Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

The temple was no more than a hundred yards away, but the valley cut deep into the mountain. They didn’t see it again until they took a turn a half hour later and the mist and fog separated in front of them. They stopped ten yards away and through a blur of swirling incense smoke watched two monks, bundled in dark robes against the cold, meditating before the altar inside.

Beyond the temple and nestled higher up on the hillside, Gage could make out the monks’ quarters, raw wood on a rough stone foundation, appearing no more substantial than a migrant shack.

The soldier waved them forward and then turned back. They waited until the thudding of his boots died away and walked to the temple steps.

The monks turned at their approach. The younger one rose and helped the older one to his feet. Both were tiny men with bald heads and soft eyes. Neither seemed surprised by the arrival of the two gweilo, the two white ghosts.

The old man waved Faith forward. She slipped off her shoes and into a pair of slippers and stepped inside. The younger monk handed her the last incense stick from a bamboo tube below the altar and she lit it from a candle. After fanning away the flame, she held it between her palms for a few moments, and then pressed its bare end into the sand next to the rest.

Gage removed his shoes and stepped forward and took her hand as she stared down at it, the monks now chanting, the stream of sandalwood smoke rising, interlacing and merging with those around it. He’d heard the same rumbling Sanskrit and the dark flat-toned rhythms before, meditations on dying and acceptance and nothingness, and wondered how many pilgrims had come to this place over the centuries and whether they’d received the comfort they’d sought.

The door to the monk’s house scraped open. They turned toward it and looked past the trees and through the rolling mist. They expected to see a novice monk bringing more incense to the temple or a line of older monks coming toward them to pray or perhaps a pilgrim come to honor an ancestor.

Instead, a tall, unshaven man appeared in the shadowed doorway, dressed not like a monk, but in a long wool coat and cap and heavy boots, standing straight, his arms hanging by his sides. Gage heard Faith draw in a breath and felt her hand tighten around his as the man’s face came into view. After gazing at her for a long moment with his deep and unblinking eyes, Old Cat nodded, and then turned away, and slipped back into the darkness.