“You have already told me what I need to know.”

Shan gazed out at the moon rising between two peaks. “Then I will save your career. Keep Tan in town and I will give you the real murderer.”

“The antenna attached to the car has been disabled,” Shan added as he climbed out. “There will be men hidden in the rocks. If you don’t stay in the truck for at least an hour I cannot be responsible for what will happen.”

As Cao lit a cigarette Shan saw his hand tremble. “When this is over, Shan,” the major spat, “I will have you on your knees begging me to shoot you.”

Chapter Eleven

Gyalo had gone to another level of existence. He cursed the gods, rattled off the names of the levels of hell as if he were being examined by some ancient guru.

“All the way here,” Kypo explained in a pained voice as he sat on a stool in the sunken chapel, “he shouted verses from sutras and tried to get out of the truck. I had to hold him down.”

It was no surprise the drunken lama had been left for dead. One arm had been broken, the side of his head had been kicked until it looked like a pulpy, rotten fruit. Two fingers were splinted in place. An eye was swollen shut. Blood trickled from his mouth where a tooth had been knocked out. Whoever had attacked him and thrown him into the pit had thought they were disposing of a dead man.

“I sent Yates away,” Kypo explained. “He was very upset. He said he had work to do at the base camp but he acted like it was his fault this had happened.”

Shan examined the broken arm. It had been expertly set and splinted. “The American did this?”

“My mother. When we brought him to her, her first words were ‘let the old bastard die’ and she turned her back on him. But a few minutes later she came back with her first aid kit and worked on him. She said to tell him the gods would look after him despite himself. He woke up and starting shouting like this.”

“Saying the same things as now?” Shan asked.

“Mostly.” Kypo thought a moment, reconsidering. “He chanted monk’s words, charms against demons, in the voice of a terrified child. It was as if he were more scared of us than those who attacked him. He reached for me, and said ‘just let me die.’ She hit him.”

Shan looked up, not sure he had heard correctly. “Your mother hit Gyalo?”

Kypo nodded. “With a small club. She knocked him out. She said she couldn’t risk having neighbors hear, said he needed to be still so she could set his arm. But she seemed glad for the excuse to strike him.” He searched Shan’s face, as if hoping for an answer.

“How did she know him? I thought she never came to town.”

Kypo shrugged. “And Gyalo never left town. For a while, before she knocked him out, he was trying to crawl to the door.” He shrugged again. “He’s been crazy for years. An old man. An alcoholic.”

“I’ve known many Tibetans a lot older.”

“Old enough to have known another Tibet, I mean.”

Shan chewed on the words, sensing the passing, like a leaf on the wind, of a shard of truth. Once all of his investigations had been linear, one fact linking to the next in quick progression leading to the truth. But in Tibet all his puzzles were like giant tangkas, the traditional religious paintings with overlaps of deities, suffering humans, protector demons, even alternate worlds, linked not by events so much as expectation and hope, by relationships in other, earlier Buddhist lives.

“Has your mother always been an astrologer?” Shan asked.

“Of course. It is who she is.”

“Was her father an astrologer? Her mother?”

Kypo frowned, bending over the former lama. He was not going to reply.

They washed Gyalo in silence, dressing him in clean clothes from Shan’s meager wardrobe. Shan lit more butter lamps. Kypo produced a small cone of incense and lit it by Gyalo’s pallet.

“He could still die,” Kypo observed in a heavy voice. “I think he wants to die. What will the town do without him? People call him a mascot. But he’s something else, something none of us understand.”

“I think he is more like a teacher,” Shan said. “One who takes on roles to make us understand. Except long ago he lost the ability to go back to himself.”

Gyalo stirred, coughing, as Shan held a cup of water to his lips. The old Tibetan ignored it, instead grabbing his arm and studying it, close to his eyes, as if to confirm he was real. There was nothing but bitterness in his eyes when he looked up and recognized Shan. “I know I’m in hell now,” he muttered, then drifted into sleep.

Shan sat on a blanket in the corner of the dim chamber, intending to mentally reconstruct his puzzle using its new pieces. But the exhaustion he had been fighting finally overwhelmed him. When he opened his eyes briefly an hour later Kypo was gone. Later when he opened them for a few moments Jomo was there, with a kettle of hot tea, helping his father to drink. Much later, when he fully awoke, Jomo was gone and several fresh momo dumplings were stacked on a low stool between Shan and Gyalo.

The former lama sat upright, gazing with his one good eye at the dim images on the walls. He wore an oddly vacant expression, showing no pain, none of his usual alcoholic haze. He stared at the image of the central demon on the opposite wall. It was Mahakala the protector, in his four armed blue form, holding a skull cup and a sword, draped in a garland of human heads.

“I knew a place like this once,” the old Tibetan said in a ragged voice. “but that one was destroyed.”

“The tunnels that connected to the temple were filled with debris,” Shan explained. “But there was an exit through the stable, probably forgotten long before the gompa was destroyed. I cleaned away enough to be able to enter.”

“Why would you do such a thing?”

“All these deities. It felt like they had been buried alive. They needed to be released.”

“You were scared of them,” Gyalo growled. “They put you under a spell.”

“They put me under a spell,” Shan readily admitted.

The moist, rattling cackle that came from Gyalo’s throat became a groan as the Tibetan clutched his side, doubling over in pain. Blood was seeping into the bandage on the arm that was not broken, but Shan had no fresh one to replace it.

“Who did this to you, Gyalo?”

“I need a drink. A real drink.”

“Of the handful of people who know you are here, not one will bring you alcohol.”

“Then I may as well die.”

“Who did this?” Shan repeated.

When Gyalo finally spoke it was to the demon on the wall, as if he preferred to converse with the old god. “Two strangers in dark sweatshirts, hoods over their heads.” His voice was dry as stone. “Big men, built like yaks. They didn’t introduce themselves. Someone else stood in the shadows, as if enjoying the show.”

“What did they want?”

“They spoke a few words of greeting at first, and gave me a bottle, like maybe they came for a blessing. After I drank some they said more words.”

“What words?”

“Questions. Who had spoken with me about the Yama temple that had been up on the mountains. Who had I given a sickle to, with the writing on the blade.” A spasm of pain racked his body, and he spat up blood again. He began shivering.

Shan lifted an tattered sheepskin chuba coat from a peg by the entry and covered him with it. “So you told them about the American and me.”

Gyalo gazed at the demon. “Not at first.”

Shan looked up in surprise. Surely the drunken lama had not invited the beating by trying to protect Yates and Shan.

“In the cupboard,” the Tibetan said abruptly, and pointed to a little alcove in the dusty stone wall.

“There is no cupboard,” Shan said, confused. The small squared-out space in the wall might well have once held shelves but no trace of them remained.

With what seemed like a great effort Gyalo lifted a finger and pointed insistently at the alcove. Shan stood, carrying a lamp to show that the space was empty. But when the Tibetan grunted and jabbed his finger again he tapped his fingers along the surface of the wall until, on the left side at shoulder height, his drumming reached something hollow. He pressed his fingers into the dust-encrusted stone, scratching until he found the lip of a board and pulled. With a small cloud of dust, a door cracked open. He reached inside and extracted a six-inch painted figure, carved of wood. It was Mahakala, Protector of the Faithful, in his fierce blue skinned form, matching the painting on the wall. Shan blew away the coating of dust from the figure and placed it on the stool beside Gyalo.