Shan reluctantly stepped over the American's legs "We are going down that path. We can just crawl a little at a time. You'll be better when we descend."
"I'll be better. You win," the American whispered, and his fingers made a tiny motion that seemed to be a gesture toward the cave.
Inside there was a musty odor of incense that had not been there before, but the chamber was empty and no incense burned. Shan stepped to the healing thangkas and looked briefly at each one, trying to calm himself. At the long thangka where the collection of dorjes lay, a new one sat beside the sandalwood dorje, one of bronze, burnished with decades of rubbing. Nearby, leaning against the wall, was something else. A long wooden staff, as worn and weathered as the dorje. On the ledge beside the dorje he saw two small dust-encrusted shapes he had not noticed before. He reached out for one, shaking away the dust. It was a small bone, perfectly shaped. Shan cleaned the second. It seemed to be a rock, until he realized how light it was. He studied the objects again and discovered he had been wrong. The rock was a carefully crafted piece of bone. And the bone was an exquisitely carved stone.
Shan pulled aside the thankga, releasing a stronger smell of incense. As he expected, there was a tunnel behind the old painting. He followed it at a sharp downward angle for nearly a minute before it leveled into a low, broad chamber. A second large thankga hung at one of the sides: a representation, not of the Medicine Buddha, but of a fierce protector demon, Rahula, a wrathful deity with several heads and a serpent body instead of legs.
Shan grasped the gau around his neck then stepped behind the thangka. To the right a long wide ledge, three feet high, ran the length of the narrow, forty-foot-long room, as straight and square as a bench. To the left, at the center of the wall, was a small altar of polished, deftly fitted wood, with a sixteen-inch golden Buddha, behind the traditional seven offering bowls. He slowly approached the altar. The four bowls that were meant to hold water were dry and crusted with dust. A single stick of incense and the stub of a candle burned beside the bowls on a polished stone tray. On either side of the altar were several large clay jars, some nearly two feet high, filled with dried herbs.
He stood in front of the Buddha, still clutching his gau tightly, and stared at it a moment before turning to face the lamas. He counted fifteen of them sitting on the long ledge then moved to the far end where the row started with a figure in a robe of coarse sackcloth, a stone bowl for mixing herbs at his side, his hands folded neatly on his legs around a string of coral beads. Not his hands exactly, but the bones of his fingers and the shriveled parchment-like skin that covered them. The man's head, little more than a skull covered with the same parchment, tilted back in a slight grin. One of the first of the lama healers, who had probably come to sit inside the mountain three or four hundred years before. Shan walked slowly along the wise old men. Some wore brocade robes and had gold urns at their sides, although most wore the robes of simple monks. At the foot of one lay a stack of wood blocks for printing a teaching.
Then the line ended, near the entrance, and he was gazing into Jokar's face. The old lama was struggling no longer. He had come home. He had finished what he had set out to do when he left India. That's all it was, Shan knew now, with a strange, sad warmth. There had been no conspiracy. He had never intended to lead the Tibetans in resistance or stir up political controversy. There had been no motive other than to find closure to a long life well lived, to leave his bones in honored company, to give his bones to the mountain they all cherished.
Jokar wore a serene smile on his face, which was so peaceful he seemed only to be in slumber. Shan touched the lama's hand, wrapped around his rosary. The warmth had left it, but it was not yet cold. The lama's other hand was resting on the leg of the shriveled man beside him, a figure with short white hair and a small wooden mixing bowl cradled in his lap. Jokar had known him. Lokesh had known him, too. Shan's old friend had recognized the sandalwood dorje in the antechamber as that of his old teacher, Chigu.
He gazed back on the tomb. It had probably been only an hour since Jokar had placed the candle on the altar and lit the stick of incense. The lama had climbed onto the long stone bench with his colleagues, clasped his beads, and the leg of his old friend, then drifted away for the last time. Inside Yapchi Mountain treasures were buried, Dremu had said.
Shan used the last of his water to reverently fill the offering bowls on the altar, before he suddenly remembered the American. He paused by Jokar a moment, then walked, backwards, to the thangka, climbed back to the entrance chamber and stepped outside, into the dusk. Winslow was nowhere to be seen.
He searched frantically with the electric light, first at the deep crevasse beyond the stone pillar, then outside, on the path. There was no sign of the American anywhere. He must have dragged himself down the treacherous path, to make sure Shan would not risk his own life in trying to help him. The trail was empty but dim, with no more than a hundred yards visible in either direction. He stepped down the trail several yards, then peered over the edge with the light. Nothing was visible, nothing but blackness. It was nearly a thousand feet to the bottom.
Returning to the cleft, he extinguished the light and studied the sky. Stars were appearing overhead, and below. A wind blew, and he realized his cheek was suddenly cold and wet. He wiped away a tear then stepped back into the cleft and began searching every corner, every indentation in the rock wall.
Five minutes later he saw the tip of a boot, above his head, jutting out from a long, high crack in the rockface that ended a few feet off the ground with a flat rock like a shelf, looking out over the entrance to the cave. Shan pulled himself halfway up the rock and lit the shelf with the flashlight. Winslow was sitting on the small shelf, the rock wall pressing against each shoulder.
"We must go now," he called out urgently, but the American was studying the shadows beyond Shan's shoulder and seemed not to hear. Shan scrambled up the rock and reached out to wipe the froth from the American's face again, then pulled back with a shudder. The froth was cold. Winslow's eyes, still open, had gone beyond seeing.
He dropped to the American's side. A long wracking sob shook Shan's body. So many times Shan had wanted Winslow to return to his embassy, so many opportunities had come and gone for the American to find safety. Just a phone call, just a word at the Golmud base, just a request to Jenkins at the oil camp. He could have escaped. But each time he had chosen to stay.
After a moment Shan realized there was a bundle on Winslow's legs, wrapped in black cloth. And over the cloth, clenched in the American's hand, was a note. Shan gently lifted the paper out of the lifeless fingers. It was nearly illegible. The American had written it at the very end, in English, with trembling fingers, in the dark. Shan studied it for several minutes before he could decipher the words.
By all that's holy, leave me here to watch over them. Tell no one but Melissa. Let the others wonder, my last little joke on the world. It's not so bad, Shan. I think I'm getting the hang of this impermanence thing. This is where I belong this time. Every lama needs a cowboy.
Shan sat a long time, fighting the dark, hollow thing he felt inside. Death was an old acquaintance. Death didn't scare him, it just intimidated him, it made him feel so unprepared, so incomplete, so wasteful of what his Tibetan friends called the precious human incarnation.