Eliot Pattison - Prayer of the Dragon

“Why did you do that?” Gao asked Hostene, and pointed to an object Hostene clutched between his hands. The Navajo had gleaned a splinter of wood from an old prayer flag stand and, with thread unwound from his shirt, had fastened some feathers to it.

“We’ve run out of mountain,” Hostene said. “In the morning there will be an end to it. It is time to call on the deities.” He had stripped off his shirt, wore only his vest, and had coated his bare arms with dust again.

Gao stirred the fire. “You have to understand,” he said in a patient voice, “I am a man of science.”

“And I used to be a judge,” Hostene replied earnestly. “But I learned something on this mountain. Here it isn’t about what we have put into our heads, it is about what we have put into our hearts.” He rose and took a new seat fifty feet away, where he had a better view of the sun setting over a hundred miles of horizon.

“Perhaps Heinz had to cross the border to fix his problems,” Shan offered a moment later. “You said the firm does a lot of business in India.”

Gao, his head cocked, was watching Hostene. “This is where you play the part of the clever detective trying to trick me into telling secrets. Didn’t you hear what Hostene just said?”

“I’ll tell you a secret, Doctor. Thomas may have presented many complex challenges but the reason he died was simple. He was trying to find the truth.” Shan explained Thomas’s fastidious work at the murder scene.

“There is a warehouse, in Bengal somewhere,” Gao finally said, “and that house on the ocean, in the south. Beautiful beaches. You saw the photo.”

“Who arranges the schedules and cargo of the trucks going south?”

“I don’t know. Heinz would know. He takes care of details. He’s probably in Tashtul now, taking care of Thomas’s body for me.”

“Only one more thing. Where did Heinz go, that year he was away?”

Gao did not reply. The fire died away. Soon Shan could see nothing but two dim eyes staring at the stars.

The end of the world came after midnight. There was no warning by wind or rain, only a massive bone-shaking clap of thunder that physically pushed Shan and his friends toward the back wall of the overhang, then a blinding explosion of light. They had come to the place where lightning was born. They had come to the home of the lightning god.

The bolts came one after another, with a deep rending force that seemed about to split not only the sky but the mountain as well. The air seemed to boil, churning in and out of their little cavity with the rhythm of the bolts, like the breath of some huge beast.

“Your eyes!” Shan shouted above the din, waving his hands. “Cover your eyes!” They looked at him in mute confusion, and he suddenly understood why. He was deaf, and, judging by their expressions, so were his friends. He crawled to each of them, pushing their forearms over their eyes, gesturing for them to face the wall, away from the flashes.

It seemed it would never stop. They could die so easily. One tongue of the lightning could leap into their confined space and leave them as bent, charred artifacts for some future pilgrim to consult as he passed by.

On it went, the explosions numbing not just his ears but his entire body, the light so intense that even facing the wall, the air smelling of metal, his arm over his eyes, Shan could sometimes see the crimson tinge of his flesh. He found himself slipping toward a place he had never been before, a destination perhaps intended by the path’s builders. He had no body left, no mystery left, no him left. There were only explosions and light and shuddering air, and one question that would assure that when they found his remains there would be a look of wonder on his face-was this how it felt to be a deity?

His friends were all dead. When the storm finally stopped he crawled desolately from man to man, probing them, touching their backs as they lay curled against the wall. They did not move. Their flesh was so hard and cramped it seemed they had been baked alive.

Shan fell back against the wall, his heart and body ravaged, then eventually took stock of his own senses. He could see the stars and moon, could feel the wind on his face, but could hear nothing. His arms and legs ached, the hair on the back of his neck and arms was singed. His shirt was stiff and brittle at the cuffs.

He curled up on the ledge, facing outward this time, still so numb he couldn’t even feel despair, only think about how painful it would be when it came. He glanced back at his companions. Each man’s hands were balled up in fists, tucked under their chins. In corpses this was called the boxer’s posture, the effect of prolonged heat, which caused the muscles to contract. His eyes welled with moisture as he gazed out over the moonlit ranges.

Suddenly a foot kicked him. Someone was testing to see if he were alive.

It was as if they had been frozen and were slowly thawing out. He could not see whose foot it was but he helped the struggling figure straighten his limbs, then dragged him into the moonlight. The man worked himself into a sitting position, trembling, squeezing Shan’s hand. It was Gao.

Shan sat with him, each man explaining with gestures to the other that he could not hear. Then he returned to the deeper shadows, leaving the scientist pondering the blackened edges of his clothing. He found the two remaining forms against the wall and felt each for a pulse. Hostene and Yangke were also coming back to life.

Half an hour later all four sat in the moonlight, Shan cradling Yangke’s head in his lap, Hostene holding one of the Tibetan’s hands. They were all deaf but Yangke was also blind.

No one argued when Shan took the lead in the morning, no one disputed their direction, still upward. After climbing for a while, Hostene leading Yangke by his hand, they reached a wide sheltered shelf that held not only small clumps of heather but also a few pools of water. They guided Yangke to a pool and after he had drunk his fill they sluiced it over his head and over his closed eyes, then let him roll onto sun-warmed moss and sleep. They washed themselves. Hostene found some small waxy blue berries that, though tart, provided a makeshift breakfast. They sat, still partially in shock, staring at each other, rubbing their ears, casting fearful glances toward the summit, within an hour’s reach now. If she had survived, Abigail could be up there, as deaf and blind as Yangke. But they were weary to the bone from the night’s ordeal. The warmth of the little hollow soon had them sprawled against the rocks, drifting into slumber.

A bird was calling in the distance when Shan awoke, perhaps two hours later. He saw it only ten feet away, languidly watched it eating some of the blue berries. Why did it sound so far away? Shan sat up as the welcome realization hit him. His hearing was returning. He turned to see Hostene bending over Yangke, whose face had turned yellow.

The Navajo had opened his precious sacred pollen from home. He had spread some on Yangke’s hands, and more on his cheeks and brow, and was bent over the Tibetan, speaking toward the crown of his head, waving his spirit feather in the air. The unintelligible words, which seemed to filter down a long pipe, made Shan worry again about his senses until he realized Hostene was speaking in his native tongue.

Shan stretched, stood, explored the beginning of the trail to the summit, then began picking more berries for Yangke, soon joined by Gao, who confirmed that his hearing was also beginning to return. When they brought the berries back, Yangke was sitting upright, cross-legged, moving his hand back and forth across his lap. “I see shadows,” he said in a hopeful tone. He could hear perfectly now, he explained, then ravenously consumed the berries they dropped into his palm.