Bone Mountain is-3

by Eliot Pattison

  Shan paused for a moment to glance behind. Lin was there, in the gorge, his pistol in his hand, with four soldiers behind him. Only four. But four soldiers with automatic weapons would be more than enough. The soldiers would not shoot to kill, but one of their bullets could easily maim for life. A shot rang out, again over their heads, and another. Shan could keep running but a hundred feet ahead he saw Lokesh and the American, and between them Anya, frequently looking back, terror in her eyes.

  The gorge narrowed and turned. They were out of Lin's line of sight, but they had no chance of hiding, no chance of climbing the high, nearly vertical walls to distract or evade the colonel. They reached Lokesh and Winslow, both of whom appeared near exhaustion. Shan put Lokesh's arm around his neck and kept moving, half-carrying the old Tibetan up the trail. Nyma swept up Anya and put the child on her back. They reached a long straight chute of rock and scrambled desperately for the far end. But halfway down it a rifle shot rang out again, then another, and another. Shan saw the shots hit the rock wall, each lower than the one before, each closer. The last one hit a rock a few feet in front of Nyma. With a groan of defeat she stopped and slowly turned.

  "Treason!" Lin shouted as he jogged toward them. "Destruction of state property! Sabotage! You will never-" His words were drowned out by a violent explosion above them, then two more in rapid succession. The tank was shooting at the rockface. A hundred feet above them the wall burst apart, shattering violently with each impact. Huge slabs of rock sloughed off the face of rock above the soldiers, who did not look up but stared confidently at their prisoners, their guns leveled.

  Lin glanced upward at the last instant. "Fool!" he shouted, and reached for a radio on his belt as he desperately leapt forward. But the debris was on him the next instant. The biggest slabs slammed onto the four soldiers, who had no time to flee or even cry out. There was a muffled scream and a spurt of blood, then the soldiers disappeared. The rock kept falling, groaning, shifting, and falling some more, raising great clouds of dust as it slammed into the gorge. Small, sharp pieces like shrapnel landed at Shan's feet.

  Suddenly there was silence. The dust cleared and the soldiers were gone, buried under ten feet of stone. There was no sign except for one arm extending out of the debris at the front, its hand clutching a pistol. Finally the pistol dropped, and the fingers hung in the air, trembling.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A cloud enveloped them, a dry, choking cloud that swirled about them as if to warn that their world was changing. No one spoke. No one moved. Then the wind began pushing the rock dust away until it was like an eerie midday fog, thin enough for Shan to see the hand again. The fingers extended from the debris, shook and seemed to reach for something in the air, then gradually stilled.

  Anya took a hesitant step forward, and another, slowly walking toward the hand as Shan and the others stood frozen.

  "Run," Winslow said in a distant voice. "We should run." But the American did not move.

  As the girl reached the hand she gently opened the fingers and clasped her own around the hand. The fingers remained limp at first but then, as if gradually sensing her touch, they returned the clasp, squeezing the girl's hand tightly. Anya fell to her knees and began a mantra.

  Shan, still in a daze, found himself stepping toward the girl, lowering himself beside her. A moment later he sensed someone towering behind him, and looked up into the American's grim face. Winslow's eyes were fixed on Anya's hand, and Lin's fingers, desperately trying to hold on, as though he were falling. Shan and Lokesh began pulling away the rocks.

  It was more than a quarter hour before they had Lin's body uncovered. Anya had not stopped her mantra, had even entwined her rosary through her own fingers and Lin's. The colonel's face was nearly covered in blood from a long gash that ran from his crown to his left temple. Otherwise he seemed unharmed, except for his right arm, pinned under a long slab of rock. Shan and Winslow tried in vain to pry the slab up, then Nyma began digging underneath it. In a few minutes they were able to slide Lin out, his right wrist bent at an unnatural angle, his hand purple.

  Nyma rose and sighed. "A few minutes up the trail are some small trees. I'll get splints." As she turned and jogged away, Winslow picked up Lin's pistol. Without looking at Shan he emptied the small oblong leather case on Lin's belt that contained extra magazines, stowing them with the pistol in his rucksack. Shan stared at the American, who looked up as he retightened the strings on his pack and turned away with clenched jaw to tear his bandana into long narrow strips.

  With her free hand Anya wiped the blood from Lin's face with the bottom of her skirt as Lokesh searched in vain for the other soldiers. Nyma returned in ten minutes, and in another ten they had the splints tied around Lin's wrist.

  "He shouldn't be moved," Nyma warned. "It's a terrible concussion."

  Winslow stood. "All we can do is move him," he stated in a flat voice, meaning no one could stay with Lin, and with the path blocked it was unlikely his soldiers would find him before dark. The American handed Shan his pack and bent, his hands on his knees.

  Nyma nodded reluctantly, and helped Shan lift Lin onto Winslow's back.

  Shan and the American alternated carrying Lin on their back, until at last they rounded a boulder and Lhandro appeared with two men from his village. Nyma quickly explained. The Yapchi men called their headman out of earshot, gesturing angrily at Lin and the mountains above them. Shan watched as Nyma approached them and spoke quietly. With hanging heads the Yapchi men seemed to apologize to her. They fashioned a rough litter by tying two of their heavy chubas together and began carrying Lin up the steep slope, not on a trail, but over the grassy mountainside toward a gap in the mountain that opened to the south. In an hour of heavy climbing, led by Nyma, they had crossed the gap and were looking out over the long Plain of Flowers where the ruins of Rapjung lay.

  Lhandro paused, only for a moment, looking back toward his valley with desolation in his eyes. The village headman did not acknowledge Shan when he stopped beside him. "Our deity is truly blind. We proved that today," Lhandro said in a near whisper, and stepped over the crest.

  Nyma and the men from Yapchi plodded on without explanation, taking a goat trail toward a tiny plateau a thousand feet below. Their eyes seemed glazed, their expressions frozen into masks of grief and fear. They had lost their serene village. They had lost their valley. Several of the soldiers who had caused it were dead, and the army would never believe its men had died by accident. Now they were carrying into their midst, to whatever hiding place Nyma was leading them, the demon who had brought all their afflictions.

  It had once been a hermitage, Shan decided as they reached the plateau, but a rockslide had destroyed the little retreat. The front wall of a stone hut remained, with empty frames for a door and a window that had looked out over the abyss that began a few feet away- a thousand-foot drop into the labyrinth of gorges at the southern base of Yapchi Mountain. The remainder of the structure was lost in a huge tumble of loose rocks that rose halfway up the back of the wall and continued in a long sweep to meet the steep slope above. On the opposite side of the wedge-shaped plateau was a single gnarled juniper tree, its trunk over a foot wide but no more than eight feet in height. Its branches all pointed southward, toward Rapjung.

  "I think they meant for us to go to this place," Nyma announced in a weary, uncertain tone. "They said the place on the south slope once used by lamas. I have never been here but-" Her voice choked off as a man appeared beyond the hut, as though materializing out of the shadows by the rock wall. It was one of the purbas from the canyon at Yapchi, the man with the tattered green sweater. He gestured them toward him with an urgent motion, as though he were fearful of them lingering in the open. He melted just as suddenly back into the rocks.

  At the rear of the plateau, its narrowest point, the rockslide had nearly reached the sheer rock face of the mountain. But the catastrophe that had destroyed the hut had not annihilated the rest of the small complex, only buried it. A st
urdy door frame stood in the rock debris, like an entrance to a tunnel. Beside it, facing the plateau, a wall of rocks had been skillfully constructed to appear as a continuation of the avalanche, hiding the entrance from all but those who stepped to within a few feet of the rock face. Shan watched the men carrying the litter enter the darkened entrance, then followed them into a low chamber with thick, closely set logs for roof beams, capped by sturdy planks and supported by thick wooden posts, as though its builders had anticipated the rock fall.

  Half a dozen pallets lay unrolled along the rear wall of the chamber beside one of the piles of kettles and pans Shan had seen tied together at the village. Nyma ventured through a doorway that led to a room dimly lit with butter lamps, and motioned for the men to bring the litter forward. The second chamber they entered was larger than the first, perhaps fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long, with an open air hole in the roof. Two openings without doors led to small rooms that appeared to be meditation cells. An old faded thangka of the Medicine Buddha hung between the cells. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness Shan saw several shapes rise from the shadows where they had sitting by the back wall. Lhandro's parents were there, and Tenzin, with the three purbas who had been waiting for him at Yapchi. In a corner behind the purbas was the equipment he had seen in the canyon by the village. At the back wall Lepka was examining several large, very old clay jars that appeared to contain dried herbs.

  Lokesh and Tenzin did not hesitate as Lin was laid on a pallet. As Shan's old friend bent over Lin's limp form Tenzin collected all the lamps in the room and placed them beside the pallet. Winslow appeared and produced his electric lamp as Lokesh placed three fingers along one wrist, then the other, then the neck.

  "Why bring a hostage?" one of the purbas asked with barely concealed anger. "We can do nothing with a hostage. All he can do is betray our secrets."

  Lokesh looked toward the door, then back to the fiery Tibetan. "I don't understand. Is there a hostage?"

  "This damned officer," the purba growled.

  Lokesh knitted his brow in confusion. "Ah," he sighed after a moment. "No one brought a hostage. We brought a man who needs our compassion."

  The purba with the green sweater, who had been speaking with Winslow, turned to Shan in disbelief. "You took him out of the rocks? You dug him out of his own grave?"

  Lhandro's father hobbled over, lowered himself to the floor, and began helping Lokesh as he washed Lin's face, rinsing the cloth in a bowl of water and wringing it out for Lokesh. "You should be grateful to this man," the aged rongpa said.

  "Grateful?" the purba spat.

  "He is the one who made everyone run so fast. If he had not," Lepka said, "some of us would have been below when those rocks fell, instead of those unfortunate soldiers."

  The purba groaned in exasperation, wheeled about, and left the chamber.

  Lokesh toiled hard over Lin, washing him, massaging the hand of his broken wrist, repeatedly taking his pulse. As Nyma went outside to look for better splints, Lokesh looked into Lin's ears and mouth, then listened again, his eyes closed, at the pulse on Lin's neck and finally, removing the colonel's boots, at each of his ankles. He washed the wound on Lin's head once more, with a grim expression. Injuries to the crown of the head were especially unfortunate, for that was where, if it had to migrate from the injured flesh, the spirit would depart the body.

  "I will make tea, for when he wakes," Lhandro's mother offered.

  Lokesh's face was strangely clouded. "This one will not wake for a long time, if ever," he said, then rose stiffly and left the room.

  Ten minutes later Shan found him sitting near the front edge of the small plateau, watching the sun set over the Plain of Flowers. Shan studied his friend, trying to understand the melancholy confusion on his face.

  "The best healers at Rapjung were those who did not even begin studying medicine until they had spent years of learning as a monk, getting thoroughly familiar with their inner Buddha," said the old Tibetan. "They said that no healer could restore the balance of health in a patient unless there was also balance in the spirit of the healer."

  Lokesh almost never complained, but when he did it was always about his own shortcomings. To think that somehow Lokesh felt himself at fault for not being able to deal with Lin's injury brought a stab of pain to Shan's heart. "I remember the lamas in our barracks saying once that if left to ripen to its true nature a soul will inhabit a body for many decades, then one day pop off like a ripe fruit," Shan said, following Lokesh's gaze toward the Plain of Flowers as he spoke. "But they also said that if left to grow in the wrong places spirits could became so rotten they will tumble off prematurely."

  Lokesh offered a slow nod in reply.

  They watched the sun disappear. The horizon glowed in a brilliant line of pink and gold under a distant layer of clouds.

  "It isn't that it may be his time to die that disturbs me," Lokesh said quietly. "It's just that he is dying and I know no medicine, I have no words, I know not even what hopes to express for a man like that, or how to reach his spirit if he dies. There must be millions of Lins in the world and it pains me to so little understand them. I can make no connection with them. Not with me, not with the earth, with the world I know. How can I address the essence inside?" Lokesh sighed. "It makes me feel so incomplete, Xiao Shan. There can be no healing when such gaps exist."

  Shan, too, had no words. It pained him deeply to think that the wise, kind old Tibetan was made to feel incomplete by a man like Lin.

  They sat in silence as night fell. Shan began to realize how unique the little plateau was, sheltered from the north winds by the immense tower of rock behind it, open to the south, with a view for dozens of miles over the low ranges to the west and south, and beyond them, the starkly beautiful changtang. In Tibetan tradition it would be considered a place of great power. "The hermits who came here," he said at last. "Were they from Rapjung?"

  "It wasn't exactly a hermitage. I knew it, or knew of it. There were two places on this side of the mountains, in the high lands above Rapjung. For centuries, every summer the medicine lamas came to them, because of their power as mixing places. There was a place they called the mixing ledge at the edge of a huge cliff, and another nearby called the herb shelf."

  "Mixing places?" Shan asked.

  "There are medicines that take hours to mix right, because special prayers have to be said over them, special sanctified tools used, with very precise portions to be mixed, in correct sequence, to keep the earth power in them. Once a batch was begun, the mixing could not stop. And for certain medicines the lama had to be in the correct state of mind, which meant they would come and sit in cells or sit out under the night sky until they reached the proper level of awareness. In the summer, I think, with that mountain wall behind to reflect the light, the full moon must shine on this place like no other. The mixing ledge was said to have a healing power of its own, as if the place itself was a medicine."

  They watched the vastness of sky and land before them as it surrendered to shadow. Eventually a woman's soft voice called out, close behind them. "There is food."

  Shan turned to see Nyma. She seemed uninterested in eating and sat on a nearby rock. "Where will we go?" she asked after a long silence. When neither of her companions answered, Nyma replied to her own question. "The Mountain Combat Brigade is on the other side of the mountain," she said in a brittle voice. "They will think we killed those soldiers. That dobdob is stalking us, probably waiting somewhere on the mountain right now. Down below is Norbu gompa, with all those howlers.

  Some of my people feel such hate. Some want to go back and sabotage that oil camp." She looked at Shan. "They have no hope. They have only anger left."

  "You know where that would lead," he warned, "if there is armed resistance, even the hint of it, the army will come and stay. Martial law will be declared, and a man like Lin will run the district, for years."

  "Sometimes today I have felt anger, too," she confessed. "Our village. Our preci
ous village…"

  In their frantic flight up the mountain Shan had not considered why she had taken off her robe. To blend in better with the others who were being chased, he had assumed at first, but now he remembered the woman running out of the house at the last minute, pausing to hang a brown cloth on a peg. "Your robe," he said. "You left it to burn."

  "It's not mine," Nyma said in a hollow voice. "I am finished with that lie. I am not a nun. If my people had a real nun maybe none of this would have happened."

  A small, sad moan escaped Lokesh's lips.

  "You can't-" Shan began. "They need you…" But the words choked away as a wave of helplessness washed over him. He saw her turn her head toward the chain of peaks that ran to the west.

  A loud hollow croaking noise came from above, the sound of a night-hawk.

  "We could follow those peaks into the main range of the Kunlun Mountains. We could follow them for a thousand miles, follow them for months, maybe not see any other person the entire time," Nyma said, with longing in her voice.

  Nyma's distant gaze caused Shan to piece together the mental map of the region he had been constructing in his mind. Suddenly he realized where they were, and he knew Winslow would soon reach the same conclusion. They were only two or three miles from where Melissa Larkin had fallen to her death.

  Lokesh was asleep beside Lin when Shan and Winslow left the next morning. The American had been studying his map when Shan had finally gone inside to eat the night before, and the two men had not spoken, but Shan was only a few steps behind when Winslow left at dawn and began climbing the long western arm of the mountain.

  "You should have stayed and rested with the others," Winslow suggested when Shan caught up with him.

  "I need to see for myself," Shan replied.

  "But Larkin is my business," the American observed.