"We know how to work in storms," Lokesh said quietly. It was a phrase from their gulag days, when the lamas exhorted the prisoners to ignore suffering and other distractions, and only work on their inner deities.

Shan's mouth went dry. "You and I saw monks die in prison because they decided to do nothing but work on their inner deities," he said after a moment.

Lokesh replied with a disappointed frown.

"What if Drakte's killer is following us?" Shan asked. "How can we avoid the killer, how can we get safely to that valley with the chenyi stone if we do not understand this killer?"

Lokesh shook his head. "By appealing to our deities. When there is a deity to repair there is nothing more important. All that work we did at the hermitage, it was like a vow. I am bound. And if that stone wants a piece of my own deity to help it heal, I will gladly give it."

Shan recognized his friend's words as a challenge. Although Lokesh usually supported Shan's quest for truth in all its forms, this time everything was different. There were no rules for healing deities, but Lokesh knew that trying to understand a killer was probably the opposite of trying to understand a deity. He conceded by bowing his head. "I am bound," Shan said in a solemn whisper. "I can work in storms."

They dug again until Lokesh gave an exclamation of triumph and extracted a small grey stone. "A very good one," he said with satisfaction and handed it to Shan.

Shan had seen the shape in the rock before. It was indeed a rare find. "A fossil," he announced. "A trilobite that lived when these lands were under a sea millions of years ago."

Lokesh gave a patient sigh, as if Shan had missed the point. "A powerful tonde," he said, "because it took the combined action of the water and earth deities to make it."

They were walking toward the lake half an hour later, when Lokesh paused and held his hand to his ear. "A song," he declared, "a song is coming from the earth." He firmly believed in the ability of inanimate objects to become animated when inhabited by a deity. Lokesh studied the landscape, then pointed toward a small knoll. They were proceeding toward it, pausing every few steps to listen, when Lhandro called out for them to stop.

"Leave her alone," the Yapchi farmer warned as he trotted to their side. "She needs this time."

When he saw their confused expressions, Lhandro gestured them forward with a finger to his lips, stopping when they could see a girl sitting in the shallow depression on the far side of the hill. It was Anya, the crippled girl with the braids and red cheeks. She had a lamb on her lap. The animal's tongue was out of its mouth, its breathing heavy.

"Anya is an orphan, like the lamb," Lhandro said. "The lamb's mother was killed by wild dogs a few days ago. No other ewe was in milk. She tried to feed it goat's milk but it wouldn't drink. It will be dead by nightfall." He looked out over the lake. "Sometimes she speaks the words of deities."

In the silence they listened. The girl was singing to the lamb in a high voice that came like a whisper on the wind. Shan could not understand the words, but they were strikingly beautiful, somehow eerie yet soothing, so natural it seemed to Shan that if the lamb's mother had been there and could express her sorrow, this would be her sound.

Lokesh cocked his head toward the girl and closed his eyes. Others were listening, too, Shan saw. Tenzin sat in the spring grass at the top of the opposite knoll, gazing sadly at the girl. Near Tenzin sat one of the big mastiffs, looking just as forlorn. Shan gazed at the girl, then the sky over her head. When he looked back at Lokesh a tear was falling down his cheek, and the old Tibetan nodded knowingly at Shan as if to say yes, it was a deity who was singing after all.

"When I was young my mother used to sing like that," someone said behind Shan, "just go sit out on a ledge and sing." It was Nyma, staring at the girl. "First time I heard her I thought she was crying. But she said no, she was trying to call the Yapchi deity back, to tell the deity it wouldn't be blind forever. When she died she said to me she was praying for the deity to forgive her, because she had lied to the deity, that it would have to get used to being blind."

"But now it will be different," Lhandro said, fixing his gaze on Shan. "Now they will be made to understand about the land."

Shan looked in confusion at the farmer. "They?"

"All those people who lost the understanding of earth deities."

"I don't know what-"

"Our valley," Lhandro said with a distant gaze toward the northern mountains. "It's full of Chinese and foreigners who plan to take the blood out of our earth."

"Blood?" Shan turned to Nyma for help.

"The earth's blood," Lhandro said.

"Oil," the nun offered in a hushed voice, lowering her eyes, as if the word frightened her, or she was embarrassed not to have told Shan before. "They destroyed the home of the deity and now they are drilling in our earth. They say they will find oil soon, then our valley will be destroyed." She looked into his eyes with a pleading expression. "But now, Shan, you are coming," she said, and hope lit her countenance. "You and the Yapchi deity are going to fix the land for us. You are going to make them leave."

Chapter Four

The crust of the earth under Tibet is twice as thick as elsewhere on the planet. Shan had heard that fact twice in his life. First from a professor in Beijing, who had emphasized that because plates of the earth had piled up on themselves in Tibet the land was constantly rising, causing many dangerous, unpredictable seismic events. But the point had also been related to Shan by an old lama in prison, who had explained that it meant the power of the land deities was more concentrated in Tibet than anywhere else on earth, that the roots that connected the land with its people ran much deeper, that the land expressed itself in more powerful ways.

As they left the next morning Shan remembered the words of the lama, for the earth was indeed expressing itself in powerful ways. A small but violent squall raced over the peaks to the north, one moment enveloping them in the white curtain that meant swirling snow, the next breaking to let the sun brilliantly illuminate a patch of slope. To the south clouds were scudding over another range, washing peaks with swaths of shadow that shifted so rapidly that the mountains themselves seemed to be in motion. And in between, the air over the great lake was clear and crisp under a cobalt sky. During the night the geese had gathered close to the salt camp, and Lokesh was standing close to the shore, speaking with them, or perhaps his mother, as he waved a farewell. The night before, his old friend had decided not to sleep. As the moon had risen over the holy waters, he had announced that he felt closer to his mother than he had in years, and he wanted to experience the sensation as long as possible. It was the geese, Lokesh had decided, and he wanted to stay near them all night.

As Shan had watched his friend settling onto a rock at the darkened shoreline he, too, decided to begin a vigil of sorts, atop a small hill, hoping for one of the rare moments when he connected with his father, when he would suddenly sense the smell of ginger and hear a hoarse, throaty laugh down some long empty corridor in his mind. But after an hour he had given up, realizing his father would never approach when the vision of Drakte's death lingered so close to Shan's consciousness.