"They stored treasures," Shan agreed, but looked uncertainly at Lokesh. Tenzin bent to the base of one wall where there was a long low mound of dust. He probed it with his fingers and pulled out an end of fabric with threads of bright color. Above it, over their heads, was a gnarled limb with two pieces of yak-hair twine frayed at the end. A thangka had hung there, and fallen away. He looked at Shan, then reverently lowered the cloth. Tenzin understood, too. This was not simply a cache of treasure hastily secreted when the army came to destroy Rapjung. This was an ancient retreat cave of some kind, perhaps a place for a special, secret ritual whose purpose had been lost to time.
Finally, Chemi reminded them of their destination and they followed her quietly outside. Shan lingered at the stone pillar for a moment to look toward the shadow that marked the cave entrance. "How could they survive? How could any lama endure," he wondered. "The army would have searched the mountains."
"Survived?" Chemi said bitterly. "They sterilized the mountains. For a while they even had patrols with rifles that had telescopes. They killed anything that moved. They put up posters that warned all of us to stay out of the mountains for three months. Every goat, every wild yak was shot, because when he was dying a monk had said all the Tibetans killed by the Chinese would come back as mountain animals until they could live as humans again. Nothing survived up here."
"Then how would one of the old medicine lamas be here?" a voice asked over Shan's shoulder. The American had been listening.
Chemi shrugged. "Sometimes things grow back," she said, as if someone had planted seeds and a crop of old lamas had emerged. "Sometimes they find a way to step between worlds." As she turned into the cleft that led to the trail outside Shan studied the sturdy woman. She hadn't explained everything, hadn't explained why she had gone south, days away from her home, to reach the healer, waiting on a particular trail. How had she known where to find him, how had the dropka known to watch the herb meadow? A medicine lama was in the mountains but so was the dobdob who was attacking Tibetans, even monks.
Outside, on the side of the mountain, there was no sign of the helicopter, no evidence of activity on the ledges below. They hurried along the exposed trail into a series of deep gorges, walking sometimes in chasms so narrow that they moved through water a few inches deep, the runoff from the rocks above. They navigated along a row of rock pinnacles that towered like sentinels along the Qinghai border until they reached an open ledge that commanded a view of many miles to the north and east.
Chemi pointed to the next high mountain to the east in the long line of snowcapped peaks that defined the border. "Geladaintong," she explained. "Where the Yangtze River begins. And there," she said, turning west to point to a long flat-topped ridge that lay to the west. "Three miles past there, that's my village." She said it with an air of satisfaction. "We will have hot tea and tsampa. And noodle soup. My sister always has a kettle of noodle soup."
Shan lingered a moment looking at the rugged peak Chemi had pointed out. He had forgotten that the source of the Yangtze was in Amdo. For a moment he pictured the mighty river flowing through Chinese cities and farmland, powering so much commerce, feeding millions of Chinese, emptying into the East China Sea near Shanghai. It all began with one Tibetan mountain.
They circled a massive outrider of the mountain, like a huge granite rib, and found themselves hovering at the edge of a cliff over a patch of greyness below, a cloud along the base of the rib. It seemed as though a piece of the sky had fallen and been trapped in the rocks.
"Always like that," Chemi explained as Lokesh stared in wonder at the strange fallen cloud. "They say a demon lives there; when there is no wind you can hear it roar. Hermits used to come to this ledge to meditate, I've heard, because it was a connected place."
"Connected?" Winslow asked.
"For humans to connect with something deep in the earth. Where land deities were connected to sky deities." Chemi leaned out from the overhang, so far Shan stepped forward in fear that she would fall. "My uncles used to walk over this ridge to come visit us. They said it was the place where clouds are made," she added, then stepped back with a triumphant smile as a small grey wisp drifted up the gorge and floated toward the southern ridges.
They descended on a narrow switchback trail and in an hour began to cross the ridge under an afternoon sky so clear it shimmered. When the wind ebbed birds could be heard in the distance. Lokesh, for the first time in many days, began to sing one of his traveling songs, a song that pilgrims sang when they rested at night.
Coming down the high mountain onto the ridge underscored the sense of arrival into the land of the Yapchi villagers. The landscape was largely comprised of lichen-covered rocks, with long steep gravel slopes, and deep gorges falling between fingers of the mountain, full of the stark beauty that Shan had grown accustomed to in Tibet. He was in Qinghai now, a new land. He recalled hearing from a prisoner that there was more tolerance in Qinghai, that the destruction of traditional Tibetan institutions had not been so complete in what had once been Amdo, because there had been no real centers of population in the land, no obvious targets for the army.
As they emerged into a broad open field of gravel and low heather, Lokesh called out softly and pointed at a small flock of grouse-like birds, dappled with the white remnants of their winter plumage, that were browsing on the field two hundred feet away. "Lha gyal lo!" Lokesh called softly.
Then the birds exploded.
Gravel, plants, and birds burst into the air with a deafening blast. Chemi shouted and dropped to the ground. Tenzin grabbed Anya and pulled her behind a boulder as Shan pushed Lokesh in the same direction. The American did not move, but stood, cursing loudly in English as the rubble tumbled to the ground. As Winslow took a step forward, pulling out his binoculars, another patch of ground fifty feet beyond the first erupted with the same violence, blasting stones far into the sky. Winslow retreated to the rocks beside Shan, still cursing, and a third explosion ripped through the still afternoon air.
Abruptly, there was silence. Tiny bits of soil began to shower down on them, and three small columns of smoke drifted upward from small craters in the meadow. Three explosions, in a line, evenly spaced. Like the ones they had witnessed from the heights of the mountain that morning.
Chemi rose, terror in her eyes. Tenzin stepped to her side, his eyes upward, watching something white drift down toward them. It was a feather, and they all watched it in silence until it touched the ground in front of them. Lokesh began a mantra in a low, sorrowful tone.
"What would the army…" Chemi began, and rubbed her ears.
Shan realized his own ears were ringing. "Not the army," he heard Winslow say, as if from a distance, and the American pointed toward the far end of the clearing.
Several figures were emerging from the outcropping at the far end of the field. They wore helmets, but not the helmets of soldiers. Their helmets were red and silver, the kind construction workers sometimes wore. Shan motioned the others back into the rocks. He stepped hesitantly into the clearing and waited.
The fury of the man in the lead was evident. Even though he was still out of earshot they could tell he was shouting and pointing at them, pointing at the small craters, even turning to wave his fist at the small party that followed him. As he reached the crater nearest them the man halted and examined Shan, then removed his silver helmet and marched quickly forward, his hands clenched, his mouth curled in anger. For a moment Shan thought the man was going to throw the helmet at him.