Hostene began studying the ground around them, stepping out into the fading sunlight, pausing to examine scraps of wood. Shan joined the search, studying the collection of skeleton hands, finding footprints in many directions as well as several stripped leaves of fragrant herbs. He was collecting the leaves when Yangke gave an excited cry.

Hostene was already at Yangke’s side when Shan reached them, pointing at white marks on the stone wall overhang. At the top was a jagged streak of lightning, then two of the stick-figure gods, then a row of Tibetan sacred objects. Leaning against the wall were two eight-inch-long pieces of juniper, scraped flat, decorated with black-and-white patterns. Shan picked up one of the sticks. It had been lightly coated with white chalk, then a jagged black line running its length had been inscribed with a charred stick. The other stick held the same pattern but instead of black on white the pattern was white on black.

“Prayer sticks,” Hostene explained. “Thunder prayer sticks.” Lifting the second stick to examine it more closely, he exposed a final sign in chalk on the rock behind it, an oval with eight appendages with a smaller flat oval for a head. A beetle. Beside it was the chalk image of a sacred lotus blossom. It was as if Abigail were introducing the two worlds, Navajo and Tibetan, to each other.

Shan extended the leaves in his hand toward Hostene, dropping them into the Navajo’s palm. “Medicine herbs.”

The Navajo sniffed the leaves, then stared at them. “Some days she has pain in her abdomen. Once I found her doubled up behind a rock. She said it was nothing, told me to leave.”

Yangke showed Shan that under the skulls at the hub of the skeleton wheel was a pattern of colored marks. Red, white, green. They were working to keep their small fire alight when an eerie humming sound rose from nearby. Yangke braced himself, looking wide-eyed at the skulls as if to see which of them was speaking. Shan rose and followed the sound.

In the light of the early moon Hostene was standing on a flat boulder, whirling a piece of wood tied to a length of the yak-hair rope over his head. It made a low ululating roar that varied in pitch as it moved through the air, reminding Shan uncannily of a Tibetan throat chant. He became aware of Yangke at his side, and the two of them sat and listened until the Navajo stopped.

“It’s called a bull roarer in English,” Hostene explained as he showed them the flat piece of wood, triangular at one end, that he had fashioned with his knife. His voice was somber and low, that of a monk in a temple. “In my people’s tongue it is called the thunder speaker. It’s used in many of our ceremonies. Thunder drives away evil. It summons the Thunder People.”

“But the Thunder People,” Yangke whispered, “they are dangerous.”

Hostene looked out at the stars. “They are like your protector demons. The Thunder People have the power to find lost things. They know every inch of the sky.”

Hostene showed Yangke and Shan how to propel the bull roarer over their heads, letting its weight carry it around in a circle.

Hostene did not enter the alcove with the bones. He stayed by Abigail’s chalk marks, a blanket wrapped around him. Three times an owl called, and each time Hostene rose and used the bull roarer as if in defiant reply.

Shan settled against a rock near the fire and, despite a terrible feeling of foreboding, drifted into a fitful sleep. An hour later he woke up shaking from a nightmare. He had been falling down a seemingly endless hole, passing skeletons on ledges that cringed in fear as he floated by.

As he walked out into the moonlight Hostene spoke from his vigil by the chalk marks. “I had a dream too,” the Navajo said in a haunted tone. “Abigail was a ghost and was gliding over the mountain in the arms of an ancient lama who was explaining the old ways to her. I kept calling to her but she ignored me. When they swooped close I jumped and grabbed the lama by his robe. She turned to me. ‘You need to accept it, Uncle,’ she said. ‘This is the way I was meant to learn. This is how I walk in beauty.’ ” He looked up at Shan, moonlight lighting his melancholy features. “When I pulled the lama ghost around to face me, it was Gendun.”

In the morning Shan arranged his friends according to what he called the pattern of the colors, the only solution that made sense to him of the dozen he had considered in the night. They erected the wood post and Hostene stood beside it. Green for wood, in the tradition of Tibetan ritual. Yangke stood at the anvil. White for metal. Shan stood at the furnace. Red for fire. Extended, the line they made intersected a thin, sharp shadow perhaps one third of the way up the trail that climbed the slope above them, the trail Bing had taken the evening before. They retrieved their bags and staffs and started walking.

Half an hour later they reached the shadow, a cleft that could easily have gone unnoticed by someone watching his footing on the precarious trail. They entered the shadow and followed a passage through a spine of rock into a small garden on the other side, a bowl where a spring formed a pool surrounded by ferns.

They relaxed in this oasis, drinking and washing, cautiously sampling the little berries growing on low vines, then they followed the path up the spine of rock, realizing that the arch they had seen from below was yet another passage through the rock, though not one intended for the pilgrims.

When their path finally intersected with the end of the arched passage they found themselves on the final flat plain before the summit itself. Outside the arch, on the near side, was a now familiar painting of a dragon deity. On the other side, Bing waited for them.

The former Public Security officer leaned against a rock, the blanket he had stolen from them draped around him. He looked strangely weak, greeting them with only a sour grimace. He made no effort to reach for the pistol that lay at his side. Several feet beyond lay the pilgrim bag in which he had carried away their food supply.

Shan took a step toward Bing, his eyes on the gun. It was the kind of game Bing would play, to see how close you could come before he flipped open the blanket and drew the pistol, perhaps even pulling the trigger. Shan was ready to play, ready to advance close enough to attempt to kick the food bag toward his friends. But then with a chill he saw the blood, still wet, in a circle of stones behind Bing. Bing must have used the gun already.

Shan looked futilely for bodies. Then he feinted toward the bag and darted to the weapon. As he reached it, Bing lashed out with his foot, hooking Shan’s leg, pulling Shan on top of him, squeezing him, at first with a savage strength, as if to break Shan’s ribs, but then steadily, quickly, weakening. Shan fought his grip, squirming, realizing in terror that Bing must have stabbed him, for there was suddenly a spate of blood-on Shan, on the blanket, on Bing’s face. Then there were hands pulling Shan away. As he stood upright, he saw his friends’ faces first. They were drained of color. The blanket had fallen in Bing’s struggle with Shan, revealing why he had not reached for his pistol. He had no hands.

Chapter Thirteen

Shan did what he could for the mayor of Little Moscow, offering him water from the bottle Yangke refilled from the spring below, wiping the blood from his face as he slipped in and out of consciousness. A quick scan of the clearing behind him showed two nearly identical blood patterns, sprays with the force of spurting arteries behind them, at each end of a low mound of heavy rocks.

“Tell me what happened,” Shan said as he wiped Bing’s brow. Hostene had ripped two strips from his shirttail and wrapped them around the stumps of Bing’s arms.

“When it happens,” Bing murmured with a dreamy gaze, “you’re not real anymore.