Bone Mountain (49 page)

As if on cue a cracked, but fierce voice boomed out from the back of the plateau. “Surrender! You are my prisoners! Only if you surrender will we show mercy!” Lin was standing unsteadily, his good hand on the rock wall, his knees about to buckle. He seemed to be shouting at Shan and Lokesh. Not really shouting. Shan realized, for the rock wall amplified his voice. But trying to shout.

“Perhaps,” Shan said dryly, “just one more rock.”

Lokesh groaned and leapt up. Lin staggered and dropped to his knees as Lokesh reached him. A thin trickle of blood came from the wound on his scalp.

As Shan reached the two men a small figure darted forth from the shadows, rushing between Lokesh and Lin. “Everyone was sleeping,” Anya said in an anguished voice.

Nyma appeared behind the girl. “That old thankga.” She seemed close to tears. “The colonel ripped it to pieces.”

“Submit! You are my prisoners!” Lin called again in an angry voice, though he had so little strength the words came out in barely a whisper.

“No one,” Anya said to Lin in the tone of an impatient midwife, “no one is going to surrender. And no one is going to attack.”

Lin looked with an odd, confused expression at the girl, then he fell forward, his good arm clutching at Anya, trapping the girl, so that when he fell she was beneath him, cushioning the fall.

When they had carried Lin’s unconscious form back to his pallet, Anya looked up with a determined glint. “You will have to go tell them,” the girl declared. “Tell the army we have their colonel. He is important to them I think. They will miss him.”

“Little girl,” a voice said from behind them. The youngest of the purbas who had come with Tenzin was awake. “Tell them that and they will assume he is a hostage. Tell them anything about him and they will assume it is a trick, or he is a hostage. It will become like war in these mountains. They have so many soldiers they would be like ants on a mound. It is treason to kidnap an officer.”

“We kidnapped no one. Ours was simply the way of compassion,” the girl said in the soft tone of a lama.

The purba stepped out of the shadows and fixed Anya with an angry stare. “You’re old enough to know better. Old enough to go to one of their coal mine camps,” the young Tibetan said with fire in his voice. “I’ll tell you what we do with your colonel. We carry him to the edge and drop him over, like they have done with so many Tibetans before. Sky burial,” he added with a grin.

Suddenly a hand appeared from behind and clasped the man’s shoulder. The angry purba seemed to deflate. He frowned, shook the hand off, and turned away. It was Tenzin. The man whom the colonel wanted so desperately to imprison knelt at Lin’s side, opposite Anya, and helped her pull the blanket over his unconscious form.

*   *   *

The sun had been up two hours the next morning when Winslow and Shan neared the narrow gap that led back over the range into Qinghai Province. The lanky American stopped, warning Shan with an upraised hand, and pointed. A solitary figure was hiking along the ridge, a small Tibetan man wearing a derby-like hat with a drawstring pouch slung over his shoulder. They crested the ridge and waited for the man, who smiled cheerfully as he approached.

“You are the ones helping Yapchi,” he observed. “The distant ones who came to help.” Distant ones. The man meant foreigners. “People all over the mountains are speaking about you, about how you are going to restore the balance,” he said in a bright, confident tone. “My grandfather knew distant ones who helped him see things,” the man added enigmatically.

Shan paused. Foreigners? The grandfather of a man who lived in the mountains knew foreigners? “There could be soldiers below,” he warned.

“I’m not going below,” the man said, “I am just bringing water.”

Shan studied the small pouch. “Not much more than would fill a kettle.” In his pocket, his hand clenched around another pouch, one of the little ochre bags of true earth Jokar had prepared.

“Not even,” the man said. He opened the pouch and produced a one-liter plastic bottle. The label it once bore had been torn away. Tibetan script ran along the side, made with a bold black marker.
Sum,
it said, the number three, and below that
chu,
river. “It’s going to the sky birthing, for the Green Tara,” he said, still in his bright tone, then he returned the bottle to the sack and started down the trail again.

“What did he mean?” Winslow asked as he followed the man with a confused gaze.

“Offerings,” Shan suggested. “Perhaps they have decided to invoke the protectress deity called the Green Tara. She is believed to be very powerful.”

“A protector deity,” Winslow sighed. “Where do I sign up?”

*   *   *

Workers were stretched across the valley as Shan and Winslow surveyed it two hours later. The logging crews had cut a swath nearly three hundred yards wide above the camp. Through their binoculars, tiny figures could be seen scrambling over the tower of the derrick as it kept cutting into the earth below. And at the near end, the south end, by the ruins of Yapchi Village, crews unloaded a truck trailer stacked with freshly sawn lumber.

Each time the American had paused to study his map, Shan had looked back, hesitating. He had been to the oil camp before, and the howlers had tried to take him. Would Somo still be there? Had the intrepid woman been discovered and arrested for helping him? Increasingly, he sensed that helping Winslow find what had happened to Larkin was also somehow helping to find the deity.

They climbed past the little canyon, now empty, where the villagers had hidden, planning to circle the valley along the edge of the band of trees. They were above the derrick when Winslow stopped and looked at Shan.

“Stay up here,” the American said. “I’ll go in, talk with Jenkins about Zhu’s crew, maybe his secretary can help locate them. I’ll find them and talk to them without Zhu knowing—” he was interrupted by a sudden sound, the slow beat of a deep drum. It seemed to be coming from directly above them on the slope, no more than a hundred yards away. The two men stared at each other, then Shan took a step toward the sound and Winslow grinned, offering a wave of his hand.

Shan ran. Whoever was beating the drum would not likely hear a few broken twigs or sliding rocks. The pounding grew louder, in a rhythm of two rapid beats and a pause, even more like a heartbeat than before. He was close, he was certain, no more than a hundred paces away, searching the clusters of boulders that dotted the slope.

Suddenly something leapt on his back. A leopard, a voice screamed in his mind, and he was down, claws in his back, his struggling hands batted away violently, his head pressed into the earth. He groaned in fear, his breath rushing out of him, his arms flailing, connecting only with the earth. Then, strangely, his attacker seized his arms behind him and rolled him over.

It was a man, Shan saw through a haze of pain. Was the drum still pounding or was it his own heart he heard? A man he seemed to recognize, who surely recognized him, for as soon as their eyes met the man gasped and released him.

No, it was a bear, the distant voice in his head said. The fog lifted from his eyes and Shan saw it was the Golok bear, Dremu. But not the Dremu Shan had known, for this one was torn and gaunt, a shadow of the prideful Golok Shan had last seen the night the eye was stolen.

Dremu pulled Shan upright, his legs still on the ground, and for a moment his hands lingered, clenching Shan’s shoulders in something like an embrace.

“They said you had fled,” Shan ventured.

Dremu put his finger over his lips. “Damned soldiers took me,” he whispered. “I was riding near the oil camp, in the trees and I didn’t know they had soldiers hiding.” Shan saw heavy bruises around the Golok’s eyes. “They beat me and put me on that work crew, took my horse even, to haul their logs.” Dremu looked toward the drumming sound, which continued, louder than ever, very close. “They didn’t know who they had caught,” he said in a defiant tone. “Thought I was just some rongpa, like those others who just take their orders. I ran away. But first I told those rongpa that their eye was back in the valley, that the eye was watching again.”

“Why would you say that?” Shan asked, studying the forlorn Golok. Had Dremu taken the eye, as Lhandro suspected?

“Because the valley’s heart is beating again.” Dremu, too, stared toward the drumming. “I’m going to get that stone for you, Chinese. So you can make it like the old days.” He pointed in the direction of the heartbeat, bent and moved forward, like a predator stalking prey, Shan a few paces behind.

Just as Dremu seemed about to pounce around an outcropping onto the drummer, the Golok jerked back and held his shoulder, wincing with pain. The drumming stopped, and they heard the sound of feet running. He looked in despair at his shoulder, slowly lifting his fingers. “Buddha’s breath! I thought I was shot.” He bent and picked up a round stone from near his feet, a pebble that did not belong with the sharp granite shards that otherwise lay underfoot. “A sling,” he said, with a hint of respect in his voice, as he looked about cautiously.

The slope was silent, and seemed empty now. Dremu rubbed his shoulder, seeming reluctant to follow. In the hands of an expert a sling could be as deadly as a rifle. He bent low and inched around the rock.

The patch of ground on the far side of the outcropping showed evidence of several boots; prints of the smooth-soled boots worn by Tibetans, made with woolen uppers. They were nearly all small prints.

“Children,” Dremu announced as he squatted by the tracks. “Two or three children,” he said in a puzzled tone. “Maybe one adult. They sat, and knelt,” he explained, pointing to several areas where the earth was pressed smooth. The site had been chosen well, with two large slabs of rock behind it to amplify the sound in the direction of the valley. Shan bent and lifted several pieces of grass that lay at the edge of the clearing. They had little knots tied in them. On a small boulder in front, facing the valley, someone had worked with a chisel, trying to cut away a piece of rock, trying to make an elongated hole in front of the rock.

“For the eye,” Dremu said over his shoulder, and with a rush of excitement Shan realized the Golok was right. The eye was back in the valley, and someone had been trying to fashion a new home for it. Shan found himself touching the hole, feeling its rough contours. He stared at the crudely worked stone until finally he realized the Golok was staring at him. Dremu seemed to be waiting for orders.

“Some of the villagers thought it was you who took the eye,” Shan said. “I can tell them otherwise now.”

Dremu scowled. “You mean you thought it, too. Or you would have told them already.”

Shan said nothing.

“I wouldn’t have done that. Not before you got it back to the valley.”

“You mean you planned to take it.”

The Golok stared at Shan. “I don’t usually plan that far ahead,” he said, and offered a hollow grin. “It’s just that … I think my father and grandfather need me to do something about it. Could you understand that?”

Shan nodded soberly, and the Golok brightened and gestured down the slope. “There were sick people who came to the valley. Some had children. Some of the village children fled.”

Shan saw for the first time that Dremu’s gau, and the small pouch that had hung beside it, were both missing. “You should get food,” he suggested, studying the gaunt man. “And rest.” But he didn’t know how, didn’t know where the other Tibetans were, and who would offer help to the Golok. He could not send Dremu to the mixing ledge, where Lhandro was, who had thrown stones at him. “That monk Gyalo and his yak are in the mountains, on the high ridges. If you can find them they will help you get food. All the others have fled. You should, too, until the soldiers go.”

“Not all,” Dremu countered.

“You mean the drummer.”

“I saw some others on the slope this morning. In the high rocks, moving stealthfully. I think maybe they are trying to damage the oil rig.”

“Purbas?” Shan asked with a chill.

“I only saw them from a distance. They moved slow, and without fear, as if they didn’t care about the soldiers. Probably they have charms to protect them.”

Shan stared at the Golok uncertainly, then, asking him once more to leave for the high ranges, he turned and jogged away. He found a game trail that ran parallel to the valley floor and had trotted northward on it for several minutes, watching for movement on the upper slopes and the shadows of caves, when suddenly two figures appeared on the trail in the distance—not walking so much as strolling, conversing, watching the ground as if hunting for something. Shan faded into the shadows between two rocks. He pushed back as far as he could in the cleft and watched, first with fear, then with confusion as two shadows passed by. One of the figures was singing a Tibetan pilgrim’s song.

He scrambled out and leapt forward. “Lokesh!” he called out in alarm.

Thirty feet down the trail his old friend turned and offered his crooked grin. “Good fortune!” Lokesh exclaimed. “You can help us, Xiao Shan.” His companion, wearing an amused grin, awkwardly raised a hand in greeting to Shan. Tenzin.

“Help with what?” Shan asked in exasperation, looking about for some place to hide the men.

“I told you,” Lokesh said sheepishly. “Looking for medicine herbs. Tenzin wants to learn about herbs too.”

“In the mountains, you said in the mountains.”

Lokesh waved his hand around the landscape. “The mountains around Yapchi,” he said with another grin. “Surely you remember. Jokar Rinpoche said it would help that officer. His heart wind is so distressed he could die.”

“Tell me where,” Shan said in a pleading voice. “Tell me where and I will get your herbs. Just go back. Now—”

His words choked in his throat. Two green uniformed soldiers stepped around a large tree less than a hundred feet away. From behind the soldiers a figure in a white shirt emerged, followed by half a dozen other Tibetans. Shan recognized the man in white. Director Tuan. Four of the others were oil workers, wearing the green jackets of the venture. But the other two wore the robes of monks.