It could mean only one thing. They had left the ancient medicine lama on the mountain with Lin. But Lin's soldiers had finally found their colonel, and now Lin had made good on his vow. He had arrested Jokar.

Chapter Seventeen

The mixing ledge was deserted when they reached it the next morning.

"The soldiers," Somo said forlornly as she walked through the empty chambers with a butter lamp. "They were searching with helicopters. Lin must have signaled them. It's how they must have found Jokar Rinpoche."

Lhandro's parents and Anya as well, Shan thought bitterly. They were all gone. "It means we can't stay," he said. "We need to go back to the water cave." Winslow, Tenzin, and the other purbas had carried Lokesh on a litter to Larkin's cave. Shan, Somo, and Nyma had pushed on with Lhandro to the little plateau.

The meager possessions of those who had been hiding at the mixing ledge were spread around the chambers, undisturbed, as though they had been forced out with no time to pack. The Yapchi headman knelt by his father's empty pallet with a mournful expression. His parents would not survive imprisonment for long. He had left them in a joyful state, communing with the medicine lama, but they had been wrenched away, into a violent, soulless world, a world they would never comprehend. Lhandro touched the corner of the framed photograph, sitting at the head of the pallet, and a small choking sound escaped his throat. His fingers trembled. "Some of the dropka," he said, "call helicopters 'sky demons.'" A sky demon had landed and consumed his parents. It happened that way sometimes. Helicopters came without warning and snatched away someone, who would never be seen again. In ancient days, a dropka once told Shan, sky demons did the same thing, but with lightning.

Lhandro stared at the photograph and opened his mouth, as if to ask why. It wasn't that his parents might be dead that hurt the most, Shan knew, but that it was so incomplete. Lhandro would never know whether to offer death rites, would not know when or where to mourn, or whether to seek them in some prison.

"All we wanted was our deity," Lhandro whispered to the photograph. He collapsed onto his knees beside the pallet, before the Dalai Lama, and began a mantra to the Compassionate Buddha.

Shan studied the room and the pallet. "Why," he asked slowly, "would soldiers leave the photograph like that?"

Somo looked at him, and then back at the image of the Dalai Lama. It was the kind of thing the soldiers hated, the kind of thing they would have thrown against a wall or ground into the earth with a boot heel.

Lhandro looked up in confusion. Somo knelt, studying the contents of the chamber with wary eyes, then shot up as Nyma called in alarm from the doorway.

Two figures approached along the western slope, walking slowly, stopping sometimes to survey the landscape below. Somo gestured the others back behind the rocks until it was clear the approaching figures were Tibetans, both clad in dropka chubas, one, the taller of the two, wearing a derby. With his binoculars Shan saw they were holding hands. Then the strangers stopped and sat on a flat rock two hundred yards away.

Somo sighed. "We can ask those herders if they saw something. But now we have to pack up anything that was left behind. No evidence should be left. If they come back, if they decide this is a purba hiding place, they will destroy it with explosives," she declared grimly, and stepped back inside, Shan and the others following closely.

Five minutes later Shan froze. Strangely, he thought he heard laughter. He looked at Somo, who had stopped, too. They rose from the bundles of blankets they were tying and warily moved outside.

Anya was there, wearing an oversized chuba, kicking an apple like a soccer ball as someone with their back to them tried to block her. It was the man in the chuba and derby who had been walking with her. Kicking the apple, Anya gave a surprised grin and waved at Shan as he stepped forward, then the man turned. Somo gasped. It was Lin.

The colonel froze. The apple rolled past him. Impossible as it seemed, for a moment Shan thought he saw playfulness on Lin's face. But his features instantly hardened and the fragment of a smile left on his face chilled into a scowl.

"Still on the run," Lin said gruffly as Anya ran to Nyma and embraced her. "I knew you wouldn't get far."

"I have a teacher," Shan explained in an even voice, "who says one of my problems is that I never run away." He studied Lin. The heavy chuba, which he now recognized as belonging to Lhandro's father, hung over his army pants. His army shirt had been replaced with a red one, like many of the dropka wore. His eyes were clear, his legs obviously steady. "But sometimes in Tibet," Shan added, "it can be hard to understand what running away means."

"I showed Aku Lin where the pink flowers called lamb's nose were blooming," Anya said, and she stepped in front of Lin as though to protect him. "We found some greens we can cook."

Aku Lin. She had called him Uncle Lin. Shan stared at the girl, and back at Lin, then at Somo. Their presence meant a helicopter had not come. "How long have you been here?" he asked. "Alone like this?"

"Three days," the girl said as she stepped closer to Shan. "The medicine lama said stay with Lin. He said it was how we needed to be," she added in a low tone. She seemed to search Shan's face for something, then Somo's, until, with an expression of doubt, she gazed back toward the brilliant white top of the mountain, as if something was happening she didn't understand.

Shan remembered the joyful expression on the girl's face as she had played with Lin, and the deep laugh he had heard. It could only have been from Lin. It was how Jokar had said they should be. "But they were arrested. Jokar and the others. Where were they taken?"

"Arrested?" Anya cried. "No. They said they would be back soon. They just went to Yapchi," Anya said. "They talked all night about it, first. Once when I woke up, Lepka-" she looked over Shan's shoulder at Lhandro, who had just appeared, and stopped.

"What?" Lhandro demanded. "What was my father doing?"

Anya's gaze became apologetic. "He was crying."

Lhandro looked at Lin, accusation filling his eyes. Lin glared back, his fingers curling, as though he were bracing for a fight.

"No- it was about the valley healing. I didn't understand all of it. It was about old things, when he and Jokar were boys."

"The valley healing?" Somo said. "You mean the people of Yapchi healing."

Anya shook her head slowly. "It was what they said," she explained, and looked at Shan. "The valley. I think they meant our deity. After they spoke, they seemed to have an idea where the deity went." She shrugged. "The next morning they left at dawn." The girl searched Lhandro's eyes as though for an answer. "Stickmen. Jokar said the stickmen would need a blessing."

"Medicine," Lhandro said to Shan, glancing with unmasked anger at Lin. "They must have gone for that medicine. The herbs Lokesh sought."

But Lin looked like he was no longer in need of herbs. He had clearly recovered from his concussion. The splint was off his wrist, which was now wrapped in a strip of cloth.

They stood in silence. Lin glanced at Shan, stepped to the apple and gave it a fierce kick that sent it over the edge of the cliff.

"They have your letter," Shan said to the colonel. "They know you're still alive."