As they left the building they discovered a new visitor. Tenzin was standing in the smoke of the samkang, his eyes closed, as if trying to be washed by the purifying smoke. They watched as his eyes opened and he stepped toward the child, who showed signs of exhaustion. With a gentle motion of his hand Tenzin offered to take over, and the tall silent Tibetan took up the repetitive motion as the girl stepped away with a grateful nod, not letting the wheel miss a single rotation. Shan and Lokesh had passed by a remote house in western Tibet where an old man and his wife turned a similar prayer wheel, salvaged from a ruined gompa, spinning it in four hour shifts, twenty-four hours a day. They had been doing so for ten years because, they solemnly explained, when they had turned the wheel for twenty years the deities would become so pleased they would bring the Dalai Lama back to Tibet.
Lokesh touched Shan's arm and nudged him away, around a corner of the building, so as not to disturb Tenzin. They left him spinning the wheel, the girl sitting against the wall of the lhakang, the solemn Tibetan exchanging a tiny smile with her.
The sheep of the caravan were lying contentedly along the bank of the small stream that flowed through the juniper grove, watched over by the mastiffs and Anya, sitting beside Winslow, who lay napping in the thick grass. They found the Yapchi villagers by the small house built against the wall, standing by the open door with bowls of tea. To Shan's great relief the monk was sitting upright on a straw pallet inside the simple structure, a bowl in his hands, attended by Nyma and the caretaker, who stood with his back to Shan, speaking in low, gentle tones as Nyma washed the monk's wounds.
Shan turned and silently stepped out of the doorway and around the corner of the house, where he found Lhandro on a roughhewn bench set against the wall studying his map. As he approached the rongpa Nyma rushed around the corner. "It was him!" she cried. "That dobdob! He says he was meditating when a huge man appeared, a crazy man dressed like a demon, with blackened cheeks. He began beating him for no reason with his long staff, and threw fire at him." The nun stared at Shan with a confused, frightened expression.
Lhandro called out to one of the Yapchi men, who darted to one of the horses and rode away. Even here, in the wild, remote Plain of Flowers, they needed to guard the chenyi stone.
"How would he know?" Lhandro asked. "That demon follows the eye as if it speaks to him."
Not follow, Shan thought. The dobdob had come from the hermitage to the Plain of Flowers ahead of them, as though he had known they would come this way. Had he caused the avalanche that blocked the pass, to be sure they would detour across the plain? Had he attacked the monk and burned the plain in an effort to stop them, or slow them? Or had he been waiting and felt the need to slake his appetite by attacking another of the devout?
"Lokesh said a dobdob enforces virtue," Nyma said in a low voice, as if scared of being overheard. "But this one attacks the virtuous. It's like he's the opposite of a dobdob, or some dobdob crazed with evil."
She looked from Lhandro to Shan for an answer, then sighed when both men stayed silent. "At least he's going to be all right," she said as Shan sat down on the bench. "His eyes are clear. He is hungry. His name is Padme. He told us where his gompa is," she added, as Lhandro produced his map and she pointed to a dot labeled Norbu at the end of a road that extended east to the north-south highway. Lhandro traced his finger from the dot to a point a few miles below them on the plain, then outlined a trail that led east along the high slope above them, north into Qinghai Province, toward Yapchi Valley. "We have heard of this Norbu, one of the gompas permitted to open five years ago. My father wants me to go there some winter, to bring back blessings. It would be only ten miles off our path. Five of us will take him tomorrow- four to carry the blanket, one for relief." He fixed Shan with an uncertain gaze. "We can't leave a monk in the wilderness," he added in a plaintive tone.
"We can't," Shan agreed, and looked over the ruins. Tenzin had not emerged from the reconstructed buildings where he had been turning the prayer wheel. It was the first time the mute Tibetan had not departed with his leather dung sack as soon as they made camp.
"You take him," Shan said, "let me go on to the Yapchi Valley alone. Lokesh and I."
"Impossible," Lhandro protested. "The chenyi stone- the caravan. We are entrusted to escort you."
"I fear what could be there waiting," Shan said. "The Colonel. His mountain commandos. They know where the eye came from originally. They must know that is where it will return."
"It is our home," Lhandro declared with a determined glint. "I live in the house built by my family generations ago. I will not let soldiers keep me from my home."
"You must understand something," Shan said in a sober tone. "Bringing the eye back now is more likely to cause your people harm than good."
"No," Lhandro insisted, the doubt gone from his voice. "Of all the paths that are possible, that is not one of them. We must take the stone back, at any cost, even if it means facing the army, or that dobdob. We will get rest tomorrow, then-"
Lhandro was interrupted by the appearance of a Tibetan woman in a frayed red tunic with a long yak hair belt and several heavy turquoise and coral necklaces around her neck. She cast a worried glance at Shan, then looked back toward the house. "You should go tend those sheep," she said in a low, hurried voice.
Lhandro stood, looking with alarm toward the flock. The sheep lay peacefully on the banks of the stream, a hundred yards away.
The woman glanced back at the fire, where two children tended a small bellows. She lived here, Shan realized, was probably the caretaker's wife.
"I'll go with you to your sheep," the woman offered. "We should go now."
Lhandro took a step forward, staring at the animals again.
"Not you," the woman said to Lhandro pointedly. She was wringing her hands.
Shan stood, not understanding either the woman's words or her nervousness. "Do you need to speak with me?"
"No," the woman began, then groaned as the caretaker appeared around the corner of the house. He was a big-boned man, slightly taller than Shan, wearing a broad-rimmed brown hat and one of the wool fleece vests favored by the dropka. He froze, glared at Shan with a look that seemed to be something like horror, then came at him like a bull, not speaking, giving no warning as he abruptly shoved Shan back into the bench, slamming him against the wall so hard the wind was knocked out of him.
"No one asked you here, Chinese," the man spat with cold fury. "You're not welcome."
Shan stood on wobbly knees, trying to regain his breath. The man slammed him back against the wall. Shan felt dizzy. He became aware of the woman running away toward the fire. He heard the sound of a horse cantering and saw movement in the direction of the trees.
Lhandro put a hand on the man's arm but the caretaker twisted and hit the rongpa with an elbow, in the process knocking his own hat off. Shan stared at him in confusion. The caretaker was Chinese.
"Take your murdering ways and leave!" the man spat. "There is no room for blasphemers!" As he stepped toward Shan with his fist raised, a horse wheeled to a halt in a cloud of dust and in a blur of speed its rider launched from the saddle onto the caretaker's back. It was Dremu, throwing his arm around the man's neck, pulling him backward, twisting, forcing him to the ground.