Shan only shook his head sadly. He extended a hand toward the head of the valley. "How did you see Drakte in the dark? You must have sounded the horn because you saw him. Was it only him?"
"There was nearly a half-moon. I have sat with our herds on many such nights, watching for wolves and snow lions with my sling. In such light, without clouds, I can see a great distance. I knew someone was coming. By the time he reached the valley floor I could see him plainly where he passed through patches of snow. Only him. But first I heard the dogs."
"Dogs?"
"From down the valley. Dogs barked from where the valley bends, where there had been no dogs for all these weeks." She pointed toward a large set of outcroppings nearly a mile away. "I began to watch more closely. At first I thought it might have been Tenzin."
"Tenzin?" Shan asked in surprise.
"He goes away at night sometimes. Two nights ago, and one night last week. I think he goes to places where he can pray in the moonlight. There are prayers that should only be said at night, and things that are perhaps best said only to the moon." She looked at Shan pointedly then shook her head and looked back down the valley. "I never suspected it was Drakte. I wouldn't have sounded the warning. He would always stop to talk with dogs he met, they wouldn't bark like that. And I knew his gait. He always walked straight, proud, like a warrior. But last night he acted so strange, trotting in plain sight in the moonlight, then sometimes stopping at rock outcroppings, as if trying to hide, like for an ambush."
"Or to see if he were being followed." In his mind's eye Shan replayed Drakte's entry into the chamber, followed moments later by the intruder. No, the purba had been shocked to see the huge man with the staff. He had not expected the intruder, had not expected to be followed. There had to be another reason he had been pausing at the rocks, another explanation for his strange behavior.
"When he finally climbed the ridge and he saw you what did he say?"
"I recognized him when he reached the crest, and waved. He said nothing, just pointed toward the hermitage. I went down with him, because I had blown the horn and didn't want the others to be alarmed, to think trouble was…" The words choked in the woman's throat. She had gone down from her post to assure them no one dangerous was coming after all. But while she was away from her post something very dangerous indeed had come.
"That thing. It was a powerful demon, to make us see the spear that way." The woman's voice was nearly a whisper.
"Spear? There was no spear."
"Of course you didn't see it, none of us did. But we all saw how Drakte was stabbed. That demon made the rest of us see it as just a staff."
Shan stared at the woman, considering her words, until he saw that the dropka had begun to stare past his shoulder. He turned to see Shopo cresting the ridge, walking down toward the long valley below, a cloth bundle slung over his shoulder.
"Blessed Buddha," the woman said in her mournful voice. "The sand." She touched the gau on her neck as she spoke. "He has to return the sands to the nagas, to the water deities."
"But in daylight he can be easily spotted by the patrols," Shan said in alarm, taking a step forward as he considered whether to run and stop the lama. "He could be arrested. Can't he wait?"
The dropka looked at Shan, gazing plaintively toward the mountains across the valley, as if asking the deities why she had to be burdened with such a Chinese. She shook her head. "All that blood. And just as they were finishing, after all the weeks of prayers. At least it hadn't received the final consecration," she said heavily, as if an even greater catastrophe had been narrowly avoided. She gazed down at the solitary figure descending into the empty valley, and shook her head. "When they had finished Shopo would have gone to thank the nagas and tell them what a beautiful thing had been done with their gift, how it had been used to begin patching a god. Think of what he'll have to say to them now," the woman whispered, and a tear rolled down her cheek.
Shan watched the lama's retreating figure a moment in silence. "If there were dogs," he said, "maybe herders were at the head of the valley last night. Maybe someone could find them, and ask them what happened. I must stay with Gendun, but we need to know what happened out there last night."
When the woman gave no sign of hearing, Shan wandered back toward the switchback trail, leaving the forlorn dropka alone, stacking rocks again. He paused before beginning the descent to the hermitage, surveying the vast rugged landscape. Beyond the low spine of mountains on the far side of the valley he saw another range, higher again, the air shimmering behind it, its peaks snowcovered and lit a dazzling white by the early sun. It was how he felt. No matter how he tried, how hard he climbed, whenever he reached a new height, a new understanding, a new connection with his teachers, another mountain rose up, another obstacle presented itself, another mystery blocked his path. Once Lokesh had described it to him as the burden of being Shan. "Things we see as inevitable turns in the path of our lives, you see as enigmas you must stop to understand. It is the way you have of teaching yourself," his friend had added with a tinge of curiosity in his voice. But teaching implied learning, advancing with new knowledge. And Shan's path seemed to be relentlessly telling him how much he did not know.
As he began to turn toward the hermitage he caught movement on the valley floor. A black figure moved impossibly fast along the trail- on foot- so fast another pang of fear stabbed through Shan. Was it the same unnatural creature that had caught up with Drakte in the lhakang? Shan crouched in the low grass and watched in alarm as, far below, Shopo stopped and stared at the approaching figure. The dropka at the cairn groaned loudly and grabbed her horn, then stared at the figure in confusion. Old Tibetans told tales of mystic runners called lunggompas who could travel hundreds of miles in a day by summoning superhuman strength and training their bodies to ignore fatigue.
The figure slowed momentarily as it passed Shopo, then resumed its unnatural gait to ascend the ridge where Shan stood, toward the hermitage. The dropka lowered the horn. The intruder had not harmed nor even challenged the lama with his bundle of sand. Shan sat down on a rock near the path and waited. The runner, clad in a black-hooded sweatsuit, saw Shan from fifty feet away, slowed, then silently approached and sat across from him, cross-legged. After a moment the stranger produced a water bottle from a belt under the sweatsuit, briefly drank, and flipped back the hood.
It was a young Tibetan woman with a thin face and intense black eyes. "You must be the Chinese." She spoke in a stern voice, breathing deeply, though not panting as she should have been after such an arduous climb. After studying him a moment, she reached back to release two braids of hair which had been pinned close to her ears and arranged them, as if suddenly concerned about her appearance. "I am looking for Drakte."
"You're a purba," Shan suggested.
"I am a schoolteacher," the young woman shot back.
"There are no children here," Shan observed quietly.
The woman fixed Shan with a cold, challenging stare. "The Chinese said go to university to become a teacher, become a model for Tibetan youth," she said when he silently returned the stare. "So I went to university. They said run on the track team so we can have a Tibetan endurance runner to compete in China. So I did. I won medals in Beijing and I returned to my home district to be that model citizen." She spoke loudly. She was relating the story to taunt him. "But after a year of teaching they said no more classes in Tibetan. Only speak Chinese, only use Chinese books. And I said no, I will speak to Tibetan children in their own tongue. That is what a model Tibetan citizen does." She raised the bottle and drank deeply. "One day I came to my school and a Chinese teacher had taken my class. They had emptied my office, even took all my medals." She gazed down at the hermitage, then looked back at Shan. "But they didn't take my legs."