Nyma and the men from Yapchi plodded on without explanation, taking a goat trail toward a tiny plateau a thousand feet below. Their eyes seemed glazed, their expressions frozen into masks of grief and fear. They had lost their serene village. They had lost their valley. Several of the soldiers who had caused it were dead, and the army would never believe its men had died by accident. Now they were carrying into their midst, to whatever hiding place Nyma was leading them, the demon who had brought all their afflictions.
It had once been a hermitage, Shan decided as they reached the plateau, but a rockslide had destroyed the little retreat. The front wall of a stone hut remained, with empty frames for a door and a window that had looked out over the abyss that began a few feet away- a thousand-foot drop into the labyrinth of gorges at the southern base of Yapchi Mountain. The remainder of the structure was lost in a huge tumble of loose rocks that rose halfway up the back of the wall and continued in a long sweep to meet the steep slope above. On the opposite side of the wedge-shaped plateau was a single gnarled juniper tree, its trunk over a foot wide but no more than eight feet in height. Its branches all pointed southward, toward Rapjung.
"I think they meant for us to go to this place," Nyma announced in a weary, uncertain tone. "They said the place on the south slope once used by lamas. I have never been here but-" Her voice choked off as a man appeared beyond the hut, as though materializing out of the shadows by the rock wall. It was one of the purbas from the canyon at Yapchi, the man with the tattered green sweater. He gestured them toward him with an urgent motion, as though he were fearful of them lingering in the open. He melted just as suddenly back into the rocks.
At the rear of the plateau, its narrowest point, the rockslide had nearly reached the sheer rock face of the mountain. But the catastrophe that had destroyed the hut had not annihilated the rest of the small complex, only buried it. A sturdy door frame stood in the rock debris, like an entrance to a tunnel. Beside it, facing the plateau, a wall of rocks had been skillfully constructed to appear as a continuation of the avalanche, hiding the entrance from all but those who stepped to within a few feet of the rock face. Shan watched the men carrying the litter enter the darkened entrance, then followed them into a low chamber with thick, closely set logs for roof beams, capped by sturdy planks and supported by thick wooden posts, as though its builders had anticipated the rock fall.
Half a dozen pallets lay unrolled along the rear wall of the chamber beside one of the piles of kettles and pans Shan had seen tied together at the village. Nyma ventured through a doorway that led to a room dimly lit with butter lamps, and motioned for the men to bring the litter forward. The second chamber they entered was larger than the first, perhaps fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long, with an open air hole in the roof. Two openings without doors led to small rooms that appeared to be meditation cells. An old faded thangka of the Medicine Buddha hung between the cells. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness Shan saw several shapes rise from the shadows where they had sitting by the back wall. Lhandro's parents were there, and Tenzin, with the three purbas who had been waiting for him at Yapchi. In a corner behind the purbas was the equipment he had seen in the canyon by the village. At the back wall Lepka was examining several large, very old clay jars that appeared to contain dried herbs.
Lokesh and Tenzin did not hesitate as Lin was laid on a pallet. As Shan's old friend bent over Lin's limp form Tenzin collected all the lamps in the room and placed them beside the pallet. Winslow appeared and produced his electric lamp as Lokesh placed three fingers along one wrist, then the other, then the neck.
"Why bring a hostage?" one of the purbas asked with barely concealed anger. "We can do nothing with a hostage. All he can do is betray our secrets."
Lokesh looked toward the door, then back to the fiery Tibetan. "I don't understand. Is there a hostage?"
"This damned officer," the purba growled.
Lokesh knitted his brow in confusion. "Ah," he sighed after a moment. "No one brought a hostage. We brought a man who needs our compassion."
The purba with the green sweater, who had been speaking with Winslow, turned to Shan in disbelief. "You took him out of the rocks? You dug him out of his own grave?"
Lhandro's father hobbled over, lowered himself to the floor, and began helping Lokesh as he washed Lin's face, rinsing the cloth in a bowl of water and wringing it out for Lokesh. "You should be grateful to this man," the aged rongpa said.
"Grateful?" the purba spat.
"He is the one who made everyone run so fast. If he had not," Lepka said, "some of us would have been below when those rocks fell, instead of those unfortunate soldiers."
The purba groaned in exasperation, wheeled about, and left the chamber.
Lokesh toiled hard over Lin, washing him, massaging the hand of his broken wrist, repeatedly taking his pulse. As Nyma went outside to look for better splints, Lokesh looked into Lin's ears and mouth, then listened again, his eyes closed, at the pulse on Lin's neck and finally, removing the colonel's boots, at each of his ankles. He washed the wound on Lin's head once more, with a grim expression. Injuries to the crown of the head were especially unfortunate, for that was where, if it had to migrate from the injured flesh, the spirit would depart the body.
"I will make tea, for when he wakes," Lhandro's mother offered.
Lokesh's face was strangely clouded. "This one will not wake for a long time, if ever," he said, then rose stiffly and left the room.
Ten minutes later Shan found him sitting near the front edge of the small plateau, watching the sun set over the Plain of Flowers. Shan studied his friend, trying to understand the melancholy confusion on his face.
"The best healers at Rapjung were those who did not even begin studying medicine until they had spent years of learning as a monk, getting thoroughly familiar with their inner Buddha," said the old Tibetan. "They said that no healer could restore the balance of health in a patient unless there was also balance in the spirit of the healer."
Lokesh almost never complained, but when he did it was always about his own shortcomings. To think that somehow Lokesh felt himself at fault for not being able to deal with Lin's injury brought a stab of pain to Shan's heart. "I remember the lamas in our barracks saying once that if left to ripen to its true nature a soul will inhabit a body for many decades, then one day pop off like a ripe fruit," Shan said, following Lokesh's gaze toward the Plain of Flowers as he spoke. "But they also said that if left to grow in the wrong places spirits could became so rotten they will tumble off prematurely."
Lokesh offered a slow nod in reply.
They watched the sun disappear. The horizon glowed in a brilliant line of pink and gold under a distant layer of clouds.
"It isn't that it may be his time to die that disturbs me," Lokesh said quietly. "It's just that he is dying and I know no medicine, I have no words, I know not even what hopes to express for a man like that, or how to reach his spirit if he dies. There must be millions of Lins in the world and it pains me to so little understand them. I can make no connection with them. Not with me, not with the earth, with the world I know. How can I address the essence inside?" Lokesh sighed. "It makes me feel so incomplete, Xiao Shan. There can be no healing when such gaps exist."