"It's such a long way to come. Hundreds of miles. He appears to have no money." Shan remembered the tattered robe and shoes. "Knobs have been chasing him." But he knew that meant little to Jokar. Once he was on the course intended for him he would be as likely to change it because of knobs as Gendun, or Lokesh. The Beijing Shan would have laughed when told deities protected such men. But there were times it seemed the only explanation.

"He said it is a pilgrimage of sorts," Lokesh continued. "He said if he had money he might be tempted to ride buses and go into towns. He has traveled on foot, always on foot, close to the earth. Eight months now, staying with rongpa here and there, sometimes traveling with dropka and their herds. Healing where he can. Uncovering old roots he said, as though the old ways were still in the land and in the heart of the people and simply had to be discovered again. He makes the old medicines when he can. Sometimes entire villages have sat with him through a night, to hear of the Dalai Lama and of the old days in Tibet and he reminds them of ways of healing they thought they had forgotten."

"But why come here?"

"This is where he spent nearly fifty years of his life, at Rapjung. He was sent there as a young boy while the thirteenth Dalai Lama still lived. In India, he was senior lama of the new school for many years. It was time to finish there, he said. I think now he wants the old school to be born again."

"Rapjung?"

Lokesh nodded. "He says he met other healers while walking from India, that they all know of Rapjung and many asked if medicine herbs still grow there. He said he saw the ruins, but he also saw new buildings." They exchanged a meaningful glance. Jokar did not know about the fire. "He said Tibetans must learn how to stay the same by practicing change." Lokesh paused and nodded again, slowly, as if contemplating the words. "The rumors must be true. Jokar must have come to take the seat of Siddhi, the defiant leader from the ancient tales."

"The knobs have spies in India," Shan said. "They would have learned about such a prominent lama embarking for Tibet to gather the people and restore an institution of the old order. They would consider it the gravest of sins against the government. It is so dangerous for him."

Lokesh nodded. "Duties," he said sadly. There was no need for more words. It had become their own shorthand. Shan had had the same conversation with Lokesh, and other Tibetans, often. Soldiers would do what they had to do, Lokesh meant, and the Tibetans would do what they had to do.

"He would have been safe staying here, for a few days."

"Who could presume to tell him to change his plans? He is visiting all the old places. The herb meadows. The mixing places. While he does so he will look for medicine for the sick colonel."

Shan considered Lokesh's words. "What does he say of Lin?"

"The bone at the top of his head was cracked. But there was something else, worse, from before the rocks fell."

"He was already ill?"

Lokesh nodded heavily. "Heart wind." The tantric medical system Lokesh and Jokar practiced believed that the heart-center was the intersection between the physical and spiritual beings. Not the physical, beating heart as such, but the center of the awareness and life energy. Heart wind meant stress on the heart center brought on by intense anger, fear, or other mental imbalances. Jokar would not address one of Lin's maladies without addressing them all. "There are medicines that could help perhaps, but in such cases all the imbalances are related," Lokesh said.

"Jokar says that heart wind seems to be the most common ailment in Tibet today." Lokesh's gaze drifted toward the trails. He, too, seemed to be looking for Jokar. "He said something else. He said that bringing Lin from the rocks to here, that was part of the healing, too. For everyone."

Shan weighed the words. Jokar meant that it wasn't just Lin who suffered an imbalance, that perhaps they all shared an imbalance, and that for Tibetans to bring a hated colonel from what would have surely been his grave may have begun another healing as well.

"Jokar says there was a small grey plant with heart-shaped leaves that grew on the slopes near Yapchi that would be helpful. He asked me if I remembered the ways of harvesting and mixing."

"I think you should find him, Lokesh," Shan said after they watched a flight of birds leave the mountain, soaring toward the Plain of Flowers. "You should take him to hide, stop him from moving around so much while soldiers are in the mountains. Take him and hide him. For weeks. Speak with him of the old ways. Write them down. For months, if necessary. Until the soldiers leave Yapchi. The purbas would help you."

His old friend seemed to consider the words a long time. "I would not know how to," he said at last.

Shan stared at him. Lokesh not only meant he would not know how to find Jokar, but that he would not know how to ask such a holy man anything. Shan thought of the night before. No one had questioned the ancient lama, no one had asked where he had come from, or why he was there. Because, in the language of Shan's teachers, his deity had become him. It was as if Jokar was indeed a spirit creature, a true Bodhisattva, a Buddha who remained on earth to help others find enlightenment.

"I have to go back to that valley," Shan said. "I have to find the path of that eye if it is there. Because," he said slowly, "I am bound."

Lokesh fixed him with a searching stare. "Sometimes deities are created in the seeking. And the seeking itself may create the path."

Shan returned Lokesh's stare. "You make it sound like I just follow acts of compassion and they will eventually connect me to a deity."

Lokesh answered with his crooked grin.

Shan sighed. "You will be safe staying on the mountain. Someone needs to help Tenzin," he suggested. It would be a way of keeping Lokesh with Tenzin, who was perhaps his safest guardian if Shan could not be with the old man.

"You forget, Xiao Shan. I am bound also." Lokesh looked over the plain. "You should know something else," he said with a strange spark in his eye, excited yet solemn. "Tenzin was speaking. I saw Jokar touch him, and Tenzin's tongue grew back. They spoke a long time at that tree, and when the moon was bright Jokar and Tenzin began working at something, like lamas mixing medicine in the moonlight. After a while I went to investigate. They had a sack of Lamtso salt, and Jokar had ripped off the bottom of his robe and made little squares of it. I helped them, creating little pouches from the squares, filling them with salt and tying them at the top. True earth, Jokar called the salt. Tenzin repeated the words, again and again, smiling like a young boy."

Lokesh stared out at a high cloud. "Tenzin has a strong voice, a voice that would be good for temples. His new tongue knew prayers. Jokar told him of a teaching, from the first lama at Rapjung, the founder, the one called Siddhi. He said all healing was about the same thing, about connecting the earth to the earth inside us all. We took all the pouches to one of the meditation cells. While Lin was sleeping Jokar put one in his pocket. He said everyone in the mixing place should leave with one." Lokesh reached into his shirt and produced one of the small bags for Shan.

"Lin was studying the room this morning," Shan observed as he accepted the pouch. "As if planning something."

"I don't know the state of his awareness," Lokesh said forlornly, as though finishing the thought for Shan. Lin was such a dangerous man. He could still inflict great harm on them all. "Those falling rocks may have done something to the soldier in him." Lokesh was fond of telling Shan stories of cruel people who had experienced close calls with death only to become dramatically different, better people.