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.
Dremu pointed toward a small dust cloud on the rough track in the low rolling hills that led toward the lake. Shan reached into the drawstring sack tied to his saddle and produced his battered pair of field glasses. He focused on the cloud a moment and sighed, then handed the glasses to the nun.
"Army!" Nyma gasped.
"One truck," the Golok grunted. "No more than five or ten soldiers."
With a sudden tightening in his stomach Shan studied the approaching vehicle. It was still over two miles away, speeding not toward them but toward the lake. As he watched, however, the truck stopped. The nun cried out and bent down as though to hide behind his horse's neck. "I saw a glint of something. I think they're searching the mountains with binoculars!"
The Golok scowled at the nun. "That's what soldiers do. Could mean a hundred things. Could be escorting a birth inspector," he said, referring to the hated bureaucrats who enforced China's birth quotas. "Could be out hunting wild goats. Could be searching for something stolen from them," he added with a meaningful gaze at Shan, then reached for the glasses. "The way that truck is painted in shades of grey, could be mountain troops," he added in a tone like a curse. "I'd rather go against the damned knobs."
Shan looked back down the trail. Lokesh had lingered behind again, stopping his horse to stare down at a pattern of lichen on a rock face. Since their pilgrimage his old friend had particularly sought out self-actuated symbols of the Buddha- meaning elements of nature that had assumed the shape of a sacred object. More than once he had abandoned a piece of clothing or some food from his own drawstring sack in order to make room for a rock with lichen in the shape of a sacred emblem, or a weathered bone shaped like a ritual offering.
The Golok pointed with his bottle toward a shadow below an outcropping a hundred feet away. Nyma sighed with relief and pushed her mount toward the opening.
Shan doubted there was any land on the planet with more natural caves than Tibet. Certainly there was no land where caves were so integrated into the story of its people. There were cave hermitages, cave shrines, even entire gompas built around caves. Centuries before, Guru Rinpoche, the most revered of the ancient teaching lamas, was believed to have deposited sacred objects and scriptures in caves throughout Tibet. Tibetans still kept watch for forgotten caves that might harbor some of the Guru's sacred treasures. And many of the local protector deities that watched over valleys and mountains were said to make their homes in caves.