The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

  Shan did as he was told.

  Behind him Yeshe gasped. The woman made a sound like the call of a raven. Was it laughter? Or fear?

  They repeated the strange mantra at least twenty times. Then Shan realized Khorda had stopped and he was speaking alone. He felt light-headed, then an intense coldness clenched him and everything seemed to grow dark. The words came faster and faster, as though his voice was being controlled by another. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash that seemed to come from inside his head, and Khorda gave an immense roar. It was a sound of great pain.

  Shan shivered violently. He dropped the beads and the room came back into focus. The shivering stopped, though his hands felt ice cold.

  The sorcerer was gasping, as though from strenuous exercise. He looked warily around the chamber, especially into the shadows of the corners, as though expecting something to leap out. He reached and poked Shan's chest with a gnarled finger. "You still alive?" he croaked. "Is it still you, Chinese?" He retrieved the rosary and studied Shan's palms again.

  Shan's heart was racing. "How do I find Tamdin?" he asked.

  "Follow his path. He won't be far now," the sorcerer said with his crooked grin. "If you are brave enough. The path of Tamdin is a path of ruthlessness. Sometimes only ruthlessness reaches the truth."

  "What-" Shan's mouth was as dry as sand. "What if someone offended Tamdin? What would need to be done?"

  "Offend a protector demon? Then expect to attain nothingness."

  "No. I mean a true believer did something in the name of Tamdin, pretending to be Tamdin. Maybe borrowing the face of Tamdin."

  "For the virtuous there are charms for forgiveness. Might work for the girl."

  "A girl asked to be forgiven by Tamdin?"

  Khorda said nothing.

  "Can they work for me?" If a nonbeliever used a costume, Shan realized, they would not ask for a charm. But surely a nonbeliever would have no reason to use the costume, unless they were framing the Buddhist monk. And then they would not be concerned with forgiveness. Shan sighed. He wished he could simply settle for attaining nothingness.

  Khorda lifted his enchanter's cap and set it on his head. As if it were a cue, the woman appeared with a sheet of rice paper, ink, and a brush. Khorda lifted the brush and began to work on the paper. He inscribed several large ideograms, then closed his right eye and raised the paper to the jeweled eye. He shook his head sadly, tore the paper into pieces and dropped it all onto the floor. "It won't stick to you," Khorda grunted in frustration, fixing Shan with his unearthly stare. "You require much more." The sorcerer's hand, still clutching the rosary, began to shake.

  "What do you see?" Shan heard himself say, as though from a distance. He massaged his fingers. They still seemed icy cold where they had touched the skull rosary.

  "I have known men like you. Like a magnet. No. Not that. A lightning rod. If you are not careful your soul will wear out long before your body."

  Khorda's hand was shaking violently now. It began to move. Khorda seemed to fight it, to try to restrain it, but without avail. It leapt at Shan and grabbed his pocket. Two bony fingers pulled out a paper. It was the charm from Choje. The shaking hand unfolded it, then abruptly dropped it, as though burned.

  The old man studied the paper and nodded deferentially. "This Choje must love you well, Chinese, to give you such a thing," he said solemnly. A hoarse laugh rose in his throat. "Now I know why you survived," he said, wheezing. "But it cannot change the thing you did." He gave a great sigh, as though he had been released from a powerful grip, and began to stare at the skull beads in his hand. An intense curiosity seized his face, as if he could not understand how they got there, or why.

  "The thing I did? The mantra, with the skulls?" Shan asked.

  But Khorda seemed not to hear. The woman pulled his arm urgently. "The summoning," she hissed, pushing him out the door. "You summoned the demon."

  ***

  As they moved back through the maze of stalls, a two-wheeled cart filled with young goats turned in front of them, pulled by two old women. The women stumbled and the cart flew upward, tipping its contents directly onto Sergeant Feng. Feng went down, entangled in bleating animals. The alley exploded with activity. Merchants angrily shouted to keep the goats from their wares. Herdsmen moved in to help, adding to the confusion.

  Three men, dressed in the fleece vests and caps of herders, materialized at Shan's side. They pushed Yeshe and Shan into a doorway six feet away. One of them turned his back to them, blocking the view to Feng; he began shouting encouragement to the herdsmen.

  "We know you have Sungpo," one of them said abruptly. He pulled back his cap, revealing a familiar haircut. Several long scars crisscrossed his face.

  "Isn't it a breach of the monastic rules not to wear your robe?" Shan asked.

  The man gave him a sour look. "When you do not hold a license you are not so fastidious," he said with a distracted tone. He was studying Yeshe. "What was your gompa?" he demanded.

  Yeshe tried to push away. The man at his arm responded by squeezing the top of his shoulder. The motion seemed to take Yeshe's breath away. He bent over, gasping. It was a traditional martial arts pincer movement against a pressure point.

  "What kind of monks-" Shan began, then recognized the scars. They were the kind left by Public Security batons, from a beating so savage it ripped open long gutters of skin. Sometimes Public Security glued sandpaper to their batons.

  The man's companion held Yeshe by the upper arm.

  "Purba!" Yeshe warned.

  "Some say you are among the zung mag protected by Choje Rinpoche," the scarred-face man said. Zung mag was a Tibetan term. It meant prisoners of war. It was not a term Choje ever used. "Others say you are protected by Colonel Tan. It cannot be both. It is a dangerous game you play." He silently pulled up Shan's arm, unbuttoned the cuff and rolled up his sleeve. He pushed the flesh around the tattoo. It was a test used in the prisons for infiltrators. Recent tattoos would not lose their color because of the bruising underneath.

  The man nodded at his companion, who relaxed his grip on Yeshe. "Do you have any idea of what will happen if you execute another of the Five?" Inside his sleeve another garment was visible. He was wearing a robe after all, Shan realized, under the herdsmen's clothes.

  For some reason the man made Shan angry. "Murder is a capital offense."

  "We know about capital offenses in Tibet," the purba snapped. "My uncle was executed for throwing your chairman's quotations into a chamber pot. My brother was killed for conducting rites at a mass grave."

  "You are talking about history."

  "That makes it better?"

  "Not at all," Shan said. "But what does it mean for you and me?"

  The purba glared at Shan. "They killed my lama," he said.

  "They killed my father," Shan shot back.

  "But you are going to prosecute Sungpo."

  "No. I am making an investigation file."

  "Why?"

  "I am a lao gai prisoner. It is the labor assigned to me."

  "Why would they use a prisoner? It makes no sense."

  "Because I had a life before the 404th. I was an investigator in Beijing. That is why Tan chose me. Why he decided to do an investigation outside the prosecutor's office I do not yet know."

  The rancor began to fade from the man's voice. "There were riots before, the last time the knobs came to this valley. Many were killed. It was never reported."

  Shan nodded sadly.

  "It seemed that they were beginning to move on. But then they started persecuting the Five."

  "Prosecution. There was a murder in each case." As much as he disliked the man's violence, Shan desperately wanted to find common grounds with the purbas. "At least accept that murderers must be punished. This is not some pogrom against the Buddhists."

  "Do you know that?"

  No, Shan realized wearily, he didn't know that. "But each started with a murder."

  "Strange words, for someone from Beijin
g. I know your kind. Murder isn't a crime. It's a political phenomenon."

  Shan felt an unfamiliar fire as he stared back at the young monk. "What is it you seek? To warn me? To scare me away from a job I am forced to do?"

  "There must be payment in kind. When you take one of ours."

  "Revenge is not the Buddhist way."

  When the monk frowned, the long gouts of scar tissue contorted his face into a gruesome mask. "The story of my country's destruction. Peaceful coexistence. Let virtue prevail over force. It doesn't work when virtue has no voice left." He grabbed Shan's chin and forced Shan to look as he turned his head slowly, to be certain Shan could see the ruin of his face. "In this country, when you turn the other cheek they just destroy both of them."

  Shan pushed the purba's hand away and looked into his smoldering eyes. "Then help me. There is nothing that can stop this, except the truth."

  "We do not care who murdered the prosecutor."

  "The only reason they will release a suspect is because they have a better one."

  The purba stared at Shan, still suspicious. "In the hut of Choje Rinpoche, there is a Chinese prisoner who prays with Rinpoche. They call him the Chinese Stone, because he is so hard. He has never broken. He tricked them into releasing an old man."

  "The old man's name was Lokesh," Shan acknowledged. "He sang the old songs."

  The man nodded slowly. "What are you asking of us?"

  "I don't know." Shan's eyes wandered toward Khorda's hut. "I would like to know who has suddenly been asking for charms for forgiveness from Tamdin. A young girl. And I need to find Balti, Prosecutor Jao's khampa driver. No one has seen him or the car since the murder."

  "You think we would collaborate?"

  "On the truth, yes."

  The monk did not reply. Sergeant Feng's voice could be heard now, calling for Shan and Yeshe above the bleat of the goats.

  "Here-" The purba in front spun about and dropped a small goat into Yeshe's arms. His disguise.

  Feng was raising the whistle to his lips as Shan and Yeshe stepped out of the doorway.

  Shan glanced back. The purbas were gone.

  Yeshe was silent as they returned to the truck. He sat in the back and stared at a piece of heather, like those worn by the people in the market. "A girl gave it to me," he said in a desolate tone. "She said to wear it for them. I asked who she meant. She said the souls of the 404th. She said the sorcerer announced they were all going to be martyred."

  Chapter Eight

  The lampposts leading out of town were being painted silver, no doubt for the honored guests soon to arrive from Beijing and America. But a high wind was blowing, so that sand particles adhered to the poles as quickly as the workers applied the paint, making the poles appear even shabbier than before. Shan envied the proletariat its ability to embrace the most important lesson of their society, that the goal of any worker was not to do a good job, but to do a correct job.

  The kiosks that housed public phones were being painted, too, although Sergeant Feng could not find a single phone that worked. He followed a wire to a musty tea shop at the edge of town and commandeered a phone.

  "No one will stop you," Colonel Tan replied when Shan told him he needed to inspect the skull cave. "I closed it down the day we found the head. What took you so long? Surely you're not frightened of a few bones."

  As the truck climbed the low gravel foothills that led out of the valley, Yeshe seemed more restless than usual. "You should not have done it," he burst out at last. "You shouldn't meddle."

  Shan turned in his seat. Yeshe's gaze moved unsteadily across the skyline as they headed toward the huge mass of the Dragon Claws. Giant cumulus clouds, almost blindingly white against the cobalt sky, had snagged on the peaks in the distance.

  "Meddle with what?"

  "What you did. The skull mantra. You had no right to summon the demon."

  "So you believe that's what I did?"

  "No. It's just that these people…" Yeshe's voice faded away.

  "These people? You mean your people?"

  Yeshe frowned. "Summoning is a dangerous thing. To the old Buddhists, words were the most dangerous weapon of all."

  "You believe I summoned a demon?" Shan repeated.

  Yeshe cut his eyes at Shan, then looked away. "It's not so simple. People will hear about the words you spoke. Some will say the demon will possess the summoner. Some will say the demon has been invited to act again. Khorda was right. Ruthlessness follows the name of the demon."

  "I thought the demon was already released."

  Yeshe looked with pain into his hands. "Our demons, they have a way of becoming self-fulfilling."

  Shan considered his companion. He had never known anyone who could sound like a monk one moment and a party functionary the next. "What do you mean?"

  "I don't know. Things will happen. It will become an excuse."

  "For what? Telling the truth?"

  Yeshe winced and turned back to the window.

  Only one thing the sorcerer had said made sense. Follow the path of Tamdin. The Tamdin killer had gone from the 404th, then over the mountains to the skull cave. And Shan had to follow the path, had to return to the horrible, holy place of the dead lamas.

  A single army truck with two drowsy guards sat at the turnoff to the skull cave, stationed there while Tan kept the project closed for the investigation. Startled by the sudden appearance of visitors, the soldiers grabbed their rifles, then relaxed as they saw Feng at the wheel.

  The air was strangely still as they drove into the little valley. Overhead clouds scudded quickly by, but as they reached the small plateau with the solitary tree, Shan saw that no wind touched its branches. He climbed out of the truck with a strange apprehension. There was also no sound. There was almost no color other than the browns and grays of the rock and shed, except for a new sign in bright red characters. DANGER, it said, ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN BY ORDER OF THE MINISTRY OF GEOLOGY.

  Yeshe exchanged an uneasy glance with him, then followed Shan toward the cave entrance. Feng hung back as they checked their flashlights, conspicuously examining the tires as though they suddenly required his attention.

  The two men walked silently through the entrance tunnel, Yeshe lagging farther behind Shan with each step.

  "This is not-" Yeshe began nervously as he joined Shan at the edge of the main chamber. In the dim, shaking light of their handlamps the huge figures on the walls seemed to dance, staring angrily at them.

  "Not what?"

  "Not a place where-" Yeshe was struggling, but with what Shan was not certain. Had he been asked to stop Shan somehow? Had he perhaps decided to quit his assignment?

  The figures of the demons and Buddhas seemed to be speaking to Yeshe. He cocked his head toward them, his face clouding, but it wasn't fear of the images, nor hatred of Shan. It was just pain. "We should not go here," he said. "It is only for the most holy of people."

  "You're refusing to continue on religious grounds?"

  "No," Yeshe shot back defensively. He fixed his eyes on the floor of the cave, refusing to look at the paintings. "I mean, this is only meaningful for the religious minorities." He looked up, but refused to look Shan in the eyes. "The Bureau of Religious Affairs has specialists. They would be better qualified to engage in cultural interpretations."

  "Odd. I thought a trained monk would be even better."

  Yeshe turned away.

  "I think you're scared," Shan said to his back, "scared that someone will accuse you of being Tibetan."

  A sound, something like a laugh, came from Yeshe's throat, but there was no laughter in his eyes as he faced Shan again.

  "Who are you?" Shan pressed. "The good Chinese who craves losing himself with a billion others just like him? Or the Tibetan who recognizes that lives are at stake here? Not just one, but many. And we are the only ones who have a chance of saving them. Me. And you."

  Yeshe looked back as though with a question and froze. Shan followed his gaze. There were lig
hts at the opposite side of the chamber, and voices raised in excitement.

  Instantly they extinguished their own lamps and stepped back into the tunnel. Tan had shut down the cave. No one else was authorized to enter. There had been no other vehicles outside. Whoever the intruders were, they were running a grave risk if captured.

  "Purbas," Yeshe whispered. "We must leave, quickly."

  "But we just left them back at the market."

  "No. Their ranks are large. They are very dangerous. There is a decree from the capital. It is a citizen's duty to report them."

  "So you want to get away from me to report them?" Shan asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "We were with Sergeant Feng since seeing the purbas in the market. You said nothing to him."

  "They are outlaws."

  "They are monks. Are you going to report them?" Shan repeated.

  "If we get caught working with them it will be conspiracy," Yeshe said in anguish. "At least five years lao gai."

  Shan realized the intruders were not in the skull tunnel, but a smaller alcove in the center of the far wall. He pushed Yeshe toward them, moving silently along the perimeter of the huge chamber. Suddenly, when less then thirty feet separated them, a brilliant strobe exploded.

  The camera flash was aimed toward the wall paintings beside him, but caught Shan in the face, blinding him. A high-pitched scream split the air, then was abruptly stifled. "Son of a bitch," someone else groaned in a lower voice.

  Shan, shielding his eyes against another flash, switched on his light. Rebecca Fowler, her hand clutching her chest as though she had been kicked, stared at them numbly.

  "Jesus, boys," the man with the camera said. "Thought you were ghosts for sure." Tyler Kincaid gave a quick, forced laugh and aimed a high-powered beam behind them. "You alone?"

  "The army is outside," Yeshe blurted out, as though in warning.

  "Sergeant Feng is outside," Shan corrected.

  "So here we are," Kincaid said, and took another picture. "Thieves in the night, you might say."