“But he came back on four legs.”

Dakpo offered a strangely sad smile, then swept his hand across the horizon. “For as far as you can see there will be none of us coming back on two legs.”

It was the most remarkable statement of a remarkable conversation. Shan dared not ask what terrible sin the inhabitants of the region had committed to all be reborn as lower life forms. “Do you live in a cave, Rinpoche?” he asked instead.

The hermit’s mood had darkened. He only nodded.

“Above the cliff where the mule was killed?”

He nodded again.

“I don’t think he was going up the trail for grass. I think he was coming down. Did you see him?”

“He was not anywhere above,” Dakpo shot back, too insistent. “There is nowhere above.”

“He would not have been alone,” Shan continued. “He would have been with his killer, or closely followed by his killer.”

“He went to get grass. He fell. Someone shot him in an act of mercy.”

“No. He was first shot above.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. That wound was on the far side of his body, against the wall. His killer could not have done it after he fell.”

Dakpo fell silent.

“How long have you lived in your cave, Dakpo?”

“As long as I care to remember.”

“But you are from the village?”

“A long time ago.”

“Then you must know the secrets that Ama Apte’s uncle died for.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The mule took a secret trail home. The minister’s killer was on the same trail, eluding his pursuers. But I can’t find the truth, can’t release the soul of your friend without knowing that secret. There are probably helpful signs on the trail, clues I could use. What is so important that it keeps you from helping him?”

“There is no such trail. And we have our own ways of dealing with death, Shan. The mountain will work it out.” Dakpo stood, stowed his pipe in the pouch at his waist and without another word walked away. Shan watched a long time, watched as the patch of red against the massive stonewall grew smaller and smaller and finally disappeared, then he turned back to the shrine.

Thirty minutes later he had settled into the shadows of a small ledge from which he could watch both the path from below and the sheltered altar where the deities, both Eastern and Western, patiently waited.

Purple and gold fingers stretched out in the sky above the snowcapped western peaks. He relaxed, wondering absently if his son was watching the same sunset, constructing dragons and fish out of the clouds as Shan and his father often had done. Then, as so often happened, a whisper of reality crushed his dream. It had been his particular psychosis during his years in prison, one for which he still had found no cure. He would dream of his son Ko as a happy, innocent youth, had laid on his own dark prison bunk for hours imagining his son studying the old poets, flying kites, folding paper hats. But all the time, unknown to Shan, his son had been a criminal, a gang leader, a drug dealer, a drug user. And just as Ko had begun to transform, to heal in the hands of the prisoner lamas of Shan’s own former camp, he had been transported for being a chronic disciplinary problem to the knobs’ infamous prison hospital. Ko, the only person on the planet who shared blood with Shan, lingered on a slow but certain path to death. With one of the silent, wracking sobs that sometimes woke Shan from a dead sleep, he had a vision of Ko emptied out, cauterized by chemicals and electrodes.

He steadied himself, forming a calming mudra with his hands, pushing himself into the present, remembering that he too had a path to follow that might, with the slenderest reed of a chance, allow him to alter Ko’s fate. His lips began to move in a silent mantra. Stars twinkled to life above the mother mountain, around which a silvery moonlit plume of wind-driven snow hung like a prayer scarf. A tide of fatigue surged through Shan’s limbs. He leaned against the rock behind him.

He awoke with a terrible sense of falling, so vivid he clutched at the stone beside him, his heart pounding. Above, the stars had shifted hours to the west. And below, someone stalked the gods.

Shan rose silently to his feet. The dark figure held a flashlight near his head as he surveyed the makeshift altar. No, Shan saw as he advanced, the man had a light strapped to his head, leaving both his hands free to handle the figurines. The intruder worked quickly, hefting each little statue, shaking it, stuffing two, then three, into a bag hanging from his shoulder. A light on his head. What had the old woman in the village seen? A ghost with a star over its head. Shan rose and stealthily descended into the ruins.

He felt the pressure of the ceramic shard under his boot an instant too late to prevent it from snapping. Twenty feet away, the thief spun about at the crunching sound, instantly switching off the light, crouching so that he was just another low, dark shadow among the moonlit rocks.

“I just want to speak with you!” Shan called out in Chinese, then Tibetan, as he took another step forward. A ball of shadow exploded from under the overhanging ledge, colliding with Shan, knocking him off his feet before bounding down the path.

Shan was up in an instant, in frantic pursuit, stumbling on the loose gravel, running with his arm slightly extended to warn him of the outcroppings hidden in shadow, then sprinting forward as he spotted the thief in a patch of moonlight a hundred feet ahead of him.

He sensed the fist a moment before it connected, just as he rounded a column of rock. It would have pounded his eye but he twisted so it bounced off his ear, feeling like someone had taken a mallet to his head. As he fell he swung wildly, grabbing a booted foot, jerking his assailant off his feet but inviting a kick that sent an explosion of pain into his ribs. He rolled, thinking he had knocked the man down, then realized it was not the man’s body he clutched but the nylon bag of figurines.

The two men began a treacherous tug of war. Shan suddenly sensed that they were at the cliff’s edge, with a thousand feet of void less than a yard away. He reached for his flashlight and hammered with it on the man’s knuckles until it was wrestled from Shan’s grip and tossed away. The bag caught on a rock and began to rip. The ancient figures tumbled out, rolling on the ground. The man gasped, losing interest in Shan as he desperately reached for them, grabbing the last one just as Shan’s own fingers closed around it. It was one of the very old bronze Yamas, its jeweled eyes lit with moonlight. Shan jerked it onto his shoulder, the intruder wrenched it back. The deity seemed to watch their struggle in disappointment.

Shan found a handhold on a boulder and heaved backward. The Yama broke out of the man’s grip but the force of Shan’s effort sent the statue tumbling backward, out of Shan’s hand. A choked cry left the thief’s throat as the bronze disappeared over the cliff. Then a boot slammed into Shan’s chest, and he lurched backward, sprawling on the ground, gasping for air as he clutched at his heart. When he could breathe again he saw the shadowy figure running in another pool of moonlight a hundred yards below.

Shan crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked down, overcome with desolation. He hadn’t just lost the thief. He had killed a god.

Shan stayed bent, his head touching the ground, at first because it relieved the pain in his chest and then because of his shame. When at last he rose it was not to stumble downhill but toward the altar, gathering a small bundle of dried grass which he lit to examine the thief’s work. The intruder had started at the end opposite the crucifix, had been stopped by Shan before he reached the Buddha in the center of the altar. But five of the bronze Yamas, the largest ones, were gone.

As his makeshift torch sputtered and died he glanced at the stars and the shadow-black trail. It was only a few hours until dawn. He gathered more wood and lit a fire a few feet in front of the altar, then retrieved his blanket and pack, withdrawing the pouch of food he had brought. Ignoring his hunger pangs, he emptied all his food onto the altar and divided it into seven portions and distributed them along the front of the altar, adding a smoldering, fragrant juniper twig to each offering. He murmured prayers of apology then placed another smoldering twig by the crucifix. It was as out of place as a fish in a tree but it seemed the most significant discovery he had yet made.