Beautiful Ghosts (14 page)

As the stranger slowly raised his hand from the floor of the stream, putting more of his weight on his legs, the iron bar beneath his right foot snapped loose, broken away at the bottom.

Shan extended his leg, struggling to direct the end of the belt close to the man’s hand. “You’ve got to turn and grab it when I say,” he called.

“If I miss it I’m gone.” The man groaned.

“I don’t know which is going to last longer,” Shan said, “my shirt or that last bar.” He pushed his leg as far as it would go, lifting it, twisting it, watching the end of the belt as the water carried it closer to the man. “Now!”

In the same instant the man twisted and grabbed the belt, the last bar broke, and Shan’s shirt began to rip. The American began to slip out the opening, his legs hanging over the abyss, the heavier man pulling Shan toward him. Then, suddenly, a hand appeared on Shan’s arm and began pulling him back. He twisted to see Yao, one arm wrapped around the pillar, pulling Shan, until Shan could grasp the pillar himself, then straddle it as he and Yao together pulled on the strap tied to his ankle.

Suddenly the American was in their grasp, and they hauled him out of the water. Shan collapsed beside the man. Yao sat down heavily, gasping, but not before, with a small sideways motion of his foot, hidden from the American, he had kicked the American’s camera into the water, where the current quickly pushed it over the edge.

“Where the hell were you?” the American growled at Yao.

“Don’t complain,” Yao said as he struggled for breath. “I saved you a hundred dollars.”

Shan looked from one man to the other as they lay exhausted on the floor of the tunnel, Yao staring angrily at the American, the American making a low laughing sound. Shan forced himself to his feet, grabbed his shirt, pulled the little electric lamp from his pocket, and ran back up the tunnel.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Shan kept running when he reached the surface, darting into the shadows of one of the long alleys of the ruins toward the slope, listening for pursuit, watching for signs of soldiers on the surface. Nothing. He jogged, following the mental map he had been making of the ruins, until he arrived at the eastern edge, the side opposite the stone tower. He looked down at his wet legs as he caught his breath. If a man had been murdered in the fresco chamber the day before, then the body had been quickly disposed of. What better way than to throw it into the swift subterranean stream and let it wash out into the gorge, as the American almost had?

Following a foot trail along the top of the curving wall he found a perch that afforded a view into the gorge below the old gompa. The full length of the waterfall that sprouted from the mountainside was visible. The water tumbled into a pool five hundred feet below, from which a stream wound its way out, north and west toward Lhadrung Valley. He knelt and studied the treacherous, nearly vertical walls of the gorge. There would be no access to the pool below without traveling miles east to the valley and miles back up the gorge. There was no sign of a body, but there was no way of knowing how deep the pool was, or if the body had washed away or fallen into the shadows surrounding the pool. He saw bits of color and shapes that seemed not to belong to the rocks of the ravine, and remembered how in her fit of fear Dawa had flung so many things over the edge. Somewhere down there was Gendun’s little Buddha, and the bag with Shan’s ancient throwing sticks.

He surveyed the landscape, searching futilely for any sign of Lokesh or Gendun. He could travel to the east, beyond the head of the gorge three miles away, across the next ridge, and be at the hidden entrance to Yerpa before the moon set. He looked west. He could return to the strange, comfortable home of the woman called Fiona and pass the night reading English novels to her. Then he looked to the south, toward the rugged treacherous lands between Lhadrung and the border with India, nearly fifty miles away. He had last seen Lokesh hurrying in that direction, looking for the terrified girl.

He was about to rise, to head south, when the faint hint of incense touched his nostrils. Five minutes later he was back in the ruins, and in five more had followed the scent to its source.

The lama sat below the largest of the standing walls, the one with the jagged hole in its center. Shan lowered himself to Gendun’s side, struggling to keep his fear for the lama out of his voice. “There are men here like those who took Surya,” he said when Gendun acknowledged him with a nod.

“I was just going to go speak with them about how beautiful the sky is today,” Gendun said, then seemed to recognize the reaction in Shan’s eyes. “A temple is for disseminating truth, Shan. Not hiding it.”

“Should we not understand the truth first?” Shan asked. “Have you found the truth of what Surya did, of the prayer he gave you to keep him away?”

“It was a prayer to keep a demon away,” Gendun corrected him.

Shan quietly explained what he had learned in town. “What troubled him so, Rinpoche? What happened to him in the tunnel wasn’t the beginning of his pain, it was the end. You knew him better than anyone.”

Gendun folded his hands into his lap and stared at them. “I had never seen him happier than when he found that old chronicle from Zhoka. It was an old record book, hidden two hundred years ago, but it explained all we needed to know about Zhoka and its founders. He said all his life had been a preparation for this, for living here. He began leaving the hermitage during the day to come here, to learn about it. Then two days ago I found him in his cell shaking, unable to speak. It was the evening after he had slashed his painting. He would not say a word. I stayed with him all night. He recited prayers with me but never spoke to me.”

“Did you know he was meeting outsiders here?”

“A week or more ago, he said people from all the world were embracing Zhoka, nothing more. I thought he meant the hill people.”

“He said he met a great abbot.”

The lama considered Shan’s words a long time before replying. “There have been no great abbots in these mountains for decades.” He searched Shan’s face, as if looking for answers. But Shan had none to give. He knew the conversation was difficult for the lama. It was the most Gendun had ever spoken about a flesh and blood dilemma, about one of the mysteries that Shan tried to resolve. It was because, Shan knew, Gendun, like Shan, could not grasp whether Surya’s mystery was one of the flesh and blood or one of the spirit.

“I met policemen in the tunnels,” Shan said, glancing in the direction of the stairs that led underground.

Gendun looked into the coil of smoke rising from the incense. “If they are looking for evidence against Surya you should give it to them,” he said quietly.

Shan stared at him, dumbfounded.

“It is what Surya would want.”

“I cannot, Rinpoche,” Shan said. The pain of defying the lama was like a vise on his heart. “I am going to save Surya from himself.” He looked and met Gendun’s gaze. Words said could not be taken back. He would protect the monks, even if it meant he could never live with them again.

“Save Surya, save the people from the godkillers, save the little girl who ran away, save Yerpa and its monks,” Gendun said in a level voice. “Not even you can do all these things.”

“No,” Shan admitted. “But what would you have me do?”

“The only important thing. Save Zhoka.”

They sat in silence as Shan considered the words. “That book about Zhoka,” he said. “Where is it?”

“It was too dangerous to keep. Surya took it back where he found it. Only he knows the cave.”

As he studied the ruins once more, Shan saw two figures climbing the slope above. Yao and the American were leaving, walking back toward the stone tower.

A dozen new questions leapt to Shan’s tongue, but when he looked back, Gendun’s eyes were closed. He had begun a meditation. “Lha gyal lo,” he said softly, and rose. Perhaps not all his tasks were impossible. He was not sure where to look for demons and sacred books, but Lokesh and Dawa could be found in the south.

*   *   *

A quarter hour later Shan jogged along the southern path, cresting the ridge above Zhoka, when he stumbled, falling hard against a boulder, landing on his belly. As he wiped dirt from his mouth he saw a yak hair rope which had been stretched across the path, and a worn pair of boots. Shan pushed himself up on his hands, and looked into the eyes of the ox-like herder who had tried to seize Shan the day before. As the man’s boot swung at him Shan turned, easily evading the blow, then rose slowly, sitting on the boulder, wary of inviting further violence.

“Once I got a bounty for killing a wolf,” the big man growled. “The price they’re paying in the valley makes you worth fifty wolves.”

“I’m sorry your prayers were interrupted yesterday,” Shan said in an even tone. “I wanted to ask you about the godkillers.”

“I said I’m taking you in,” the man said, stepping forward, raising a fist. As he did so Shan saw a piece of knotted twine hanging from a button and a piece of rolled paper tied to a cord around his neck. The man was wearing protective charms.

Shan reached out and grabbed a handful of dirt from where the man had stood, from his bootprint. He spat into his hands and began to roll the earth into a ball. “Did you see them, did you see the godkillers?”

The man glanced uneasily at Shan’s hands. “Don’t do that,” he said, scraping his foot along the ground, obliterating his other bootprints.

“Have you?” Shan opened his palm, began pressing the moistened earth into the shape of a man.

“I’ve seen strangers, three or four times, these past two weeks. I don’t get close enough to see who they are. Expensive clothes. Backpacks. Binoculars. They make a lot of noise. Laugh a lot. You can smell their cigarettes a mile away.”

Shan kept working the earth. It was a very old thing from pre-Buddhist Tibet. He was making an effigy of the man, which could be manipulated to cause injury to him. Usually a piece of hair or scrap of clothing would be used, but soil from a footprint would suffice.

“You can’t know…” the man said uncertainly as he stared at Shan’s hands. He took a step back. “Damn you! Don’t!”

“Where?” Shan asked.

“The last time, four, maybe five miles from here. Closer to the valley. A pasture past small gullies, rough terrain. No one but herders go there. So when one of my dogs barked I figured it was Jara or one of the others with a herd. But it was a party of ten or twelve, Chinese and Tibetans, with colorful jackets, acting like tourists. I sent my dog back and got closer, thinking I might earn some money guiding them. I got close enough to hear them reading to each other out of a pilgrim book, enough to see they already had a guide, that bastard with the bad hand from town.”

“Were they praying?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why a pilgrim book?”

“It’s how you get to the old pilgrim places, to the things inside the old shrines,” the man said. “If you don’t come to pray, you come to do the opposite.”

“You mean they destroyed the sacred things.”

“They moved a flat rock that covered a little stone altar. I used to go there with my father when he prayed to the deity inside the altar. A copper statue of Buddha. It was smashed like that little silver Tara when they left.”

“Have there been other statues broken like that?”

“Five that I’ve seen, all smashed in the head, all cut in the back. All emptied.” The man stared at the mud figure as he spoke.

“Did you see any of the strangers yesterday? Last night?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. After dark there were people moving toward the south, carrying things like logs. I didn’t go closer.”

“Why would the godkillers go out at night?”

“Because that is when the monks come out.” The man grimaced and gestured toward the little effigy. “You think you can scare me with a little mud? You have to speak the words. It doesn’t work without the words.”

“I’ve had teachers,” Shan said. He bent and drew in the dirt with his fingers.
Om ghate jam-mo,
he wrote.

The man grew very quiet, gazing forlornly at the words in the dirt, then at Shan. After a moment he pointed to the inside of Shan’s wrist, to the long tattoo of numbers, then sighed and erased the words with his boot. As Shan rolled up his sleeve the scar-faced man grimaced. “Where?” the herder asked.

“The 404th, in the valley.”

The man stared at the little mud figure again. “No one said anything about bringing in a convict.” He cursed under his breath, then rolled up his own sleeve, revealing a similar line of numbers. “Eight years, in the big prison by Lhasa. Go,” he said, but extended his palm.

Shan lowered the figure toward his hand, then paused. “What is the word that people will kill for?”

“You’re crazy. Don’t!”

“Then tell me about it without saying it.”

The herder gave a quiet groan, and looked again at the mud effigy Shan kept in his palm. “He was a protector god of Zhoka, a special form of Yama. There was a festival in his honor, with people from the hills, with costumes and mask dancers. At dusk a great wind came and grabbed the costume of the deity, took it into the sky never to be seen again. The next day the airplanes came.” Shan dropped the figure into the man’s open hand. The herder would have to hide it now, where no harm would come to it. He pushed Shan roughly down the trail, cursing as if Shan had cheated him. “What do I care?” he called to Shan’s back. “Keep going south and you’ll have a lot more to fear than the likes of me. Nothing but fleshcutters and bluemen in the south.”

*   *   *

By the time he found a goat path that led due south the sun was disappearing in a blaze of purple and gold. A sudden mechanical throbbing sent him behind a rock, and he watched with relief as a helicopter settled onto the ridge above Zhoka, taking off a minute later, no doubt taking Yao and the American back to Lhadrung. Then he remembered the small cigar he had found in the tunnels. Someone else had been at Zhoka, could still be lurking there as Gendun meditated.

He walked slowly, preoccupied with his fears and the confusing events of the past two days, unable to drive Surya’s hollow, empty face from his mind, trying to make sense of the big herder’s tale. The name the godkillers wanted was a form of Yama. A form of the Lord of Death. The FBI agent had said his interrogators had asked Surya to draw a picture of death. He paused at the screech of a nighthawk, watching its flight against the stars, and as it disappeared he became aware of a new sound, a soft wailing that rose and fell with the wind. Five minutes later he stood over a small hollow on the side of the ridge, staring down at a figure dancing beside a raging fire, watched by a woman and child who sat with their backs toward Shan.