They sat, still partially in shock, staring at each other, rubbing their ears, casting fearful glances toward the summit, within an hour’s reach now. If she had survived, Abigail could be up there, as deaf and blind as Yangke. But they were weary to the bone from the night’s ordeal. The warmth of the little hollow soon had them sprawled against the rocks, drifting into slumber.
A bird was calling in the distance when Shan awoke, perhaps two hours later. He saw it only ten feet away, languidly watched it eating some of the blue berries. Why did it sound so far away? Shan sat up as the welcome realization hit him. His hearing was returning. He turned to see Hostene bending over Yangke, whose face had turned yellow.
The Navajo had opened his precious sacred pollen from home. He had spread some on Yangke’s hands, and more on his cheeks and brow, and was bent over the Tibetan, speaking toward the crown of his head, waving his spirit feather in the air. The unintelligible words, which seemed to filter down a long pipe, made Shan worry again about his senses until he realized Hostene was speaking in his native tongue.
Shan stretched, stood, explored the beginning of the trail to the summit, then began picking more berries for Yangke, soon joined by Gao, who confirmed that his hearing was also beginning to return. When they brought the berries back, Yangke was sitting upright, cross-legged, moving his hand back and forth across his lap. “I see shadows,” he said in a hopeful tone. He could hear perfectly now, he explained, then ravenously consumed the berries they dropped into his palm.
Having passed through a corridor of natural stone covered with the most fearful paintings they had yet seen, they looked down on a quarter-mile-wide bowl directly beneath the summit. It seemed to be filled with debris, a jumble of jagged, lightning-scorched slabs that had sloughed off the pinnacle. In the center, at its lowest point, was an opening-not a crater but a jagged tear in the fabric of the peak, a crevasse perhaps a hundred feet long and thirty wide. All except the largest of the rock slabs had been cleared from around it. Its perimeter was outlined with tall cairns, some bearing the last threads of prayer flags from another century.
A wide pathway at one end of the fissure connected it to a shallow cave at the base of the summit, a twenty-foot-high indentation where a great piece of stone appeared to have been scooped out of the peak. Halfway between the cavern and the fissure were two figures, one in an oft-patched red robe who was prostrating himself as he advanced toward the hole. The other, wearing a long green vest with many golden bracelets and a tiered headdress, trudged behind him.
Hostene ran forward.
“No!” Shan shouted in vain. They had lost the benefit of surprise, lost all chance of comprehension before confronting those below. Gao hurried past, holding one of Yangke’s hands. The scientist was supposed to be leading the blind Tibetan but Gao appeared to be dragged by Yangke.
Shan lingered, trying to see the place as Lokesh might, as the builders had intended. They had experienced the end of the world the night before, and now had reached the home of the deities. For one who believed the supreme deities were lightning gods, such a place would be the gateway to heaven, and the proper final home for a wandering Tara. He studied the fissure, the prostrating monk, the strangely submissive Navajo woman, then ran to Gao’s side.
“Don’t,” he said, surprised to find himself panting for breath, reminding himself of the thinness of the air.
“Don’t what?” Gao asked.
“I don’t know,” Shan said, a terrible premonition building inside him. “Don’t believe anything is as it seems.”
“Tell
Abigail Natay appeared to have aged ten years. Her skin was chalky, her eyes hollow, her hair dull and tangled under the old headdress of the Tara costume. She had been sprinkled with pollen. On one hand was a daub of white paint, tapered at the ends. She had acquired a third eye. Hostene seemed to be unable to touch his niece. As Shan halted a dozen feet away the Navajo extended his hand to within a few inches of her, withdrew it, then repeated the motion. She gave no sign of seeing him, staring straight ahead at the bobbing head of the pilgrim she followed.
Rapaki, moving at the snail’s pace of the prostrating pilgrim, seemed to be heading for a stone altar at the rim of the fissure, beside a long heavy slab that had fallen so it extended perhaps eight feet over the hole.
Shan turned to see Gao guiding Yangke to a ring of flat stones arranged like seats in front of the cavern. As he watched, Gao paused, his expression rigid as he looked at something on the floor of the cave. Shan took a step closer, and another, trying to see, then broke into a run. The leg of a man sprawled from behind a rock in the cave.
He sped past Gao. A moment later he reached the prostrate form, which was bound with rope.
“How could-,” Gao began as he saw the color of the man’s hair. “What have they done?” he groaned.
Shan pulled the man onto his back. It was Heinz Kohler.
The German’s temple was bleeding from a jagged cut. His arms were tied against his sides with yak-hair rope that had been wound around his body a dozen times. Gao bent over his unconscious friend, examining one arm, then the other. Satisfied that Kohler’s hands were intact, he began untying him. Leaning against the rock beside him was a short ceremonial ax, its four-inch blade stained brown. Shan lifted the blade. It matched the outline he had seen on the wall of the storage chamber at the hermit’s cave. At the center of the blade the metal was nicked.
They laid Kohler in the sunlight, Shan cupping rainwater from another of the natural bowls in the rock and splashing it over the German’s face as Gao hovered over him, wiping the blood from Kohler’s check with his handkerchief. The German’s eyes fluttered open and he gazed at Gao for a long moment before recognizing him. “They tied me up,” he explained in a weak voice. “Rapaki. He’s insane. He has her under some kind of spell.” Then his eyes came into focus and he sat up. “Abigail!” Kohler shouted, then he staggered to his feet and ran toward her.
He did not hesitate to touch her but grabbed her and thrust her toward Hostene, then ran toward Rapaki.
The hermit was nearly at the edge of the fissure now, before the little altar. Shan reached him first but hesitated.
“Anything from your old lamas about disturbing a lunatic killer who is pretending to be a pilgrim?” Kohler asked in a bitter voice.
For the first time, Shan saw that Rapaki carried a leather bag, a pilgrim’s bag, strapped to his belt.
“Rapaki,” Shan called softly. The hermit did not react.
Abigail was moving again, in tandem with Rapaki, as if bound to him by some invisible cord. Kohler, blood still trickling down his face, cast an impatient glance at Hostene, then charged toward Abigail, scooping her up onto his shoulder and carrying her back to the cavern.
The mantra Rapaki chanted grew louder, and oddly joyful.
“I don’t understand,” Hostene said. He had taken several steps toward his niece, now seemingly out of harm’s way, then paused, his troubled gaze on the hermit.
“He has an offering to make,” Shan said, gesturing toward the altar.
“To what?”
“To all the gods and saints who live below.”
“Below?”
“He’s been looking for it all his life. Abigail showed him the way. The bayal, the home of the gods.”
They looked back. Gao was with Kohler now, wiping Abigail’s face as the German covered her with a blanket.
“What are you waiting for?” Hostene called out. “He is the killer!”
“Let him finish,” Shan said. “After he’s come all this way, after all these years, let him touch the altar and make his offering.”
“He has to be brought to justice,” Hostene said. “We must take him back to the village. You have to think of Gendun and Lokesh.”
That, Shan did not say, is exactly what I am doing.
Shan advanced toward the altar, and lowered himself to the ground. Rapaki touched the altar, his face
