Feng bought a stick of roasted crab apples. A man with a milky eye whirled a prayer wheel and offered jars of chang, Tibetan beer made from barley. Yak cheese, hard, dry, and dirty, stood stacked beside a forlorn girl with waist-length braids. A boy offered plastic bags stuffed with yogurt, an old man some animal skins. Shan realized that most of the Tibetans wore sprigs of heather, tied or pinned to their shirts. A girl with one arm called for them to buy a scrap of silk to use as a khata. The air was filled with the pungent traces of buttered tea, incense, and unwashed humans.

A squad of soldiers was checking the papers of a wiry, restless-looking man who wore a dagger in his belt in the traditional khampa style. As the soldiers approached he gripped not the dagger but the amulet around his neck, the gau locket which probably contained an invocation to a protective spirit. They let him walk on. As the man gave his gau a pat of thanks, Shan suddenly remembered. The local inhabitants had complained about the blasting because it angered Tamdin. Fowler had said no, she started blasting only six months earlier. She meant Tamdin had been seen more than six months earlier. Tamdin had been angry earlier. A pattern. Had Tamdin killed earlier?

Yeshe stopped at the far end of the market, beside a shop whose door was a filthy carpet supported by two spindly poles. Sergeant Feng eyed the dark interior of the shop and frowned. More than one Chinese soldier had been ambushed in such places. He pointed toward a stall selling tea near the center of the market. "I'll have two cups, no more." He reached into his shirt and pulled out a whistle on a lanyard. "After that I'll call the patrol." He pulled an apple from the stick with his teeth and walked away.

There was no window in the building, no doorway but the one they entered by. The interior was lit only by butter lamps, their meager light made even dimmer by the smoke of incense. As his eyes adjusted Shan discerned rows of shelves covered with bowls and jars. It was an herbalist's shop. An emaciated woman sat behind a wide plank laid across two upended crates. She cast a vacant stare at Shan and Yeshe. Three men sat on the earthen floor against the wall to the right, apparently in a state of stupor. He followed Yeshe's gaze to the left, into the darkest corner of the room. On a rough-hewn table sat a short, dirty conical hat with the bottom folded up. Behind it was a deeper shadow which had the shape of an animal, perhaps a large dog. "An enchanter's cap," Yeshe said with a nervous whisper. "I haven't seen one since I was a boy."

"You said nothing about Chinese," the old hag barked. As she spoke one of the men on the floor sprang forward, grabbing a heavy staff that leaned against the shelves.

Yeshe put a restraining hand on Shan's arm. "It's all right," he replied nervously. "He's not like that."

The woman fixed Shan with a frigid stare, then pulled a jar of powder from the lowest shelf. "You want something for sex, eh? That's what Chinese want."

Shan shook his head slowly and turned toward Yeshe. Not like what? He took a step closer to the table in the corner. The shadow at the table seemed to have shifted. It was clearly a man now, who appeared to be asleep, or perhaps intoxicated. Shan took another step. The left half of the man's face had been crushed. Half his left ear had been cut away. A brown bowl sat in front of him, lined with silver. Shan studied the peculiar pattern on the vessel. It wasn't a bowl. It was the top half of a human skull.

Suddenly a second man leapt forward to hover at Shan's elbow. He muttered a threat in a dialect that was unintelligible to Shan. Shan turned and saw to his surprise that the man was a monk. But he had a wild, feral quality, a raw look that Shan had never seen in a monk.

"He says"- Yeshe looked at the sleeping man as he spoke-"He says that if you take a photograph you will be sent immediately to the second level of the hot hell."

No matter where Shan turned, people wanted to warn him of the great suffering that awaited him. He turned his palms outward to show that they were empty. "Tell him," he said wearily, "that I am not acquainted with that particular hell."

"Don't mock him," Yeshe warned. "He means Kalasutra. You are nailed down and your body is cut into pieces with a burning hot saw. These monks. They are from a very old sect. Almost none left. They will tell you it is real. They may tell you they have been there."

Shan studied the monk with a chill.

Yeshe grabbed his arm and pulled. "No. Don't anger him. This drunkard cannot be who we want. Let us leave this place."

Shan ignored him and moved back toward the woman.

"I could read your omens," the woman said in a voice like that of a hen.

"Not interested in omens," Shan said. There was a brass piece, a plate the size of his palm on the table. It was inscribed along the perimeter with small images of Buddha. The center was brilliantly polished.

"Your people like omens."

"Omens just tell facts. I am interested in implications," Shan said. He reached for the plate.

Yeshe's hand snapped up and grabbed his wrist before he touched it.

"Not for you," the woman said with a chiding glance at Yeshe, as though she wished Shan had reached the disc.

"What is it?" he asked. Yeshe turned with his back to Shan, as though Shan needed protection.

"Much power," the woman cackled. "Enchantment. A trap."

"Trap for what?"

"Death."

"It catches the dead? You mean ghosts?"

"Not that kind of death," she said enigmatically, and pushed his hand away.

"I don't understand."

"Your people never understand. They fear death as an ending of life. But that is not the important one."

"You mean it catches the forces that lay waste to the soul."

The woman gave a slow nod of respect. "When it can be focused correctly." She considered him for a moment, then pulled a handful of black and white pebbles from a bowl and tossed them on the table. She solemnly arranged them in a line, then extracted several after careful deliberation. She looked at Shan sadly. "For the next month you must not dig in the earth alone. You must light torma offerings. You must bow before black dogs."

"I must speak with Khorda."

"Who are you?" the woman asked.

Shan weighed his words. "Right now," he whispered back, "I only know who I am not."

She stepped around the table and took his hand as if he might lose his way if he tried to reach the corner alone. The monk moved to intercept him again, but was stopped with a sharp glance from the woman. He retreated to sit squarely in the entrance, facing outside. Yeshe squatted beside him at the doorframe, facing Shan, as if he might need to spring to Shan's rescue at any moment.

Shan sat on a crate in front of the table and studied the old man.

As he did so the man's eyes burst open, instantly alert, the way a predator wakens.

Shan had the fleeting impression of looking into the face of an idol. The eye on the ragged side of the man's face looked at him with a supernatural intensity. The eyeball was gone, replaced with a brilliant red glass orb. The right eye, the living eye, seemed no more human. It too gleamed like a jewel, lit from the back.

"Choje Rinpoche suggested I speak with you."

The eye seemed to turn inward for a moment, as though searching for recognition. "I knew Choje when he was nothing but a brown-robe rapjung, an apprentice," Khorda said at last. His voice was like gravel being rubbed against a rock. "They took his gompa many years ago. Where does he study now?"