"I think you lied when you said you were taken by the venture work gang," Shan said. "Those two Goloks tried to steal from us."

Dremu seemed to shrink. He hunched his shoulders forward and wrapped both arms around the drum as if he were going to fall. "That was before," he muttered.

"Before what?"

The Golok just hugged the drum, looking at Shan's feet. "They're not my friends," he said after a long silence. "They are wild, like leopards. At first I thought if we worked together we could make enough money for the next winter. It was okay when we just stole from the oil company. But when they met me here and said they were going to steal from the Yapchi farmers I tried to stop them. They beat me and took everything I had, even my horse."

Shan reached into his pocket and pulled out the leather pouch, the lapis bracelet, and the knife with the spoon, and placed them one by one on the rock in front of Dremu. The Golok stared at them, then with a reverent expression picked up the pouch. "I had nothing left but the rags on my back. That was before…"

Before what? Shan almost asked again, but somehow he knew the answer. Dremu meant before the deity began speaking to him through the drum.

There was movement around the edge of the high rocks, and Gang approached them, supported by his son. In Gang's bandaged hand, extended toward Shan, was the chenyi stone.

"This man," Dremu said, "was almost dead. First I found his family looking for him, crying, thinking they had lost him forever, thinking he had gone to kill you. Then we found him, beating the drum, looking crazy, not able to talk. By then the drum was drumming him." Dremu looked at Shan uncertainly. "I couldn't… I didn't…"

"You did well," Shan offered. "You kept the deity."

Gang pushed his son away and stumbled toward Shan. He held out the stone in both hands, appealing to Shan with his exhausted, glazed eyes, and was wracked by a sob. He began crying, convulsing with tears, able to control himself only enough to step forward and drop the chenyi stone into Shan's hands.

Shan gazed at the stone, then surveyed the chaos in the valley below. He felt empty, drained, uncertain where to go, what more he could do. After a long time he raised Gang's hand in his own and returned the stone to him. Then Shan picked up the two drumsticks, exchanged a solemn look with Dremu, and began pounding the deity drum.

Chapter Nineteen

Dremu stared in disbelief, twisting his head from side to side as if to better see Shan. A smile gradually broke across his weary face and he showed Shan how to make the quick one-two beat, the heart sound. They watched, the drum pounding, the children laughing, as more derrick workers jumped off, splashing, into the huge puddle of water that was growing around their machine. Shan watched his hands pounding the drumskin without conscious effort, and found himself drifting to a place he did not recognize, watching his hands as though they belonged to someone else. He had heard of monks in old Tibet using such sounds, not just in ritual but in meditation exercises. The throbbing of the drum became the throbbing of his own heart and the echo that came back to him seemed to come not from across the valley but from somewhere else, a faraway place where something huge was stirring to the sound, rolling over as though to awaken, the way a mountain sometimes rolls over.

It was as if one of Lokesh's karma storms was roiling the valley, as if everything that could happen was happening, changing too fast to be understood, too sudden for the pain of it all to be fully sensed. He could not stop beating the drum. The drum was beating him.

He lost track of time, but eventually became aware of Gang standing close to him, staring with his head cocked, his eyes not bitter or angry, only empty and pleading. Shan handed him the sticks and stepped back. An hour or more had gone by. The speaking platform below was empty, and the dignitaries were gathered at the tables, having their banquet as though unaware of the water that still flooded their derrick or, more likely, unconcerned, because they knew the water would soon recede and the derrick would resume drilling.

The derrick itself was empty, and the muddy pond at its base was perhaps three hundred feet across. But the waters seemed to have stopped flowing. A new pond had appeared at the end of the valley, where Jenkins had built a rough levee by bulldozing the surface soil of the barley fields into a long, low bank.

Shan studied Gang, who seemed to have drifted to the same place the drum had taken each of them before. His eyes lost their focus. His hands gripped the drumsticks despite his still-healing burns, gripped so tightly his knuckles were white, as if he wasn't holding sticks but a lifeline. The embittered Han had attacked Shan, he knew now, had attacked him and taken the eye.

But why? Because he thought Shan had not earned the right to return the eye? Because he simply could not believe there could be another Han who was virtuous? More likely, because he had spent most of his life trying to redeem himself, to prove himself to the Tibetans, then seen the most visible proof, his reconstructed shrines, go up in flames.

Shan wandered to the valley floor, mingled with the workers who still seemed to be running everywhere with shovels and hoes. A truck sped by carrying logs from the camp stockpile. Soldiers in mud-caked uniforms jogged toward the base camp and were being herded into two troop trucks that waited below the derrick. Shan watched as the first of the trucks sped away, racing through the camp and out of the valley.

"Too late to beat the knobs," Shan heard someone say with an air of amusement. A broad-shouldered Tibetan in grease-stained coveralls stood ten feet away, speaking to no one in particular.

Shan ventured closer to the man. "Those knobs already left?" he asked.

"Their prize isn't the oil well," the man observed in a bitter voice. "For them a hundred resisters will beat an oil well every time."

Shan closed his eyes and fought down a wave of fear. There was a meadow somewhere; a small, high meadow where Tibetans waited for Jokar, where they expected to find new strength in resisting Beijing- a leader who could be respected like no other, who would become a new symbol, a modern-day Siddhi. Somo and many of the purbas must be going there now, waiting for Gyalo to bring Jokar. Some of the purbas had guns.

When he reached the trees on the far side of the valley, Shan ran. He did not know where the meadow was. All he could do was go up, east toward the highest spines of the huge mountain, praying he would see a sign or meet Tibetans on the way who might lead him to Jokar. He jogged until his side raged with pain then stumbled into a stream.

As he knelt in the water, he looked about, gasping. The distant drumming from Yapchi began to seem hollow, and he began to hear it as a sound of frustration, not hope. No deity had come, no compassion had been found. And now, he thought as he splashed the frigid water on his face, when the soldiers or knobs found Jokar at a secret rally against Beijing, they would show no mercy.

"Lokesh!" he heard someone shout, again and again, until he realized it was himself. No matter how urgently he wanted to find Jokar, another part of him was still desperately thinking of Lokesh, who would soon begin hobbling toward Beijing, where he would be killed or imprisoned.

He launched himself out of the water, following one goat path, then another, always seeking the paths that would take him still higher. An hour passed, then another, and he began to recognize trails. He had circled far below Larkin's birthing water cave and was climbing again, near where Chemi had brought them over the mountain on their first day in Qinghai. Rounding an outcropping, he froze. A huge black drong stood in a clearing a hundred feet away, staring warily at him. But then he took a step forward and saw the red ribbons in its neck hair, some of which Shan and Anya had tied.