“Your eyes!” Shan shouted above the din, waving his hands. “Cover your eyes!” They looked at him in mute confusion, and he suddenly understood why. He was deaf, and, judging by their expressions, so were his friends. He crawled to each of them, pushing their forearms over their eyes, gesturing for them to face the wall, away from the flashes.
It seemed it would never stop. They could die so easily. One tongue of the lightning could leap into their confined space and leave them as bent, charred artifacts for some future pilgrim to consult as he passed by.
On it went, the explosions numbing not just his ears but his entire body, the light so intense that even facing the wall, the air smelling of metal, his arm over his eyes, Shan could sometimes see the crimson tinge of his flesh. He found himself slipping toward a place he had never been before, a destination perhaps intended by the path’s builders. He had no body left, no mystery left, no him left. There were only explosions and light and shuddering air, and one question that would assure that when they found his remains there would be a look of wonder on his face-was this how it felt to be a deity?
Chapter Fourteen
His friends were all dead. When the storm finally stopped he crawled desolately from man to man, probing them, touching their backs as they lay curled against the wall. They did not move. Their flesh was so hard and cramped it seemed they had been baked alive.
Shan fell back against the wall, his heart and body ravaged, then eventually took stock of his own senses. He could see the stars and moon, could feel the wind on his face, but could hear nothing. His arms and legs ached, the hair on the back of his neck and arms was singed. His shirt was stiff and brittle at the cuffs.
He curled up on the ledge, facing outward this time, still so numb he couldn’t even feel despair, only think about how painful it would be when it came. He glanced back at his companions. Each man’s hands were balled up in fists, tucked under their chins. In corpses this was called the boxer’s posture, the effect of prolonged heat, which caused the muscles to contract. His eyes welled with moisture as he gazed out over the moonlit ranges.
Suddenly a foot kicked him. Someone was testing to see if he were alive.
It was as if they had been frozen and were slowly thawing out. He could not see whose foot it was but he helped the struggling figure straighten his limbs, then dragged him into the moonlight. The man worked himself into a sitting position, trembling, squeezing Shan’s hand. It was Gao.
Shan sat with him, each man explaining with gestures to the other that he could not hear. Then he returned to the deeper shadows, leaving the scientist pondering the blackened edges of his clothing. He found the two remaining forms against the wall and felt each for a pulse. Hostene and Yangke were also coming back to life.
Half an hour later all four sat in the moonlight, Shan cradling Yangke’s head in his lap, Hostene holding one of the Tibetan’s hands. They were all deaf but Yangke was also blind.
No one argued when Shan took the lead in the morning, no one disputed their direction, still upward. After climbing for a while, Hostene leading Yangke by his hand, they reached a wide sheltered shelf that held not only small clumps of heather but also a few pools of water. They guided Yangke to a pool and after he had drunk his fill they sluiced it over his head and over his closed eyes, then let him roll onto sun-warmed moss and sleep. They washed themselves. Hostene found some small waxy blue berries that, though tart, provided a makeshift breakfast. They sat, still partially in shock, staring at each other, rubbing their ears, casting fearful glances toward the summit, within an hour’s reach now. If she had survived, Abigail could be up there, as deaf and blind as Yangke. But they were weary to the bone from the night’s ordeal. The warmth of the little hollow soon had them sprawled against the rocks, drifting into slumber.
A bird was calling in the distance when Shan awoke, perhaps two hours later. He saw it only ten feet away, languidly watched it eating some of the blue berries. Why did it sound so far away? Shan sat up as the welcome realization hit him. His hearing was returning. He turned to see Hostene bending over Yangke, whose face had turned yellow.
The Navajo had opened his precious sacred pollen from home. He had spread some on Yangke’s hands, and more on his cheeks and brow, and was bent over the Tibetan, speaking toward the crown of his head, waving his spirit feather in the air. The unintelligible words, which seemed to filter down a long pipe, made Shan worry again about his senses until he realized Hostene was speaking in his native tongue.
Shan stretched, stood, explored the beginning of the trail to the summit, then began picking more berries for Yangke, soon joined by Gao, who confirmed that his hearing was also beginning to return. When they brought the berries back, Yangke was sitting upright, cross-legged, moving his hand back and forth across his lap. “I see shadows,” he said in a hopeful tone. He could hear perfectly now, he explained, then ravenously consumed the berries they dropped into his palm.
Having passed through a corridor of natural stone covered with the most fearful paintings they had yet seen, they looked down on a quarter-mile-wide bowl directly beneath the summit. It seemed to be filled with debris, a jumble of jagged, lightning-scorched slabs that had sloughed off the pinnacle. In the center, at its lowest point, was an opening-not a crater but a jagged tear in the fabric of the peak, a crevasse perhaps a hundred feet long and thirty wide. All except the largest of the rock slabs had been cleared from around it. Its perimeter was outlined with tall cairns, some bearing the last threads of prayer flags from another century.
A wide pathway at one end of the fissure connected it to a shallow cave at the base of the summit, a twenty-foot-high indentation where a great piece of stone appeared to have been scooped out of the peak. Halfway between the cavern and the fissure were two figures, one in an oft-patched red robe who was prostrating himself as he advanced toward the hole. The other, wearing a long green vest with many golden bracelets and a tiered headdress, trudged behind him.
Hostene ran forward.
“No!” Shan shouted in vain. They had lost the benefit of surprise, lost all chance of comprehension before confronting those below. Gao hurried past, holding one of Yangke’s hands. The scientist was supposed to be leading the blind Tibetan but Gao appeared to be dragged by Yangke.
Shan lingered, trying to see the place as Lokesh might, as the builders had intended. They had experienced the end of the world the night before, and now had reached the home of the deities. For one who believed the supreme deities were lightning gods, such a place would be the gateway to heaven, and the proper final home for a wandering Tara. He studied the fissure, the prostrating monk, the strangely submissive Navajo woman, then ran to Gao’s side.
“Don’t,” he said, surprised to find himself panting for breath, reminding himself of the thinness of the air.
“Don’t what?” Gao asked.
“I don’t know,” Shan said, a terrible premonition building inside him. “Don’t believe anything is as it seems.”
“Tell him,” Gao said, pointing to Hostene, who walked beside his niece now, trying to get her attention.
Abigail Natay appeared to have aged ten years. Her skin was chalky, her eyes hollow, her hair dull and tangled under the old headdress of the Tara costume. She had been sprinkled with pollen. On one hand was a daub of white paint, tapered at the ends. She had acquired a third eye. Hostene seemed to be unable to touch his niece. As Shan halted a dozen feet away the Navajo extended his hand to within a few inches of her, withdrew it, then repeated the motion. She gave no sign of seeing him, staring straight ahead at the bobbing head of the pilgrim she followed.