“We could have been killed when the bolt of lightning struck,” Hostene said.
Thirty feet in front of them was the twisted, scorched iron frame of an old chest. On a rock wall opposite the debris was a large faded painting of a fierce protector demon riding a blue wolf, painted so its eyes seemed to follow the observer as he walked around the bowl’s circumference.
Shan studied the pile of rocks, the twisted iron, the splinters of old beams thrown across the clearing. “I have never seen lightning do such a thing.”
“We had nearly finished our work here and were examining a painting of a blue bull god some distance away. Professor Ma said he had left a set of cleaning brushes here. He retrieved the brushes, and when he returned he asked who had moved the equipment. Someone had taken all the old iron pieces, the trunk, straps for a forge, an anvil, old chisels and pry rods and piled them up in front of the tunnel, then added iron pry rods at the top of the pile, strapping three together like a flagpole.”
“Or, more likely, a lightning rod,” Shan said. He bent and scrutinized one of the scorched rocks, holding it under his nose. “Someone put explosives under the pile and used the lightning as a detonator. Whenever it went off whoever did this would be far away and could have an alibi. And they didn’t care who was nearby when it exploded.”
Hostene went to the far side of the pile and squatted, pulling away stones frantically, as if something had told him his niece might be underneath. Then, abruptly, he stopped, shuddering, gazing with a weary expression at the destruction.
“What had you found here?” Shan asked.
“Words painted on tunnel walls. Tashi and Abigail translated them but I never asked what they said. We had seen so many old writings already.”
“And gold?” Shan suggested.
“Not much. Just little nuggets here and there that seemed to have fallen in cracks or behind rocks and been forgotten. Abigail became very angry the first time Tashi touched one.”
“But he did take some-eight nuggets for the cairn by your camp.”
Hostene nodded. “Tashi changed her mind. He said it was the right thing to do, that it was what the old monk miners intended. He said it was how you recharged the prayers. That’s the word he used, ‘recharged.’ ”
“How much gold did you take?”
“Enough for four or five cairns, I guess. It wasn’t our gold, we all agreed we had no claim on it, that it would be wrong to do anything else with it. It wasn’t stealing. It was in line with what Abigail called the reverence of her work.”
Shan asked for the camera again, and found a scene of Abigail in front of the mine, speaking of Tibetan artisans who rendered exquisite goddesses out of gold, then of the Tibetan and Navajo shared reverence for turquoise, which they incorporated into both jewelry and holy images. The demon represented in the sole painting at the site was stated to be the main guardian of the powerful land deity that inhabited the mountain. Hostene lingered only a moment after handing the camera to Shan, then went to the head of the trail, impatient for Shan to finish.
But Shan kept watching. The scene at the mine ended, the screen turned blue for a moment. Then he saw the image of a lichen-covered rock and what might have been a shadowed painting beyond.
“The camera lesson is done. Stop playing and listen to me,” a female voice declared in English. It was Abigail Natay, but not the careful, patient Abigail. This was an urgent, insistent voice. The camera had been set down but it had not been shut off.
“This has to be done tonight,” Abigail said. “I finished most of it this afternoon. You know what to do, where to put it?”
“Yes, if I must,” came a whispered, fearful reply. The man sounded young. He spoke in slow but confident English. He had pulled the camera closer. Abigail appeared, sitting on the rock, her shoulder and one side of her face visible. Long shadows fell across her arm and the rock-strewn ground beside her.
“Take this,” Abigail said, almost apologetically. As she turned to lift something from behind her Shan glimpsed her front pocket. He pushed the rewind button and found the moment when she turned, then froze the image, staring at it in confusion. Pinned to her shirt pocket was a paper talisman, in Chinese, reminiscent of a charm to guard against evil spirits. It brought the superstitions of his childhood back to him. He studied the ideograph on the paper. It was not a protective charm, he realized. It was a prayer for the soul of one who has been killed by violence, to help it avoid one of the many hells that such victims were susceptible to.
It made no sense. Hostene had said Abigail could not speak Chinese. She was not there to study Chinese traditions. But then, as he studied the rest of the scenes, nothing made sense. Nothing happened that could be explained by anything he had learned thus far on the mountain. Abigail began extending things toward her invisible companion. First, she handed a small nugget of gold to the man who remained offscreen. Then, from the shadows on her opposite side, she lifted four more items, which she dangled in front of her unknown companion with an expression that chilled Shan. Two sets of bones, two humerus bones fastened to two ulnas, then two femurs fastened to two tibias, each set connected with what appeared to be shoelaces through holes bored at the ends of each bone. Two arms, two legs, as if she were constructing a skeleton.
“I can’t,” the man moaned.
“You will,” Abigail insisted. “We have to do this together or all is lost. There is a war on this mountain and you have to chose sides.”
After a long pause, the man said, “First tell me how many sides there are.”
Abigail offered a sympathetic smile but did not reply. “Think of your family. Think of the old ones,” she said. Then, impossibly, “Think of Eight Treasures in a Winter Melon.” Surely he had heard wrong. The words described a traditional dish favored by China’s gourmets, eight special ingredients cooked in broth, then poured into a hollowed melon.
“They’ve starting putting out other things, on sticks. The blood drips down into pools,” the man said.
Shan’s mouth went dry. He replayed and replayed the exchange again. The sound from the tiny speaker was poor but he dared not raise the volume while Hostene was nearby.
That was the end of it. Abigail moved offscreen. Shan saw nothing but rocks and dirt and then, as the shadows shifted, the sandal-clad foot of a deity. He fast-forwarded the tape. There was nothing but empty blueness, until the tape ran out. He stared at the blank screen, shut off the camera, and silently returned it to Hostene before gesturing him toward the gully.
They had just turned onto the main trail when a high-pitched cry brought them to an abrupt halt. A figure on a red bike hurtled around a rock. The hood of a black sweatshirt covering his face, one hand was on the handlebars, the other swung a five-foot-long pole.
In an instant, the faceless man was aiming at Hostene’s head. The Navajo twisted and leaped. The club landed a glancing blow on his shoulder as he dropped to the ground. Shan stumbled as he ran to help Hostene, and with a kind of war cry the man struck Shan’s knee with his front tire, barely missing Hostene’s head with the pole. Shan pulled the Navajo up, shoving him toward rocky ground where the bicycle could not follow, then grabbed a short stick from the ground. He waited for the rider, feinted one way, ducked to avoid the savage swing of the pole, then shoved the stick into the rear wheel as the man passed.