Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

She looked from Lhandro to Shan for an answer, then sighed when both men stayed silent. "At least he's going to be all right," she said as Shan sat down on the bench. "His eyes are clear. He is hungry. His name is Padme. He told us where his gompa is," she added, as Lhandro produced his map and she pointed to a dot labeled Norbu at the end of a road that extended east to the north-south highway. Lhandro traced his finger from the dot to a point a few miles below them on the plain, then outlined a trail that led east along the high slope above them, north into Qinghai Province, toward Yapchi Valley. "We have heard of this Norbu, one of the gompas permitted to open five years ago. My father wants me to go there some winter, to bring back blessings. It would be only ten miles off our path. Five of us will take him tomorrow- four to carry the blanket, one for relief." He fixed Shan with an uncertain gaze. "We can't leave a monk in the wilderness," he added in a plaintive tone.

"We can't," Shan agreed, and looked over the ruins. Tenzin had not emerged from the reconstructed buildings where he had been turning the prayer wheel. It was the first time the mute Tibetan had not departed with his leather dung sack as soon as they made camp.

"You take him," Shan said, "let me go on to the Yapchi Valley alone. Lokesh and I."

"Impossible," Lhandro protested. "The chenyi stone- the caravan. We are entrusted to escort you."

"I fear what could be there waiting," Shan said. "The Colonel. His mountain commandos. They know where the eye came from originally. They must know that is where it will return."

"It is our home," Lhandro declared with a determined glint. "I live in the house built by my family generations ago. I will not let soldiers keep me from my home."

"You must understand something," Shan said in a sober tone. "Bringing the eye back now is more likely to cause your people harm than good."

"No," Lhandro insisted, the doubt gone from his voice. "Of all the paths that are possible, that is not one of them. We must take the stone back, at any cost, even if it means facing the army, or that dobdob. We will get rest tomorrow, then-"

Lhandro was interrupted by the appearance of a Tibetan woman in a frayed red tunic with a long yak hair belt and several heavy turquoise and coral necklaces around her neck. She cast a worried glance at Shan, then looked back toward the house. "You should go tend those sheep," she said in a low, hurried voice.

Lhandro stood, looking with alarm toward the flock. The sheep lay peacefully on the banks of the stream, a hundred yards away.

The woman glanced back at the fire, where two children tended a small bellows. She lived here, Shan realized, was probably the caretaker's wife.

"I'll go with you to your sheep," the woman offered. "We should go now."

Lhandro took a step forward, staring at the animals again.

"Not you," the woman said to Lhandro pointedly. She was wringing her hands.

Shan stood, not understanding either the woman's words or her nervousness. "Do you need to speak with me?"

"No," the woman began, then groaned as the caretaker appeared around the corner of the house. He was a big-boned man, slightly taller than Shan, wearing a broad-rimmed brown hat and one of the wool fleece vests favored by the dropka. He froze, glared at Shan with a look that seemed to be something like horror, then came at him like a bull, not speaking, giving no warning as he abruptly shoved Shan back into the bench, slamming him against the wall so hard the wind was knocked out of him.

"No one asked you here, Chinese," the man spat with cold fury. "You're not welcome."

Shan stood on wobbly knees, trying to regain his breath. The man slammed him back against the wall. Shan felt dizzy. He became aware of the woman running away toward the fire. He heard the sound of a horse cantering and saw movement in the direction of the trees.

Lhandro put a hand on the man's arm but the caretaker twisted and hit the rongpa with an elbow, in the process knocking his own hat off. Shan stared at him in confusion. The caretaker was Chinese.

"Take your murdering ways and leave!" the man spat. "There is no room for blasphemers!" As he stepped toward Shan with his fist raised, a horse wheeled to a halt in a cloud of dust and in a blur of speed its rider launched from the saddle onto the caretaker's back. It was Dremu, throwing his arm around the man's neck, pulling him backward, twisting, forcing him to the ground.

The woman screamed. The caretaker pulled a chisel from his belt and, still sitting on the ground, lashed out at Dremu as the Golok leapt back and crouched, hands floating in the air, as if about to spring again. As Shan stood Nyma appeared, then Anya, crying out in alarm. Suddenly Dremu's knife was in his hand.

"It is not the way, father," a patient, youthful voice called out. The boy who had first run to bring the caretaker from the reconstruction site repeated the words as the woman pushed the boy forward, as though the boy were the only means she had to stop Shan's attacker.

The hand holding the chisel seemed to droop. The caretaker seemed unaware of Dremu now. He looked venomously at Shan then back at the boy.

"These two men," a calmer voice declared from behind Shan. "They found me when I lay wounded on the plain." Shan turned to see the monk at the corner of the building, leaning on Lokesh.

The caretaker seemed to go limp. He looked at the monk, the woman and the boy, and folded his arms around his knees, dropping the chisel to the ground. He pressed his head into his knees. After a moment he looked up with a sullen, resentful expression at Shan, then turned to Lhandro. "You should have told me a Chinese was coming," he spat, but there was more sorrow in his voice than anger.

The boy stepped cautiously to the man's side and extended an arm to help him up. For a moment, as he rose with the boy's help, the caretaker seemed old and unsteady, then his eyes flared again and as he retrieved the chisel and replaced it in his belt he fixed Shan with a baleful stare.

"He's not one of-" Lhandro began, searching for words. "He's like you, Gang."

The man reacted with a resentful snort, as if to say no one was like him, but, as his son took his hand, he seemed to deflate again. His gaze drifted toward the ground and he let the boy lead him back across the compound.

Shan staggered to the bench and sat down, then watched as the man walked toward the shrines. Gang. It meant steel, a name given by members of what his father would have called the Mao Cult during one of the Chairman's fanatical campaigns for steel production more than four decades earlier.

"My husband is not-" a strained voice started near Shan. He turned to see the woman with the child beside him. "Gang isn't like that…" Shelooked toward the strange angry man and seemed about to cry. "My husband built those shrines," she offered in his defense, then asked the boy to bring Shan a bowl of tea. "It's taken him nearly ten years."

Lhandro stepped past Shan to help the monk back inside. "Gang has bad memories," the farmer said in an apologetic tone, looking at Shan, then the monk. "I'm sorry. I had not seen him in years. I had forgotten that." Bad memories. It was a catch phrase, another part of the odd language developed by all those who had lived under the shadow of Beijing, a way to explain the torment suffered by those who had been caught up in the bloody terror that nearly annihilated their world.

The caretaker Gang had bad memories. But of what? Shan had never heard Tibetans speak of Chinese having bad memories.

"I've read reports of the rumor in the mountains, about a Chinese who builds temples," the monk said in a weak but smooth, well-educated voice. He looked across the field of ruins at the caretaker, who was nearly at the reconstruction site. "But up here," he said in a quizzical tone, shaking his head. "We never thought the rumors were true. No one comes up here. The winds are so cold. We thought this was just ruins and wilderness." He put his hand against the wall, as if suddenly dizzy, and Nyma helped him back to his pallet.