of Drakte's death. Because as important as returning the eye may be, there was something else, something he would sacrifice even his inner deity for, and that was keeping the old Tibetans safe.
'And a valley of people lost their deity,' his teacher replied. He let the words hang in the air a moment, until Shan looked back into his eyes. 'It will be your greatest test. Look forward. Look inside. Not behind you. You must stop being the seeker you were and become the seeker you want to be.'
It was a topic of many conversations between them. Shan's biggest spiritual handicap was his obsession with the workings of what Gendun called the fleeting, unimportant mysteries of the surface world when he should be looking to the mystery of his soul.
'You must stop being a seeker of fact and become a seeker of truth,' Gendun said. 'That is how deities are repaired.'
'Rinpoche, after the durtro, don't try to find us,' Shan said abruptly. Gendun looked at him, and Shan's face flushed. The words sounded like Shan was bargaining, as if he were asking Gendun to at least acknowledge the danger that he always ignored. 'You must go back to Yerpa,' Shan said, referring to the secret hermitage inside a mountain above Lhadrung, where Gendun was the principal teacher to a handful of monks. 'Please.'
'My boots.' Gendun nodded toward to his feet, where the soles of his old work boots had split open at the toe. 'My boots are tired,' he said, as though agreeing. 'But first I must deliver the earth part of Drakte back to the earth,' he said quietly, looking at the dead man a moment before turning back to Shan. 'May the Compassionate Buddha watch over you,' he whispered.
A single dried, brown leaf blew into the doorway. They watched in silence as the wind carried it out again, past the cluster of buildings and up into the air, until it soared out of sight. They both stared at the empty place it had been; then, as if the leaf had been a signal, Gendun turned toward Drakte, pausing to fix Shan with a brief gaze that somehow expressed worry and hope at the same time. 'Beware of the dust and air,' he said with a note of finality, then sat and began reciting the Bardo again.
Beware of the dust and air. It was one of Gendun's customary farewells, a way of saying pay attention only to the essence of what you encounter.
But something made Shan turn back as he reached the door. Gendun paused and slowly brought his eyes back to Shan's. There was an exquisite silence between them for a moment, and Shan fought the urge to go to Gendun's side and not move until the Bardo was done.
'The deity you find, Shan, will be the one you take with you,' Gendun said quietly, punctuating the words with another long stare before he turned back to Drakte.
As Shan stepped outside he realized the hairs on his arms were standing on end. He stood perfectly still a moment, looking at his hands, which trembled. Slowly, stumbling over his own boots, he stepped toward his horse, ignoring the Golok's impatient gestures for him to mount. As he lifted the reins he looked back at Somo, who stood at the door to the lhakang now. 'You never did tell us what it was, the message you were carrying for Drakte,' he said.
The woman frowned. 'It was a purba message.'
'It was about the eye,' Shan said, 'if you were coming here.'
'The lamas. The government is sweeping the mountains for unregistered lamas.'
'No. We knew that already.'
She glanced back toward the death hut, then hesitantly stepped to Shan's side. 'All right. We didn't think Drakte knew. He had to be warned before he started for that valley with you. They're moving north, a headquarters unit from Lhasa,' Somo declared cryptically. 'That was my message. A small unit.' She bit her lower lip. 'Platoon strength, that's what I was to say to Drakte.'
'I'm sorry,' Shan said, his throat suddenly bone dry. 'I don't understand.'
'I guess it means you must move quickly now. This Golok must know secret trails.' She saw the confusion in Shan's eyes and glanced at Nyma. 'No one told you about the struggle over that old stone eye? Someone else thinks they own it. It was taken from them in Lhasa. They want it back.'
'Who?' Shan asked with a sinking heart.
Somo bit her lip again, then answered slowly, in a chill tone. 'The 54th Mountain Combat Brigade of the People's Liberation Army.'
Chapter Three
They rode not north, as Shan expected, but west, climbing the high ridge on the far side of the long valley, then descending toward the second snowcapped range of mountains beyond it. As he rode over the crest and out of the valley that led to the hermitage, Shan reined in his horse and watched Dremu trot off to scout ahead. He looked back to the ridge where the dropka had stacked rocks to protect the lamas, toward the hermitage. Gendun had been sheltered inside his own secret hermitage above Lhadrung until Shan had discovered it. Gendun might never have been exposed to the outside world except for Shan.
'When we arrived there, before the mandala began, I talked with Shopo,' said Lokesh, at his side. The old man had an uncanny ability to read Shan's emotions. 'They didn't know Gendun. He just arrived and sat in the lhakang for hours contemplating the stone eye. Then he drank tea with Shopo and said he knew that eye now, and he knew who would return the eye, as certain as if he had read it in a book where the future is written. Shopo said he hadn't been sure himself, but Gendun would not be swayed. He knew it had to be you. He said not only did you have a pure heart, you had a big heart, so big it was a burden to you.'
So big its pain almost overpowered Shan. If the killer was stalking the eye he had no choice but to take it away from the lamas. And going with it was the only way he would find the killer. He could only protect the lamas by leaving the lamas.
Shan cast an awkward glance at Lokesh, who grinned back, leaned over like a mischievous uncle and pulled Shan's hat brim down over his eyes, then trotted away toward a clump of flowers. It was how Lokesh always traveled, not in a straight line but from flower to flower, or rock to rock, stopping to examine the shapes of nature in whatever form might capture his curiosity. He turned toward the Golok, who was moving so quickly away he seemed to be fleeing them. He did not trust the man. But Drakte had, or at least Dremu wanted Shan and the others to believe he had. Dremu knew about the eye but none of the others left alive knew about him. Drakte had apparently known him, but from where? The only logical answer seemed to be from prison. Shan checked the binding on his saddlebag, then reluctantly urged his horse forward.
Three hours later Dremu waited for them at the crest of the lowest ridge in the second range, their mounts following a winding goat trail through patches of snow. The air beyond still shimmered, as Shan had seen from a distance, and as they reached the crest he discovered the reason.
'Lha gyal lo!' Lokesh called out with a boyish glee as he rode up behind Shan, pointing to the vast flat expanse of turquoise that dominated the landscape below them. 'Lamtso!'
Shan stared at the distant water. It looked like a long jewel inlaid between the mountains. Lamtso was one of Tibet's holy lakes, its waters known as the home of important nagas, its shores a favorite grazing ground for the dropka herds.
From a bag tied to his horse the Golok produced a large plastic water bottle filled not with water but with amber chang, Tibetan barley beer. He did not open it, but quickly surveyed the faces of his companions. 'We sleep there tonight,' he announced with a gesture toward the water. 'If we move fast enough,' he added with a frown toward Lokesh. The Golok paused and squinted toward the horizon behind them. Shan followed his gaze toward the valley they had just traversed. A small band of horsemen was pursuing them. Or perhaps not pursuing them, he realized, for they had stopped as well and had spread out, watching behind them.
'Those dropka,' Dremu said. 'They are worried about you, Chinese. They think they can try to guard your back but they don't know the kind of trouble that follows. How many Tibetans are you worth, comrade?' he asked, aiming a bitter glance at Shan, then kicked his horse into a gallop and disappeared around a bend in the trail.
They caught up with him a quarter hour later, waiting at a huge outcropping of rock, a leg draped over his horse's neck, nearly half the bottle gone. As Nyma and Tenzin began to ease their mounts around him, the Golok raised a hand in warning. 'Wouldn't if I were you.'
'I think we can find the lake from here,' Nyma declared impatiently.
