Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

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?"

Shan only shook his head sadly. He extended a hand toward the head of the valley. "How did you see Drakte in the dark? You must have sounded the horn because you saw him. Was it only him?"

"There was nearly a half-moon. I have sat with our herds on many such nights, watching for wolves and snow lions with my sling. In such light, without clouds, I can see a great distance. I knew someone was coming. By the time he reached the valley floor I could see him plainly where he passed through patches of snow. Only him. But first I heard the dogs."

"Dogs?"

"From down the valley. Dogs barked from where the valley bends, where there had been no dogs for all these weeks." She pointed toward a large set of outcroppings nearly a mile away. "I began to watch more closely. At first I thought it might have been Tenzin."

"Tenzin?" Shan asked in surprise.

"He goes away at night sometimes. Two nights ago, and one night last week. I think he goes to places where he can pray in the moonlight. There are prayers that should only be said at night, and things that are perhaps best said only to the moon." She looked at Shan pointedly then shook her head and looked back down the valley. "I never suspected it was Drakte. I wouldn't have sounded the warning. He would always stop to talk with dogs he met, they wouldn't bark like that. And I knew his gait. He always walked straight, proud, like a warrior. But last night he acted so strange, trotting in plain sight in the moonlight, then sometimes stopping at rock outcroppings, as if trying to hide, like for an ambush."

"Or to see if he were being followed." In his mind's eye Shan replayed Drakte's entry into the chamber, followed moments later by the intruder. No, the purba had been shocked to see the huge man with the staff. He had not expected the intruder, had not expected to be followed. There had to be another reason he had been pausing at the rocks, another explanation for his strange behavior.

"When he finally climbed the ridge and he saw you what did he say?"

"I recognized him when he reached the crest, and waved. He said nothing, just pointed toward the hermitage. I went down with him, because I had blown the horn and didn't want the others to be alarmed, to think trouble was…" The words choked in the woman's throat. She had gone down from her post to assure them no one dangerous was coming after all. But while she was away from her post something very dangerous indeed had come.

"That thing. It was a powerful demon, to make us see the spear that way." The woman's voice was nearly a whisper.

"Spear? There was no spear."

"Of course you didn't see it, none of us did. But we all saw how Drakte was stabbed. That demon made the rest of us see it as just a staff."

Shan stared at the woman, considering her words, until he saw that the dropka had begun to stare past his shoulder. He turned to see Shopo cresting the ridge, walking down toward the long valley below, a cloth bundle slung over his shoulder.