The commando raised his AK-47 rifle. There was a raw, animal quality in his countenance that made Shan shiver. Sergeant Feng shoved Shan violently through the gate, knocking him to his knees. The knob studied Feng a moment, then, with a reluctant frown, stepped back.

"Got to show them who's in charge," Feng mumbled as he caught up with Shan. Shan realized it was meant to be an apology. "Damned strutting cockbirds. Grab the glory and move on." He stopped, arms akimbo, to survey the knobs' bunkers, then gestured toward Shan's hut. "Thirty minutes," he snapped, and moved back toward the brilliantly lit dead zone.

The air of the blackened hut was thick with the smell of paraffin. There was a sound as though of mice scampering on a rock floor. Beads were being worked. Someone whispered Shan's name and a candle was lit. Several prisoners sat up and stared, breaking the count of their beads. Their faces were shadowed with fatigue. But on some there was also something else. Defiance. It scared Shan, and excited him.

Trinle was on his feet as soon as he saw Shan.

"I must speak with him," Shan said urgently. Choje was on the bunk behind Trinle, as still as death.

"He is near exhaustion."

Suddenly Choje's hands moved and folded over his mouth and nose. He exhaled sharply three times. It was the ritual of awakening for every devout Buddhist. The first exhalation was to expunge sin, the second to purge confusion, the third to clear away impediments to the true path.

Choje sat up and greeted Shan with a flicker of a smile. He was wearing a robe, an illegal robe, which had been sewn together from prison shirts and somehow dyed. Without speaking he rose and moved to the center of the floor where he dropped into the lotus position, joined by Trinle. Shan sat between them.

"You are weak, Rinpoche. I did not mean to disturb your rest."

"There is so much to be done. Today each hut did ten thousand rosaries. Many of the men have been prepared. Tomorrow we will try for more."

Shan clenched his jaw, fighting his emotions. "Prepared?"

Choje only smiled.

A strange scraping noise disturbed the stillness. Shan turned. One of the young monks was reverently spinning a prayer wheel, fashioned from a tin can and a pencil.

"Are you eating?" Shan asked.

"The kitchens were ordered closed," Trinle explained. "Only water. Buckets are left at the gate at midday."

Shan pulled the paper bag that contained his uneaten lunch from his coat pocket. "Some dumplings."

Choje received the bag solemnly and handed it to Trinle to divide. "We are grateful. We will try to get some to those in the stable."

"They opened the stable," Shan whispered. It was not a question but an anguished declaration.

"Three of the monks from a gompa to the north. They sat near the gate, demanding an exorcism."

"I saw the troops outside. They look impatient."

Choje shrugged. "They are young."

"They will not grow old waiting for striking prisoners."

"What can they expect? There is an angry jungpo. It would be but the work of a day to restore the balance."

"Colonel Tan will never allow an exorcism on the mountain. It would be a defeat, an embarrassment."

"Then your colonel will have to live with them both." There was no challenge in Choje's voice, only a trace of sympathy.

"Both," Shan repeated. "You mean Tamdin."

Choje sighed and looked about the hut. There was another unfamiliar sound. Shan turned and saw the khampa, sitting by the door. The man had a frightening gleam in his eyes.

"Gonna get us out, wizard?" he asked Shan. He had removed the handle from his eating mug and was sharpening it on a rock. "Another of your tricks? Make all the knobs disappear?" He laughed, and kept sharpening.

"Trinle has been practicing his arrow mantras," Choje observed as he watched the khampa with sad eyes. An arrow mantra was a charm of ancient legend, by which the practitioner was transported across great distances in an instant. "He is getting very good. One day he will surprise us. Once when I was a boy I saw an old lama perform the rite. One moment there was a blur and he was gone. Like an arrow from a bow. He was back an hour later, with a flower that grew only at a gompa fifty miles away."

"So Trinle will leave you like an arrow?" Shan asked, unable to disguise his impatience.

"Trinle knows many things. Some things must be preserved."

Shan sighed deeply to calm himself. Choje was speaking as though the rest of their world would not survive. "I need to know about Tamdin."

Choje nodded. "Some are saying that Tamdin is not finished." He looked sadly into Shan's eyes. "He will not show mercy if he strikes again. In the time of the seventh," Choje said, referring to the seventh Dalai Lama, "an entire Manchurian army was destroyed as they invaded. A mountain collapsed on them as they marched. The manuscripts say it was Tamdin who pushed the mountain over."

"Rinpoche. Hear my words. Do you believe in Tamdin?"

Choje looked at Shan with intense curiosity. "The human body is such an imperfect vessel for the spirit. Surely the universe has room for many other vessels."

"But do you believe in a demon creature that stalks the mountains? I must understand if- if there is to be any chance of stopping all this."

"You ask the wrong question." Choje spoke very slowly, in his prayer voice. "I believe in the capacity of the essence that is Tamdin to possess a human being."

"I do not understand."

"If some are meant to achieve Buddhahood then perhaps others are meant to achieve Tamdinhood."

Shan held his head in his hands, fighting an overwhelming fatigue. "If there is to be hope I must understand more."

"You must learn to fight that."

"Fight what?"

"This thing called hope. It still consumes you, my friend. It makes you wrongly believe that you can strike against the world. It distracts you from what is more important. It makes you believe the world is populated by victims and villains and heroes. But that is not our world. We are not victims. Rather we are honored to have had our faith tested. If we are to be consumed by the knobs then we are to be consumed. Neither hope nor fear will change that."

"Rinpoche. I do not have the strength not to hope."

"I wonder about you sometimes," Choje said. "I worry that you are too hard a seeker."

Shan nodded sadly. "I do not know how not to seek."

Choje sighed. "They are holding a lama," he observed. "A hermit from Saskya gompa."

Shan had long ago given up trying to understand how information spread through the Tibetan population and across prison walls. It was as if the Tibetans practiced a secret form of telepathy.

"Did this lama do it?" Choje asked.

"You think a lama could do such a thing?"

"Every spirit can lapse. Buddha himself wrestled with many temptations before he was eventually transformed."

"I have seen this lama," Shan said solemnly. "I have looked into his face. He did not do it."

"Ah," Choje sighed, and then was silent. "I see," he said after a long time. "You must obtain the release of this lama by proving that the murder was done by the demon Tamdin."

"Yes," Shan admitted at last, looking into his hands, his reply barely audible.