For a moment a fire raged inside Shan. They had tortured his friend, they had slowly tightened the clamp until a bone had snapped. In a gompa. For what? To find out about Shan? No. It was about Tenzin. To find out about the purbas helping Tenzin. To persuade the abbot of Sangchi to return to the prescribed path.

It was the reason for the light guard. Lokesh could not walk. And the howlers would never expect Tibetans to endeavor a rescue.

"I think I could get out the window," Tenzin said. "But I would not leave him."

"Doctors," Shan said. "There's a medical team here who could help with his leg."

"I asked," Tenzin said wearily. "That Khodrak and Director Tuan, they said they would think about it. First they want me to sign papers, to give a speech, to say I was on retreat to perfect the Serenity Campaign, to state that officials in Lhasa are wrong in suggesting I was fleeing. On retreat to study the integration of Buddhist thought with the characteristics of Chinese socialism." It was an idiom of political officers. Build industry with the characteristics of Chinese socialism. Strengthen education with the characteristics of Chinese socialism. "I told them I had indeed been contemplating that topic," Tenzin said pointedly, gazing forlornly at Lokesh again. "He doesn't complain. Lokesh just does his beads when he's conscious, or sings one of those pilgrim songs. But I think a break like that, it is very painful. He keeps writing a letter with the paper they gave him for self-criticism. A letter to the Chairman in Beijing. He says he is going to deliver it personally. Sometimes he folds papers and asks me to drop them out the window. He said strong horses will come and we can drop out of the window onto them and ride away."

Shan stared painfully at his old friend. "But if they keep you here," Shan said, "they must remain hopeful that you will cooperate."

Tenzin sighed. "Khodrak acts like I am his personal prize. Great for their careers, I heard him say to Tuan, the best thing ever. They've invited a senior delegation from Religious Affairs to the festival."

Shan could not take his eyes off Lokesh. He lifted one of Lokesh's hands and squeezed it. The old man's eyes fluttered open. He gazed dreamily at Shan, then lifted his fingers and touched Shan's cheek, as if to determine if he were real.

Suddenly Gyalo was pulling him away. "The guard is finishing. If he begins to pay attention to us, my friend, we will be in much trouble," he said in a desperate tone.

Lokesh's eyes fluttered shut again.

Tenzin grabbed Shan's arm. "You must understand something. They could come any second," he said urgently, and looked into Shan's eyes with deep despair. "Someone must know this in case we disappear. He went there for me. He died because of me."

Shan and Gyalo froze. The abbot of Sangchi suddenly seemed very old. "Some nights I can't sleep because I see him standing, dying, on that mandala."

Shan swallowed hard. "You mean Drakte. You mean you sent Drakte to Amdo town."

Tenzin nodded. "He was going anyway, but I had asked him to find me one of those Lotus Books, to bring it to me. He went there and the knobs killed him for it. He lost the book. He lost his life, because of me," Tenzin said in a desolate voice.

Gyalo pulled on Shan's shoulder but Shan would not move. He looked from Tenzin's tortured face to Lokesh, then to the paper on the table, and slowly pulled the pouch with the ivory rosary from his pocket. "Drakte was supposed to use all your things to leave a trail in the south. But he kept one thing back." He handed the pouch to Tenzin, who opened it and stared inside.

He heard Tenzin's breath catch, and watched the man's face sag. "My grandfather gave these to me," the Tibetan whispered. "He said they are the only valuable thing a monk should have, because they are his connection to his god."

Shan watched as Tenzin twined the beads around his fingers. "You have to tell them," he said slowly, "tell them you'll make your speech. Tomorrow. You have to play the abbot again," he said apologetically, "for a few minutes more." Then he leaned into Tenzin's ear to explain.

Night had fallen when Shan drifted toward the rear of the encampment, to walk among the stars. But as he passed the dropka tents by the yak herd he was distracted by a strange sound.

"Humm, humm en da rengg," a dropka youth recited in a singsong voice. It had the sound of a mantra, but unlike any Shan had ever heard. He rounded the tent to see a group of dropka, young and old, sitting by a huge yak-dung fire, beside which Winslow was standing. Shan spun about, alarmed that the American would be so careless as to come down from the hiding place on the ridge after they had all agreed it was too dangerous for him to do so. But then he saw two lean men standing at the edge of the circle, facing the gompa. One was close enough to recognize, one of the stoney-faced purbas who had been with Tenzin at Yapchi.

Winslow acknowledged Shan with a grin. For a moment Shan thought he was waving at him, then he realized the American was leading the dropka in song.

"Whur da deaar end nat'lope ply- yy," the dropka continued. It was an American song, in a rough approximation of the English, one of the Western songs approved for the public address systems of Chinese trains: Home, Home on the Range.

As Shan sat near the fire, trying to join in the spirit of the circle, his concern for the American increased. It was too dangerous for him to come to the encampment, even with purbas protecting him. He would be an illegal now, without the protection of his passport, without any identity as far as the authorities would be concerned. Like Shan, Winslow didn't exist now, and if captured he might be made to disappear.

In the dim light on the far side of the fire Shan became aware of another figure, seated on the back of a horse cart, a dour Tibetan man, Shan's age, flanked by two of the purbas he had seen on the ridge. Shan rose and edged around the ring. But when he got close to the cart the nearest purba stepped in front of him. The man on the cart stared at Shan with hooded eyes, showing no greeting, no emotion of any kind. In the firelight Shan could see two deep gutters of scar tissue along the man's cheek, and the flame in his eyes. He saw much that he recognized in those eyes. They were prisoner's eyes, filled with a weary, sad intelligence, but they were also extraordinarily fierce eyes, lit with fury and righteousness alike. Shan had seen the same eyes on thangkas of wrathful protector demons.

Shan took another step forward and the purba's hand closed around his arm like a cold vise, and pressed it against something near his chest. A pistol butt, in a shoulder holster. Shan froze, then stepped back out of the purba's grip, studying the lines of scar tissue on the man's cheeks. It was the one they called the Tiger, he somehow knew, the legendary purba leader with the stripes on his face. The two most wanted men in all Tibet were at Khodrak's gompa.

Shan retreated to the far side of the circle. He wandered out onto the plain, into the comfort of the night, trying to fight the new fear that the Tiger's presence had ignited. An owl called. The mountains on the horizon glistened in the moonlight. The appearance of the purba leader unsettled Shan as much as if knobs had risen out of the fire. The Tiger was not there to help Shan. The Tiger was famed as a man of action. It was said that his mother had been Moslem. Moslems believed in retribution. The Tiger was so hunted, so prominently marked for destruction he could easily have an army of knobs on his trail at that moment. The words Anya had spoken their first night on Yapchi mountain came back to him. So many have died, the oracle had said, so many still to die.