Rapaki, moving at the snail’s pace of the prostrating pilgrim, seemed to be heading for a stone altar at the rim of the fissure, beside a long heavy slab that had fallen so it extended perhaps eight feet over the hole.
Shan turned to see Gao guiding Yangke to a ring of flat stones arranged like seats in front of the cavern. As he watched, Gao paused, his expression rigid as he looked at something on the floor of the cave. Shan took a step closer, and another, trying to see, then broke into a run. The leg of a man sprawled from behind a rock in the cave.
He sped past Gao. A moment later he reached the prostrate form, which was bound with rope.
“How could-,” Gao began as he saw the color of the man’s hair. “What have they done?” he groaned.
Shan pulled the man onto his back. It was Heinz Kohler.
The German’s temple was bleeding from a jagged cut. His arms were tied against his sides with yak-hair rope that had been wound around his body a dozen times. Gao bent over his unconscious friend, examining one arm, then the other. Satisfied that Kohler’s hands were intact, he began untying him. Leaning against the rock beside him was a short ceremonial ax, its four-inch blade stained brown. Shan lifted the blade. It matched the outline he had seen on the wall of the storage chamber at the hermit’s cave. At the center of the blade the metal was nicked.
They laid Kohler in the sunlight, Shan cupping rainwater from another of the natural bowls in the rock and splashing it over the German’s face as Gao hovered over him, wiping the blood from Kohler’s check with his handkerchief. The German’s eyes fluttered open and he gazed at Gao for a long moment before recognizing him. “They tied me up,” he explained in a weak voice. “Rapaki. He’s insane. He has her under some kind of spell.” Then his eyes came into focus and he sat up. “Abigail!” Kohler shouted, then he staggered to his feet and ran toward her.
He did not hesitate to touch her but grabbed her and thrust her toward Hostene, then ran toward Rapaki.
The hermit was nearly at the edge of the fissure now, before the little altar. Shan reached him first but hesitated.
“Anything from your old lamas about disturbing a lunatic killer who is pretending to be a pilgrim?” Kohler asked in a bitter voice.
For the first time, Shan saw that Rapaki carried a leather bag, a pilgrim’s bag, strapped to his belt.
“Rapaki,” Shan called softly. The hermit did not react.
Abigail was moving again, in tandem with Rapaki, as if bound to him by some invisible cord. Kohler, blood still trickling down his face, cast an impatient glance at Hostene, then charged toward Abigail, scooping her up onto his shoulder and carrying her back to the cavern.
The mantra Rapaki chanted grew louder, and oddly joyful.
“I don’t understand,” Hostene said. He had taken several steps toward his niece, now seemingly out of harm’s way, then paused, his troubled gaze on the hermit.
“He has an offering to make,” Shan said, gesturing toward the altar.
“To what?”
“To all the gods and saints who live below.”
“Below?”
“He’s been looking for it all his life. Abigail showed him the way. The bayal, the home of the gods.”
They looked back. Gao was with Kohler now, wiping Abigail’s face as the German covered her with a blanket.
“What are you waiting for?” Hostene called out. “He is the killer!”
“Let him finish,” Shan said. “After he’s come all this way, after all these years, let him touch the altar and make his offering.”
“He has to be brought to justice,” Hostene said. “We must take him back to the village. You have to think of Gendun and Lokesh.”
That, Shan did not say, is exactly what I am doing.
Shan advanced toward the altar, and lowered himself to the ground. Rapaki touched the altar, his face radiant, then stood and bowed his head. His pilgrim’s bag was heavy, with several bulky objects inside. From inside his robe he produced a small cloth pouch from which he extracted several ceremonial offerings, laying each on the stone altar. He absently glanced at Shan, went back to his work of stripping things from his belt, then paused and looked at Shan. He extended a single finger and pressed it against Shan’s chest, glanced at Abigail, now at the cave, then gazed uncertainly at Shan again.
Shan brought Lokesh’s old amulet box out of his shirt. Rapaki reacted with a smile, touching the box, nodding now as if he knew this much was real. He then stripped off his tattered shoes and robe, so that he wore nothing but a swath of cloth around his loins, a string of beads on his wrist, and a small silver gau around his neck. The hermit squatted for a moment, writing in the dirt below the altar, beginning the mantra for the Compassionate Buddha. He paused, touched Lokesh’s gau again, then resumed writing with his other hand. Rapaki had never gone to formal schools. He had taught himself to write with either hand. He was both right-handed, and left-handed.
“What is he doing?” Shan saw that Hostene had gone to Abigail’s side and been replaced by Gao.
Rapaki folded his tattered robe carefully. Advancing halfway down the slab that extended over the fissure, he dropped it into the hole. The robe fell only a little way down, then was lifted in an updraft, floating in the air fifteen feet, then twenty feet above them, rising, unfolding, appearing like a phantom monk hovering above them.
“The rope,” Shan said quietly to Gao. “Perhaps he could be tied.” The scientist offered a hesitant nod, looking uneasily at the still-hovering robe, and jogged toward the cavern.
As Gao retreated, Rapaki produced a scrap of folded leather from his waistband, unfolded it, and poured its contents into his hand. Pollen. The hermit was sprinkling pollen on his head. Shan reached into his pocket and lifted the little piece of gold he had found below, extending it on his palm. Rapaki saw it, glanced back and forth from the fissure to Shan, then stepped forward and with a small nod accepted the gold from Shan.
“Lha gyal lo,” Shan whispered. He raised his left hand to a forty-five-degree angle, his palm downward, his forefinger down, tucked under his thumb.
Rapaki looked more serene than Shan had ever seen him. “Lha gyal lo,” the hermit repeated in a scratchy voice as he studied Shan’s hand and nodded again. He dropped Shan’s gold into the pilgrim’s bag, then stepped to the end of the slab. As he did so, the wind ebbed and the robe slowly floated down. Rapaki held out the bag at arm’s length, speaking words Shan could not hear, and dropped it into the fissure.
Shan saw no actual movement by the hermit. It was as if the wind simply reached out for him. One moment he was on the slab, watching his bag drop, the next he was in the void, following it, passing his robe as it fluttered downward. His mantra seemed to grow louder as he fell. Shan could still hear it after he dropped from sight, leaving only his robe, empty, floating gently into the shadows.
He did not know how long he stared into the fissure. When he turned, Gao and Hostene were at the altar, anger on their faces, as if Shan had cheated them of something.
“What was that you did with your hand?” Gao asked.
“It was nothing,” Shan said. But it was something. Shan had finally understood everything, and the only thing he could offer was the abhaya mudra, the hand gesture known as Bestowing Refuge.
“He had a bag,” Hostene said. “Why did he take that old bag?”
Shan looked at the Navajo. He could see in his eyes that Hostene understood but needed to hear it said aloud. “His offering. The deity he prayed to seemed to favor necklaces of body parts.”
“The hands,” Gao murmured.
“I tried to stop him, tried to get the evidence,” a new voice said from behind them-Kohler. “But he hit me and tied me up.”