Prayer of the Dragon (3 page)

“There is another house that would be better for you,” the headman said to Shan. “Bigger. You would be more comfortable there. Dolma, the widow who lives there, will see to your needs.”

“We need only a floor for our blankets,” Shan said. At his first encounters with Tibetans, Shan was often feared, sometimes reviled. But the rare occasions when he was doted upon because he was Chinese made him much more uncomfortable.

“I insist,” pressed the genpo.

“Only if my friends can join me,” Shan replied.

“Of course,” Chodron agreed hesitantly. “It’s the house next to the stable. I will see that your bags are moved.”

Outside, a woman worked at the loom Shan had admired earlier, and a man had begun applying new whitewash to the walls fronting the street. “Are you preparing for a festival?” Shan asked, gesturing toward the pile of juniper wood.

“Two great events at once,” Chodron confirmed. “First the barley harvest, then the First of August,” he said. “There will be singing all night. And many jars of
chang
,” he added, the Tibetan barley ale. For the first time Shan saw several men by the granaries, working with stones on steel, sharpening sickles. Soon they would work in the fields, loading sheaves onto carts pulled by broad-backed yaks. Against the granary walls were stacked wooden flails and the wide, flat baskets that would be used to thresh and winnow the grain. To a village like Drango nothing was more important than the harvest, nothing more dangerous than a bonfire while the paper-dry barley still stood in the fields.

As Shan followed the genpo toward the largest of the structures along the short, dusty street, he glanced at Lokesh, seeing in his friend’s troubled eyes confirmation that he had heard correctly. August the First. The little village, so remote it seemed to have escaped the notice of the government since the day it was bombed from the air, was preparing to celebrate one of Beijing’s most patriotic holidays, the day set aside for praise of China’s military.

In the sparsely furnished sitting room on the second floor of his house, Chodron’s wife silently served them more buttered tea while the headman boasted of the accomplishments of his village. Most of the families had lived in Drango for eight or more generations, he explained. Once they had been renowned for their finely woven carpets like the one that adorned the room they sat in. Shan’s gaze drifted over the headman’s shoulder to a shelf heavy with books, all hardbound printed books, all in Chinese, then finally to a framed photo on the wall of a much younger Chodron in the uniform of the People’s Liberation Army.

As they walked back outside, a bell rang somewhere. Lokesh smiled. It was a way of summoning deities, a way of accompanying the rhythm of mantras. But these peals quickly became frantic, and from the slopes men began shouting. Sweet, acrid smoke wafted around the houses. The headman gasped and darted toward the street, Shan a step behind him. Someone had set the pile of juniper wood alight.

The village exploded with activity, some villagers running to the stream with buckets, others toward the fields with brooms and blankets. Every flying spark threatened their precious harvest. Shan ran with them toward the thick column of smoke, then saw Lokesh headed for the stable at the other end of the settlement. Shan paused only long enough to see the headman confer with the big farmer who had been guarding the stable door. The man began to run up a track along the stream at the side of the fields, pausing only to lift a heavy harvest knife from a bench by a granary.

A minute later, Shan was at his friend’s side. The guard at the door was gone, the chamber emptied of everyone but Gendun and his charge. Lokesh approached the pallet and lifted the man’s hand, taking his pulse at his wrist, then his neck, and temple. Shan brought tea from the kettle by the door.

Lokesh raised a hand. “It might revive him. Water, not tea. I have given him water every few hours.”

Lokesh tipped the man’s head back as Shan filled a ladle from a bucket and began dripping water into his mouth. Long bony fingers reached out and closed around the man’s lifeless hand. Gendun had stopped his mantra. Lokesh straightened the man’s legs and began massaging the limbs, pausing twice to press his ear to the stranger’s chest and check his pulse. “His flesh cannot endure without nourishment,” Lokesh declared in a worried tone.

“This particular life,” came a voice like rustling grass, “is not rounded.”

Lokesh and Shan looked up. Except for his prayers, these were the first words Gendun had spoken since Shan’s arrival. Gendun’s words were used between monks of their hermitage or by the monks of Shan’s former prison to describe a strong stumbling spirit that had failed to resolve itself before death.

“The mountain,” Lokesh said. “He may have come to learn from the mountain.”

“A pilgrimage,” Shan added, completing the thought. Devout Tibetans sometimes made secret pilgrimages to remote shrines, to give thanks to a deity, seek absolution, be cured, or fulfill a promise to a loved one. To wear down the rough edges that cut at a troubled soul.

“Lha gyal lo!” Lokesh exclaimed. He’d seen the man’s tongue appear between his lips in response to the trickle of moisture. As Shan cradled the man in his arms, Lokesh stroked the stranger’s throat. He swallowed. They gave him half a ladle more of water mixed with honey from a jar by the door, a few drops at a time, then returned him to the pallet. Shan went to the door. The villagers had extinguished the fire by pulling the logs from the pile and soaking them, and were now beating out small patches of flame in the fields. They’d saved nearly all their crop.

“Someone is asking for help,” Lokesh declared when he returned to the pallet. He saw the confusion on Shan’s face. “Don’t you see? It is like a desperate prayer. Someone is willing to lose the crop in order to summon the deities.”

Perhaps his friend was right, Shan thought, though the fire could just as easily have been a distraction, even a warning.

He checked the invalid’s pockets and found them empty except for a few Chinese coins and a stick as thick as his index finger and half as long. The bark had recently been peeled from the little piece of wood and it had been carved at one end, with three holes cut into the rounded surface, arranged like two eyes and a mouth. The other end, where its waist and legs should have been, was broken off. He stared at the stick on his palm for a moment, then slipped it into his own pocket. The man wore no ring, no watch, no amulet, no adornment of any kind except for a very strange tattoo on his forearm, a thick blue line that extended nearly from his wrist to his elbow, the body of a stick figure with a rectangular head, arms and legs made of jagged lines like lightning bolts, and a long triangle arranged like a skirt low down.

Shan, like his friends, cocked his head at the image.
Stickman
. The intruder had pronounced the name like a curse. The tattooed image was unfamiliar, as was, for most Tibetans, the concept of the decoration of the skin with ink. The stranger was not just from down in the world but from far away. Shan probed the man’s clothing, running a fingertip over the fabric, pausing over each button, each stain. He said nothing about the thin line of tiny rust brown spots across the front of his shirt or the fanlike pattern of similar spots on his denim trousers that ran from the knee up his thigh, or the faint line of spots along his chest. They were dried blood that had sprayed onto his clothing from a severed blood vessel less than an arm’s length away.

He gazed a moment at the man’s unseeing face, then ran his finger over the inside of his vest, looking for a hidden pocket. “Something is sewn inside,” he announced, trying to make sense of the three shapes he felt. Neither Lokesh, massaging the man’s legs, nor Gendun, still holding one of his hands but reciting his prayers again, took notice. Shan rose, darted out the door, and returned with a small wooden tube retrieved from his pack. He extracted the cork from the top and withdrew a long needle and thread, then with his knife opened the seam of the vest’s lining. Tucked into small, tight pockets, expertly sewn, were the feather of a large bird, a small leather pouch bound by a drawstring, and a long plastic vial of yellow powder.

They stared at the unexpected, inexplicable objects in silence, the pace of Gendun’s recitation slowing as the lama reached out, one thin finger touching not the objects but the space just above them. Lokesh’s jaw opened and shut silently. When the old Tibetan looked up at Shan he knew his friend too was recalling Yangke’s description of the comatose man and his dead companions.

“What kind of holy man is this?” Lokesh asked at last.

What kind of bloodwalker is this? Shan almost added.

A shout from somewhere within the village broke the spell. Lokesh rose and stood at the door, watching the street, while Shan refastened the lining with hasty stitches.

The villagers returned to their vigil in twos and threes, their chatter fading as they approached the stable, new, excited whispers rising as they saw that their would-be saint had moved.

The guard appeared, followed a moment later by Chodron. “What have you done?” the genpo demanded as he neared the form now outstretched on the pallet. “He awakened! I must speak with him.” He kneeled and poked the man’s arm.

Shan asked in a loud, slow voice, “How often have you seen such a great column of juniper smoke?”

The headman stared at Shan, his brows knitted. The villagers leaned forward.

“The juniper smoke touched the sky,” Shan explained, fixing Chodron with a level stare. “And then he moved without waking.” A murmur of wonder rippled through the onlookers.

“The deities arrived!” a woman exclaimed. “And they lifted him!”

The headman glared at Shan. Then, with a wary glance at the onlookers, he went to the wooden bowl holding incense sticks, lit one from a lamp, and placed it in the cracked plank that held the others. Chodron settled against the wall, studying Shan with intense curiosity, then after several minutes, rose and left.

As the purple light of sunset filtered over the horizon the three friends shared tsampa and
momo
, Tibetan dumplings, with a score of villagers around a fire pit behind the headman’s house. The villagers listened with rapt attention as Lokesh spoke of his many travels around the fringes of modern Tibet, even touching, ever so tentatively, upon his years, decades earlier, as an official in the Dalai Lama’s government.

At last there was no one left but the headman and three gray-haired villagers, introduced as the village elders, two men and the woman in the black dress who had first given Shan tea. Although Chodron fastidiously performed his obligations as host, filling their cups one more time, all warmth had left his face. “Seldom do we receive visitors,” the headman said. “You have honored us. But as you see, we are beginning our harvest. Every hand must be lifted to the work.” He was inviting them to leave.

“Then it is fortunate my friends and I are here, so we can care for the stranger in the stable, freeing others for their tasks,” Shan replied impassively.

“You mean the murderer in our jail.” The deference Chodron had previously shown Shan was gone.

The elders said nothing. One stared into his bowl of tea. The woman, her hands clasped in her lap, chewed absently on a piece of dried cheese, glancing repeatedly at Shan before looking away.

“It is a terrible responsibility, to sit in judgment of others,” Shan said.

“I will not flee from my duty,” Chodron shot back.

“He is ill. When he awakens he may not be able to speak for himself.”

Chodron silently rose, entered the rear door of his house, and returned a moment later with a small wooden chest that he set on the ground by the fire. The headman extracted a cloth bundle from within, then unfolded it on the ground in front of Shan. “We already know the blackness of his deeds.”

He displayed a hammer, a modern rock hammer, one end blunt and square, the other extending in a long, slightly curving claw. There was still enough light for Shan to see the dried blood and small gray flecks on the claw. “His hands were covered with the blood of those he killed,” the headman explained. “He finished one of them with a blow from that claw to the back of the head.” Chodron tapped the handle of the hammer with his boot, revealing a second object underneath. “No one wants to even think about what he did with his other weapon.”

It was a slender rod of stainless steel that rose into a curved sharp hook at one end. It was so out of context that it took Shan a moment to recognize it as a dental pick. The tip was covered in blood.

The woman shuddered and looked away. The other two elders stared into the fire, carefully avoiding looking at the objects.

“The people of the town say there are no witnesses,” Lokesh reminded them.

“My people are like children when it comes to things of the outside world,” Chodron said. “They must be taught right from wrong.”

“And you will do so by killing this stranger?” Shan asked.

“If the deities wish to prevent it, they can take him before he awakes. Otherwise,” Chodron said in a brittle tone, “those of us responsible for the village know our obligations. We will have a town assembly. We will speak of what happened, of why we must do what we have to do. I have been rereading the old records with the elders. Perhaps it will be enough to take something of his body, perhaps only one eye. In the old days they sometimes just took an eye. We are taught to be compassionate.”

“Compassion in Drango,” Lokesh observed in a haunted tone, “has a flavor all its own.”