“The investigator desires to know about the bodies,” Dolma declared.

“He’s a convict,” the big man spat. “He deceived us.”

“He’s the answer to our problems,” Dolma replied with strained patience.

The big man looked at the elderly man. Then he uttered a low curse and began speaking, looking at Dolma, not Shan. “We were moving a flock of sheep up the mountain to a new pasture. The dog found the one in the stable first. He was all bloody, with those signs near him. The other two were inside a circle of tall rocks, what was left of them.”

“What was left?” Dolma repeated in a quivering voice.

“Their hands were gone, chopped off. We ran and sent for Chodron.”

A chill settled along Shan’s spine. He had seen the evidence, but having the butchery described aloud was still unsettling. “The camp,” he said after a moment, his tongue dry as tinder. “What did you see in the camp, by the trees?”

“Blood. Ashes. Some equipment, though it was gone when we went back. Pots and pans. A blue pack. A red pack with a rising sun on its flap. Sleeping bags.”

“Could vultures have taken the hands?”

“No. It was too early for vultures. They come when the stench starts.”

The old man started to sway. Dolma helped him to a chair and fetched him a cup of tea.

“Where did you take the bodies?”

“Tibetans know what to do with bodies.” Resentment was building in the big man and his voice betrayed it. “There are the fleshcutters. . ”

“Where did you take the bodies?” Dolma repeated reproachfully. “You did not take them to the ragyapa. That would have meant at least a three-day trip.”

The elder with the beard looked at the man again. “We never touched the bodies,” he admitted. “They were there the first day and gone when we returned the next. Only white lines were on the ground where they had been. Someone said that the lightning had taken them, leaving only the white dust of their bones. Chodron said not to tell anyone.”

“What about the colored sand,” Shan asked, “the mandala?”

The man looked up in surprise. “There was something like that, I almost forgot. It was there the first day. I only glanced at it.

We were scared. It was gone the next. Like the bodies.”

Shan studied the man. If that was true, he now knew something about the killer’s priorities. Taking the hands had come first. Then the removal of the bodies and the obliteration of the mandala. “Can you describe what was drawn in the sand?”

The man knitted his brow, then shook his head. “You are speaking of old things. We are forbidden to learn those things.”

“Could you draw it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you recognize the dead men?”

The man gazed into his hands. His hesitation brought Dolma’s head up. “Who were they?” she demanded. “Chodron said they were strangers. Tell Trinle. Tell your father and me the truth.”

“Strange people in a strange place,” the man said. Then, with a single bound, he leaped into the stair hole and was gone.

Dolma and the old man named Trinle exchanged a silent worried glance.

“Who is missing from the village?” Shan asked.

“No one,” Dolma replied, puzzled.

When Shan returned to the stable, Dolma followed with a bucket of water. Neither Gendun nor Lokesh acknowledged him. As he settled to the earthen floor Dolma handed him a moist cloth, and together they began washing the comatose stranger’s arms. Shan let himself be drawn into the silent rhythm of the task, sometimes washing the man himself, sometimes wringing out the cloth for the Tibetan woman, aware that what they were doing was usually done for the dead. He paused only once, to check under the overturned bowl. The beetle was gone.

They worked in silence. Then Dolma, distracted, failed to grasp the cloth Shan extended toward her. He followed her gaze. The stranger’s hand had closed around her arm.

“Lha gyal lo!” Lokesh whispered in joy.

“Lha gyal lo,” the old woman repeated and began stroking the man’s hand. They watched as the man’s other hand was slowly lifted. Its fingers started moving, pointing into the shadows as if through his eyelids he sensed things they could not see, pointing here, pausing, pointing there. No, not pausing, Shan decided. Drawing. He was drawing something in the air. When the hand finally settled back onto his chest, the man sighed deeply. And whispered something.

Shan leaned forward, cradling the man’s head now, desperately trying to understand the words.

“Dsilyi neyani. Dsil banaca.”

The words meant nothing to Shan. They were not Tibetan, not Mandarin, Cantonese, neither English, Russian, nor any of the dozen other languages Shan thought he could recognize.

The words continued, still whispered, though in a stronger, even an urgent tone. “Tsilke nacani! Nigel icla, nace hila!”

Dolma and Shan exchanged a confused look. Gendun had reminded him that there were obscure ancient dialects still alive in remote areas of the mountains. Dolma cupped her other hand around the man’s, cradling it the way a mother might that of a sleeping child.

The man’s eyes opened. Shan feared he was blind for they seemed dull and unfocused. Then they settled on the worn, kind countenance that hovered above him, mouthing prayers. The stranger’s eyes grew round and he hastened his strange, urgent chant, twisting about to face Gendun, a hand reaching out as if to touch the lama. Then it stopped as if he was afraid to test whether Gendun was flesh and blood.

“Qojoni qasle, quojoni qasle!” he whispered, fear in his voice as he bowed to Gendun. “Qojoni qasle,” he repeated weakly, then collapsed, dropping back on the pallet, unconscious again.

When Shan turned the man over, his unseeing eyes were filled with tears.

Chapter Three

Shan leafed through the wondrous parchment book the now-conscious man had given him, trying make sense of the stick figures that matched the one on the man’s arm, the ancient poems written in Chinese, the prayers in Tibetan, trying to grasp why it displayed a photograph of a young Shan standing proudly in a tight-collared Mao jacket with his newly graduated class of investigators. Why did his foot itch so terribly? he wondered. The man sat across from him, smiling serenely, counting Tibetan beads in one hand, holding a bloody rock hammer in the other.

“Take the book with you,” the man said in a voice that matched Gendun’s for its quiet gentleness. “You will need it where you are going.”

Shan shook his head. “I am not leaving.”

“It is you they have come for. On this mountain your life will end. Tell me this-do you prefer we leave your corpse for the birds or shall we use fire?” There was snow in the saint’s hair, mixed with yellow powder. Behind him in the shadows, two other men appeared, wearing red robes, waving the stumps of arms without hands. As they advanced he saw their faces-Lokesh and Gendun.

The itching in his foot became a terrible burning. Shan pulled up his trouser leg. There was nothing but bone below the knee. A swarm of golden beetles was devouring his flesh.

He awoke gasping for breath, his heart pounding, not aware he had leaped up from his pallet and dashed outside until he stumbled on a rock in the yard behind Dolma’s house. It took him several minutes to recover from his nightmare. He steadied himself by holding onto the flat stones that formed the top of the rear wall. The sky shimmered with stars, lending an eerie glow to the pale houses. A nightjar called. The bleat of a lonely lamb echoed off the slope. All else was as still as death. Shan retrieved his boots from the doorway, and began walking.

Though it was well after midnight, the gibbous moon and the light of a thousand stars illuminated the path. He paused on a ledge overlooking the slumbering village. Only one structure showed any life-the stable where Lokesh had relit the one hundred eight butter lamps whose light leaked between the wind-withered boards. The old Tibetan would not follow him this time. When Shan had left the stable the night before, the door had been barred from the outside by Chodron, locking in Lokesh, Gendun, and Dolma. And a guard had been posted by the entry as well.