The White Mirror (28 page)

“That boy,” said Yeshe. “He always has a defeated look to him. Where's he going?”

Li Du stood up and brushed the ash dust from his coat. “Doso sent him to the village to see if the path is clear.”

Yeshe squinted. “Well,” he said, “that isn't where he's going.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that's not the way to the village.”

“Is he going to the temple?”

Yeshe considered. “Might be, but he's not taking the quick way there. Seems to me he's heading toward the old landslide. It's impossible to get to the village that way.”

Li Du looked out after Pema, who was almost lost among the trees. Murmuring a hasty excuse, Li Du set out after him.

 

Chapter 22

Pema's trail was easy to follow, but Li Du's progress was slowed by the melting snow. With every step, his boots broke through the icy surface and sank into slush. His coat and robes grew heavier as their hems soaked up water. Clumps of snow slid from bowed branches. Sun alternated with shadow as clouds skimmed restlessly across the sky.

He was behind the manor on a path he guessed ran roughly parallel to the stone stairs. To his left, he saw for the first time the rooftops of the village, but he was separated from it by a deep chasm. The footprints continued up, tracing the edge of the ravine. Li Du was so intent on searching the forest ahead of him for a glimpse of Pema that he did not immediately notice the additional footprints running roughly parallel to Pema's. When he did notice them, he stopped. Their edges were beginning to melt, but they were recent.

He increased his pace and soon caught sight of Pema standing in a dense thicket of rhododendron trees decorated with the last blossoms of the year, vivid pink against a background of snow and stone. Pema hesitated. Then he was gone.

Li Du struggled through the snow as fast as he could until he came to where the several sets of footprints converged at the edge of the ravine. The cliff across the chasm was a sheer wall. He inched forward carefully, with tiny steps, until he could see over the side. The wind pulled at his coat. He leaned forward as far as he dared.

Just below him, a narrow path, cleared of snow, sloped down to a ledge on the side of the cliff. Pema was standing on it, looking out over the precipice. The sun on his face was so bright that it erased the scar on his cheek.

Fearful of startling him, Li Du hesitated. But when he saw Pema move another step closer to the edge, he could not stop himself from calling out to him.

At the sound of Li Du's voice, Pema raised a hand, covered by the long sleeve of his cuff, to shade his eyes as he searched for the speaker. When he saw Li Du, he dropped his arm and scrambled up to join him.

“Did you already go inside?” he asked Li Du, pointing behind him at the snowy ledge muddled with footprints.

Li Du's brow furrowed. “I do not know what you mean. I have only just come here.”

Pema scanned the forest around them with nervous eyes. “Why did you follow me?”

Li Du was honest. “Because I saw you leave the manor as if you were carrying away a secret.”

Pema turned hesitantly toward the platform cut in the face of the stone. “It is not really a secret. I don't think that you can call something a secret when it has no value. If you want to see it, I will show you.”

Ignoring an instinct that warned him to be cautious, Li Du followed Pema down the ledge. As he clung to roots and scrubby branches to keep from falling, he was aware of the vast space surrounding him. Far below them in the ravine, an eagle glided silently, just ahead of its shadow on the face of the canyon wall.

They reached the ledge. A curtain of old dry vines fell across the cliff wall. Pema pulled them to one side and secured them in a wooden hook wedged in a crack in the rock. Light poured through, illuminating the inside of a cave. Pools of melted snow and mud reflected light up from its floor. Pema stood to the side in silent invitation for Li Du to go in.

His first thought was that he had stepped into the nest of a bird from one of Hamza's tales. There was not a single patch of bare stone visible on the wall. Its surface was uninterrupted color. A pack of wolves ran silvery gray through an emerald field. A bear sat under a tree, its shoulders hunched over a beehive surrounded by flecks of yellow so bright Li Du could almost hear them buzzing. There were chipmunks and ravens and deer and foxes and a creature with a golden coat as pale as corn silk around a long, somber face. Birds swept the tips of their red and orange wings across the surface of a pond, sending ripples through a path of moonlight.

Teetering shelves were stacked with cracked pots and bowls filled with minerals and pigments just like the ones in Dhamo's studio. Glue strips hung from crags on the stone ceiling. Rolls of silk and parchment were stacked on top of each other.

“This is your work,” Li Du said. “You used Dhamo's paints.”

“I—yes. When I bought them, I always kept a little for myself. Not the expensive ones.”

“And this cave?”

Pema reached out and touched a portion of the wall, tracing his finger around a rectangle of blue, then connecting one by one the stars surrounding it. “I used to come here with my brother,” he said. “I have no memory of the day he left, but I remember playing here. We watched the ravens fly through the ravine and pretended that we could speak to them and that they could warn us of danger with their caws. After he left I came here alone. No one ever noticed.”

“Dhamo did not know about your painting?”

Pema hesitated. “He might have known. He would not have given me paints if I had asked, but I do not think he would have cared about me taking them.”

“That seems a contradiction.”

“It is difficult to explain. Dhamo only cared about completing his commissions. When he was not painting, he was praying or meditating.”

“You mean the commissions he received from pilgrims.”

“Yes.”

“He painted nothing else?”

“No. For him, the commissions were like—” Pema struggled for the right word. “—like commands.”

“Commands from whom?”

“I don't know what I mean,” said Pema, seeming frustrated. “Dhamo rarely spoke, but a few years ago at the harvest festival someone gave him wine to drink. He told me that night that the pilgrims were not pilgrims. He told me that they only pretended to be pilgrims, but that they were really bodhisattvas who knew spells to ward off demons. They needed a painter to paint their spells. That was his task. That was why he painted.”

“Did he say anything more?”

“No. He never spoke of it again.”

Li Du was silent, absorbing the information. He allowed his gaze to wander over the walls of the cave as he thought. “I have seen many paintings,” he said. “I was a librarian in an emperor's library. Its walls were decorated with the works of the old masters, painters whose secrets will never be known and whose paintings will never be duplicated. Li Shan's
Wind and Snow in the Fir Pines
and Xia Gui's
Autumn Moon on Dongting Lake
greeted me every day when I was a student.” He peered closer at the line of a doe's neck, which sloped down to meet the upturned nose of her fawn. “Seeing your painting is like looking at the old masters again. They did not paint on stone or in the sunlight through branches. They had never seen the golden beast that lives only in these mountains. Your work is exquisite. I have never seen its like before.”

Pema touched the cold color on the wall closest to him. “When I come here, I feel as if I am far away from the valley, as if I have disappeared from it.” His face became anxious and he glanced down at the wet, muddy floor. “But someone else has been here today.”

Li Du felt suddenly cold. A cloud had covered the sun, and the back of the cave emanated a chill where the light had not touched it. “Does this cave continue deep into the mountain?” he asked.

Pema gestured toward the shadows. “It does not go far. There is an alcove there at the back, but water drips down the wall and it is cold and dark.”

Li Du stepped deeper into the cave. He looked to the right and sensed more than saw the dark opening into another chamber. “Who do you think was here?”

“I—I don't know,” said Pema. “Maybe it was the Chhöshe. The mountain temple is not far. Maybe he remembered. Or it could have been—” Pema didn't complete the sentence. Li Du heard the sharp clicks as Pema tried to strike a flint.

Li Du did not wait for Pema, but continued around a jutting outcrop of stone. Behind him, he heard the whisper and crack of flame catching pine needles. He stepped forward, deeper into the darkness, and paused. There was a presence in the back of the cave, a presence that was not as cold as the stone and the seeping water. He shivered and reached out, searching for the back wall. His fingers found nothing. He took a step and stumbled over something soft.

He heard Pema's step behind him. Torchlight poured over his shoulder and illuminated the back of the cave. Pema made a choking sound. The light danced wildly. Li Du saw the sheen of wet skin, eyes open and staring upward, lips slack and speckled with blood. A fan of black hair and turquoise beads spread over the shoulder and onto the darkly glistening floor. It was Sonam.

 

Chapter 23

Doso stood close to a group of grazing mules in the pasture just beside the manor. Even at a distance he was imposing, his physical power evident in his stance. The red tassels tied to the hilt of his knife were bright against his black coat.

He was aware of Li Du and Pema's approach. When he saw that they did not turn toward the manor gate, but continued down the slope in his direction, he strode to meet them.

“Is the way to the village open?” he asked Pema, with a curious look at Li Du.

“I—I did not go to the village,” Pema said.

With a frown, Doso looked over their shoulders. “Our home is full of guests,” he said. “You have responsibilities. I hoped you would bring the lama from the village to assist the Chhöshe at the temple, and the tanner's son to perform his service to the family and help Kamala in the house. This is an inconvenient time for you to disappear into the forest.”

Li Du stepped forward. “Sonam is dead.”

Doso swung to face Li Du. His look changed to one of complete incomprehension.

“We found Sonam's body,” said Li Du. “He was murdered.”

Doso raised his eyes again to look in the direction from which they had come. “You are saying,” he said slowly, “that Sonam has been killed.”

“Yes,” said Li Du. “He was stabbed. His body lies in a cave in the ravine.”

“Stabbed? But that is—” Doso paused. “What is this cave?”

Pema tried to meet Doso's eyes, but his own fell. “It is the cave where I used to play with Tashi,” he said. “I—I don't know why my uncle went there.” He turned to Li Du, as if it was easier to speak to him.

“I showed it to my uncle yesterday,” he explained, haltingly. “I—I hoped that I could persuade him to take me with him if he thought someone might pay him for my paintings. But he—he laughed at me. I didn't think he would go back there. I—” Pema stammered into silence.

Doso appeared to be struggling to master his emotions. “An angry ghost,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Only a malevolent spirit can have inspired two violent deaths, one so close upon the other.” As he spoke, he pulled a loop of black prayer beads from his wrist and began to shift the beads one by one along the string between his thumb and forefinger.

“Whatever power might have guided the blade,” said Li Du, “it was a human hand that dealt the blow.”

Doso's arm dropped to his side, but his fingers continued to count the beads. “You speak as if you have specific knowledge of what has occurred,” he said.

“I do not know who killed Sonam,” Li Du said. “But since the night I returned from Lumo's cabin, I have known that Dhamo did not kill himself.”

Li Du explained how he had deduced that Dhamo had gone to the hot springs to collect cinnabar and been attacked and killed on the bridge. He repeated Campo's original account of being pushed from the escarpment. Finally, he described his discovery that the thangka was missing. He said nothing of his conversation with Rinzen in the tower, of Kalden's deal with Sonam, or of the attack on Sera.

Doso listened, his face set like carved stone. “Now you will tell me that Sonam's death was connected to Dhamo's.”

“It must be,” Li Du said.

Suppressed anger slowed Doso's voice. “This valley is not a haven for thieves and murderers. My ancestors have always offered protection and care to those in need of it. Now you tell me that someone I have welcomed into my home, someone who is even now within the manor walls, has killed two people.”

With clenched fists, Doso directed his gaze again at the manor. “I cannot hold court in my home like some magistrate,” he said. “I can only protect the innocent from harm.”

Watching him, Li Du reflected that Doso had forged his surroundings with steadfast determination. He had fashioned himself in the likeness of the ancestors whose names and histories he so often recited, easy, unexciting histories. Nothing in Doso's construction of his own character had prepared him for this eventuality.

“I understand that you are in a difficult position,” Li Du said.

Doso did not seem to have heard him. “The strangers in my home must leave,” he said. “Whoever brought this contagion must take it away.”

Li Du's eyes moved to the fortified, self-assured manor. “You will have to communicate what has happened.”

The furrows in Doso's forehead deepened. “Yes,” he said. “I will do it now.”

Li Du turned to look at Pema, whose drawn face was pale and upset. Doso appeared to have forgotten the young man—his son, Li Du had to remind himself—entirely.