"No!" Nyma protested. "You probably saved others from injury. A thief like that would just have brought his violence to the rest of us if you hadn't taken the eye aside."

The searchers returned one by one over the next two hours, the last coming by horseback from the trail above. Some shook their heads, others just shrugged. Only Dremu, the last rider, from the slope above, had anything to report. A wild goat had run past him on the trail as though frightened by something above.

"The army," Winslow sighed. "If it was the army…" he began.

"How could it be the army?" Nyma asked. "If it had been the army, if it had been that Colonel Lin, they would not care about stealth, they would have just pounced on us, taken all of us away in chains like he tried to that day."

Some of the villagers murmured agreement. But Winslow and Shan exchanged a glance. Lin might have acted quietly, sending only one of his commandos for an ambush, if he had known the American was present.

"If the army took the eye," Shan said, "then it is gone, out of our reach. But if the army did not take the eye," he said with an expectant look at Lhandro, "then the eye may still be in our grasp." Lhandro shook his head, but seemed to ponder the words and looked up at Shan with interest.

"What would be the other reasons to take it?" another voice asked from the shadows. Gyalo appeared. "Nyma explained things to me," he said in an aside to Shan, before he turned to the others. "Shan is saying we must know the why of this theft."

"To destroy it," Nyma suggested. "So the valley could not be saved. Or to hide it."

"That would mean it could be those who wish to use your valley," Gyalo observed.

Lhandro nodded. "The oil crews. The geologists who work for the petroleum joint venture."

"And if not to destroy it or hide it?" Shan asked. "Perhaps the thief wants it back in Yapchi, too, just in a different way."

"Return it?" Nyma asked, creasing her brow. "Someone else… someone who didn't believe we would make it to Yapchi," she said in a hollow voice. "Maybe someone who didn't understand the oracle," she added with a quick glance toward Shan. "Or someone who just thought they could acquire merit somehow."

"That goat that ran from up the slope, it could have been someone climbing above who spooked it. Someone taking the eye over the mountain," Winslow observed.

"The army wouldn't take it over the mountain," Lhandro said quietly. "They would take it back to Lhasa."

"If the army didn't take the eye," Shan said, "then we must get to the valley, and quickly. Someone attempting to return it to the deity might be conspicuous. Maybe we can find the thief before the army does." It was a slim chance, he knew. But it was the only one they had.

"The oracle," Nyma said with a glimmer of hope, looking at Shan. "It didn't say how the eye would get to the valley, only how it would be returned to its true place."

"There is a secret trail over Yapchi Mountain," a new voice said from the shadows. They turned to see Chemi standing by the big yak. "A high trail, very narrow in spots, very dangerous. I took it once when I was a girl. I've seen old goats on it. Not for horses, not for sheep wearing packs. The caravan will have to go around the base of the mountain to the valley. But on foot, some of us can go over it and be in the valley before dusk tomorrow, if we leave at daybreak." She searched the faces of the villagers. "I know about that eye," she said, looking at Shan. "My grandfather's father was from Yapchi. He was away on a pilgrimage when those Lujun soldiers came. He never went back after that."

"I'll go," Winslow said quickly, then, in response to Shan's worried glance, shrugged and gestured toward his pack. "I'll take my pills. She might be up there."

There was movement at Shan's side. Lokesh was kneeling now, tightening the laces of his tattered boots. Shan put a hand on his shoulder and Lokesh pretended to ignore it. "Old goats," he said. "You heard her. It's for old goats."

The Yapchi villagers laughed.

"The four of us then," Shan declared. "At dawn."

Lhandro surveyed the caravaners. "Someone from the village should go. Shan may need help in understanding the valley before we arrive with the sheep. Only one. We cannot spare more and still drive the sheep."

Nyma seemed about to step forward when a diminutive figure pushed through from the shadows behind her. "It needs to be me," Anya said solemnly. Her voice seemed small and brittle. It was the first Shan had heard her speak since the oracle had visited.

Lhandro's chest pulled in, as if he were about to protest that the girl's twisted leg would make it too dangerous, but the headman only sighed and stared at the girl in silence.

An owl called from somewhere.

In the blur of events since he had been attacked Shan had almost forgotten about the strange words of the oracle. Had the oracle somehow been warning that the eye would be lost? Did Anya somehow feel responsible?

Gyalo, squatting by the fire, raised his wrist to his mouth as if biting something on it, then stood, extracting a grey strand from his hand and extending it to Anya. "It's a yak-hair bracelet," he said. "From Jampa. My mother always made me wear one in the high mountains. She said a yak-hair bracelet would make you as surefooted as a yak. Good for high places."

Anya studied the bracelet of woven hair. She seemed reluctant to take it.

"We are going to help with the sheep, Jampa and I. We want to see this Yapchi Valley. You can return it to me there."

They started when the eastern sky was the color of juniper smoke, the high peaks above them lost in purple and grey shadow. A cry of a bird echoed from above and Winslow cocked his head, listening. A moment later, a sheep bleated toward them, as though in reply to the bird. Another sheep called, and another, until a dozen or more were calling at once. It sounded as if they were mourning the loss of the jagged eye.

Chemi led the way, not on a trail at first, but up a series of ledges and steep gravel slopes that would reach the trail in an hour, she promised. After a few minutes she turned and pointed to a rider urging his horse along the lower trail, the caravan route. Dremu was riding out ahead of the rongpa. Shan stared at the Golok as he disappeared around an outcropping. Dremu was on Yapchi Mountain now, the mountain he hated.

It was rough going. More than once Lokesh slipped and fell to his knees on the loose rough slopes. The American stopped several times and held his head but each time continued, matching Chemi's hurried pace. It seemed as if they were fleeing from something. More than once he studied the line of figures in front of him. Winslow, who had almost died the day before of altitude sickness. Anya who had been seized by the oracle. Chemi who had seemed more dead than alive when they had seen her on the trail the week before. Some of the older Buddhists would have said the wheel of their karma was moving quickly.

After an hour, as they followed Chemi around a sharp turn up a steep switchback trail a movement below caught Shan's eye. Another figure was climbing behind them. Tenzin. Somehow Shan wasn't surprised. Of all of them, perhaps Tenzin had the most urgent reason to flee.

They reached the main trail and climbed for another hour before Chemi paused to rest, on a ledge that overlooked several high, broad ridges to the south that led to the Plain of Flowers in the distance. Chemi pointed between two of the northern peaks to a brown swath of land in the north. "Amdo Province," she said with a flash of defiance in her eyes. "Our people never call it Qinghai, that's only for Chinese maps. On the far side of the mountain," she said, looking at the massive rock wall that towered before them, the pinnacle of Yapchi Mountain, "there is a long twisting path down a gully that opens on a shelf of land where my family lives. An hour beyond that, over the next ridge, is Yapchi Valley."