After a moment Shan realized there was a bundle on Winslow's legs, wrapped in black cloth. And over the cloth, clenched in the American's hand, was a note. Shan gently lifted the paper out of the lifeless fingers. It was nearly illegible. The American had written it at the very end, in English, with trembling fingers, in the dark. Shan studied it for several minutes before he could decipher the words.
By all that's holy, leave me here to watch over them. Tell no one but Melissa. Let the others wonder, my last little joke on the world. It's not so bad, Shan. I think I'm getting the hang of this impermanence thing. This is where I belong this time. Every lama needs a cowboy.
Shan sat a long time, fighting the dark, hollow thing he felt inside. Death was an old acquaintance. Death didn't scare him, it just intimidated him, it made him feel so unprepared, so incomplete, so wasteful of what his Tibetan friends called the precious human incarnation.
He sat until the dark thing lifted from his heart, until he could bear to look into Winslow's eyes, until it seemed they were just friends silently watching the night fall. He studied the American once more, read the note again, and he knew that in his own way Winslow had found what he had been looking for.
At last he rose, pulled the bundle from Winslow's lap, crossed the American's lifeless hands over his legs, and pushed his eyelids closed. He hesitated a moment, then searched the American's pockets to find the tiny pouch of salt prepared by Jokar. He placed the pouch in Winslow's hand, closed his fingers around the true earth, then climbed down.
Winslow had realized what was behind the long thangka, where Jokar was going. He wanted to watch over the old ones. He wanted to stay by all that's holy.
Shan found himself wandering back inside the mountain with the bundle Winslow had been holding when he died, the bundle taken from Padme's satchel, switched by the American for the accounts that had proven Khodrak's lies. He felt as though he were being led, walking like a blind man toward the tomb chamber to deliver the bundle. It was Winslow's spirit, Lokesh would have said, asking Shan to show him the way to the lamas, to deliver a final offering. In that moment Shan would not have disagreed.
On the altar the candle still flickered, almost at the end of its wick. He set the book at the bottom of the ledge, studying the lamas again. The flickering light seemed to give movement to the faces of the old men.
"He decided not to leave you," Shan whispered to Jokar. "That American, he came far," he added, remembering the lama's words to Winslow at the mixing ledge. Afterwards Winslow, shaken by the lama, had told Shan of his dream, of flying through the air with Jokar. Maybe that's where they were now, floating over the mountain, laughing at the surprise they had dealt those below. Shan thought of the two geese he had seen soaring over the mountain.
"It's such a perfect place to finish," a deep, disembodied voice observed suddenly.
Shan gasped and stepped backwards, as though struck, his heart racing as he gaped at Jokar.
Then a tall, gaunt figure stepped through the door, his face so weary, his eyes so wide, so much emotion on his features, it took Shan took a moment before he recognized Tenzin.
The abbot of Sangchi pulled a candle from his pocket and silently stepped to the altar to light it from the dying wick of the one already there. Placing the candle on the altar, he turned and surveyed the figures on the ledge. "You found the chair," he whispered in an awed voice, and slowly walked down the line of dead lamas, pausing before each one, his lips moving in silent prayer, until he reached the far end, the oldest of the old ones, the one with the grinning skull and the sackcloth robe.
"What do you mean?" Shan asked as Tenzin studied the oldest of the dead lamas.
"Siddhi was the first," Tenzin replied, "the first teacher at Rapjung. Lepka told me something at the mixing ledge, after he heard those purbas talking about Jokar as a leader of rebellion. He said the purbas misunderstood, that Siddhi was a teacher who embraced the Medicine Buddha, that he didn't organize the people to fight the Mongols, he organized groups to be missionaries among the Mongols, to spread the way of compassion." He looked back at Shan. "Jokar would never allow his name to be used for violent means. When he said he would take the chair of Siddhi, this is what he meant."
The chair of Siddhi. They were standing before the chair of Siddhi, and Siddhi's descendants, the chair of the gentle old men who had spent their entire lives keeping humans connected to the earth inside them.
Tenzin dropped to his knees, then lowered his chest to the floor, prostrating himself, praying with his mouth an inch from the floor. After more than a minute he rose and gently kissed the edge of the ancient sackcloth. Then he rose and repeated the action in front of each of the remaining figures, until he joined Shan in front of Jokar.
"The purbas said we would just go north," Tenzin said quietly, staring at Jokar's split, tattered black canvas shoes. "They said they had it all planned. I would escape through Russia and go on to America, where people would give me a house and ask me to give speeches sometimes." Self-revulsion echoed in his words. A single tear rolled down his cheek. "The stone eye was my cover. A party of purbas stealing north, escorting me would eventually be noticed. But the eye, traveling with ordinary Tibetans…," Tenzin glanced at Shan, "… that man Tiger said with them I could go north and no one would suspect.
"I never planned to take those papers from Lin. Drakte had taken me there, Drakte had stayed at my side all that week during the Serenity conference, wearing a monk's robe, keeping me safe from all the howlers, making sure I did nothing to inadvertently reveal my intention. That Khodrak kept coming up to me, saying he was the most fervent supporter of the Campaign, that he thought it was the work of genius. He must have known about my being in his district because he saw Drakte with Chao that night." Tenzin fell silent a moment and stared at the lamas. "That report was there on Lin's desk when Drakte and I went for the stone and I began reading it. The month before, Religious Affairs had given me a speech to read before a youth congress in Lhasa. I told those youths that there were no Tibetans in slave labor camps, that such stories were made up by the Dalai Cult to poison the minds of Tibetans. Then there was the paper in Lin's office, proving me wrong. I just kept reading that paper as Drakte pulled at me, when we had the eye in our mop bucket and we were supposed to flee. Finally, to get me to leave, he told me to keep it. He said, what did I expect, it was what the purbas had been telling me."
Tenzin searched Shan's face. "They made me lie to those children. I had never believed the stories about slave labor, of old lamas still in prison, or of monks buried alive in their gompas. I knew I had to leave when they told me I was to become a director of Religious Affairs for all of Tibet, because they would never again let me be an abbot, or a monk. But even then, even when I had decided to leave, I never believed so many horrible things could have…" His voice drifted off, and he looked back at Jokar, apology in his face.
"At that hermitage, with Gendun and Shopo, we spoke of things, and more purbas came. Drakte showed me how all the numbers at the back of Lin's report were registration numbers for people: one set for soldiers; one set for prisoners, mostly old monks who had been imprisoned for twenty years and more, the Tibetans who had dug out that mountain, knowing they were going to die in it." Tenzin gazed down the row of lamas and lowered his head, as if in shame.