Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

"He just stopped," she cried when they ran to her side. Her face was ashen. "He leaned against the wall and sighed, then just slid down it. Jokar… Jokar is dead."

The lama was slumped against the wall, one leg thrown out, the other pinned under his body. One of his hands gripped a worn bronze dorje. His face gave no sign of life. Lhandro and his parents were saying mantras at a rapid, almost frantic pace. The remaining purbas knelt in a semicircle around the lama, their faces twisted with helplessness.

Shan squeezed between them. Jokar was not breathing. "So old," Nyma said in an anguished voice. "But no one is here to say Bardo."

His fingers trembling, Shan lifted the old man's hand. Lokesh would know what to do. He arranged his fingers as he had seen his friend do dozens of times. There was no pulse that he could detect at first. But then he sensed something like the flutter of distant bird wings. One beat, and after what seemed an impossibly long time, another.

"Sometimes, a man like that can be called away to speak with deities," Anya said at Shan's shoulder. The others stared at her solemnly but no one offered an argument. If one deity came to Anya to speak, another could easily summon Jokar to speak somewhere else. "Part of him could have been called back to that bayal he came from." Jokar was from one of the hidden lands, she meant. It was, as Lokesh might say, as good a truth as any.

With Nyma's help Shan gently pulled out the leg pinned under the lama's body. The man's flesh was cool; not cold, but not nearly as warm as Shan's.

"He is gone," Lhandro moaned. "It happens like this, the organs begin to stop one at a time."

"He embraced the knowledge," Lepka said softly, at the lama's feet. When he saw inquiry on Shan's face he continued. "It was a teaching from Rapjung, that I heard often when I was young. The greatest gift of being human is the knowing, and the greatest knowing is of death." He gazed at Jokar as he spoke, then turned back to Shan as though he needed to explain further. "It is a great gift, the monks would say, to know of your own impermanence."

No one spoke. Even the mantras stopped. Lepka looked about with an expression of curiosity, as if he had not expected anyone to be surprised by his words.

"Someone should sit at each side, to make sure he doesn't fall," Lhandro's mother instructed quietly, and took one side herself. Nyma took the other. Shan stepped back and saw the worried expression on Winslow's face.

"I have a few pills left," the American offered in a helpless tone. Winslow stepped close to Jokar, one of his hands wringing the fingers of the other. "That herb place. I could go back, if someone tells me what to pick."

Shan studied the lama, then the American, not understanding the strange connection developing between them. "He mentioned the black thing," Shan said. "He told you to get rid of it. That's what you can do."

"I didn't understand," the American said slowly, his eyes shifting back and forth from Shan to Jokar.

"The black thing you carry," Shan said.

Winslow looked into the shadows a moment, sighed, picked up his pouch and stepped outside. Shan joined him, a few steps behind as he walked to the rim of the plateau.

He reached Winslow as the American turned back to look at Lin, who had moved to sit on a rock near the gnarled juniper. They stepped past the ruins of the old hut, out of Lin's view, and Winslow opened his pack. "I thought Melissa might need it, with Zhu still in the mountains," he said apologetically.

Shan did not speak, but pointed to a spot far below where a small chasm created a deep shadow. Winslow reached into his pack, pulled out Lin's pistol, and threw it over the edge of the rim. It soared in a wide arc then tumbled downward for a long time until it disappeared into the shadow. In quick succession the spare magazines followed.

A great bird soared close by, a lammergier that dove to investigate the tumbling magazines, then pulled back and sent a long screech after them.

They wandered back to the medicine mixing room in silence and joined the vigil beside Jokar. The rongpa recited the mani mantra. Larkin and Winslow sat at the lama's feet. Somo cradled one of the lama's hands in her own, lightly stroking it. Anya began singing one of her songs, in a whisper, and, strangely, after a moment, Melissa Larkin began humming in accompaniment, as if the American geologist knew the song. More than thirty minutes passed, when suddenly the fingers of one of the lama's hands rose, and Jokar's body jerked slightly forward, then fell back.

Shan had seen deep meditations, had gone into deep meditation himself, and this was not one. Jokar was somewhere else. The lama's eyes opened, though they seemed to have no life in them. They sparked with energy, then faded. Shan watched, scared. The lama's eyes were glazed. His fingers were extending and contracting, as if they were climbing something. The mantras in the back of the chamber grew louder. The purbas had joined in. Melissa Larkin stepped forward with a bowl of tea and gently pressed its warmth against the lama's arm. His eyes flickered again, and his hand reached out as though to clutch something in the air. Jokar's mouth opened and shut and his head bent back, his jaw clenching as though he were in struggle with something.

The chamber fell utterly silent again.

"It's like he's trying to wake from a deep sleep," Lhandro whispered.

But Shan knew it was no slumber. Jokar had not died, Shan knew, but he had gone to the edge of death, or perhaps somehow death had visited him and he was sending it back. The ancient body had given up for a while, but the essence of what was Jokar fought back, as though it had unfinished business. Lepka started a mantra that Shan had never heard before, a pleading mantra, filled with the name of Yamantaka, the Lord of Death.

Then the lammergeier screeched again, so close it seemed the bird was sitting on the rocks over their heads, and an instant later the lama's eyes lit, and stayed lit, and Jokar was with them.

Winslow emitted one of his cowboy hoots and the medicine lama's eyes grew wide; fully awake now, the lama smiled appreciatively at the American, as if it had been the hoot that had summoned him back. But no one offered another word or sound, until suddenly there was movement behind them. Shan turned to see Lin standing in the shadows. How long had he been there, Shan wondered. Had he understood what he had seen? For that matter, did any of them understand?

Jokar breathed deeply. Nyma offered him the tea.

By the time Shan rose, Lin had retreated outside and was studying the gnarled juniper again, as if he expected it to reveal an important secret, or perhaps provide a bird to come listen to him. Shan saw that the constant anger had faded from Lin's eyes. In some ways he was not the same Lin they had met on the road two weeks earlier. But he knew the short-tempered, predatory Lin was still there, just below the surface of the confused man who sat in the shadow of the tree.

"What that old man did…" Lin started in a low voice when Shan sat beside him. But he seemed uncertain how to finish. "In the village where I grew up, they would have called him a witch for doing that."

"It doesn't work," Shan said, putting a hand on the end of one of the twisted branches, "trying to explain the Tibetans according to what we learned growing up in China."

A growl came from Lin's throat, as if he were warning Shan away from such conversation.

"It was Religious Affairs that took Tenzin," Shan suddenly declared. "Director Tuan."

"That Tuan? He had no business-" Lin blurted out. He clenched his jaw. "Only because I wasn't there," he spat.

Shan stared at Lin and nodded. "Because Tenzin was your mission. Not Tuan's."

"We all work for the people's government," Lin muttered.