head cocked, was watching Hostene. “This is where you play the part of the clever detective trying to trick me into telling secrets. Didn’t you hear what Hostene just said?”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Doctor. Thomas may have presented many complex challenges but the reason he died was simple. He was trying to find the truth.” Shan explained Thomas’s fastidious work at the murder scene.
“There is a warehouse, in Bengal somewhere,” Gao finally said, “and that house on the ocean, in the south. Beautiful beaches. You saw the photo.”
“Who arranges the schedules and cargo of the trucks going south?”
“I don’t know. Heinz would know. He takes care of details. He’s probably in Tashtul now, taking care of Thomas’s body for me.”
“Only one more thing. Where did Heinz go, that year he was away?”
Gao did not reply. The fire died away. Soon Shan could see nothing but two dim eyes staring at the stars.
The end of the world came after midnight. There was no warning by wind or rain, only a massive bone- shaking clap of thunder that physically pushed Shan and his friends toward the back wall of the overhang, then a blinding explosion of light. They had come to the place where lightning was born. They had come to the home of the lightning god.
The bolts came one after another, with a deep rending force that seemed about to split not only the sky but the mountain as well. The air seemed to boil, churning in and out of their little cavity with the rhythm of the bolts, like the breath of some huge beast.
“Your eyes!” Shan shouted above the din, waving his hands. “Cover your eyes!” They looked at him in mute confusion, and he suddenly understood why. He was deaf, and, judging by their expressions, so were his friends. He crawled to each of them, pushing their forearms over their eyes, gesturing for them to face the wall, away from the flashes.
It seemed it would never stop. They could die so easily. One tongue of the lightning could leap into their confined space and leave them as bent, charred artifacts for some future pilgrim to consult as he passed by.
On it went, the explosions numbing not just his ears but his entire body, the light so intense that even facing the wall, the air smelling of metal, his arm over his eyes, Shan could sometimes see the crimson tinge of his flesh. He found himself slipping toward a place he had never been before, a destination perhaps intended by the path’s builders. He had no body left, no mystery left, no
Chapter Fourteen
His friends were all dead. When the storm finally stopped he crawled desolately from man to man, probing them, touching their backs as they lay curled against the wall. They did not move. Their flesh was so hard and cramped it seemed they had been baked alive.
Shan fell back against the wall, his heart and body ravaged, then eventually took stock of his own senses. He could see the stars and moon, could feel the wind on his face, but could hear nothing. His arms and legs ached, the hair on the back of his neck and arms was singed. His shirt was stiff and brittle at the cuffs.
He curled up on the ledge, facing outward this time, still so numb he couldn’t even feel despair, only think about how painful it would be when it came. He glanced back at his companions. Each man’s hands were balled up in fists, tucked under their chins. In corpses this was called the boxer’s posture, the effect of prolonged heat, which caused the muscles to contract. His eyes welled with moisture as he gazed out over the moonlit ranges.
Suddenly a foot kicked him. Someone was testing to see if
It was as if they had been frozen and were slowly thawing out. He could not see whose foot it was but he helped the struggling figure straighten his limbs, then dragged him into the moonlight. The man worked himself into a sitting position, trembling, squeezing Shan’s hand. It was Gao.
Shan sat with him, each man explaining with gestures to the other that he could not hear. Then he returned to the deeper shadows, leaving the scientist pondering the blackened edges of his clothing. He found the two remaining forms against the wall and felt each for a pulse. Hostene and Yangke were also coming back to life.
Half an hour later all four sat in the moonlight, Shan cradling Yangke’s head in his lap, Hostene holding one of the Tibetan’s hands. They were all deaf but Yangke was also blind.
No one argued when Shan took the lead in the morning, no one disputed their direction, still upward. After climbing for a while, Hostene leading Yangke by his hand, they reached a wide sheltered shelf that held not only small clumps of heather but also a few pools of water. They guided Yangke to a pool and after he had drunk his fill they sluiced it over his head and over his closed eyes, then let him roll onto sun-warmed moss and sleep. They washed themselves. Hostene found some small waxy blue berries that, though tart, provided a makeshift breakfast.
