Chapter Two
"The basic nature of your mind is luminosity and emptiness," Gendun intoned softly as he sat beside the young Tibetan's body. "It dwells as a great expanse of light beyond birth or death." He had begun reciting the Bardo ritual the instant he had seen Drakte's face, quietly offering the ancient words as the two dropka reverently straightened the body on the floor. There was no time to lose. The Tibetans believed Drakte was now sensing a great falling, a rush of wind, and the flashing of brilliant colors. He had not been prepared for the loss of his body and would be confused.
"Rinpoche," Nyma said to Gendun in a numbed voice, "the mandala for the-"
Gendun paused a moment, surveying the ruined mandala, the jagged eye, then Tenzin, who had rushed forward to kneel by Drakte, before finally settling his gaze on the dead man. "This is where the Compassionate Buddha has taken us," he declared, and continued the ritual. "You will leave this body of flesh and blood and know you are at peace," the lama recited from memory, his eyes nearly closed.
The dropka produced a blanket, onto which they lifted the body. With Gendun walking alongside still reciting the death rite, Lokesh and Tenzin slowly carried the dead man into the hut next door. As Nyma lit butter lamps they arranged the body in the traditional fashion, in a sitting position, leaning against the wall. Shan sat for a moment with the lama, his heart still pounding loudly, desperately trying to understand what had happened. Then he rose and stood at the door, looking outside. The Golok and the two herders were nervously pacing the perimeter of the small compound, the dropka woman was calling to the adjacent encampment, spreading the alarm. Shan looked back inside the hut. It appeared in the dim light that Gendun and Drakte were conversing.
In the lhakang Shopo began a second ceremony at the mandala. One by one, with Nyma and Lokesh sitting on either side, the lama began to address the images invoked in the sand painting, uttering to each a low prayer that had the sound of an apology. Shan sat with them for nearly thirty minutes; then, his confusion giving way to fear again, he stepped outside, to the doorway of the second hut, where Gendun still spoke to Drakte. He stared at the dead man, recalling the first time he had seen him in the Lhadrung valley, gathering food for families of prisoners. Drakte had worn the robes of a monk for several years before being forced out of his gompa, his monastery, when Beijing's Bureau of Religious Affairs had established strict limits on the number of active monks. In another age Drakte would have passed his life in a robe, learning and teaching the ways of compassion. But those who controlled the world Shan and Drakte lived in had told the young Tibetan he was not allowed to sit in a gompa and share the wisdom of the lamas.
He had been wrong, Shan told himself, to think they could be safe in their hidden hermitage, wrong to have let himself be drawn so deeply into the mandala ritual when danger lurked so near. Perhaps it had even been wrong for him to have become so focused, obsessed even, with the mandala and the hope it embodied. Shan had often listened as the lamas spoke with men like Drakte about the importance of letting compassion become the weapon of their struggle. Most of them replied that if they tried to defend their cause only with compassion, eventually all the compassionate would be dead.
He found himself wandering, walking as if in a daze, finally reaching his meditation place by the rocks. A cloud passed over the moon. The terrible scene kept playing again and again in his mind's eye: Drakte's life blood oozing over the mandala, Drakte staring helplessly at Shan. He restlessly watched the dimly lit horizon, then ventured toward the death hut again, thinking of entering. But the door was closed, and as he stepped closer he heard the Bardo, not in one voice but in two. The second voice was not that of Nyma, or Lokesh, or Shopo, all of whom remained in the lhakang. Someone else, a stranger, had joined Gendun. The second voice was almost like an echo of Gendun's soft, seasoned voice, but deeper- the voice of someone long schooled in the traditional ways, the voice of a teacher like Gendun. Shopo had told him other lamas sometimes came to meditate in secret at the hermitage. Or perhaps one of the dropka from the encampment knew the ceremony. Shan backed away. He could not bear to interrupt. Somehow he felt he had made it hard for Drakte to live. He didn't want to make it harder for him to die.
At dawn Shan asked the dropka woman to take him to the ridge and show him where she had first seen Drakte the night before. He followed her in silence through the grey light, up the steep switchback trail that connected the hermitage to the outside world. At the crest the dropka sank to the earth and warily inched herself forward to survey the valley beyond, as if expecting an ambush. After a long moment the woman pushed herself up and signaled for Shan to join her, but she did not wait for him. She jogged along the path at the crest for two hundred yards to the highest point of the ridge, where a rock cairn had been raised. When Shan caught up with the woman, she was busily adding rocks to the stack. The base of the cairn was ancient, thickly covered with grey-green lichen. But during the past weeks, while the dropka had been standing guard on the ridge, the herders had added several rocks a day, building it to a height of over six feet, to gain the attention of the local deities. Now the woman was gathering rocks at a feverish pace, her face drawn with worry. If the dropka were not permitted weapons at the hermitage, at least they could add rocks to the cairn.
Shan lifted a large rock as he approached and set it near the top of the stack. A sad smile split the woman's leathery face and she pushed back the red braided headband she always wore, then silently retrieved another stone.
"I can't stop thinking that I caused it," she said at last, studying the valley with a haunted expression. "Maybe what I did brought that thing that killed him. I blew the horn when I saw Drakte coming, before I recognized him." She stared at the horn, laying on a cloth near the cairn. "Maybe my dungchen attracted it somehow."
"No," Shan said, trying to sound more certain than he felt, "this thing was already after Drakte, already after the stone. Drakte came to warn us." But the purba had also been coming to help them start their journey with the stone eye. The purba's last words haunted him as much as the image of the young Tibetan's blood soaking the mandala. Had he apologized to Shan for something he, Drakte, had done? Or because the journey would be impossible now? Perhaps both, because he had unleashed the demon on them.
"And died for it," the herder said. She grimaced in pain and clutched her chest, as if something inside had torn. "I knew Drakte. He was born in this county, to herders living only a day's walk from here. His mother was so proud when he became a monk. He helped rebuild this hermitage years ago. He always knew which families had members imprisoned, and brought others like him to help in their places. Drakte even brought me messages from my son, who is in prison near Lhasa for sheltering a monk years ago." She touched the headband, braided of red cloth. "He brought me this from my son, made from the robe of a monk who died."
The woman stared out over the long valley as the dawning sun washed over it. "But the thing he came to warn us about did not harm us," she said in a confused tone. "It just killed him and left. It could have taken the stone but it didn't. I heard Drakte say it will kill for the stone. We saw it kill him." The dropka searched Shan's face. "It must be waiting somewhere in the mountains to return. Now that it knows. Tonight. Does it only do its killing at night?"