“But what is the sound?” Gao asked. “Why that sound?”
Yangke and Shan concentrated on listening.
Yangke’s eyes lit with realization. “A seed sound,” he said, referring to one of the root sounds used in Tibetan ritual. “Vam!” he said. “It is the seed sound Vam.”
Shan cocked his head, telling himself it was not possible. But the sound was unmistakable now. Each gust renewed the syllable. The sound mesmerized the four men. The monks of five centuries past were speaking to them.
Hostene, his expression of wonder growing, clamped his hands over his ears. Gao stared not at the hole above now, but at the entryway. Shan pulled Yangke into a corner, where the sound was less intense.
He asked, “What does it signify?”
“The color blue,” Yangke said, “And the direction north. And-” The sound grew louder now, accompanied by something new, a low rushing rumble.
The image of the white sticks below flashed through Shan’s mind. “Run!” he shouted, pushing Hostene and Gao forward, pointing Yangke toward the entry. They were halfway down the chamber when the shelf below the hole erupted. There was indeed one more meaning to the seed syllable. Water.
It burst out of the wall with the force of a tsunami. As the makers of the chamber intended, they would not have time to run down the path to safety below. Shan pushed Yangke into the shadow behind the north pillar. The Tibetan understood instantly, and pulled Hostene into the narrow cleft before the wall of water reached them. Shan grabbed the collar of Gao’s jacket as the scientist was swept off his feet, then braced himself in the opening of the cleft. He had to extract Gao from the torrent, he had to get them both higher, for the water was rapidly rising and would not stop, he knew now, until it reached a level just below the old paintings, eight feet from the floor of the chamber.
He pulled on Gao’s collar, not daring to use both arms for fear of losing his balance. By the time he had pulled Gao inside the cleft, their heads were under water. Blind in the swirling blackness, Shan let his feet lead him. They found a narrow step, then another, and another. He slipped, almost losing Gao. Then hands reached down and tugged him upward.
He found himself lying on the floor of another cave. He struggled to his hands and knees, his stomach heaving up the water he had swallowed, Gao beside him coughing up water too as Hostene slapped his back.
“They weren’t white sticks,” Gao said once he regained his breath.
“No,” Shan agreed. They were the flotsam of centuries of pilgrims who had not been so fortunate, the bones of what had been perhaps twenty or thirty bodies.
They spoke hurriedly, in tones of disbelief, comparing theories, until at last they understood what the ancient monk engineers had done. The bell. The bell rope would always be pulled by a pilgrim, for bells drove away evil spirits. But the rope not only tipped the bell, it activated a mechanism, releasing a cover over the wind funnel and then something else above, releasing a gravity-activated gate on a dam that connected to the wide opening at the end of the cave. The path had been paved at the top to endure the occasional floods without being washed away. The sidewall had not crumbled away but had deliberately been built that way, to make a death trap for those who were unlucky enough to be washed out of the cavern. They had found the missing spring melt, the water that had been diverted from the passageway they had used to enter the summit kora.
The excitement of their discovery, and of their survival, was soon replaced by the grim realization that all of their equipment, including that brought by Gao, had been swept away by the water. They had no food, no pilgrim bags, not even a butter lamp. A staff that Hostene had clutched during the ordeal and the contents of their pockets were all that remained. They took inventory. Gao’s phone. A flint. Two pocketknifes. A few pencil stubs. Several feathers Hostene had collected along the way. And, Shan knew, the secrets secured inside Hostene’s vest. Yangke, in his soaked clothes, starter to shiver, rubbed his arms, and looked at Shan expectantly.
Hostene gazed toward the narrow stairs that had saved their lives. He had no way of knowing whether Abigail had been so lucky. He rose, then began walking toward the light at the end of the passage.
They clambered up trails fit only for goats. As the day faded, they made a fire of goat dung under a deep overhang, surrounded by rocks blackened by lightning strikes, beside the painting of a dragon god. “When we capture this crazed monk,” Gao asked as he stared at the vivid painting, “what will happen to him?”
“I don’t know,” Shan replied. “That depends on you.”
“You mean because of Thomas.”
“Because you are the only one among us who might report him to the authorities.”
“If I don’t, what then?”
“We take him back to Drango village, to save the life of Gendun.”
This was the impossible dilemma that had been gnawing at Shan since they had begun their strange pilgrimage. Gendun would never forgive Shan for saving his life by sacrificing that of the hermit, however deranged Rapaki might be.
“I don’t think it matters what I do,” Gao said. “Major Ren is involved now.”
The words quieted them. There were no pilgrims on this mountain, Shan realized. There were only fugitives. Their pasts had overtaken each of them, and their lives were changing. Every man there, including Shan, was beginning to glimpse the hollow shape of his future.
“Why did you do that?” Gao asked Hostene, and pointed to an object Hostene clutched between his hands. The Navajo had gleaned a splinter of wood from an old prayer flag stand and, with thread unwound from his shirt, had fastened some feathers to it.
“We’ve run out of mountain,” Hostene said. “In the morning there will be an end to it. It is time to call on the deities.” He had stripped off his shirt, wore only his vest, and had coated his bare arms with dust again.
Gao stirred the fire. “You have to understand,” he said in a patient voice, “I am a man of science.”
“And I used to be a judge,” Hostene replied earnestly. “But I learned something on this mountain. Here it isn’t about what we have put into our heads, it is about what we have put into our hearts.” He rose and took a new seat fifty feet away, where he had a better view of the sun setting over a hundred miles of horizon.
“Perhaps Heinz had to cross the border to fix his problems,” Shan offered a moment later. “You said the firm does a lot of business in India.”
Gao, his head cocked, was watching Hostene. “This is where you play the part of the clever detective trying to trick me into telling secrets. Didn’t you hear what Hostene just said?”
“I’ll tell you a secret, Doctor. Thomas may have presented many complex challenges but the reason he died was simple. He was trying to find the truth.” Shan explained Thomas’s fastidious work at the murder scene.
“There is a warehouse, in Bengal somewhere,” Gao finally said, “and that house on the ocean, in the south. Beautiful beaches. You saw the photo.”
“Who arranges the schedules and cargo of the trucks going south?”
“I don’t know. Heinz would know. He takes care of details. He’s probably in Tashtul now, taking care of Thomas’s body for me.”
“Only one more thing. Where did Heinz go, that year he was away?”
Gao did not reply. The fire died away. Soon Shan could see nothing but two dim eyes staring at the stars.
The end of the world came after midnight. There was no warning by wind or rain, only a massive bone-shaking clap of thunder that physically pushed Shan and his friends toward the back wall of the overhang, then a blinding explosion of light. They had come to the place where lightning was born. They had come to the home of the lightning god.
The bolts came one after another, with a deep rending force that seemed about to split not only the sky but the mountain as well. The air seemed to boil, churning in and out of their little cavity with the rhythm of the bolts, like the breath of some huge beast.