The only sign that Tenzin heard him was a lowering of his gaze to the ground by Shan's feet.
"A lama gave the man a pebble and had him focus on it." Shan lifted a large pebble in his palm. "He told the man to push his guilt into it. Then he had the man throw the pebble into a river. The man was healed after that."
Tenzin looked at the stone, fixed Shan with a brittle gaze, then stepped several feet away to retrieve a heavy rock nearly a foot in diameter. He paused, looked pointedly at Shan, threw the rock into the water, and turned back to stare at him.
Shan returned the stare for a moment. Shaken, he turned away. What had it been, to cause such anguish? Something had been pulling at his memory. The dropka woman said that Tenzin had been away the night before Drakte died. The night Chao had been murdered. He looked at the ripples where the heavy rock had fallen. A pebble had been enough for a single killing.
Shan backed away from Tenzin and turned toward the yurt. The old herder squinted at him as he approached the entrance, then raised the staff threateningly.
"The girl brought you a tonde," Shan said tentatively.
"Not me. Go away. This is my family's tent. People are sleeping."
"You guard them when they sleep?"
From the corner of his eye Shan saw several more figures approaching in haste.
"There is fresh tea!" the woman in the bright apron called from a hundred feet away, gesturing Shan toward her fire. But Shan quickly put his hand on the man's staff to deflect it and stepped inside.
An old woman with no teeth, the sole occupant of the tent, groaned as he appeared. "No!" she cried and rose, lowering the prayer wheel she had been spinning. "Chinese!"
Shan sensed figures moving behind him. He tensed, expecting to be dragged away, until a soft voice called out from the shadows at the back of the tent. "He is a friend of the lamas," a woman said, and the man behind Shan halted, lowering his raised staff.
"Nyma?" Shan asked, stepping toward the shadows, where two felt blankets had been strung to create dressing chambers inside the tent. A hand appeared between the blankets, pushing one aside, and Shan bent to enter the dark, cramped space.
Nyma sat in the dim light of a single butter lamp beside a pallet, holding the hand of a woman of perhaps thirty years. The woman's face was beaded with sweat, her breathing labored. She seemed to be trying to smile through a mask of pain.
"Lokesh," Shan said, "he studied with medicine lamas."
"She fell from a ledge three days ago, running from a patrol in the night. I think she broke ribs," Nyma said.
"Then she needs a doctor," Shan said urgently. Arranged along the pallet was a dirt-encrusted bell and several dirty beads.
"No doctor!" shouted the old woman, now standing over them, her hands holding back the blankets.
"Some herders from the east of here rode in last week and told everyone to beware of new doctors, to hide the sick, and not speak of any Tibetan doctors to any Chinese." Nyma raised her eyebrows toward Shan as though to express her frustration. "I don't know why. No one really does."
"But you can't hide someone injured so badly," Shan said. "What if her organs are bleeding? A hospital…"
"We don't need those doctors. They aren't real," the woman said, then bent and wrapped the injured woman's fingers around the little bell.
The woman on the pallet stared up at Shan, pain and confusion in her eyes. Shan sighed. "Lokesh knows medicine teas," he said and turned away, striding past the old woman and four grim-faced herders.
He found his old friend near a freshly turned pile of earth, explained about the injured woman, and watched as Lokesh rose and hurried to the tent. Then Shan turned and studied a grassy hill half a mile away. Ten minutes later he stood at the five-foot-high cairn Drakte had made with the children. Shan walked around the stack of rocks several times, then sat before it. Drakte had been on urgent business, in the middle of making final arrangements for the chenyi stone, but he had taken the time to build a cairn for the local deities. And he had planned to return to the salt camp with Shan and the stone. Shan stood and studied the wide, flat stone that covered the top. He lifted it and lowered it to the ground. The narrow openings between the stones underneath were so dark he almost missed the piece of brown yarn wedged between two of them. He pulled on the yarn and a small felt pouch rose out of the shadows. Inside was a mala, a rosary of exquisite ivory beads carved in the shapes of animal heads. It was a valuable antique worthy of a museum. Why, he wondered, as he slipped the rosary back into the pouch, would Drakte have wanted it hidden? Because it was too dangerous to carry the week between his visits to the camp? Or because he had meant for someone else to retrieve it? Shan pocketed the pouch.
"This is how Chinese help the deities?" a flat voice called out from behind him.
Shan slowly turned to see Dremu, sitting on his grey horse thirty feet down the slope, on the side opposite the camp. There was no surprise on the Golok's face, only a sinister amusement. He lifted a leg and rested it on his horse's neck.
Shan silently replaced the capstone. "I want to ask you something. Where did you meet Drakte? Where did he hire you?" he asked.
"In a city."
"Lhasa?"
Dremu's eyes half closed as he examined Shan. "Lhasa," he confirmed in a low voice. "I learned things there not even the purbas knew."
"What kind of things?"
"You can die in this country for telling too many secrets."
"Or for being too secretive," Shan shot back. Had the Golok seen the priceless rosary? "Why? Why did Drakte select you to help? You're no purba. You're not welcome among the people of Yapchi."
Dremu's lips curled up as if he took satisfaction in Shan's words.
Shan studied the Golok, who returned Shan's stare inquisitively, running his finger along his moustache, his other hand on his knife. Abruptly Shan stepped away, dropped to his knees by a large rock, and pulled it up on one edge. He pointed to Dremu, then to the cairn. The Golok frowned, but silently dismounted and helped Shan carry the rock to the top of the stack. Shan offered a mantra to the Compassionate Buddha and the Golok hung his head with a deflated expression, as if Shan had earned himself unexpected protection. He marched to his horse and rode away. Shan fingered the rosary in his pocket, suddenly remembering that Drakte had brought nothing to pay the Golok. Had the beads been intended for Dremu?
As Shan approached the camp he found Lokesh back at his excavation. "She is sleeping now. I told them of a tea they can make, for the pain. I will check her later," the old Tibetan explained.
"Did they explain why suddenly they want no doctors?"
Lokesh and Shan exchanged a knowing glance. Every Tibetan knew stories of Chinese doctors performing unwanted surgeries on Tibetans, usually sterilizations, and even of Tibetans dying mysteriously when under Chinese medical care. But the woman's fear was more urgent, more directed. Riders had come to camp to warn about doctors.