The Ninth Buddha

He moved a limb at a time: left hand, right hand, left knee, right knee, progressing in a shuffling motion, certain his balance would go and the bridge slip from his grasp in a single, irretrievable instant. Twice an up draught took him from below and started to lift him, using the chuba as a sail, but each time he hunkered down, flattening himself against the surface of the bridge until the gust had moved on. His fingers were freezing, so much so that he could scarcely feel to grip the bridge. He could not see or hear or feel: his whole passage over the bridge was an act of will and nothing more.

It seemed to him as though the crossing took several lifetimes.

Time stood still while he crawled endlessly through space. His former life was nothing but a dream: this and this alone was reality, moving in darkness, waiting for the wind to take him into its arms and play with him before finally breaking him like a doll on twisted rocks.

“What took you so long?” It was Chindamani’s voice coming to him out of the darkness. He was on the opposite ledge, still crawling as though the bridge would never come to an end.

“We can stand up here,” she said.

“It’s more sheltered than the roof.”

He noticed that the wind was quieter here and that it fell less heavily on his face when he turned into it. She was standing beside him again, small and absurdly bulky-looking in her outsize chuba.

Without thinking, driven only by a desperation born in him while he crossed the bridge, he stepped towards her and held her to him.

She said nothing, did nothing to repel him, but let him hold her, the thick chub as holding their bodies apart as much as the darkness or her dozen lifetimes. She allowed him to hold her, even though she knew it was wrong, that no man should ever hold her. A great fear began to grow in her. She could not give it a name, but she knew it was centred somehow in this strange man whose destiny had so cruelly been joined to hers.

“It’s time,” she said finally. He had not kissed her or touched her skin with his skin, but she had to make him let her go before the fear became too great. She had never understood before that fear and desire could lie so close together, like a god and his consort, entwined in stone forever.

He let go of her gently, releasing her into the night. She had smelt of cinnamon. His nostrils were inflamed by the smell of her.

Not even the wind could take her perfume away.

She led him across an expanse of bare rock pocked with slivers and pools of ice. Above them, the mountain rose up into the darkness, huge and invisible, its mass more felt than seen. In spite of the shelter, it seemed almost colder here on the rock, against the grim flank of the mountain.

“They call it Ketsuperi,” she said.

Christopher said he did not understand.

“The mountain,” she explained.

“It means “the mountain that reaches heaven”.”

Suddenly, they were standing right against the mountain wall.

Chindamani put her hand to the rock face and pushed. Something moved, and Christopher realized that it had not been rock at all but a door set in the side of the mountain. Light streamed out from lamps hanging behind the doorway. Chindamani pushed again and the door swung all the way open.

In front of them, a narrow passageway stretched out for perhaps seventy or eighty feet. It had been cut down through the solid rock, but the walls had been smoothed and plastered over. Ornate lamps hung on fine gold chains from the ceiling, flickering gently in the draught from the open doorway.

Chindamani closed the door and threw back her hood. The air in the passage was much warmer than that outside.

“What is this place?” asked Christopher.

“A lab rang she said.

“This is the residence of the incarnations of Dorje-la. This is where they live when they are first brought to the monastery from their families. The present abbot your father never used it. He lived from the beginning on the upper floor of the main building. To my knowledge, he has never set foot here.”

She paused.

“When you held me then, outside,” she said hesitantly, ‘what did you feel? What did you think of?”

The questions frightened her, coming as they did from a part of her consciousness that had been dormant until now. Before this, she had never needed to ask what anyone thought of her. She was Tara, not in the flesh, but in the spirit, and that took care of that.

Her own flesh was unimportant, a vehicle, nothing more. She had never even thought of having an identity of her own.

“I thought of the cold,” he said.

“Of the darkness. Of the years I had spent on the bridge, thinking you were gone forever. And I though how it would be if there was warmth. If there was light. If you were just a woman and not some sort of goddess.”

“But I told you, I am a woman. There is no mystery.”

He looked at her, finding her eyes and holding them with his.

“Yes,” he said, ‘there is mystery. I understand almost nothing.

In your world I’m blind and deaf, crawling in darkness, waiting to fall into nothingness.”

“There is only nothingness,” she said.

“I can’t believe that,” he protested.

“I’m sorry.” She turned her face away, reddening. But what she had said was true: there was only nothingness. The world was a dragonfly shimmering in silence over dark waters.

He stepped towards her, aware that he had hurt her. It had not been his intention.

“Come with me,” she said.

“Your son is waiting. He will be sleeping. But please, whatever you do, do not try to waken him or speak to him. Promise me that.”

“But.. .”

“You must promise. If they know you have seen him, they will make it impossible for us to get to him again. Promise.”

He nodded.

“I promise,” he said.

At the end of the passage, a door opened to the left. It led into a temple-room filled with statues and painted figures. From here, three more doors led into further rooms.

Chindamani motioned to Christopher that he should be silent, and opened the door on the right.

He saw at once that it was a bedroom. Only a dim light gave it any illumination, but he could see the small bed covered in rich brocades and the figure in it, etched by shadows.

Chindamani bowed low, then straightened and, putting a finger to her lips, slipped inside. Christopher followed her.

It was as though Dorje-la and all the vast wilderness of snow and ice that circled it had been swept away. Christopher imagined he was in Carfax again, looking down at his son sleeping in a quiet bedroom filled with toys and books. The only nightmare was in Christopher’s head. He, not the child, was the dreamer who could not awaken, however hard he tried.

Cautiously, he went up close to William. The boy’s hair had fallen over one eye. Gently, Christopher straightened it, touching his son’s forehead. The boy stirred and mumbled something in his sleep. Chindamani took his arm, afraid he might waken the child.

Christopher felt his eyes grow hot with tears. He wanted to pick William up and hold him, tell him that all was well, that he would take him away from this place. But Chindamani drew him away and out of the room.

It was a long time before Christopher could speak. Chindamani waited patiently, watching him. She was destined never to have children of her own, but she could understand some of the emotions he was feeling.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.

“There’s no need,” she told him.

“When the moment comes, you may speak to him. But it’s best he doesn’t know you are here just yet.”

“You said you were going to show me something else. You said there was someone in danger from Zamyatm.”

“Yes. We are going to see him now.”

“Zamyatin came here in search of something. When I was with” Christopher hesitated ‘my father, he said he had done a deal with Zamyatin: my son in exchange for what Zamyatin wanted. Has this other person something to do with all this?”

Chindamani nodded.

“Yes,” she said.

“Zamyatin came here to find him. I want you to help me get him away from him.”

She led the way to one of the other doors. Another dimly lit chamber,

another bed covered in gorgeous fabrics. A child was sleeping in the

bed, hair tousled, eyes shut against the darkness,

one hand loosely curled on the pillow as though about to clutch or relinquish a dream.

“Here,” she whispered.

“This is what Zamyatin was looking for.

This is what brought you here.”

A boy? A child wrapped in shadows? Was this really all?

“Who is he?” Christopher asked.

“Who would you like him to be?” asked Chindamani in reply.

“A

king? The next Emperor of China, perhaps? The surviving son of the murdered Tzar? You see, I’m not entirely uninformed about your world.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“He could be anyone. I didn’t expect something like this.” But what had he expected? Had he expected anything?

“He’s just a little boy,” said Chindamani quietly, but with feeling.

“That’s all he is. That’s all he wants to be.” She paused.

“But he has no say in the matter. He cannot be whatever he wants to be because other people want him to be someone else. Do you understand?”

“Who do they say he is?”

Chindamani looked at the sleeping child, then back at Christopher.

“The Maidari Buddha,” she said.

“The ninth Buddha of Urga.

And the last.”

“I don’t understand.”

She shook her head softly, sadly.

“No,” she said, ‘you do not understand.” She paused and glanced at the boy again.

“He is the rightful ruler of Mongolia,” she whispered.

“He is the key to a continent. Do you understand me now?”

Christopher looked down at the boy. So that was it. Zamyatin had been looking for a key to unlock the treasure house of Asia. A living god to make him the most powerful man in the East.

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“Yes, I think I am beginning to understand.”

She looked back at him.

“No,” she said.

“You understand nothing. Nothing whatever.”

They left the children sleeping and went out into the night again, returning to the main buildings by way of the bridge. The monastery was still fast asleep, but Chindamani insisted they move quietly until they reached Christopher’s room.

She stayed with him that night until just before dawn. He was withdrawn at first in spite of her presence, for seeing William had flattened his spirits greatly. She made tea on a small stove in the corner of Christopher’s room. It was Chinese tea, pale wu lung in which white jasmine flowers floated tranquilly, like lilies on a perfumed lake. When it was ready, she poured it carefully into two small porcelain cups set side by side on a low table. The cups were paper thin and soft blue in colour, like eggshells. Through the fine glaze, Christopher could see the tea, gleaming golden in the soft light.

“The Chinese call them to tai,” Chindamani said, touching the edge of one cup with her finger-tip.

“They are very special, very rare. These two were part of a present to one of the abbots of Dorje-la from the K’ang-hsi Emperor. They are over two hundred years old.”

She held the cup towards the light, watching the flames struggle in the amber liquid. For the first time, Christopher had an opportunity to see her properly. Her skin resembled the porcelain of the cup in her hand, in its smoothness and delicacy. She was tiny, less than five feet tall, and each part of her echoed that diminutive ness in a subtly modulated harmony of form. When she moved to pour tea or lift the fragile cup to her lips or just to brush a strand of stray hair from her eyes it was done with an infinitely exquisite grace that he had never seen in a woman before.

It was not a studied or a mannered gracefulness, but a natural ease of movement that had its origin in a total harmony that existed between her body and the world she inhabited. He felt that she might walk on water or cross a meadow without bruising a single blade of spring grass. And he felt sad, because such perfection seemed so far beyond his clumsy reach.

They drank the tea, saying nothing at first, watching the shadows melt and re-form on the walls. He was lost in thought, miles away, like a man drifting on a raft across an open sea, unable to tell where the shore might be or if there was a shore at all. She did not face him, did not try to break into his silence or tempt him from his pain. But when he looked up from time to time, she was there, her face half-hidden among shadows.

Finally, he began to talk, in small, clustered fragments of speech interspersed with long and painful silences. The tea grew cold and the jasmines shrivelled and drowned, and the wind sang in the mountains like a lost soul. There was neither order nor system in anything he said: thoughts simply poured out of him at random, to be followed by yet more silence. Now he spoke of his childhood in India, now of Aunt Tabitha and the long summers at Carfax, summers that had once seemed without end. Or he would tell her about men he had killed, men he had betrayed, a woman he had once betrayed long ago on a cold afternoon in the dead of winter.

He told her of Cormac’s death and how it preyed on him, the mindless droning of the flies constant in his thoughts; of the girl in the orphanage, naked and betrayed; of Lhaten slaughtered like a calf on a high field of driven snow.

She listened in silence like a priest hearing his confession, without absolution, without blame. And he sought for neither, finding sufficient blessing in her presence and grace enough in her silence. At the end, he told her about his father, about the mysterious and terrible rebirth that had taken place among the tombs that afternoon. A long silence followed. At one point, he realized that her hand was in his, small and fragile, like a shell or a piece of porcelain: a fragment of something he had known long ago and lost.

“How did the boy come to be here?” Christopher asked.

“The one Zamyatin came here to find.”

“His name is Dorje Samdup Rinpoche,” she said.

“He was born in a village far to the west of here, near the sacred lake Manosarowar. That was over ten years ago. When he was still very small, some monks came to Manosarowar from Mongolia. They found signs that he was the new incarnation of the Maidari Buddha.”

That would have been about 1912, thought Christopher. Now he knew what it was Maisky and Skrypnik had found at Manosarowar, what Zamyatin had set out to rediscover.

“At first the monks wanted to take Samdup back to Mongolia, to the holy city of Urga. But others advised against it. There is still a Khutukhtu on the throne of Urga: if he had learned of the boy’s existence, he would have tried to have him killed rather than let himself be replaced by him.”

“A Khutukhtu?” Christopher had never heard the term before.

“It’s what the Mongols call their incarnations. Samdup is the true Khutukhtu of Urga. The Jebtsun Damba Khutukhtu. The true ruler of Mongolia.”

“I don’t understand. How can there be two Khutukhtus at the same time?

How could one replace another while they are both alive?”

“There are not two Khutukhtus,” she replied.

“They are one and the same. They dwell in different bodies, that is all. But the eighth body has ceased to be a suitable vehicle. The Maidari Buddha has chosen to incarnate himself in another body before the eighth has been destroyed. It’s very simple.”

“Yes, but what I don’t understand is why Zamyatin should want to waste so much time coming here to look for the child. Why doesn’t he just go to Mongolia and try to influence the present Khutukhtu?”

Chindamani shook her head.

“The Khutukhtu in Urga has no power. I do not understand such things, but I have heard the abbot and others talking. They say that, about the time Samdup was born, the Emperor of China was defeated in a great rebellion. Is that true?”

Christopher nodded. In 1911, the Manchu dynasty had been overthrown and a Republic established in China.

“When that happened,” Chindamani continued, ‘the Khutukhtu at Urga rebelled against the Chinese, who had ruled over Mongolia for centuries. He was proclaimed ruler and the Chinese left the country. At first, another country, far to the north, gave him protection. They say it was one of the lands of the pee-lings, but I do not understand that.”

“Russia,” Christopher said.

“Their king wanted to have influence in the East. Go on.”

“The Khutukhtu ruled with their help for several years. And then the king of the pee-lings was overthrown just like the Emperor of China. Is that true?”

“Yes,” he said.

“It is true.”

“When that happened, the Chinese returned to Mongolia. They forced the Khutukhtu to sign papers on which he renounced all power for himself. They imprisoned him in his palace. He is an old man now and blind. And his people no longer believe in him.

Zamyatin wants to take Lord Samdup to Urga and put him on the throne in his place.”

“You said the present Khutukhtu was no longer a suitable vehicle. That his people no longer believe in him. What did you mean?”

She seemed embarrassed to talk of such matters with him.

“I only know what Sonam has told me,” she said.

“The present Khutukhtu was born fifty years ago in a village just next to Lhasa.

From an early age he showed signs of unsuitability: there was a . tension between the man and the spirit he incarnated. It sometimes happens. It’s as though something goes wrong at the moment of incarnation.”

She paused, then plunged on.

“The Khutukhtu began to drink. He married, not once, but twice. His second wife is a slut: she invites men to her tent young men, trap as men who should know better. But he is worse. He sleeps with both men and women.”

“Some lamas complained about him a few years ago. They said he was bringing the faith into disrepute, that he was demeaning the office of Khutukhtu. He had them executed. Now no-one dares speak out against him.”

She looked at Christopher, uncertain what he would make of this.

“Do I shock you?” she asked.

“Do you think such a thing impossible?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know what’s possible in your world,” he replied.

“I see nothing strange in a man wanting to drink or have a woman. A man is just a man, whatever resides in him.”

She sensed the unvoiced implication of what he said that a woman too was just a woman, whatever men said resided in her.

“Such things happen sometimes,” she said.

“It was the case with the sixth Dalai Lama,” she said.

“The Great Fifth died while they were still building his palace in Lhasa, the Potala. For ten years, his Regent concealed his death from the people, saying he was in seclusion, meditating. When the sixth was finally discovered, he was a boy of about thirteen. He had lived in the world. He had smelt flowers. He had experienced desire.”

“They brought him to Lhasa and shut him up in the Potala. It was dark and gloomy, and he hated it. He wanted to live in the sunshine, among ordinary people and they made him dwell in the dark with only gods and priests for company.”

He could hear the sympathy in her voice. She was expressing her own longings, speaking her own thoughts.

“Later, when he was old enough to have some control over his own affairs, he began to go into the town at night, disguised as an ordinary man. He went to taverns and found women to sleep with.

And when the night was over, he slipped back to the darkness at the top of the Potala. He lived like that for years. And then the Chinese came. They took control of eastern Tibet. They garrisoned the road to Lhasa. And they killed the Dalai Lama.”

She fell silent.

“Didn’t the people have doubts about whether he was truly an incarnation?”

She shook her head.

“No,” she answered.

“They never doubted him. He was gentle.

Not like the Khutukhtu in Urga. Men said that he had two bodies - a real body and a phantom body. They said the real body stayed in the Potala while the phantom went round the taverns, testing their faith. He wrote poetry. Love songs. But his poetry was sad.

Like perfume on a dying man.”

She began to recite lines from one of his poems:

High in the Potala, I dwell alone within dark chambers, I am a god walking, I am an unearthly thing;

But when the narrow streets enfold me and I walk in shadows among other men, I am a thing of earth, a king of dancers, I am the world itself learning to sing.

In the silence that followed, she understood for the first time just how alone she had been. Not even the Lady Tara could substitute for the presence of flesh and blood. She tried to remember her mother’s face bending over her when she was tiny, but she could see nothing but shadows.

“I’m sorry for him,” said Christopher.

“He must have been very sad.”

She was looking down; not at him, not at anything.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“But perhaps no more sad than other Dalai Lamas, other incarnations. We all live lives like his. We’re all disfigured in the same way. Our bodies are pale, Christopher. Our flesh is like ice. Our lives are endless rituals.”

She looked up quickly, as though afraid he might have disappeared.

“In my whole life,” she said, “I have never smelt a flower. Only incense. Only butter-lamps. There are no flowers here.”

No flowers anywhere in this world, thought Christopher. Only snow.

Only ice. Only frost.

Chindamani got up and went across to the window. Like other windows on the top floor, it was glazed. She looked out into the darkness beyond, past her own reflection, past the reflection of the lamp, gazing out of a world of shadows into a world of shadows. It was not yet dawn, but the sky held the first signs of light. She stared into the darkness, at the still edge of the night.

“We come from darkness,” she said, ‘and we go back into darkness.”

The pee-ling confused her. He had turned everything upside down All her life she had known no other place than Dorje-la. For twenty years, she had watched the sun rise on the same mountains, prayed to the same gods, wandered the same corridors.

Silently, she returned to her seat.

“Ka-ris To-feh,” she said in a quiet voice, ‘do you love your son very much?”

“Of course.”

“What if you found a destiny?” she asked.

“Here, in these mountains. In Dorje-la perhaps. Would you turn aside from it in order to go home with your son?”

“Are you offering me a destiny?” he asked in return.

“Is that what this is about?”

“I don’t know,” she said simply, and he saw that her eyes were still troubled.

“What is it you want me to do?”

She fell silent and gazed into the little cup she held between her hands. If the cup broke, it could not be reborn. It would be gone forever. Not all things were permanent. Transience lay at the heart of everything.

“Take us away from Dorje-la,” she said.

“Samdup and myself.

Take us northwards. There is a monastery far to the north where Samdup will be safe. Your son will be safe there too until it is time for you to take him home. Will you help us?”

He hesitated. It would mean lengthening his journey and William’s considerably. And such a diversion would not be free from danger. Common sense said he should answer ‘no’. But he knew already he could not do that.

“How will we find the way?” he asked.

“I have a map. Sonam found it for me in the abbot’s library.”

He looked at her face, at her eyes. He could not look away.

“Very well,” he said.

“I’ll come with you. We’ll find your sanctuary.”

She smiled and stood.

“Thank you,” she whispered. Her heart felt as though a great weight had been lifted from it. Why, then, did she still feel so frightened?

There was a sound of a trumpet blaring outside.

“It’s time for me to go,” she said.

“I’ll come back later today. You need to sleep now. We don’t have much time. I think Zamyatin plans to leave here very soon.”

He stepped up close to her.

“Take care,” he said.

She smiled.

“Sleep well.”

He bent and kissed her gently on the forehead. She shivered and turned her face away.

“Goodbye, Ka-ris To-feh,” she said, then turned and went out by the secret entrance through which she had come in.

Christopher went to the window and gazed out. If he looked hard, he could just make out the shape of mountains emerging from the darkness.

He was dreaming of Carfax, and in the dream William came out to the gate to meet him. He saw him in the distance, waving, his tiny white hand making patterns against the sky. It had been so long, he thought, and Tibet had been so cold. How William must have grown, and how warm the fire in the library must have become. With every step he took, the boy grew bigger, and now here he was directly in front of him, not a boy at all but a man.

William’s hair had grown white at the temples, just like his own, and his face bore heavy lines, whether of grief or simple age he could not be sure. From nowhere in particular, a child’s voice recited in Christopher’s ear:

“You are old, little William,” his father said, “Andyour hair has become very white.

“And yet you incessantly wear it to bed “Do you sleep at your age every night?”

“You’ve been gone a long time, father,” William said.

“We thought you were dead. We thought you’d disappeared like grandfather.”

“I was dead,” answered Christopher.

“But now I’m alive again.”

“Are you?” asked William, smiling a little smile.

He waited for Chindamani all that day, but she did not come. Noone came, except for a young monk who brought him food on two occasions and left without saying a word. Once, in the late afternoon, he thought he heard the sound of voices raised in anger, but after a while they died away and left him once more in silence.

At sunset, the trumpet was not sounded. When the boy came to clear away his dishes, he seemed frightened, but he would not answer Christopher’s questions and left in a hurry.

He went to bed early, uneasy. For a long time he could not sleep. He strained for sounds in the night, but there was only the wind as always. He lay in the dark, wishing sleep would come. Or Chindamani, to banish it. And it came quietly, when he was not expecting it.

The next thing he was aware of was a figure bending over him in the dark. It was Chindamani, and her hand was clapped hard over his mouth. She put her lips to his ear and whispered fiercely.

“For all our sakes, Ka-ris To-feh, don’t make a sound. Get out of bed as quietly as you can, then follow me. Please don’t ask any questions, there’s no time.”

He sensed the urgency and the fear in her voice. Without hesitation, he slipped out of bed and stood up. On the table by the bed was the knife he had taken from his assailant of two nights ago. Bending down, he fumbled for his boots, but she pushed them into his hand. He snatched up the knife and thrust it into his boot.

Outside the door of his room, the corridor had been plunged into pitch darkness. Chindamani held his hand as before. She used her other hand to follow the wall. Somewhere, loud voices called;

there was a crashing sound, as though a large object had fallen.

He thought he could hear feet running and then grow still. He thought he heard someone cry out and fall silent again.

Chindamani fumbled in the darkness. Then there was a door and they went through it. He heard the sound of a match being struck, then a sudden flame stabbed the darkness. Chindamani lit a small butter-lamp and set it back on a low cabinet. Her hand was trembling.

The girl was terrified. A long cut on her forehead was bleeding quite badly. Christopher stretched out his hand to wipe away the blood. She winced and drew away from him.

“What’s happening?” he asked in a low whisper.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“I heard noises and went to investigate. There was someone in the corridor, one of the monks - I don’t know his name. He ... he told me to go back to my room, to stay there. He spoke to me as though he didn’t know who I was. Or didn’t care. I grew angry; I told him to mind his manners and explain what he was doing there. No-one is allowed on this floor without permission. He was carrying a stick. When I challenged him he just lifted it and struck me. I fell down. I think he was going to hit me again, I don’t know. Just at that moment someone called him from nearby and he left me.

“I went straight to your father’s chambers to look for help, but there was no-one there. At least .. .” She hesitated. He saw the lamplight twist about her face in a ragged, jittery sort of dance.

Her eyes looked frightened and blood ran over one eyebrow, matting its fine black hairs.

“There are several monks whose job is to serve the abbot,” she continued, collecting herself.

“They were all there. They .. .” She paused, leaning against the edge of the cabinet. Her hand touched the coiled tail of a sea-serpent. She had gone pale.

“They were dead,” she said in a hoarse voice. She shuddered, remembering. Christopher moved as though to take her in his arms and comfort her, but she flinched and held herself away from him.

It was too soon for comfort. Perhaps it would never be the right time for it. The blood had not yet dried on her forehead.

“There was .. . blood everywhere,” she stammered.

“The room was red with it, bright, bright patches of blood in every corner. It had run across carpets, cushions, everything. Pools of it had collected in hollows, little red pools. Their .. . their throats had been cut. Not gently, not cleanly, but with something large and heavy, a sword or a billhook, without hesitation. They were butchered like animals.”

“My father .. . Was he .. .?”

She shook her head, biting her lower lip fiercely with small white teeth.

“No,” she whispered.

“He wasn’t among them. I was afraid. But I stayed to look for him. I looked in all his rooms, but there was no sign of him Perhaps he has hidden somewhere. There are secret chambers, places he could take refuge. But I was frightened, I didn’t want to call out. It had sickened me, all that blood. I can’t tell you .. .” She shivered again, the memory taking her like an ague, filling her flesh with a dark, unexpungeable chill.

“Then I thought of Samdup and your son,” she said.

“I thought of them alone, not knowing what was happening. I ran up to the roof and got across to the lab rang but they were already gone.

Someone has taken them, Christopher. Perhaps they have already killed them. I’m frightened. I don’t know what to do.”

He gestured as if to comfort her again, but still she recoiled from his touch, not out of fear of him, but more from a simple dread of his humanity. The world had suddenly been brought close to her, and at this moment he was its nearest representative.

Christopher thought he knew what was happening. Zamyatin must have decided to act. To take control of Dorje-la alone would be a matter of little consequence to him. But to have both children and a base from which to manipulate them that would transform this little operation into something that could swing the political balance of Asia. But what had prompted his sudden action?

“Did you tell anyone of your plans to take Samdup away?” he asked.

She hesitated, then nodded slowly. -“Yes,” ‘she whispered.

“I told the abbot this morning. I wanted his permission to go.” She paused.

“He refused. He said he knew a little of Zamyatin and his plans, but that he was in control of the situation. He thought he could make use of Zamyatin.”

“Make use of him?”

She blinked and nodded again.

“Your father had his own plans, his own .. . dreams. Samdup was part of them, I think. And Zamyatin. And ... I think, your son.”

“What sort of plans?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know exactly. Dreams of power. Not for himself, but for the dharma, the doctrine of the Lord Buddha. Dreams of a barrier against all foreign interference, against Britain, against Russia, against China. There is a prophecy that when Dorje-la is ruled by a pee-ling, the world will be ruled from Dorje-la. Not literally, but in some sense. He believed that. He believed he had a destiny.”

“He talked of this to you?”

“A little,” she said.

“The rest I guessed. But I think it’s too late now. If you are right, if Zamyatin has taken control.”

“This morning,” Christopher continued, ‘were you overheard?

Or would my father have told anyone else?”

She hesitated, then a look of dismay came over her face.

“At one point Losang Khyongla was in the room. He’s the abbot’s secretary. He .. . I’ve just realized that he wasn’t among the dead men I found in your father’s quarters. You don’t think he .. .?”

Christopher nodded.

“Quite possibly. Anyway, that isn’t important now. We have to find out what’s going on. Do you have any idea where they might have taken my father and the boys?”

She thought briefly.

“The most likely place is Thondrup Chophel’s room. It’s a large room near the Lha-khang. Monks are often sent there to be punished. Thondrup and his assistants would take care of anything like that!”

“Who is Thondrup Chophel?” Christopher asked.

“He’s the Geku, of course. He keeps discipline in the monastery.

It’s normal for a Geku to be frightening. Some of the monks get out of hand. But I don’t like Thondrup. He’s .. .” She paused.

“Yes?”

“He can be brutal,” she said.

“The abbot has had to reprimand him several times for his severity. Once he broke a man’s arms, just because he made a mistake while reciting the Tangyur.”

“Why hasn’t he been replaced?”

She smiled wanly at him.

“This is Dorje-la,” she said.

“The Geku is never dismissed.

Discipline must come first. Broken bones can be mended.”

He looked back at her, his eyes full of concern.

“What about broken hearts?”

She sighed.

“Hearts are like cups of porcelain,” she whispered.

“Once they are broken, they can never be mended.” The smile left her face and she grew serious.

“Very well,” he said.

“We’ll visit Thondrup Chophel’s room. Can you get me there without being seen?”

She nodded.

“I think so.”

She lifted her hand nervously to her forehead. The blood had dried a little and the wound was beginning to sting.

They travelled by dark or partly-lit passages, creeping like mice in and out of shadows, listening for voices or footsteps. Occasionally there were sounds in the distance, and twice they had to take cover in darkened rooms until little bands of monks went past. They acted on the assumption that, if anyone was moving, he was unfriendly. On the lower floors, Zamyatin’s handiwork was in evidence. The bodies of his victims lay in untidy bundles everywhere. Some had had their throats cut, others had broken necks, and a few had died from injuries to the skull. It had been silent work, mute and bloody.

Chindamani explained in whispers that a limited number of monks received training in Chinese martial arts from Tsarong Rinpoche. These men had been foremost among those attracted to Zamyatin. She thought he exercised some sort of control over them through Tsarong Rinpoche.

As they neared the Lha-khang, a low droning sound came to their ears.

“Listen,” whispered Chindamani.

“They’re chanting hymns to Yama.”

“Who is Yama?” asked Christopher.

She looked at him oddly, a distant lamp catching fire in the black pupils of her eyes.

“He is the Lord of Death,” she answered simply, turning her face away.

They left the Lha-khang behind, but the sound of chanting followed them on heavy feet. At the far end of the corridor, they came to a red-painted door in the right-hand wall.

“Is this the only entrance?” asked Christopher.

She nodded.

They put their ears to the door, but no sounds could be heard from behind it. Christopher felt naked, with only the small knife to defend himself with.

“This is no good,” he said.

“We need weapons. These people mean business we can’t keep them off with our bare hands.”

She thought for a while, then nodded.

“All right,” she said.

“Wait in here.”

There was a small room nearby, where robes and other items were kept for use in the Lha-khang. Chindamani left Christopher there and hurried off down the corridor. Her feet made no sound on the cold stones; she might have been a shadow. He waited in the darkness for her, anxious and nervous, knowing that matters were reaching a climax.

She returned within five minutes carrying a short sword. It had come from the gon-kang, she explained. Most of the other weapons had already been taken.

They went back to the door of the Geku’s room and listened again. It was still silent. But from the Lha-khang the hymn to Yama continued. Christopher put his hand to the door and pushed.

Afterwards, Christopher often wondered why he had not cried out at that moment. Had the horror been too great for his mind to take in all at once? Or had he passed in a single instant beyond all ordinary horror, into another realm where silence was the only speech?

He felt Chindamani clutch his arm, but it was as if his flesh and her flesh both belonged in a world he had just left behind. Someone had lit lamps and hung them at intervals from the walls, so that eveything in the room stood out clearly.

Ropes had been tied to rafters in the ceiling, dozens of them, like creepers in a forest, hanging down from low branches into a bright clearing, bearing obscene and over-ripened fruit. The ropes were taut, and they twisted slowly in the shadows. Something heavy hung at the end of each one, a man’s body, turning ponderously in the gloom. The bodies hung like dummies in a tailor’s warehouse, anonymous, waiting to be displayed in a shop window in a distant town; or like rag dolls waiting for giant children to cut them down and play with them.

Christopher felt a terrible cold pass through him. All his body was filled with it, his veins flowed with ice. He remembered his dream of the girls hanging in the orphanage, the staring eyes turned to him, the red lips parted. But this was no dream.

He stepped into the room, walking slowly among the bodies, looking for one body among the rest. To one side he saw the stool on which the victims had been made to stand while they were despatched. He imagined a practised foot kicking the stool out from underneath each time, the body dropping, the face in agony as the rope bit into the neck. All the men’s hands had been tied behind their backs. Death had been slow and painful.

Suddenly, he heard Chindamani call out behind him, a cry of pain or horror. He whirled round, ready to run to help her. But it was too late. Tsarong Rinpoche held her firmly, one arm round her throat. In his free hand he held a pistol pointed at her head.

Behind him, in the doorway, stood a group of monks, all armed.

“Drop your weapon to the floor, Wylam-la,” the Rinpoche said.

“If you do not, the Lady Tara will have to look for a new body.”

“You were warned not to enter Tibet,” Tsarong Rinpoche said, addressing Christopher. His voice was sad, as though he found his position distasteful but unavoidable.

“You decided to ignore that warning. A boy died. Now your own life hangs in the balance. I would have saved you from all this. Remember that.”

But inwardly the Rinpoche was very pleased with himself. The gods had smiled at his efforts. The Russian was pleased and his masters in Moscow would send the assistance they had promised.

There would be no more fumbling now that he was in control. The gods would repay him abundantly. He turned to Chindamani.

“I’m sorry, my lady,” he said, ‘but I have instructions to bring you with me. If you behave yourself, no harm will befall you.” He removed his arm from her neck and let her move away from him.

She stepped back towards Christopher and took his hand tightly in her own.

“Were you responsible for .. . this?” She gestured towards the room behind her.

“The executions were necessary,” the Rinpoche said, ‘if there was to be no attempt to undo my work. Zam-ya-ting supervised them.

He has carried out such tasks before.”

“What about my father?” Christopher asked.

“Has he been harmed?”

Tsarong Rinpoche shrugged.

“He was the abbot,” he said.

“I could not leave him alive and hope to rule in his place. He was a trulku. It was time for him to be reborn.”

For the second time in his life, Christopher received news of his father’s death in silence. The old man had come back to him out of darkness and returned to it again, unrecognized, unforgiven, almost unremembered. Christopher was an heir to darkness now.

In the shadows behind him, the heavy bodies moved as a single body:

this was his inheritance and he knew it would soon be time for him to claim it.

“Was the Russian responsible for his death as well?”

The Rinpoche shook his head.

“No. I took care of it myself.” He paused.

“There is no time to talk. Zam-ya-ting would like to see you. You have been much on his mind since your arrival here.”

They set off at once, Tsarong Rinpoche leading the way, followed by Christopher and Chindamani, each with a monk at either arm.

As they walked, Christopher pondered on what had happened.

The work of clearing the monastery had been finished and Zamyatin was in complete control of that there could be little doubt.

Nominal leadership of the monastery had passed to Tsarong Rinpoche Christopher had already guessed that. But the controlling force, the hand on all the strings, would be Zamyatin’s. And beyond Zamyatin the new regime in Moscow.

They climbed towards the upper storey, passing bodies that had fallen on the stairs “What will you do with the men you have killed?” Christopher asked.

“How will you get rid of so many bodies?”

At first he thought the Rinpoche was not going to anwer. Then he spoke, his voice remote and unconcerned, as though he had been a schoolmaster, one of whose pupils had asked a question about the Great Plague: “How did they bury them all, sir?”

“There will be a great sky burial,” the Rinpoche said.

“The air will be black with vultures. It will take several days at least, but they are greedy birds and monks are thin meat.”

Christopher understood what he meant by a ‘sky burial’. In a country where there was little soil and less timber, corpses were seldom buried or burned. Instead, the bodies of the dead were taken out to high places and expertly dissected by men using butchers’ knives. The meat was given to the vultures and the bones pounded to fine powder before being mixed with the brain and offered as a final titbit. Christopher had once watched a vulture after such a feast, too heavy to lift itself from the ground, its great wings flapping obscenely in the silence of the hills.

Their path led inexorably to the top of the monastery, and at last to the long chorten hall, where the tombs stood silent in the half-light. Copper and gold and silver gave off a dull glow, like death. Waiting for them at the far end, bathed in candlelight, was a figure dressed all in black.

Zamyatin was dressed in the plainest of costumes: a cotton Chinese jacket and trousers. His hair was cropped short, not shaven like that of the monks. He sat cross-legged on a throne of cushions, for all the world like an incarnation of a deity from the underworld. Christopher remembered something Winterpole had said to him before he left, about how the Bolsheviks all but worshipped History, how they had made it into a divinity that ordered all things in their universe. Looking down the long hall at Zamyatin, he thought he saw History enthroned at last, the word made flesh again in a man.

Beside Zamyatin sat the two children, William and Samdup.

They were both clearly frightened, but were making a sustained effort to master their fear. William was wearing Tibetan clothes in which he was manifestly uncomfortable. Samdup wore an expensive brocade robe, and on his head he sported a blue pointed cap.

Both boys were staring sullenly at their feet.

Christopher could feel his heart pounding. With every step, he expected William to look up and recognize him. He raised a finger to his lips to tell his son not to make a sound, but he had to make an effort not to dash forward himself and embrace him.

Now they were within feet of the throne. Zamyatin did not take his eyes off them once. He watched them like a bird of prey that has seen its next victims and is waiting for the moment to swoop.

Christopher noticed that he had long, thin hands like claws. They lay on his lap without moving, like the hands of a waxwork figure in a museum.

Suddenly, Samdup glanced up and saw Chindamani. He cried out to her and rose to run in her direction, but Zamyatin reached out a long arm and pinned the boy by the wrist.

“Time enough, lambkin,” he said, ‘time enough.”

At that moment, William too looked up. He looked straight at Christopher without recognizing him immediately. Then Christopher smiled and the boy’s face altered in an instant.

“Father!” he cried.

Christopher stopped in his tracks, frightened to say or do anything. He knew he should run forward, but now the moment had come, something inward held him back. Was it an instinct that he should show no emotion in front of this man?

William cried out again and tried to rise. Zamyatin took his wrist too and held him tight by his side. He looked straight at Christopher. As he did so, a shadow passed over his eyes and was gone. It had only been there for a moment, but Christopher had felt the animosity like a physical blow.

They were only feet away now. Christopher stopped and fixed his eyes on Zamyatin. The Russian’s skin was pale, but his eyes were dark and quite alien to the rest of his face: they were restless, Oriental eyes, torrid, yet without real warmth. But it was the mouth rather than the eyes that betrayed the man. The lips were by nature soft, almost sensual; but he had trained them to a hardness that thinned and mutilated them. Whatever in him was given to softness, whatever inclined him to luxury, had been starved and beaten until it cringed like a whipped dog in the darkest corners of his personality.

“What is my son doing here?” demanded Christopher.

“I insist you free him at once.”

“You may speak only when I speak to you, Mr. Wylam,” said Zamyatin in a weary voice.

“If you do not understand, I will help you understand.”

“For God’s sake, the boy has been through enough! Willjou try to understand? You’ve got what you came here for. Let him go!”

Zamyatin said nothing. He simply raised one finger of his right hand and gestured with it to someone standing behind Christopher. Tsarong Rinpoche stepped forward, lifted a hand to Christopher’s neck, and pressed gently. The pain was excruciating.

Christopher cried out and clasped his neck: the skin was unbroken, but the nerves still throbbed with agony.

“I assure you, Mr. Wylam,” Zamyatin said, ‘that the new abbot of Dorje-la is not in the least like his predecessor. But you may have guessed that already.”

“What are you doing with Lord Samdup?” burst out Chindamani.

“Why have you taken him from his lab rang

Zamyatin reached out a thin hand and caressed the boy, running sharp fingers along his cheeks, as if he were a pet. The expression on his face mocked her.

“Samdup and I are learning to be friends. Aren’t we?” he replied.

But Samdup shifted uneasily, pulling away from his hand.

“The boy is tired and frightened,” Chindamani said.

“He should not be here. You have no right to be here, and no right to be with the boy.”

Zamyatin gave her a look that was like a slap across the face.

She reddened visibly as he snapped his answer.

“Don’t talk to me of rights, miss. All the privileges are gone. The people have taken this monastery. I am their representative.

Tsarong Rinpoche is Dorje Lama now. He will decide what rights and duties you have.”

Suddenly, Samdup leaned away from Zamyatin and appealed to Chindamani.

“Please, Chindamani,” he said.

“I don’t want to stay here. I don’t understand what’s happening. Where is the Dorje Lama? Who is this man?”

“I’m your friend,” Zamyatin said, raising his hand to stroke the boy again.

“You’re not my friend,” Samdup retorted.

“Chindamani is my friend. Please, Chindamani, take me with you. I don’t want to stay here.”

“He doesn’t want to be with you,” Chindamani snapped. She was not going to let herself be cowed by Zamyatin and his bullying.

“Let me take him with me. And the other child too. They both need to sleep. There are rooms on this floor we can go to. You needn’t worry we won’t escape. There’s nowhere to go.”

Zamyatin seemed to think it over.

“Very well, take them out of my sight for a while. Read them bedtime stories I hear you’re very good at it.”

He paused and turned to Tsarong Rinpoche.

“Take her and the boys. See they’re given comfortable quarters for tonight. And make sure they’re well watched. I’ll hold you responsible if you let them give you the slip. Now, all of you get out. I want to speak with Mr. Wylam alone.”

As William passed, Christopher smiled at him and reached out a hand to touch his cheek. The boy was crying, all elation at his father’s appearance dashed to nothing by the realization that Christopher was as helpless here as himself.

“Don’t worry, William,” Christopher called to him.

“We’re not done for yet. Keep your spirits up.” But his words sounded trite and hollow. Things could scarcely be worse.

The Rinpoche and his men went out silently, taking Chindamani and the boys with them. At the door, she turned to look at Christopher. Their eyes met for a moment, then someone pulled her by the arm and she was gone.

“I see you like the girl,””Zamyatin said.

He spoke in English now, relaxed, urbane, mocking. The disinherited nobleman had picked up a veneer of sophistication somewhere along the way. Or had his urbanity come with the blood and the Slavic lips?

“She’s very nice, I don’t blame you. I toyed with the idea myself at one point. But women are a distraction you should know that.”

“A distraction from what? From murder?”

“From real life, of course. From the things that matter. Here, come and sit near me. It’s time we talked.”

Christopher took a cushion and sat facing Zamyatin, but he kept his distance: he wanted no intimacy with this man.

The Russian looked directly into his eyes.

“Your loyalty has impressed me, Major Wylam,” he said.

“I am not given to sentiment, but I will admit that this has taken me by surprise. Clearly, it does not pay to discount the baser emotions.

You have my congratulations. And my sympathy. Though perhaps you rather think yourself in need of neither.”

Christopher said nothing.

“Believe me,” Zamyatin continued, ‘your son was not taken from you gratuitously. It may have seemed that way to you, of course.

But I assure you, higher issues were at stake than you can possibly comprehend. I would not expect you to support the ends for which your boy was kidnapped. But I do expect you to acknowledge that what was done was done for the highest reasons. Not for profit or sensual gratification, but for the very highest of motives. You may condemn the action, but you must understand the justification.”

Christopher was growing angrier every moment.

“I’m the boy’s father!” he exploded.

“How the hell do you expect me to tolerate what you’ve done? Nothing gives you the right to kidnap a child and drag him off half-way across the world.

Nothing.”

“I’m sorry to hear you say that, Major. I had expected at least some acknowledgement of sympathy for my position. We are both professional men, you and I. You work for a country, I work for a cause. If I were an enemy soldier, surely I would be entitled to your respect. But I am fighting for a cause that stands above all petty particularities of race or nation the very prejudices that led to the world war. And yet you refuse to accord me the honour you would accord an enemy soldier.”

“Soldiers risk their lives in battle. You plot the snatching of a child from a safe distance. You send other men to do your dirty work for you.”

The Russian’s cheeks flushed. He stared hard at Christopher.

“And you Major Wylam when did you last go into battle? How many men have you killed or had killed in the course of your intelligence operations? How many agents have you instructed to kill on your behalf? For the common good. For the sake of the Empire. Don’t talk to me about morality. If your superiors told you to kidnap a Russian child tomorrow in the belief that it would help overthrow our revolutionary government, I don’t believe you would hesitate for a moment.”

Christopher said nothing. The horror was that Zamyatin was right. Higher necessity had dogged Christopher’s footsteps for every inch of his career in intelligence. In their gilded tombs, the sleeping dead listened. Light played on gold and bronze. Christopher felt the blade of the knife against his leg, pressing into his skin.

“Come to the point,” said Christopher.

“You haven’t asked me to stay for a cosy chat. What do you want from me?” He eased himself into a position from which he could more easily reach the handle of the knife.

Zamyatin moved his hands for the first time, lifting them from his lap and placing them together, palm to palm in front of him in an almost religious gesture. Oddly enough, it did not seem out of place for him to do so, even if he himself was a living contradiction of his surroundings.

“All I ask from you is a little help, a little information,” he said.

“You were an important man. Not so very long ago, you occupied a leading position with British intelligence in India. You have been deeply involved with your country’s plans for the region north of the Himalayas. You are a mine of information.

“Frankly, Major Wylam, I regard your presence here as an enormous bonus. When I first had investigations made into you and your son, I had no idea who you might be. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found such a central figure in an area of intelligence so close to my own heart Perhaps there are gods after all. Perhaps they are smiling on me.”

“I no longer work for British intelligence.” He scratched his knee, letting the fingers of his right hand move down towards the knife handle.

“I disagree. How did you get to India so quickly? Who told you where to go, what to look for?”

Christopher was nervous. A year was not very long. He still possessed information that could prove invaluable to Zamyatin and to the communist cells in India.

“Why should I tell you anything?” he said.

Zamyatin smiled.

“Please don’t insult my intelligence, Major. The cards are stacked against you: I beg you to bear that in mind. Your son has served his function. Admittedly, there are other uses to which I may be able to put him. But I have been weighing those up against the information I know you must possess. Your son may be more valuable to me dead than alive. Think about that, please.”

“If he dies, you can expect nothing from me.” Hidden by a thin shadow, Christopher’s fingers had found the top of the knife and were easing it upwards gently.

“Of course. I’m not a fool. But remember that death can be very slow And remember that there is an alternative. Your father made a deal with me. I am willing to make one with you. At the price of a little information hard information you may buy your son’s life.”

“He’s only a child, for God’s sake!”

“We are all children. You, me, your son. Men are still infants, silly and immature. The world grows up very slowly, very slowly indeed. We will only reach adulthood when a new society is created on earth. That is why I must be so hard now.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child” isn’t that what you say?

“I must be cruel to be kind.”

“You can bend a sapling, but not a tree.” You English have so many ways of expressing the idea.”

“And what happened tonight,” Christopher retorted warmly, ‘was that bending saplings?”

“Listen to me,” Zamyatin said.

“Your world is gone. The old order is being rolled up. A new one is being spread out in its place.

When a building has been declared unsafe, you don’t waste time papering over the cracks and putting nails in the plasterboard.

You knock it down. And you use the rubbish as a foundation for a new building. Don’t you see? it doesn’t matter if blood is spilt or sons lose their fathers or mothers lose their daughters. They will all become rubble for the foundations.”

He looked at Christopher with a look almost of entreaty.

“You can choose which you want to be,” he said, ‘part of the rubble or part of the new edifice.”

“What if I want to be neither?” Christopher asked. The handle of the knife was out of his boot. He began to ease the blade out, a fraction at a time.

“You do not have that choice. You must be one or the other.

That has been decided for you by the dialectic of history. None of us has any say in the matter. We can only choose which side to throw in our fortunes with.”

“Did any of the monks you killed tonight have a choice? Were they asked whether they wanted to join your revolution?”

Zamyatin shook his head slowly. He was like a man who carried a heavy weight on his shoulders. He saw himself as a man of sorrows.

“This is not the revolution, Major Wylam. This is not even the first stirrings of the revolution. There is no urban proletariat here, no capitalist system to be overthrown. Only gods and demons and priests.”

He sighed, as though he had spent his life bowing and scraping at dark altars, lighting candles at the feet of old gods.

“They need new leaders,” he went on, ‘men who will lead them away from their superstitions. You want to give them schools and law courts and cricket pitches. But they already have books and laws and games. What they need is freedom. Freedom from oppression. Freedom from injustice. Freedom from want.”

“And you will give them that?”

“We will make it possible. They will grant freedom to themselves.”

“What about the freedom to choose?”

Zamyatin’s eyes flashed.

“They will have that along with the rest. But first they have to be weaned from their feudalism. That will be a painful process.

Many will die before it is finished. But every death will bring the masses a step closer to liberation. It is inevitable. The forces of history are on our side.”

Like a true believer with his rosary or prayer-wheel, Zamyatin muttered the formulae of his own liturgy, invoking History in his days of gracelessness. Christopher remembered now what Winterpole had said to him: The Bolsheviks speak of historical inevitability in the way your Jesuits talk of perfect obedience. History has no feelings: no pity, no love, no hate, no elation, no bitterness. It moves on an appointed course. And God help those who get in its way.

Christopher felt trapped, morally and emotionally. He had come so far to save his son, but to do so he would have to betray innocent men and women elsewhere. Zamyatin would not be content to be fobbed off with a few crumbs of insignificant information. He would find ways of checking whatever Christopher told him, he would have questions to which he would expect reasonable answers. And when Christopher had completed his betrayals, what guarantee did he have that the Russian would honour his word?

People were pawns to him, and Christopher did not imagine for a moment that Zamyatin would want to waste time ensuring his safety or that of his son.

“I need time to think,” he said. He had the knife now. He held it by the tips of his fingers, ready to leap on the Russian.

Zamyatin pursed his lips. The candles were burning low. Beyond the windows, night was in control.

“I can’t give you time,” he said.

“I have none to give. You will have to make your mind up tonight. Tomorrow I leave for Mongolia. The Tibetan boy is about to be made a god. Your son comes with me, though whether he survives the journey or not depends on you. I hope you understand me, Major Wylam.”

“I understand.” Christopher stood up.

“I will see you are taken to your room. If there is anything you need, the steward will see it is brought to you.”

“Tell me,” Christopher said, ‘why did you kill so many people?

You had made an arrangement. You had what you wanted. Was it necessary to massacre them?”

Zamyatin stood up and took a step towards Christopher.

“Your father went back on his agreement,” he said.

“He told me to leave, ordered his monks to throw me out. I rather feared something of the sort might happen when I heard Tsarong Rinpoche had brought you here. Your father allowed emotions to creep in. Half a lifetime subduing his passions and then a moment’s inadvertence. He was as much a child as any of us. I had no time to argue. Do not make the same mistake he did.”

Christopher decided he would not. He took firm hold of the knife, lifted it, and sprang for Zamyatin. The blade slashed through the Russian’s sleeve, tearing the cloth away from his arm, as he spun himself sideways. Christopher fell flat on the cushions, righting himself as he toppled, holding the knife away from himself, aiming it at Zamyatin.

The Russian had landed on his side awkwardly. Cushions impeded his movements, getting in his way as he struggled to wriggle away from Christopher. Christopher made a second lunge-.

Zamyatin caught his arm in his left hand, gasping as he forced the point of the knife back from his chest. It was less than an inch away. Christopher fought to drive it home, bearing down heavily on his opponent. He felt rage explode in him like a sudden storm, giving him strength, but weakening his judgement. He swore as Zamyatin brought a knee up, thudding into his stomach and throwing him backwards. He toppled into a row of candles, knocking them over on to the cushions. A piece of fine cloth caught fire, flaring up and setting light to the cushion beside it.

Christopher grunted as the Russian rolled over on top of him.

He still held the knife, but his arm was pinned down by Zamyatin’s knee. In spite of appearances, the Russian was a trained fighter.

Christopher brought his left arm up to his opponent’s throat, pushing him up and back. But Zamyatin’s own hands were free.

He struck Christopher hard against the side of his neck, causing him to stiffen and drop the knife from nerveless fingers.

Zamyatin picked up the knife and brought it down slowly until it touched Christopher’s neck. It pricked the skin, drawing blood.

Behind them, the fire was taking hold of the cushions. An acrid smoke had begun to billow round them, making them both splutter.

The Russian intended to kill him. Christopher could see it in his eyes. He was breathing heavily, the simple fury of pain giving way to a deeper rage. It was suddenly clear to Christopher that Zamyatin hated him. He remembered the look in Zamyatin’s eyes when he had entered, the animosity that filled them. And he realized the reason for it. The Russian, abandoned by his own father, hated him because of his love for William. History be damned, he thought, the bastard’s just trying to get back at his father.

Suddenly, there was a sound of running footsteps. Someone had seen the flames. A group of monks ran up. One of them had had the presence of mind to rip down a heavy hanging, which he tossed on to the flames. The others stamped at isolated pockets of flame or threw untouched cushions aside, out of the path of the fire.

Within less than a minute, the blaze had been brought under control.

With so many candles extinguished and without the fire, it was dark in the chorten hall. Zamyatin remained kneeling on Christopher, the knife hard against his throat. A thin trickle of blood ran down Christopher’s neck to the floor.

The monks fell silent and gathered in a tight circle about the two men. Christopher sensed the struggle in Zamyatin’s mind. He wanted to kill Christopher; but he knew the value of the information he could obtain from him. Gradually, his breathing grew lighter and his grip slackened on the handle of the knife. Abruptly, he took the knife away and stood.

“Get up!” he snapped.

Christopher rose painfully to his feet.

Zamyatin looked at him.

“You have a few hours, Wylam. What you decide to do is up to you. But rest assured that your son will suffer if you refuse to cooperate. I want names, addresses, codes, and methods of operation.

I require full details of all intelligence your people have gathered on the Indian communists. I’d like to know about what your man Bell is up to in Tibet. You can fill in the rest yourself. Give me as much or as little as you want: your boy will be treated accordingly.

So much as one little trick, so much as a single false lead, and I’ll slit the little bastard’s throat with your own knife.”

He turned and spoke rapidly to one of the monks.

“Take him to his apartment. Lock the doors and put guards on them. If there’s a secret entrance, find it and block it up. If he escapes, I’ll hold you personally responsible and, by God, you’ll pay for it. Bring him back first thing in the morning.”

His voice echoed among the tombs and died away. It would be morning in another seven hours.

William was frightened. The sensation was, of course, nothing new to the boy. He had been frightened ever since that moment when the men had come for him after church. Time had ceased to have any meaning since then, and he could not have said how long had passed. All he knew was that what had started as a bad dream had become an unending nightmare out of which he desperately longed to awaken.

He remembered every incident of the past weeks with a vividness beyond his years: the murder of Father Middleton, the men bundling him into the car, the mad drive through snow and fog to a port somewhere. Then they had transferred to a boat, the three men still bad-tempered and uncommunicative. He had been particularly frightened of the third man, the thin one who gave the orders. They had sailed into a storm, almost foundering among waves the height of houses. He had no idea where they had landed.

Only the thin man had accompanied him the rest of the way.

An aeroplane had been waiting for them at a field not far from the beach where they had come ashore. They had flown north at first he knew how to work out directions from the sun and the pole star and then due east. From what he knew of geography, he thought they were flying over Russia. They landed often to refuel and several times to carry out repairs on the aircraft. After a while, they began to go south.

He had been exhausted on their arrival in India, but he had hated the orphanage they took him to, even though it meant he could sleep in a bed. He could never think of the Reverend Carpenter without a shudder. The journey afterwards had been terrible. Mishig, the man in charge of the small caravan, was a brute, and he had made William’s life a misery.

In the monastery, nothing seemed real to him. Everywhere, there were frightening pictures and statues, everywhere thin men with shaven heads who stared at him as though he were something in a circus. The old man who spoke English and said he was William’s grandfather had told him not to be afraid, but he could not help it: he was alone and bewildered and lost. Not even the other boy, who spoke to him in a language he could not understand, or the lady, who had spoken to him with the help of his grandfather, had been able to calm his fears.

But tonight had been the worst time of all. They had come for him and the other boy, Samdup, in the middle of the night, dragging them over that terrible bridge. He had seen men being killed, dozens of them. Then he had seen his father brought in, and that had destroyed his last hope. If his father was in the hands of these people too, then who was going to come for him, to rescue him?

Chindamani had persuaded Tsarong Rinpoche to let her take the children to her room. Two guards had been posted at the door, neither of whom was known to her. The Rinpoche had left with a warning that he would be back early in the morning.

Her old nurse Sonam was there. Chindamani had found her hiding beneath the bed where she had left her. The old ama-la had been Chindamani’s constant companion since the day the little girl had been brought to Dorje-la from the village in Tsang province where she had been born. That had been sixteen years ago.

Sonam had been an old woman even then; now she was positively ancient. She had served two incarnations of the Lady Tara, bathing and feeding them as infants, passing on her love to them as children, sorting out the problems of puberty, and listening to their troubles as women. Twenty years ago she had embalmed Chindamani’s predecessor and clothed her in her finest garments before placing her in the small chorten long reserved for her in the Tara temple. Four years later they had brought Chindamani to her, a tiny girl pathetically clutching a wooden doll and pleading to be sent back to her mother. The doll was still there, well worn and unlovely now. So was the little girl.

“What can we do, ama-la?” Chindamani asked the old woman.

Her own initiative seemed to have evaporated since the moment she stood in Thondrup Chophel’s room watching the hanging bodies bob in the shadows. She had told Sonam almost nothing of what she had seen, enough to satisfy the old woman’s curiosity but not enough to frighten her.

“Do71 What can we do?” splutterd the old crone. Little black eyes darted about like fish in a face as dry as parchment. She still wore her hair in the traditional one hundred and eight plaits, but over the years the plaits had become thinner and thinner, not to say greasier and greasier. Her mouth had long been untenanted, but she never grumbled, she had lived on tea and tsampa all her life and had never tasted let alone craved for either flesh or fish.

Between her hands she held a prayer-wheel, which she was nervously turning with her gnarled fingers.

“You say Tsarong Rinpoche has deposed the pee-ling trulku,” she went on.

“Pah! That won’t last long. The pee-ling’s more than a match for him.

I knew that Tsarong when he came here as a boy.

He was always a nasty bit of work. He used to pull the wings off flies, then the legs, then the heads. A methodical little bastard he was. When he was beaten for it, he’d say he’d done the flies a favour perhaps they’d be reincarnated as something better:

dragonflies or butterflies or bats. He’s vicious, but he isn’t

popular.

They won’t stand for him. The Dorje Lama will soon be back in charge.”

Chindamani sighed heavily. She hadn’t wanted to cause the old woman pain. But she had to know something of the truth.

“The Dorje-Lama is dead, ama-la,” she whispered.

“Dead? How?”

Chindamani explained what Tsarong Rinpoche had told her. It was not easy, and when she came to an end she found she was crying. Samdup watched her, the sense of horror and outrage growing in him.

“Murdered?” Sonam repeated.

“Oe! This will cost Tsarong Rinpoche a hundred lifetimes! He’ll come back a wingless fly, wait and see And if he does, I’ll stamp on him.” But the anger and the raillery were a facade. Deep down, the old woman’s world was being smashed. She had taken time to get used to the pee-ling trulku, but in the end she had grown fond of him.

“We’re all in danger, ama-la. There’s a man here from the north, a Burial. He wants to take Lord Samdup and the pee-ling trulku’s grandson away.”

“And you, my jewel what do they want with you?” The old nurse stretched out a leathery hand and stroked Chindamani’s hair gently.

“I think Tsarong Rinpoche will have me killed as well,” answered Chindamani as calmly as she could.

“He knows that, if I chose, I could still rally the monks round me, that I could put an end to his games. But he won’t allow that. Nor will the Burial.” She paused, taking Sonam’s hand in hers and clasping it hard.

“They won’t touch you!” exclaimed Samdup, rising and crossing to Chindamani.

“I won’t let them. They need me. I won’t do what they say if they hurt you.”

Chindamani took the boy’s hand.

“Thank you Samdup. I know you would do everything you could. But you wouldn’t be able to stop them. Tsarong Rinpoche is frightened of me. I have power he does not possess: I’m an incarnation, he is not.”

“But I’m a incarnation! I can .. .”

“Yes, Samdup, love; but you’re also a child. The Dorje Lama was an incarnation, but they killed him. Others would not have killed the Dorje Lama. Remember how they brought you back when you tried to escape with Tobchen Geshe.”

Samdup frowned and sat down again, remembering his helplessness on that occasion, how easily Thondrup Chophel had escorted him back to Dorje-la.

Chindamani turned to face Sonam again.

“Listen, ama-la,” she said.

“Listen carefully and don’t fidget. I have to escape. And I have to take the children with me.”

“Alone? You and the boys? You’d never make it out of the pass.”

“Not alone,” said Chindamani.

“They haven’t killed the Dorje Lama’s son. At least .. .” She paused.

“They hadn’t killed him when we were sent away. If I can get to him ... I have clothes and provisions already hidden for a journey.”

“And how will you get out of Dorje-la?” the old woman croaked.

She knew all about Christopher. For two days now, Chindamani had talked about little else.

“No-one will be asleep tonight. You know it’s impossible to climb down even with ropes. You haven’t got wings, you aren’t birds. Is this Ka-ris To-feh a magician? Can he fly like Padma-Sambhava?

Or perhaps he’s a lung-pa who can run hundreds of miles in a day and be away from this place before they know he’s gone?”

“No,” said Chindamani, shaking her head.

“He’s none of those things.”

“Neither am I,” muttered the nurse.

“Neither are you, for that matter. Just because the Lady Tara .. .”

“Leave the Lady Tara out of this, Sonam,” Chindamani retorted.

“I never mentioned magic and I’m not mentioning it now.”

“Well you’ll need magic if you’re to get out of this place without being seen. And more magic to get away before that Tsarong Rinpoche comes chasing after you. Rinpoche indeed! He’s no more a Rinpoche than I’m a yak’s backside.” The old dame chuckled;

she wouldn’t be put down by her ward, even if she was an incarnation of the Lady Tara.

“Ama-la, this is serious. We can’t afford to wait. Surely you must know some way out, some way even I don’t know. A secret passage through the rock, perhaps. Didn’t you mention .. .?”

“Mention? What did I mention? I mentioned nothing.” Sonam had become serious suddenly. Her little eyes would not hold still for a moment. She could not look Chindamani in the face. She knew what the girl was going to ask.

“Please think, Sonam dear,” Chindamani exhorted her.

“Years ago, when I was a little girl, you told me of a passage that had been constructed when they built Dorje-la, a secret tunnel connecting the monastery to the pass. It went down through the mountain, you said. Is it true? Is there a passage?”

The old woman seemed to shiver.

“No,” she said.

“There’s no such passage. I was telling fibs, stories for a little girl. You shouldn’t listen to everything your old ama-la tells you.”

But Chindamani knew her nurse too well to be fooled for an instant.

“Ama-la, please you’re lying now. What you told me was the truth, I can tell it in your voice. Please don’t lie to me. There isn’t time. Where is the passage? How can I get to it?”

Sonam took Chindamani’s hand in hers and began to knead it with her fingers. She was visibly frightened.

“I swore I’d never tell anyone,” she said.

“Your last body told me. I don’t know who told her.”

The little woman took a deep breath. Her pulse was racing and she was sweating.

“There’s a passage beneath the gon-kang,” she whispered. Chindamani had to lean close to hear her. Samdup came across and sat next to her. William watched from his seat next to the wall. He wished he knew what they were talking about. He could sense the fear and excitement in their voices, but he could not understand a word of what they said.

“It runs for about one hundred yards. Then there’s a flight of stairs cut through the rock, into the mountain. They’re known as the stairs of Yama, I don’t know why. They lead down to a spot below the pass, out of sight of the monastery. They were built in the days of the old kings, thousands of years ago.”

Chindamani guessed that the ‘old king’ had been Lang Darma and that the stairs had been constructed as an escape route from the gompa so that the abbot could get to safety in the event of an attack by the royal forces. That had been hundreds of years ago, when the Buddhist faith was in danger of being stamped out all over the country.

Samdup clapped his hands excitedly.

“But that’s perfect,” he exclaimed.

“Chindamani knows lots of secret ways to the gon-kang. All we have to do is to get there and we’re safe. They’ll never know which way we’ve gone.”

But the old woman shook her head furiously. She shook it so hard it looked as though her neck would snap and send it spinning off into Chindamani’s lap.

“No, my Lord, no!” she cried.

“You mustn’t go that way. I haven’t told you everything.” She paused again, as if gathering courage to say more.

“Hundreds of years ago,” she began, ‘when the first Chqje came here, he brought a great treasure from Lhasa gold and silver and precious jewels, to be made into his trance garments. You’ve seen him wear them in the Lha-kang when he enters the holy state and is ridden by the gods.”

The Chqje was the Oracle of Dorje-la. In a state of mystic trance, he could enter into communication with the spirits or the gods themselves and pass on messages to other men. The ceremonies at which he appeared took place only a few times every year, but they were by far the most exciting events in the monastery’s calendar.

His regalia was indeed impressive: the great hat, so heavy that it needed two men to support it until the Chqje rose in his trance, was a mass of rubies, emeralds, and amethysts; the Oracle throne on which he sat was studded with gems of every description, and its frame was encased in solid gold. The great mirror of divination that he wore on his chest was made of solid silver and encircled with precious stones of the finest quality.

“Have you never wondered,” the ama-la continued, ‘where those precious things are left when they are not in use? Have you never wanted to look more directly at them?”

Chindamani shook her head. The Oracle’s performances in the incense laden gloom of the Lha-khang had always filled her with a state of dread, and she had never sought closer contact with the darkly numinous world he represented.

“Only a few people know that particular secret,” the old woman whispered.

“The Chqje himself, his assistants, and the abbot. And myself, of course though none of them has ever known that I know.”

Chindamani interrupted.

“I always assumed they were left in the Chqje’s own room. Or perhaps in the old temple hall where he goes to meditate.”

Sonam shook her head.

“That’s what most people think. But they’ve been somewhere else all the time. In a small chamber just below the gon-kang.”

She looked up into Chindamani’s eyes. The girl could see the fear in the old woman’s glance, quite unmistakable now, steadying its grip on her. She felt it herself now, naked, tangible, calling her to itself.

“To get to the tunnel that leads to the stairs,” the ama-la said, ‘you have to pass through the chamber in which the Oracle treasures are kept. Do you understand? You have to go through the Chqje’s chamber.”

“Ama-la, I don’t understand,” pleaded Chindamani.

“What’s wrong with going through the chamber? I won’t touch the Chqje’s jewels. We’ll leave them exactly as they are. We won’t even look at them closely. The gods won’t be offended. What danger could there be in our just passing through the chamber?”

The old woman shuddered. Chindamani felt her own flesh creep.

What was the ama-la frightened of?

“Don’t you see?” Sonam pleaded. Her voice had become whining, trembling with fear.

“They put a guardian down there. Long ago, when they put the treasures there, they set a guardian over them.

It’s been there for more than five hundred years. It’s still there.”

“What sort of guardian?” Chindamani asked, struggling to fight down the sensation of nausea in her stomach.

“I don’t know,” Sonam protested. The old woman had frightened herself more than she had expected.

“Does it matter? It’s down there, whatever it is.”

“How does the Chqje get his regalia? He has to go down there three times a year, doesn’t he? Why doesn’t this guardian harm him or his assistants?”

“I don’t know. He must have some power over it. He has magical powers. More than you, my Lady. And more than that Tsarong Rinpoche.”

“I don’t have magical powers, ama-la. I have told you that often enough.” Nor did she believe that anyone else possessed them; but that was an opinion she kept firmly to herself.

“Tell me, Sonam,” she went on, ‘does anyone know what this guardian looks like?”

The old woman snorted.

“Of course. The Chqje knows. The abbot knows. At least .. .”

she halted, remembering the news Chindamani had just brought.

“At least he did know. And the Chqje’s assistants know. That’s all.

I’m sure that’s all.”

Chindamani sighed. She had no wish to distress the old woman further; but she had already seen the bodies of the Chqje and his three assistants among those hanging from the ceiling in Thondrup Chophel’s room.

She made her mind up.

“We’ll have to risk it,” she said.

“If the Chqje and his assistants could go in there without coming to harm, so can we.”

The old woman put her face in her hands and began to moan, rocking backwards and forwards.

“Please, ama-la,” pleaded Chindamani.

“There isn’t time for this.

Trust me. The Lady Tara won’t let me come to harm.”

But the old woman paid no attention. Her moaning was becoming more intense as the reality of their situation mingled in her mind with a lifetime’s fantasies about the supernatural horrors of the universe she inhabited.

Chindamani turned to Samdup.

“Samdup,” she said, ‘please look after the pee-ling boy. Try to tell him not to be frightened. And look after Sonam as well. Tell her there’s nothing to worry about. Ask her to help you get our clothes and equipment ready. I’ve put everything in that large chest. Take it all out and sort it into piles. There won’t be time to waste later.

I can’t help you: I have to go to find Ka-ris To-feh.”

But the boy just sat rigid on his seat, staring at her.

“What’s wrong, Samdup?” she replied.

“I’m frightened,” the boy said.

“I don’t want to go to the gonkang tonight. And I don’t want to go through any tunnels.”

Chindamani went across and sat down beside him.

“I’m frightened too, Samdup,” she whispered.

“But we both have to be brave. It’s very important for you to be brave tonight. Like you were when you tried to get to Ghaloring with Tobchen Geshe.”

“But I wasn’t brave then, Chindamani. When Tobchen Geshe was lost, I got very frightened and cried.”

“I know,” she said, putting a hand on the boy’s head.

“But you had reason to be afraid. You were alone and in very real danger. If Thondrup Chophel had not arrived when he did, you might have died.”

“But Thondrup Chophel frightened me more than anything!”

“Only at first. After that, you were just unhappy. But you weren’t in danger. Now, tonight you are in danger. No-one’s going to try to kill you, you’re worth too much to them. But a time may come when they decide it would be in their interests to get rid of you. That’s why we both have to get away tonight. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I see, but .. .”

“There’s nothing to be frightened of in the gon-kang.” She leaned across and whispered quickly in his ear, “And I wouldn’t worry about old Sonam’s story. It’s just an old tale; there’s nothing down there.”

But privately, she was worried. It might not be the sort of horror the old nurse imagined, but someone could have prepared a nasty surprise for them.

She squeezed Samdup’s hand tightly and smiled. The boy smiled back hesitantly. She went over to William, wishing she could say even a few words in his language to reassure him. All she could say was his father’s name, Ka-ris To-feh, but she could not be sure that he understood what she meant. She smiled and kissed him lightly on the forehead. He tried a small smile in return, but he was still frightened.

She crossed the room to a large lacquer chest. Inside, she kept the things she had put away for their journey: clothes for the four of them, a tent, food and a bag of fuel stolen from the kitchens, and money. She had never used money in her life, but she understood its purpose and knew it would be safer to carry than gold or jewels, the only other form of portable wealth she possessed. The money had been obtained through Sonam, who had ways of laying her hands on just about anything.

Chindamani put on a heavy man’s robe that still allowed her some freedom of movement, unlike a chuba. She said a few more reassuring words to her old nurse, smiled at the boys again, and went to the window.

Once, long ago, when she was a little girl, she had discovered that a narrow ledge ran along the side of the upper storey, just below the windows. She had tried walking along it to a room nearby, where one of her teachers lived, but had been discovered and severely punished by Sonam. Now she prayed for enough balance to make it as far as Christopher’s room, which was on the same side of the gompa as her own.

The cold bit into her face and hands like slivers of ice burrowing beneath the skin. Slowly, she lowered herself down to the ledge and found it nearer than she had expected: she had forgotten to make allowances for the couple of feet she had grown since her last venture outside But if the ledge felt nearer, it also felt narrower much narrower than the bridge to the lab rang and hard up against the wall.

The wind was worse than the cold. It blew across the face of the monastery, as it hurtled through the pass out of nowhere and into nowhere. The dark and cold and wind conspired against her, to blind and numb and snatch her away into the void. Within seconds, the light and warmth of the room had become a distant memory, and one that she had to drive from her mind by an effort of will. All her energies, all her thoughts were concentrated now on one thing, how to survive the next few minutes.

She moved inches at a time, never allowing her feet to leave the ledge, sliding across to the left, hands flat against the wall. The stone was uneven: plaster had fallen away in places, making it difficult to judge the surface. The wall and the ledge and the black void at her back had become the entire world for her. There was no other world, neither in memory nor in prospect. She edged her way along the ledge for no other reason than that she was there:

all other reasons, all other motivations had vanished.

Suddenly, her left foot slipped and she started to topple sideways. For long moments she hung poised, all her weight on the right foot, desperately fighting against the awful pull of gravity that was trying to bear her down and give her to the wind. Her frozen fingers clutched at bare stone, blindly searching for the tiniest crack to hold on to.

Part of the ledge had given way. Perhaps it had always been that way she could not remember how far she had got the last time. The problem was: just how wide was the gap? Six inches? A foot? Ten? She was carrying nothing with which to test the distance. In the pitch dark, she could see nothing. If she tired and misjudged, she would lose her balance and fall to her death on the rocks below. If she returned for something to measure the gap, she knew she would lose her nerve and be unable to climb back out again.

Gingerly, holding her weight on her right leg, pressing hard against the wall for maximum balance, she edged her left foot out again, feeling for the resumption of the ledge. The wind whistled in her ears, distracting her. It tugged at her body, trying to tear her away from the wall. Her heart shuddered inside her chest.

Her weight was already beginning to shift, and she still had not found the next stretch of ledge. She wanted to bend her right knee, to bring her torso lower, but that would only push her out further from the wall. Sweat poured out of her. On her face and the palms of her hands, it turned almost instantly to ice. She shivered and felt herself teeter on the edge of balance. Still nothing. She could not be sure just where to put her left foot down. The muscles of her right leg were pulling badly. A vicious pain shot up her thigh;

the leg felt as though about to go into cramp. Still nothing. She wanted to scream, to break the tension somehow, to relax her muscles.

She moved her left arm just a fraction, then her right. She stretched another inch left wards with her foot. Still nothing. Inside her brain, an insidious voice was repeating: “Let go, let go, let go!”

She wanted to drop, to let the void solve all her problems. Why not?

The Lady would find another body. Still nothing.

In another fraction of an inch she would have reached her limit.

And already she was frightened that, without realizing it, she had passed a point of no return, where no effort on her part would rectify her state of imbalance and return to her starting position.

Her right leg was screaming in agony, it could not possibly support the strain of moving back. She moved the final fraction. Still nothing. She moved again.

She felt her balance go. One second she was static, just holding on; the next she was out of control, moving, lurching into the darkness.

Her toe caught the corner of the ledge and held. Just. She hung there, between life and nothingness, mentally letting go, forcing herself to strain every muscle until she had balance again. Her heart pounded as if about to burst. The darkness seemed to vanish, and she was alone in a world of light. Then the light faded and she was back again on the cold ledge, shuddering and on the verge of panic.

She fought down the rising terror and edged her left foot up on to the ledge, praying it would hold. Somewhere in her mind, the Tara mantra was being recited, but she had lost all sight of the goddess within herself. Her senses were the only things binding her to reality now. The feel of her foot on the hard ledge was bliss beyond any bliss that prayers or offerings could bring.

Gradually, her heartbeat and her breathing slowed and life began to come back into her right leg. She moved her left foot along just far enough to leave room for the right, shifted her balance towards the left, and crossed the gap. That was it. She knew she could never face that a second time. If she could not find a way back into the monastery from here, she would either freeze to death or fall out of the world forever.

By her calculation, Ka-ris To-feh’s room should be the fifth along, but it was difficult to make out anything clearly in the dark and she was terrified that she would make a mistake and go past unwittingly. She prayed his shutters had not been closed since the morning before: she could not remember how they had been earlier that night when she had gone to his room to waken him.

She was grimly conscious that time was passing quickly. Fear urged her to panic and hurry, but she forced herself to move slowly, inch by inch, willing time itself to slow down and keep pace with her.

Her fingers had become a problem. If she remained outside much longer without caring for them, she could contract serious frost-bite. Already, feeling had gone from them and she was able to use them only by an effort of will.

She felt that hours had passed by the time she reached the fifth window. To her joy, she could make out the glow of a dim light coming from inside the room. Once she was positioned right underneath, she reached up and peered through the window, using the heels of her hands, then her elbows.

She looked inside. Christopher was not there.

Tsarong Rinpoche was growing more worried by the minute. With the help of the Buriat Zam-ya-ting, he had taken control of Dorjela at last. Zam-ya-ting thought he was in charge, but he would soon show him who had the final say in things here. He was more worried by the woman, Chindamani. She represented the goddess Tara, and Tara was extremely popular among the monks, just as she was with the people. Given time, the bitch could undermine all his efforts by a direct appeal to the loyalty of the trap as couched in suitably emotive language. She would have to be eliminated and that would take some subtle arranging if it were not to backfire.

The Englishman Wy-lam had served his purpose. By bringing him to the monastery, he had helped implicate the pee-ling abbot in the machinations of the British. Zam-ya-ting had known a lot about Wy-lam and had been able to persuade the monks that both he and his father were involved in some sort of plot together.

Perhaps they had been. But it didn’t seem to matter now.

What did matter was that Wy-lam could prove more of a threat than even the woman. The office of abbot was not hereditary. The Englishman could not claim to be a trulku, nor did Tsarong Rinpoche fear he would. But everyone at Dorje-la knew the words of the prophecy found in an old terma book: “When Dorje-la is ruled by a pee-ling, the world shall be ruled from Dorje-la’. And they knew the sentence that followed it in the book: “In the year that the son of a pee-ling’s son comes to the Land of Snows, in that year shall Maidari appear. He shall be the last abbot of Dorje-la, and the greatest.”

The Englishman would not know any of that, of course; but he was sure the girl would make him aware of it and use it to help them rally support within the monastery. All it needed was for Wy-lam to persuade his son to co-operate by playing whatever role the girl suggested for him. The Rinpoche could not be sure of most of the monks yet. A little push might send them running in another direction.

That would have to be prevented at all costs. He did not know what plans the Burial had for Wy-lam or the woman. But his own were unambiguous: the girl and the Englishman must be killed tonight.

The catch on the window gave without much pressure. It had not been designed to keep anyone out from the pass, it was impossible to climb anywhere within one hundred feet of it. Chindamani dropped down into the room. It felt warm. Christopher had been here since she last saw him. His outdoor clothes the ones in which he had come to Dorje-la were gone. He must have been brought back here, dressed in them, then left again. Just what was going on?

She stepped cautiously to the door. Her heart was still beating hard from her nerve-racking passage of the ledge outside, and her hands hurt as the circulation tried to return to normal. More than anything, she longed to throw herself on the bed and sleep. To escape all this in dreams seemed to her the most desirable of all things at this moment.

The door was partly open. Holding her breath, she opened it further. A man was lying on the ground about a yard away, not moving. A long halberd from the gon-kang had fallen from his hand and lay near him. Chindamani walked to the man and bent down. He was dead. As far as she could tell, someone had broken his neck. Was the fighting still going on? Or had Ka-ris To-feh done this in his determination to escape?

If it had been Ka-ris To-feh, he would be trying to find a way out of

the monastery. And the quickest way he knew was over the roof- the way

they had gone together when she had taken him to see the boys in the

lab rang But if he hoped to escape that way he was making a stupid

mistake: the roof led nowhere. And the bridge only led to the lab

rang

She set off rapidly in the direction of the hatch through which she and Christopher had got on to the roof. The monastery had fallen silent again, but tonight it was a threatening silence, not the meditative quiet to which Chindamani was accustomed. Before, she had moved quietly when she went abroad at night out of respect for the sleep or the prayers of the monks in their cells.

Tonight, she did so out of fear for her life.

When she got to the hatch it was closed. But the ladder had gone, and she guessed Ka-ris To-feh had pulled it up after him in order to delay any possible pursuit. Without it, there was no way she could get out through the hatch. The only other possibility was a second hatch nearby, a private hatch used by the abbot whenever he wanted to go to the lab rang or just spend time on the roof watching the clouds pass.

The ladder to the second hatch was in place. It was a matter of moments for Chindamani to get out on to the roof. She prayed no one would come and find the ladder and the open hatch, but there was no time to waste covering her tracks.

The cold seized her with vicious fingers, jealous of the time she had just spent out of its clutches. On the rooftop, the wind blew unimpeded by any obstacles. Pieces of dry snow whipped across her face out of the unrelieved darkness. The roaring of the wind combined with the pounding in her chest to blot out any other sounds. Like a swimmer swimming in green depths amid a terrible silence, she opened her mouth and called his name but heard nothing. The sound of her voice was swallowed up in the general din, thin and futile. Again and again she strained to be heard, shouting his name aloud in steady measures, a repeated mantra unheard and unheeded. He was here somewhere, there was nowhere else for him to go.

She wandered through the blackness calling him. It was a secret wonder to her, invoking his name like this, a man’s name, a name she could scarcely pronounce. It disturbed her that just to call his name in the darkness gave her such pleasure, even while the thought that he might have gone out here to his death disquieted her deeply.

She found him sitting on the plinth of an old bronze dragon set to guard the chortens, staring into the blackness, a dim shape in the night, scarcely distinguishable from his surroundings.

“Ka-ris To-feh,” she said, sitting beside him.

“We have to go. We have to get out of Dorje-la.”

“I’ve tried,” he said.

“But there’s no way out. And even if there was a way out, there’s nowhere to go. It’s all like this cold and bleak and meaningless. What does it matter if you’re alive or dead up here? There isn’t even anyone to care.”

“I care,” she said.

“You?” he exclaimed. A dry sound like a laugh leapt from his lips and was carried away on the wind.

“You care about nothing but your gods and your Buddhas and your child incarnations. You don’t know what the real world’s like. You don’t know what damage they can do, these gods of yours. What wounds they can inflict.”

“I care for you,” she said, drawing close lest the wind would snatch her words away.

“I love you.”

As soon as she spoke the words, she knew she had sealed her fate. Whether he heard or understood or remembered, it would not matter. If they succeeded in escaping Dorje-la, those few words bound her to him more intimately than any of her childhood vows had ever bound her to the Lady Tara or the dharma or the Buddha. She belonged to him now as she had never belonged to anyone, least of all herself.

They made it back to the hatchway, battling against a head-on wind. Inside, with the hatch closed and the ladder stored away, they stood together in the silence.

“We have to get to my room,” she said.

“There’s a passage near here that will take us there without being seen.”

“And then?” he asked.

She hesitated.

“I’ll .. . explain that when we get there,” she said.

If Tsarong Rinpoche had been worried before, he was now quite beside himself. The pee-ling had killed his guard and managed to get out into the monastery. He could be anywhere. If he succeeded in making his way to the woman’s room, she might find some way of hiding them both until the right moment came.

At least he might be able to do something to prevent that. The gun that Zam-ya-ting had given him was still in his pocket. He fingered it gently, sensing its mute perfection against his fingers. It was a message from another world, speaking to him of the possibilities inherent in earthly power. There was a mastery in it that he had sensed in nothing else. He remembered pulling the trigger when he killed the Nepalese boy on the pass: the thrill of that moment still lived with him, urging him to repeat the experience. Not even tonight’s hangings had brought him such a rush of raw excitement.

But, for all that, the presence of the gun in his pocket filled him with apprehension He had broken every vow he had ever made.

If there were other lives beyond this, he would pay a terrible price for the things he had done. He hoped Zam-ya-ting was right and that this life was the only one a man had. He had staked everything on that. Otherwise, what he was about to do would bring such suffering on his head that five hundred lifetimes would not suffice to bring him peace again.

He loosed the safety catch and set off in the direction of Chindamam’s room.

They wasted no time. Chindamani’s secret passage ran from a small chapel dedicated to Tara directly to her room. Only she and Sonam and Christopher’s father had known of its existence: it had been built centuries ago to allow the Tara incarnation to pass between her own quarters and her private chapel without being seen by anyone else. For Chindamani as, no doubt, for many of her predecessors it had played more than just an ancillary role to her devotions, providing as it did easy access to other parts of the monastery. From the Tara chapel, other passages connected with different floors: one to the main Lha-khang, where there was a curtained chamber from which the Tara incarnation could watch the services; one to the old temple-hall, now rimed with ice and frost, where Christopher had first met his father; and one to the gon-kang, in case the Tara trulku ever wanted to commune with the dark yet benign protector deities.

The passage led to a door concealed behind hangings on the wall of Chindamani’s bedroom. When she and Christopher emerged, they found Sonam and the two boys exactly as Chindamani had left them. William was sitting on the couch. Samdup was seated by the old woman, trying to comfort her while she wept.

“Ama-la,” said Chindamani, “I’m back I’ve brought Ka-ris Tofeh, the Dorje Lama’s son.”

At the sound of the younger woman’s voice, Sonam glanced up.

Her old eyes were red and filled with tears. In the act of weeping,

her distress had deepened and become potent, like a drug in her ancient veins.

“Little daughter,” she cried, ‘they’ve killed the Dorje Lama.

What are we to do?”

“I know, ama-la,” Chindamani whispered.

“I know.” Now that the moment to leave had come, she felt sick and guilty. How could she leave Sonam here with Tsarong Rinpoche and his followers?

The old woman had been like a mother to her.

She sat down beside the old woman and put one arm around her. Then she turned to look at Christopher, but he had already gone to his son, hugging him tightly, whispering words of reassurance and comfort. As she looked at them, she felt a sudden, unexpected pang of jealousy, an emotion she had never experienced before. It unsettled her to discover how she resented the child’s claim over his father.

Suddenly, there was a sound of footsteps in the corridor outside.

Christopher leaped to his feet. He looked round desperately for somewhere William might hide: having found him at last, he would die before he gave his son up again.

The door opened without a knock and Tsarong Rinpoche entered, closely followed by the monk who had been standing guard outside. The Rinpoche could not believe his luck. It occurred to him in a flash of inspiration that, with the man and the woman eliminated and the English boy in his hands, he really had no need for Zam-ya-ting at all.

“Sit down!” he ordered, addressing Christopher.

Christopher stepped towards him, but the Rinpoche took a gun from his pocket and jerked it menacingly in his direction.

“You’ve seen this gun before, Wylam-la,” he said.

“You know what it can do. Please sit down on that chest and keep quiet.”

The monk closed the door firmly. The draught caught one of the butter-lamps and set it flickering, sending oddly-shaped shadows across the faces of the two men.

Christopher was in no mood to sit. Since coming down from the roof, he had felt a sense of purpose returning. Chindamani had given him something like hope to hold on to, and William had made the hope seem real and tangible. He had started to believe it might be possible to get at least as far as the pass beyond the walls of the monastery.

“How many will this be?” he asked the Rinpoche.

“Enough to keep you crawling about in mud for the rest of eternity, I should think.”

“I told you to keep quiet,” the Rinpoche snapped. He could feel his confidence evaporating already. This would not be easy. Killing one of them alone would not have been difficult. But the two of them together, in the presence of the boys and the old woman .. .

Suddenly, everyone froze. In an uncannily high-pitched voice, old Sonam had begun to mutter the words of what sounded to Christopher like an incantation of some sort. He saw Tsarong Rinpoche turn pale and grip the gun as if to crush the metal in his bare hand. The old woman’s voice continued to rise and fall, quavering yet quite inflexible, filling the little room with curious echoes.

“Shut up!” Tsarong Rinpoche yelled at Sonam. Christopher noticed that the guard had blanched as well and was stepping back towards the door.

“Ama-la, please!” Chindamani urged, pressing the old woman’s shoulders in her hands.

“Stop reciting.” But the little nurse paid no attention. Eyes fixed on the Rinpoche, she went on with her incantation, pouring the words out implacably into the shadows that hung about him.

“Be quiet!” the Rinpoche shouted again, stepping towards the old woman and waving his gun loosely in the air. His eyes were wild and staring. Christopher could see that he had been gripped by some kind of superstitious dread, although he did not understand a word of the rhyming lines that the old nurse was reciting.

He guessed that it must be a curse of some sort and that Tsarong Rinpoche took it very seriously.

“Please, Sonam, don’t,” Chindamani was pleading. The boy Samdup sat frozen to the spot, his eyes fixed on the ancient figure, watching in horrified fascination as her wrinkled form rocked backwards and forwards in a steady rhythm, echoing the stanzas that rolled from her lips.

“Stop her!” the Rinpoche shouted.

“Or I’ll kill her. I swear I’ll kill her if she doesn’t stop!”

“Stop it, ama-la,” Chindamani pleaded. She had recognized the pain in Tsarong Rinpoche’s voice and knew he would indeed pull the trigger if Sonam went on much further. She knew why he was frightened.

But nothing would shut the old lady up. She was into her stride now, spitting the dark words of her curse out as though they were poison and could kill. Perhaps she thought they could.

Tsarong Rinpoche fired his revolver. A single shot, then the gun hung limply from his fingers. The bullet hit the ama-la in the throat. There was a terrible choking sound. She did not fall back, but went on sitting as though unhurt. But the bullet had entered through the front of the throat and exited again by the back of her neck, severing the top of the spinal column. A plume of blood sprayed out from the wound. There was a choking sound. Bright red blood foamed on her lips. Her old eyes glazed over and a moment later her body went limp and she fell back into Chindamani’s arms.

Nobody said anything. The room was filled with a dreadful silence that stretched into more than a minute. Outside, a gust of wind fell heavily against the window and rushed away again. It was as if it had come to take another soul from Dorje-la and carry it to the mysterious realm of Bardo.

The first person to move was Chindamani. There was a cold rage in her eyes that had never been in them before. She let go of Sonam’s body, lowering it to the bed, then stood up slowly, her gaze fixed on Tsarong Rinpoche. The lama’s face was twitching. A nerve was working in his right cheek. The hand that held the gun shook uncontrollably.

Chindamani began to recite the curse from where Sonam had left off. She spoke in a voice that was almost a whisper, but it carried clearly to the man at whom it was directed. She raised a finger and pointed at him and her voice trembled with anger.

As though mesmerized, Tsarong Rinpoche stood frozen for a moment, then his hand began to move. He raised the gun slowly and pointed it at Chindamani. It shook terribly and he set his teeth together, forcing his nerves to grow still. Then, just as slowly and just as deliberately, he turned the gun until it was pointing at his own face. The weapon was heavy, his fingers weak, drained of strength. He opened his mouth, then rested the edge of the gunbarrel on his lower teeth. His whole body was shivering now.

Chindamani’s voice filled the world. He wanted to cry out, to scream against the incantation, but his limbs were paralysed. Only his finger moved, tightening against the cold metal of the trigger.

Christopher watched in horror, unable to understand what was happening. The lama was terrified beyond measure. But surely the power of superstition alone could not be responsible for his unreasoning fear of the incantation. Tsarong Rinpoche had committed every sacrilege there was. And yet a few words from an old woman had been enough to undermine him completely.

Christopher held William’s face tight against his stomach. The boy had seen enough horrors already. Chindamani’s voice sounded in his ears, hard and relentless as a scalpel cutting through skin.

Tsarong Rinpoche closed his eyes.

The explosion blew most of Tsarong Rinpoche’s skull apart. Blood marked the walls of Chmdamani’s apartment with bright, angry drops. A great shudder went through all the limbs of the Rinpoche’s body, then he toppled and fell backwards Chindamani faltered and closed her eyes but remained standing. Samdup cried out in horror and threw his hands over his eyes. William, who had heard but not seen the explosion, clung to his father tightly. The monk who had entered the room with Tsarong Rinpoche was drenched with blood. Without a word, he dropped his weapon and ran through the door.

Christopher shuddered. For what seemed an age, he stood there holding William, looking at Tsarong Rinpoche’s bloodied corpse, at the blood streaming across the naked wall. Slowly, he became aware that Chindamani’s voice had faded away. He turned his head and saw her, still standing in the same spot, her arm outstretched, her finger pointing at the empty space where the Rinpoche had been standing.

He set William down on the couch and stepped towards her.

Tentatively, he took her in his arms. The shock of what had happened was rapidly leaving him, and he realized that it would not be long before someone came to investigate the gunshots.

“Chindamani,” he whispered.

“We’ve got to go. Zamyatin will send someone to see what’s going on. The monk who was here will tell others. We have to leave now or we’ll never make it.”

She was still staring ahead, her eyes unfocused, her body rigid.

He took her by the shoulders and began to shake her. She did not respond.

Suddenly, he noticed Samdup by his side. The boy had made a tremendous effort to shut out the horrors he had seen.

“Chindamani,” he said.

“Please answer me. Thepee-ling is right we have to escape. Please hurry or they’ll find us here.”

As if the boy’s voice worked some sort of magic on her, the girl blinked and began to relax. Her arms dropped to her side and she looked down at Samdup.

“I feel cold,” she said in a scarcely audible whisper.

Samdup looked up at Christopher.

“There are things for the journey in that chest,” he said.

“I was supposed to get them ready, but I had to look after Sonam and forgot.”

“William,” said Christopher.

“Come and help us get ready to leave. Help Samdup take things out of the chest.”

While the boys hurried to sort out clothes, tents, and bags of food, Christopher helped Chindamani to a seat. He put his arm round her, remembering how, not so very long before, their roles had been reversed.

“Where are we going, Ka-ris To-feh?” she asked.

“Away from here,” he answered.

“Far away.”

She smiled wanly and reached down to pick up some bags from the floor.

“Don’t waste time tying those on,” said Christopher.

“We can do that later. The main thing at the moment is to get out of this room.”

Chindamani turned and took a last look at Sonam. The old woman lay back on the bed where she had fallen, a startled look in her eyes. Chindamani bent down and straightened her arms and legs. With one hand she closed her eyes, then kissed her softly on the lips.

A sound of running feet came from the passage outside.

“Quickly!” Christopher hissed.

“Let’s go!”

While Christopher held back the hanging, Chindamani slid the door aside and stepped in after Samdup and William. Christopher followed, closing the door behind him with a click. Even if someone drew the hanging aside, the entrance would remain invisible to the casual eye.

A lamp was burning on a bracket nearby. Chindamani took it and led the way along the passage. Behind them they could hear muffled voices coming from the apartment they had left.

“What happened, Chindamani?” Christopher asked, as soon as they had put some distance between themselves and the entrance.

“What did you do to him? Why did he kill himself?”

She did not answer at first. Christopher could not see her face as she walked on ahead of him, holding the lamp. The walls of the passage were rough and unfinished; but at one point someone one of Chindamani’s predecessors, no doubt had painted a domestic scene, a mother and her children standing outside their farm, surrounded by sheep and yaks. The light played on the painting for a moment, then passed on into darkness.

“It was a curse,” she said at last, to no-one in particular.

“A curse? Surely you don’t believe .. .?”

“Sonam didn’t know what it meant.” Chindamani continued, as though she had not heard him.

“It was a Tantric curse, a very powerful one. She should not have known it that was what frightened him. Only the most advanced adepts know it. But Sonam used to come down this passage to the Lha-khang when they were undergoing instruction. It fascinated her, and she learned all sorts of things. She understood nothing, of course; but she memorized whole rituals, whole spells .. . whole curses!” She stopped and turned around to face Christopher.

“I think Tsarong Rinpoche was almost mad with guilt already.

When he heard that curse spoken by someone who had no knowledge of such matters as he thought he must have imagined that the gods were speaking, condemning him.”

“And you. How did you know how to continue?”

“Oh, Sonam taught me all the things she heard down in the Lhakhang.

Sometimes we’d go together and watch the rituals for hours. But .. .”

She hesitated.

“There was something else, something that made me do what I did. The feeling’s gone now. But when he shot Sonam, I felt as though something took me over.”

“Anger?”

“No, more than that. Something quite different. I can’t explain.”

“There’s no need. Come on, we’ve got to get moving. You still have to explain to me how we’re supposed to get out of Dorje-la.”

From the Tara chapel, a series of wooden steps and short passages led them down to the gon-kang. The small crypt-chapel was empty, save for the stuffed animals and gods that kept watch over it. A few lamps were lit, filling parts of the room with a creamy, yellow glow.

Chindamani explained to Christopher the details of the escape route described by Sonam. He listened to her grimly, unable to guess how much of the old woman’s story might be true and how much mere legend.

They tightened their travelling clothes and tied on the items of equipment Chindamani had prepared. Christopher found a short rusty sword among the small clutter of weapons left in the gonkang and slipped it into his belt.

“William,” he said. The boy was close by his side, determined not to let his father out of his sight again. Christopher reached into a fold of his chuba and drew out something soft. It was a small and very battered teddy-bear.

“I’ve brought old Samuel from Carfax,” said Christopher, holding the ragged toy out to the boy.

“I thought you might like to have him with you. To remind you of home.”

The boy took the bear and hugged it to his chest. It had always been his favourite toy, his inseparable bedtime companion, repaired, restuffed, restitched half a dozen times. He looked up at his father and, for the first time, smiled. With Samuel, he could face any number of dangers.

Samdup watched, bewildered. Stuffed animals were nothing new to him, but he had never seen one like this before. And why did the strange pee-ling boy want to carry one round with him? Was it some sort of god?

William put Samuel into his bag.

“We’ll soon be back in Carfax, Samuel,” he said. Christopher smiled.

How he wished he could believe that.

They rolled back several rugs in front of the main altar. Underneath, they could make out the shape of a narrow hatchway set flush with the floor and provided with a brass ring.

Christopher turned to Chindamani. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes gleamed in the sickly light. He scarcely dared look directly at her.

“You don’t have to come,” he said.

“You or Samdup. You’ll be quite safe, I’m sure of it. Tsarong Rinpoche is dead. You were a threat only to him. Zamyatin will find it better to let you live. He’ll use you as a symbol, but you will be alive. And the boy he’s more use to Zamyatin alive than dead. You don’t know what there is down there. Or what could be waiting on the journey.”

“I was responsible for the Rinpoche’s death,” Chindamani said.

“Or at least that is what the monk who was with him will say. His followers won’t stand for that. And Samdup wouldn’t be safe with Zam-ya-ting. You know that. You know why.”

There was nothing he could say to that. She was right: he knew why.

“Very well,” he replied.

“We’ll go together. We can’t afford to wait here any longer they’ll already be looking for us everywhere.

I don’t know what’s down beneath this hatch. It may be nothing;

it may be something more dangerous than anything Zamyatin and his men have to offer. But we’ve no choice. If we’re going out, this is the only way left open to us.”

He turned to Samdup and spoke to him directly for the first time.

“What about you, Samdup? Do you feel up to this?”

The boy did not answer at once. He looked back at Christopher with an unsettling seriousness in his eyes. Since his discovery as a trulku and his installation here at Dorje-la, he had never really been treated as a child. He had clearly recovered his composure quickly since the scene in Chindamani’s room.

“You should not call me “Samdup”,” he said finally.

“My proper name is Dorje Samdup Rinpoche. You may call me Samdup Rinpoche or, if you prefer, Lord Samdup. Only those who are very close to me may call me by my given name alone. And you must use the proper verbal forms at all times when addressing me.”

There was that in the boy’s look and tone of voice that endowed his words with an adult seriousness few British children of his age could possibly have emulated. Christopher felt thoroughly rebuked.

“I’m sorry .. . my Lord,” he said.

“There are many things I have to learn.”

“Don’t worry,” the boy said.

“I will teach you. As for leaving here - I don’t think we have much time to waste.”

Christopher said nothing. The die was cast. They were going into the passages beneath the gon-kang. He bent down and lifted the ring of the hatch in his right hand.

The hatch was heavy. It came up slowly, without a sound.

There was nothing below but darkness, black, clammy, and cold.

A stale smell rose out of the pit, or perhaps it was a mixture of smells, not quite identifiable in themselves, not quite reducible to ordinary odours. It was an evil stench and it clung to the nostrils with grim tenacity. Chindamani turned her face away and made a brief gagging sound. Christopher pulled his heavy scarf up over his mouth and nose. The others followed suit.

“I’ll go first,” whispered Christopher.

“Then William, then Lord Samdup. Then Chindamani. We’ll all carry lamps, and if anyone’s goes out they’re to say so immediately and get a fresh light from someone else. Make as little noise as possible. And close the hatch behind us.”

Peering into the hole with the help of his lamp a large one that Chindamani had found on a side altar Christopher made out the first few rungs of a wooden ladder.

They went down slowly. The ladder took them about ten feet below the floor of the gon-kang. When Christopher, William and Samdup reached the bottom, Chindamani tossed the more bulky baggage down to them before closing the hatchway and climbing down herself.

The darkness was absolute, a thing in itself, an object and not a mere absence of light. It seemed to breathe and live and grow stronger every moment. The light of their lamps was swallowed up in it and rendered flat and insubstantial. It clung to them like a dim halo, scarred and denatured by the all-encompassing blackness.

They were in a small stagnant chamber about fifteen feet by ten.

Against one wall, Christopher made out the shapes of lacquered chests and boxes. Beside them stood a huge, jewel-encrusted throne. He stepped across to a tall box ornamented with bright red peonies and lifted the lid. For a moment, it seemed as though the light thrown by his lamp had been shattered into a thousand fragments. Everywhere, tiny specks of coloured light danced in the darkness. Rubies, emeralds, diamonds and amethysts lay packed in the chest like pebbles on Brighton beach.

Christopher picked up a handful and let them trickle back through his fingers. They felt cold to the touch and curiously light, as though all their substance lay in colour and luminosity. The colours shifted and flew about, like the quick wings of hummingbirds in a forest glade, shimmering in a sudden ray of sunlight.

He picked up a second handful. They would need money for their journey. And after that, money to look after Chindamani and the boy. Out there, in what Christopher regarded as the real world, to be a representative of a goddess or an incarnation of the Maidari Buddha counted for nothing.

“Are you hungry?” It was Samdup’s voice, close beside him.

Christopher looked down and shook his head.

“No, my Lord,” he said.

“Are you thirsty?”

“No.”

“Then you have no need of them. There is food in our bags: we will not starve. There is snow: we will not go thirsty. If you take them, they will become a heavier burden than the whole of Dorjela.”

Christopher opened his fingers and the jewels dropped one by one back into the box. This time, for no real reason that he could see, they seemed trivial to him, like pieces of coloured paste or red and green candies for a greedy child. He closed the lid and raised his lamp again.

The walls were alive with paintings: among the usual gods and demons were vividly coloured mandalas and charms in the shape of lotus-flowers covered in fine writing. Little square flags printed with the image of a winged horse bearing a mystic jewel on its back had been hung at intervals; they were faded and tattered and covered in dust. Thick cobwebs hung everywhere, some ancient and tattered like prayer-flags, others clearly fresh.

They listened for the sound of something living, but the room was occupied only by inanimate objects. Christopher began to think that talk of a guardian was little more than a ploy to deter would-be thieves. But in that case, why had the story been kept so quiet?

In the wall opposite the spot where they had entered the room was the entrance to a broad tunnel. It had obviously not been used in some time: a thick, dusty spider’s web covered most of it.

“At least,” Christopher whispered, ‘we don’t have to make up our minds which way to go.”

Using the short sword, he swept away the web: it tumbled down, leaving the gaping opening free for them to pass through.

Christopher went ahead, holding his lamp out in front of him in his left hand while hefting the sword in his right, ready to strike out at the first signs of life. His heart pounded heavily in his chest:

he thought he could hear it echo off the walls of the tunnel. The stench was more pronounced here and seemed to be growing stronger all the time.

The passage was not quite high enough for Christopher to walk in un stooped but it was sufficiently wide to allow him to pass through without difficulty. He felt certain that they were already passing out of the monastery. The chill that pervaded the tunnel was unlike that in any of the passages they had come through on their way from Chindamani’s apartment. That had been icy, but tinged with a residual warmth that seemed to have seeped through the walls from the inhabited areas through which the tunnels passed. This was a fetid, uneasy chill, raw and bitter, as though nothing human had breathed the air down here for centuries.

Christopher’s foot touched something. Something hard and slightly brittle. He lowered the lamp slowly, trying to hold it at an angle in order to shed light on the ground in front of him.

He could not make it out at first. It seemed to be a bundle of some kind, about five feet long, angular in places, dirty and grey.

Then he held the light closer and all at once it became clear to him what it was ... or what it had been.

The small body had shrunk beyond all reason, as if something had sucked it dry over a long period. Nothing was left but dry skin stretched over old bones. Thin hands like talons clutched at the throat. The head was pulled back acutely, away from the body, as if death had been an agony. From head to foot, the corpse was covered in dust-laden strands of something like rotten fabric, similar to the cobwebs they had seen earlier. The whole thing resembled a cocoon, neatly packaged and left to dehydrate here in the tunnel. It had been down here a long time. Perhaps as long as five centuries. Christopher shuddered and lifted his lamp.

“What is it, Christopher?” Chindamani whispered.

“Why have you stopped?”

“It’s nothing. Just ... an obstruction in the tunnel. Keep to the right and you’ll be able to get by.”

He walked on, hesitant now, on the alert for whatever might be waiting further along the tunnel. Sonam’s guardian was slipping out of the mists of legend and growing into a thing of substance.

Behind him, he heard the others gasp as they caught sight of the obstruction.

The next body was a few yards further along. It had died in a seated position, propped against one wall. Its arms were thrust out in front of it, as thought fending off something coming out of the darkness. Like the other corpse, it was shrivelled and shrunken.

Pieces of leathery flesh, dark brown in colour, could be glimpsed beneath layers of the dusty fabric. It seemed to Christopher as though something had trussed it up and sucked it slowly dry.

“Who are they, Christopher?” Chindamani’s voice came from close behind him. She was standing, one arm around Samdup, looking down at the little corpse. The boy seemed disturbed, but not frightened. Christopher remembered that he had been brought up in a culture that had little fear of the paraphernalia of death.

Instead of Bo Peep and Humpty Dumpty, the walls of Samdup’s nursery would have been painted with dead flesh and mouldering bones. Instead of a teddy-bear, he would have been given a statue of Yama to place by his bedside.

“I think this one was a child,” he said. But it was only a guess, based on the corpse’s apparent height.

“It seems .. . more recent than the other. Less dusty.” He paused.

“There may be more. Do you want to go on?”

“Of course. We have no choice you said so yourself.”

About five yards after that, Christopher encountered a heavy web that all but blocked the tunnel. He swept it aside only to meet another and then another. Vast, heavy strands of cobwebs filled the air. The miasmatic odour was growing in intensity. Christopher was beginning to have a good idea what had trussed up the bodies they had found. But surely no ordinary spider could have sucked them dry as well.

All at once the tunnel ended and opened out into an area of undefined proportions. The light from Christopher’s lamp shed illumination over a limited radius, but as the children and Chindamani added their lights to his, the nature of their surroundings became gradually clear.

It was a chamber thick with spiders’ webs, huge structures of ancient manufacture that looped a fantastic tracery from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. The lamplight played complicated shadow-games among the interlacing cords and filaments. Some hung like hammocks, others billowed from the wall like grey lace curtains. No matter where they looked, the room was thick with them.

And no matter where they cast their eyes, they could make out the bundled, mummified remains of human beings. The webs were full of them; they hung like flies, light and grey and bloodless. The room was a subterranean larder of God knows what antiquity. In places, body had been piled upon body, the mouldering remains sewn together in huge packages. In one corner, what seemed to be a relatively recent addition to their meat supply was being drained of its remaining fluids by a small army of spiders that moved across their prey with quick, quivering motions. To his horror, Christopher estimated the size of the spiders: the largest had a leg-span longer than a man’s forearm, from fingertips to elbow.

Everywhere black shapes were walking in the shadows. The webs were alive with them, trembling as they crawled from thread to thread on huge, misshapen legs.

“For God’s sake, get back into the tunnel!” Christopher cried. He had seen stings on the ends of the bulbous bodies and he guessed that the spiders had not overpowered their prey by brute force.

Woodenly, they stumbled back, past the webs at the entrance to the food-chamber, as far as the first body. William was shaking with fright and loathing nothing in his worst nightmares had prepared him for such a sight. Samdup too was rigid with fear.

“The horror of it! The horror of it!” Chindamani kept repeating.

She was brushing and brushing her arms and body, desperately trying to rid herself of anything that might be clinging to her. She could feel their soft bodies and cold legs against her flesh. To be poisoned and pinned down and sucked dry by such creatures .. .

Christopher checked for spiders. None seemed to have dropped on them or followed them so far. These, then, were the guardians set over the Oracle’s treasure. A species of spider, mutated by the thin air and the darkness, discovered or placed down here to sting and kill intruders. But why had there been none in the treasure chamber And where did their victims come from?

“Chindamani, Samdup,” Christopher ordered.

“Get out any extra items of clothing you have in your bags. Wrap your hands and faces tightly. Leave no gaps, just a space for your eyes. Help each other. And hurry. We’ve disturbed them it won’t be long before they start investigating.” He bent down and quickly repeated what he had said to William. The boy had taken Samuel out of his bag and was clutching it to him nervously.

“Put Samuel away,” Christopher said softly.

“You’ll need your hands free.” William complied reluctantly.

Feverishly, Chindamani and Samdup wrapped each other up, using spare scarves and leggings they had packed. When they were ready, Chindamani helped William bind himself, then Christopher.

“We can still go back,” he said.

She shook her head.

“No,” she said.

“Zam-ya-ting is waiting for us there. It’s death whichever way we go.

But perhaps we have a chance down here.

That place is their lair. The stairs of Yama must be beyond it. If we can make it that far, we’ll be all right.”

Christopher prayed she was right.

When they were ready, he led the way down to the exit from the tunnel. He could hear the rustling of their legs in the darkness, stiff wire bristles on paper a host of spiders coming to investigate the disturbance.

If only he could make out an opening somewhere that would enable them to make a straight run for it. There was a risk that, if they became entangled in the vast network of spiders’ webs and confused by fighting off their hideous inhabitants, they would lose their lamps and be plunged into absolute darkness. And that would almost certainly be fatal.

A large spider, its legs moving jerkily, like a badly oiled machine, came scuttling towards him at shoulder height along a swathe of tattered web. He swept at it with the sword and sent it tumbling back into the shadows. Another ran at his feet with a queer sideways motion. He kicked down hard and felt it give way beneath the heel of his boot.

“Which way do we go, Christopher?” Chindamani asked, pressing against him from behind.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If there are stairs, they could be anywhere.”

“There have to be stairs. Sonam was right about everything else.”

“Perhaps.” He paused.

“There’s one way to find out. The most likely place is right opposite. I’ll make a dash for it. Watch me closely. If I get through and there are stairs, I’ll call. Don’t waste any time come running.”

“Be careful, Christopher,” she said. He could only see her eyes peering out above her scarf. With one hand, he reached out and touched her. She lifted a hand and put it over his. In a world of spiders, among dark threads and silken fabrics of most intricate and passionless death, they touched for a moment in silence. Skin did not touch skin, lips could not meet, there was a deathly chill upon their hampered breath.

A huge spider landed on Christopher’s back. William cried out and Christopher spun, dashing the monster to the ground and crushing it.

“Run!” cried Chindamani.

He ran, cutting a path through meshes of doubled and redoubled web, pulling, tearing, scything as he staggered through the room.

The floor was littered with small wizened corpses, pathetic bundles no longer recognizable as human. At every step, more spiders dropped on to him, clinging to his back and arms and legs, stinging again and again into the thick layers of cloth and fur.

How he made it to the other side he did not know. He swept the last web curtains aside. There was nothing but rock. Frantically, he thrashed about, severing webs like cheesecloth, ripping them apart. There was nothing but bare rock. Something struck his lamp and sent it skittering from his hand. The world was plunged into darkness. He dropped the sword with a clatter.

A large spider dropped on to his head, then another on to his shoulders. One of the corpses caught his foot and he fell helplessly to his knees. He reached out desperately and his fingers caught nothing but a tangled mass of spider’s web.

“Christopher!”

Her voice echoed in the narrow confines of the tunnel. There was no answer, and she called again, more desperately this time.

“Christopher, where are you? What’s happening? Answer me!”

But after the echoes, there was only silence. She had seen

Christopher’s lamp go out. Now he did not answer. The spiders were everywhere now, malign, implacable, without pity. She shuddered and called again.

“Christopher!”

There was something a muffled sound from the far side of the room.

“He must have fallen,” Samdup said.

“We’ve got to get to him!”

Chindamani clenched her teeth and prayed to Chenrezi for the strength to do what had to be done now.

She took the boy by the shoulders and made him face her.

William looked on, his eyes filled with terror.

“Samdup,” she said.

“I’ve got to help Ka-ris To-feh. Wait as long as you dare. If I don’t come back, leave the way we came. Go back to the gon-kang. Take the boy with you. You’ll both be safe; they won’t harm you. Do you understand?”

But even as she spoke, William suddenly broke away from them, running into the room of webs, his lamp bobbing as he ran, calling after his father. Chindamani reached out a hand frantically, but he had already eluded her grasp and her fingers found nothing but cobwebs, old and dirty.

Without a moment’s thought, she hurried after him, threshing her way through the hanging threads, flailing her arms to knock away the quivering bodies with which she came in contact.

A last grey curtain parted and she saw them Christopher on his back, fighting to throw off the dozens of spiders that crawled over him, his son using Christopher’s sword to sweep them aside.

But the black shapes kept on coming and coming.

She grabbed Christopher’s hand and helped him stagger to his feet. Had he been poisoned? If so, how long did he have before the venom began to work?

“There’s no way out!” he cried.

“We’ve got to get back to the tunnel.”

A spider moved on to Chindamani’s left leg, then another, then a third. She kicked them away, but others came. One brute landed on William’s neck and clung there. Christopher grabbed it with his bare hands, dragging it off. He thought it had stung the boy, but there was no time to check.

Suddenly, William shouted: “Look!”

He was pointing at a spot in the rear wall. There was a door heavily encrusted with spider’s webs but just distinguishable.

Chindamani shouted frantically to Samdup.

“Hurry!” she cried.

“This way! This way!”

They could see his lamp weaving through the darkness. He stumbled and Chindamani dashed back for him. There were spiders everywhere now, angry and murderous. Chindamani found Samdup and helped him over the last few yards.

“It’s over here!” Christopher shouted, pointing to the door. They ran, scything through layer after layer of soft web. And the dried bodies everywhere, like pods that had spawned the spider brood.

The door was jammed. Christopher pulled on the ring handle, but it would not give. William and Samdup did what they could to keep the spiders at bay. Chindamani joined Christopher at the door, pulling with him, tearing her muscles in desperation. How long since the door had last been opened? A century? Ten centuries? They redoubled their efforts, knowing they would never make it back to the tunnel now. It was the door or nothing.

It gave an inch then stuck again, harder than before. Christopher thought his fingers were breaking, but he kept pulling, using the pain to spur him.

There was a snapping sound and the door moved. Not much, but just enough for them to get past. Christopher grabbed William and pushed him through, then Samdup, then Chindamani. He picked up the lamp Chindamani had left on the ground. She took it from him and he pulled the door closed. They had made it. So far.

Several spiders had made it with them. William struck at them with the sword, hewing them again and again with a sustained and vicious anger that had grown too immense for his child’s body to contain. It was the first adult anger he had known, a rage less against the spiders that had provoked his immediate fear and revulsion, more against Tsarong Rinpoche and the Russian, against all those that had torn the fabric of his world to shreds. It was rage and sadness and doubt combined: rage at betrayal, sadness at the loss of all he had known, doubt of the fixed certainties that had framed his world until then.

There were stairs as Sonam had said: stark and steep and very beautiful in the light from their single lamp. They sat forever on the small landing at the top, no-one speaking, willing the horror to leave their minds, willing the last descent to the open air and freedom. The thought that no-one voiced was whether the stairs held any hidden surprises for them.

Christopher held William tightly. Once, he looked at the boy’s neck. There was an angry red mark where the spider must have stung him. But William said it scarcely hurt. He had had a lucky escape.

“It will soon be dawn,” Chindamani said.

“We should be away from here before then.”

Christopher nodded. She was right. He wanted to put as much distance between them and Dorje-la before Zamyatin realized they had escaped from the monastery.

In single file, with Christopher in the lead as before, they started down the stairs. The steps had been cut roughly in the rock, without precision or refinement. They were cold and dark, and they plunged down perilously, as though eager to be finished. They had not been made to linger on.

The cold air took away the awful stench. They uncovered their mouths and breathed in deeply, filling their lungs. With every step they took, a weight lifted from their shoulders. Death had never seemed so real or so close or so unwholesome. Not even a belief in endless reincarnation could mitigate the horror of death when it became so unnatural and so intimate.

They reached the bottom of the stairs. The rock wall had been cunningly cut in order to render the opening invisible from outside, and to make the deceit perfect, a curtain of ice hung over the front.

Outside, the wind had cleared the clouds away. A pale moon thin as silver-leaf was just setting behind a dim peak to the west.

Across a purple sky, broad swathes of stars trembled with cold and their own brightness. High above where they stood, the dark shape of Dorje-la Gompa loomed over the pass, vast and sinister, harbouring its secrets in silence.

Christopher looked up, peering into the darkness. A single light could be seen, in an unshuttered window on the top floor.

Chindamani stepped close beside him and took his hands in hers.

“Look,” he whispered.

Her eyes followed his to the lighted window.

“He’s watching for us,” he said.

“Who?” she asked.

“Zamyatin. I can sense it.” He paused.

“He won’t let us go this easily. Samdup belongs to him. In a way, I belong to him too.

He’ll come after us be sure of it.”

She said nothing for a while, but stood with Christopher’s hand in hers, staring up at the lighted window, wondering.

“It’s time to go,” she said.

But Christopher did not move. Like a moth held by the yellow light, he stood lost in thought.

“Ka-ris To-feh,” she said, tugging gently at his arm.

He looked round. In the moonlight, her face was pale and ghostly. He felt remote, impermanent, displaced. He could hold nothing, like a sieve from which water runs out.

“Do you understand what will happen if you come with me?” he said.

“I have to go to India, then back to England. It’s William’s home, I have to take him there. Once we reach India, I will no longer be able to help you. There are others there, men like Zamyatin who will want Samdup for their own purposes. Once they learn who he is and they will learn, believe me he will become their pawn. You don’t know what the world is like, what it does to people. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

She shook her head. One culture shaking its head at another, a world denying another world.

“We seem to have no understanding of each other, Ka-ris Tofeh. Is it so much to be human? Not to understand?”

“Don’t you see?” he said.

“Your Maidari Buddha has become a commodity, a coin. He’s worth so much to Zamyatin. He would be worth so much more or less to my own masters. What Zamyatin does not or cannot control, they would have me manipulate for their own ends. I don’t want to play that game. I’ll finish the one I began, but that’s as far as I go. I’ll take you to Lhasa, but I’ll leave you there. Do you understand?”

Desire for her was like a fever inside him. Denying his will in her, his love and his lust for her, was an even greater hurt, a stinging that filled his flesh and his mind equally, making him whole and tearing him apart at once.

She did not reply. Instead, she stood and picked up her bag.

With Samdup’s hand in hers, she set off in the direction of the pass. Christopher felt his heart contract. He stood up and helped William to his feet. They followed Chindamani and Samdup at a short distance.

As they picked their way down the slope, William raised his face to Christopher.

“What about grandfather?” he said.

“I don’t understand,” said Christopher. His father must have told the boy who he was, he realized.

“Aren’t we going to take him with us?”

Christopher shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Your grandfather is dead. Really dead this time.”

“How do you know?”

“Tsarong Rinpoche told us. Just before we were brought into the room where you and Samdup were sitting with Zamyatin. He said he had killed him himself.”

William stopped, forcing his father to do the same.

“But that can’t be true,” the boy said.

“Why not?”

“Because I was with grandfather just before you came.”

“How long before?” Christopher felt his heart grow cold with apprehension.

“Not long. A few minutes. Some men came and said I had to leave. Grandfather told me they were going to lock him in his rooms. The Rinpoche man was never there.”

“Are you sure, William? Maybe they killed him after you left?”

“No, because we went past his rooms on our way to the lady’s room. I knocked on his door and called. He answered me. He wished me goodnight.”

Christopher called to Chindamani to halt. He ran up to her with William and explained what his son had just told him.

“Zamyatin said nothing about the abbot being killed,” he said, ‘only that he had been replaced. Tsarong Rinpoche was lying. He wanted to make us believe my father was dead, because the old man could still be a threat to him. But even he must have drawn the line at actually putting an incarnation to death.”

Christopher remembered the Rinpoche’s words to him: “You are holy to me, I cannot touch you.” He had been holy because he was the son of an incarnation. Brutal as he was, it was clear that the Rinpoche had still been deeply superstitious. Some crimes were beyond the pale.

But Zamyatin would not feel constrained by superstitious awe.

He was more than capable of having Tsarong Rinpoche’s boast translated into stark reality.

“I have to go back,” said Christopher.

“Even if it’s only a hope, I can’t leave without trying to save him. He is my father. Whatever he’s done, I can’t just abandon him.”

Chindamani reached out a hand. She wanted so much to hold him to her until all this had passed away.

“Take me with you,” she said.

Christopher shook his head.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You know I can’t. We’ve been through so much to escape, we can’t just throw it all away by going back up there. You must stay here with William and Samdup. If I don’t return by noon tomorrow, you’ll know I’m not coming back. Take the boys and leave. Try to find your way to Lhasa: you’re an incarnation; Samdup’s an incarnation they’ll find a place for you there. Take William to a man called Bell he’s the British representative in Tibet. He’ll see to it that the boy is taken home safely.”

“I’m frightened for you, Ka-ris To-feh!”

f “I know. And I for you. But I have no choice. I intend to return with my father. Wait for me here.”

He turned to William and explained to him as well as he could } that he had to go back for his father.

“Chindamani will look after you until I return,” he said.

“Do I what she tells you, even if you don’t understand a word she says.

Will you be all right?

William nodded. He hated to see his father go again, but he understood.

“How’s your neck? Does it hurt?”

William shook his head.

“It itches a little, that’s all.”

Christopher smiled, kissed the boy on the cheek, and began the ascent to the monastery. Chindamani watched him go. As he disappeared into the darkness, she saw shadows creep across the stars. She could feel the world going out of her, far, far away, like a cloud dissolving in a storm.

It took him an hour to reach the foot of the main building. The ladder was in place. He looked up, but from where he stood he could not see Zamyatin’s window. He put a foot on the first rung and began to climb.

Two men had been put on the door. They opened it to Christopher’s pounding, their faces surly, unfriendly and, Christopher thought, more than a little frightened. They guessed that he might be the dangerous pee-ling they had been given orders to capture. But they had expected to find him inside the monastery, not coming from the outside.

Christopher had taken Tsarong Rinpoche’s gun before leaving

Chindamani’s room. Now he fingered it in his pocket, a dull weight reminding him of another existence.

“I’ve come to speak with Zamyatin,” he said.

The monks eyed him cautiously, unable to understand where he had sprung from. His clothes were soiled and matted with cobwebs and his eyes were troubled by something beyond their guessing.

They were armed with Chinese halberds, heavy, long-bladed tools of war that could inflict serious injury even when blunt. But neither man felt comfort in the feel of the heavy weapon in his hands. They had heard in a much embellished form of Tsarong Rinpoche’s fate. Zamyatin had ordered them to watch the door, but superstition travelled more easily in their veins than the stranger’s commands.

“No-one is allowed to disturb Zam-ya-ting,” said one of the men, braver or more stupid than his companion.

“I intend to disturb him,” Christopher replied in a matter-of-fact tone. It rattled the monk even more to find the pee-ling implacable rather than angry or blustering. They were in any case already feeling the first pangs of conscience about what had happened.

From an orgy of death, they and most of their colleagues had passed to a hangover of uncertainty. Without the Rinpoche to hector them, they were like children whom a party game has led into unintended naughtiness.

Christopher sensed their hesitation and walked past. One of the men called out to him to stop, but he went on regardless and the shouting subsided.

The monastery was silent. Although dawn was near, no-one had ventured out to sound the summons to morning prayers. Dorje-la would sleep late to-day if it slept at all.

He climbed to the top storey, tired, sad, defeated. He passed quickly through the rooms of the five elements and reached the hall of the chortens. No-one stopped him. He heard no voices, saw no sign that anyone had been there.

The long hall was empty. Only the bodies of the dead watched him enter. The first pale light of dawn crept through the unshuttered window, near which a lamp still burned. Christopher’s weariness changed slowly to a profound sense of unease. Where was the Russian?

“Zamyatin!” he called. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the echoing room. There was no answer.

“Zamyatin! Are you there?” he called again, but no-one replied.

He walked down the room, past the window that overlooked the pass, past memories all the more poignant for their freshness, past his father coming to life again among the shadows, past himself staring astonished at the old man. Too many ghosts. Too many shadows.

He headed for the abbot’s bedroom. The door was locked, but without someone to guard it, it was a flimsy enough affair. The lock was more ornamental than practical, and Christopher was able to kick it open without difficulty.

The old man was seated cross-legged in front of a small altar, his back to Christopher, his bent figure haloed by the light of a dozen butter lamps. He showed no sign that he had heard Christopher knock down the door. He did not turn his head or speak, other than to continue with his devotions.

Christopher stood by the door, feeling suddenly embarrassed and awkward, an intruder on his father’s privacy. The old man murmured inaudibly, oblivious of his surroundings. Christopher might have been Tsarong Rinpoche returned to kill him after all, but the abbot paid no attention.

Christopher stepped a few paces into the room. He stopped, listening to his father’s prayer, hesitant to disturb him. Then, with a shock of recognition, he understood the words the old man was reciting:

Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine .. .

“Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word in peace. Because mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, Which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people ...”

It was the Canticle of Simeon, the old man who besought God to let him depart the world in peace, having set eyes on the Christ child. Christopher stood still, listening to the familiar words, wondering if anything more than a dream separated him from that fateful evening after mass.

At last the abbot came to an end. Christopher stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Father,” he said. It was the first time he had used the name when speaking to the old man.

“It’s time for us to go.”

The abbot looked up, like someone who has long been expecting a summons.

“Christopher,” he said.

“I hoped you might come. Have you seen your son?”

Christopher nodded.

“Yes.”

“Is he all right? Is he safe?”

“Yes, father. He is safe.”

“And the other boy, Dorje Samdup Rinpoche is he safe too?”

“Yes. I’ve left them both down in the pass. Chindamani is with them.

They’re waiting for you.”

The old man smiled.

“I’m pleased they got away. You must leave as well, help them to get as far away as possible.

“Not without you, father. I came to fetch you.”

The abbot shook his head. The smile left his lips and was replaced by a deep seriousness.

“No,” he said.

“I have to remain here. I am the abbot. Whatever Tsarong Rinpoche thinks, I am still abbot of Dorje-la.”

“Tsarong Rinpoche is dead, father. You can remain abbot. But for now it’s better for you to leave. Just for a little while, until it’s safe for you to return.”

But his father shook his head again, more sadly this time.

“I’m sorry to hear about Tsarong Rinpoche. He was very unhappy. And now he will have to start his journey through his incarnations again. How tired that makes me feel. It’s time I laid this body with the others, Christopher. Time I was reborn.”

“You were reborn,” said Christopher quietly.

“When you told me who you were, it was like a rebirth for me. And again tonight.

Tsarong Rinpoche told me you were dead, and I believed him.

Coming in here like this, watching you at prayer it was like another rebirth.”

The old man put his hand on Christopher’s.

“Do you know what prayer I was reciting?” he asked.

“Yes. The Canticle of Simeon.”

“He knew when it was time to call an end. He had seen what he spent his life waiting to see. I feel the same way. Don’t force me to come with you. My place is here, among these tombs. You have another destiny. Don’t waste time here. The boys need your protection. Chindamani needs it. And, I think, your love. Don’t be too frightened of her: she’s not a goddess all the time.”

Leaning on Christopher’s arm, the old man eased himself slowly to his feet.

“Is the Russian still alive?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“Then it’s time you were on your way. I’ve no concern with politics.

Bolsheviks, Tories, Liberals they’re all the same to me.

But the boy must be protected. See that he comes to no harm. And your own son. I’m sorry I had him brought here, I’m sorry I caused you grief. But believe me that I thought it was for the best.”

Christopher squeezed his father’s hand.

“Are you sure you won’t come with me?” he said.

“Very sure.”

Christopher was silent.

“You are happy?” he asked after a while.

“I am at peace, Christopher. That is more important than happiness. You will see. In the end, you will see. Now, you must go-‘ Reluctantly, Christopher let go of his father’s hand.

“Goodbye,” he whispered.

“Goodbye, Christopher. Take care.”

Outside, a miserable sunlight was slowly working its way across the sky. One by one, stars faded and the jagged edges of mountain peaks were etched once more against a grey sky. In the air above, a vulture winged its way to Dorje-la Gompa. Its great wings dragged it forward, casting a grey shadow on the snow.

Christopher ran towards the spot where he had left Chindamani and the boys. The thin air scarred his lungs. His chest heaved, filling with pain. Altitude and tiredness were taking their combined toll.

There was a low ridge. He staggered up it and fell at the top, landing in a soft bed of snow. Picking himself up, he looked down into the pass. It was empty.

PART THREE

Parousia.

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards

Bethlehem to be born3’

The Road to Sining-Fu.

W B Yeats “The Second Coming’

Christopher’s greatest fear was that he would fall asleep in the snow and succumb to the cold. He had already been tired after his journey to Dorje-la, and the previous night’s exertions had taken their toll. The weather was bitterly cold, and his only protection was the clothing he wore. Several times when he rested he caught himself dozing off. He knew Zamyatin and the others would be tired too, but not as badly as himself. And they had two tents, a little firewood, and some food. His only hope lay in the tracks that told him which way they had gone. He would keep following them until his strength gave out.

On the first night, he found a small hollow in a cliff-face: not really of a size to be designated a cave, but big enough to give him a little shelter from the biting winds. He had not eaten since the early evening of the day before.

All the next day, he trudged on, moving deeper and deeper into the mountains. There was no point in turning back: whichever way he headed, he knew he would find nothing but snow and ice.

The tracks at his feet became the whole world to him, blotting out everything else.

He was troubled by dreams. In its exhaustion, his mind began to paint the blank snow with strange images. Once he saw a line of ruined pyramids stretch away from him towards a dark horizon.

And flanking them all the way a parallel line of sphinxes, robed in black silk and crowned with leaves of juniper. The need for sleep was overwhelming. All he wanted was to lie down and let the dreams take him. Every step became a struggle, every moment he remained awake a victory.

He kept awake on the second night by aiming the pistol at himself and holding his thumb on the trigger so that, if he pitched forward too far, it would fire. He sang to the darkness and carried out exercises in mental arithmetic.

On the third morning, he found another shelter in the rock, a deep one this time. He crawled inside it and collapsed at once into a deep sleep. It was daylight when he woke, still groggy, but he guessed he must have slept through all that day and night, so stiff were his limbs and so hungry did he feel on waking.

When he scrambled out of the little cave, he found himself in a changed world. There had been a blizzard. Try as he might, he could not find any trace of the tracks he had been following. He almost gave up then. It would have taken only a single bullet to make it quick. Instead, he decided to keep on, following the easiest path in the general direction Zamyatin had taken, due north.

He found Chindamani about five hours later, on a low saddle of rock at the edge of a glacier. She had been there since the previous day When Christopher found her, she was seated outside a small tent chanting a mantra gently to herself, over and over again. He was reminded of his father reciting the Canticle of Simeon.

He sat down beside her quietly, not wanting to startle her. At first she continued chanting, immersed in the mantra to the exclusion of all distractions. Then she became aware of his presence and became silent.

“Go on,” he said, “I didn’t meant to disturb you.”

She turned and looked at him without speaking. He had only seen her before in the yellow light of butter lamps or in stark moonlight, silhouetted. In the watery light of day she seemed drawn and pallid, bereft of warmth.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“A long time.” She paused.

“Have you come to take me home?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“I don’t know the way. There was a blizzard: all the tracks are blotted out. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t take you back there.”

She looked hard at him, with sad eyes.

“You’re tired, Ka-ris To-feh. Why are you so tired?”

“I haven’t eaten for three or four days. I’ve scarcely slept. What happened? How did Zamyatin find you?”

She told him. Someone had told the Russian about the stairs of Yama, and he had gone out to the pass by a side entrance. About half an hour after Christopher left to find his father, Zamyatin had found Chindamani and the boys. He had tied them together with a long rope and forced them to start walking.

“Where is he headed?”

“North. To Mongolia. He left me behind here because he said I was holding them up. He let me keep one of the tents and enough food for a week.”

“Are the boys all right?”

She nodded.

“They’re a little tired and frightened, but he has not harmed them.”

“What about.. .?”

She reached out a gloved hand and stroked his cheek.

“No more questions,” she said.

“I have food inside the tent. It’s time for you to eat.”

They moved on that afternoon through a light snowfall, two blurs of white in a white landscape, heading north. That night they pitched the tent in the lee of a tall rock face out of reach of the constant winds. For the first time since leaving Dorje-la, Christopher felt warmth creep back into his body.

The next day was like the one before, and the next. To make even a few miles in a day called for superhuman effort. Christopher could not begin to contemplate the sheer scale of a journey all the way to Mongolia. They were prisoners of the mountains: for all they knew, they were heading the wrong way. Though they eked it out, there was only enough food for a few days more. If they did not find a pass out of the mountains soon, they would be trapped in them forever. Christopher kept the gun a secret from her: if he had to use it, he would do so while she was asleep.

They slept together for the first time on the third night. Until then, she had kept separate from him, sleeping at her own end of their small tent, dreaming her own dreams, waking to her own loneliness. But that night she came, not simply to his bed, but to his world. It was not that she left her own existence entirely behind;

but from that moment it became paler than it had been, less substantial.

She came to him while he was sleeping, as though she were a part of a

dream, silent and unnoticed. He did not wake at first. A lonely wind

rattled through the gully in which they were camped, but inside the

little yak-hair tent it was warm. She lifted the heavy blanket that

covered him, her body on the hard ground, shivering,

fully awake, more awake than she had ever been. Carefully, like a child who has crept into bed beside her father for comfort, but is afraid to wake him, she lay against his back, awkward and tense.

He woke to her out of a dream of carnage. His sleep was still troubled and filled with dim shapes he could not remember when he woke. Hooded figures slipped away from him down narrow, deserted streets. Vultures descended on angels’ wings, their sharp beaks poised to tear his flesh.

He sensed her in the darkness close to him. As sleep left him and consciousness returned, he heard her breathing, felt her breath warm against his neck. He slept in all but his heavy outer clothes and boots. Through his thick garments, he could hardly feel her press against him.

For a long time he lay in the darkness like that, listening to the wind dance beyond the thin walls of the tent, listening to her breathe softly against the exposed skin of his neck. Then, wordlessly, as though still in a dream, he turned and lay face to face with her.

With one arm he pulled her to him until she was close against him. His fingers caressed her quietly, sadly, in a dream. She stiffened at his first clumsy embrace, then let herself be held by him.

Neither spoke. As she moved to him, she felt the dark and the loneliness grow around and within her. Her very nearness to him seemed to intensify whatever distance still rested in her mind.

He laid his voice on her like an anxious hand.

“Why did you come?” he asked.

“Does it matter?”

He stroked her back.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

She said nothing, then put one hand behind his head and drew herself closer to him. Then, in a very quiet voice, she said ‘yes’.

“Of me?”

“Not of you,” she answered.

“Of wanting you. Of wanting to lie with you like this. To become flesh with you.”

“To become flesh?”

Not ‘one flesh’, she had said, but ‘flesh’.

“All my life I have been a vehicle for the spirit,” she said.

“I

pretended my body was a mirror, that the image was what counted,

not the glass.” She paused.

“I’m tired of pretending. I am what I am. Even if the glass breaks, I want to be more than the mirror.”

He kissed her gently on the forehead, then over her entire face, small kisses, delicate as flakes of falling snow. She trembled and pressed herself against him.

He caressed her back now with longer, softer strokes. She was wearing her indoor clothes from the monastery: a silk tunic and trousers. His hand touched the rising curve of her small buttocks and he felt desire begin in him.

“Desire is greedy. It will devour you,” his father had said. But what if one were already being devoured? By loneliness. By incapacity to love. By simple bereavement of the flesh.

With shaking hands, he undressed her. Her body felt young and supple and quiet as silk. Outside, the wind had fallen and snow fell in un resisted profusion, softening, whitening everything it touched. He bent over her and kissed her forehead again, then her eyes, in equal proportion. She shivered and moaned gently. His lips felt hot against her skin. She thought that, deep inside her, the goddess shivered too.

“I love you,” she said. It was the second time she had told him, but the words still seemed strange to her, a phrase from a liturgy she had heard spoken often but never until now seen enacted.

She felt desire for him grow, suffusing her as a light suffuses a hitherto-darkened room. His fingers moved across her flesh slowly and quietly, like the wings of pigeons stroking the bright air. His mouth found hers in the darkness, without speech or sound, and she opened her lips to his, her breath mingling with his breath, her heart beating alongside his. She reached up a hand to touch his cheek. He felt strange to her: her fingers strayed blindly among the thick hairs of his beard.

As desire grew in both of them, it blotted out everything else.

The world shrank to a tiny point, then vanished. Only their bodies remained, floating in the void. They had become a single universe into which no light or sound or good or evil entered.

She helped him undress with fingers made clumsy by passion.

Why had no-one told her this, that a man’s body was more beautiful than a god’s, the awkwardness of desire more satisfying than the most perfect ritual, a moment’s fulfilment worth more than a lifetime of righteous virginity? Even the gods cohabited with their celestial consorts: the rhythms of their bodies in the act of love cast shadows over the world of men.

His hands moved over her now with the ease of love that has become whole. Out of his past, memories came to inform and guide his fingers along the uncharted waters of her flesh. He sensed her uncertainty and her hesitation in this strange novitiate. She had no memories to guide her, only instinct and the patterns set by her impassioned deities.

And yet, as he moved into her and they gave themselves up wholly to the dance, they discovered a fierce harmony, a single rhythm that possessed their bodies and their hearts entirely. She moved beneath him, easily, softly, without guilt or shame, in slow, erotic measures no art or artifice could match. And he moved in her perfectly, matching his actions to hers, seeking her in the dark with a dream-like intensity. And so the memories fell away and there was only this moment, only love for her, transcending the past, driving it out, remaking it in her image.

And finally there was silence. And darkness that seemed to stretch into eternity. They lay together, only their fingers touching.

Neither spoke.

By morning, the snow had stopped. They were the only living things in a white immensity that seemed to have no end.

At noon on the same day, they found a pass leading into the Tsangpo valley region. Beyond the pass, they came upon a hut inhabited by two hunters. The men were sullen at first, but when Chindamani told them who she was, the frowns left their faces and food and drink appeared as if from nowhere. Christopher realized how little he really knew of her. Here, she was a sort of queen, a holy person whom others would obey without question or hesitation. He kept his distance from her while they remained at the hut.

The hunters gave them directions to Gharoling, the monastery to which Tobchen Geshe had tried to take Samdup for refuge.

They arrived there two days later. The monastery was situated to the north of the mountain range through which they had passed, in a secluded valley through which ran a tributary of the Yarlong Tsangpo, the northern section of the Brahmaputra. Shigatse, the capital of Tsang province, was only a few days away to the northeast.

An early spring had come to the valley. Grass grew on the banks of the river, riveted to the earth by small blue flowers that neither of them could name. There were trees, and birds to sing in them, and green buds forming on their branches. A small village nestled beneath the gompa, which stood on a low hill near the head of the valley. White prayer-flags fluttered everywhere, filling the air with a soft flapping sound.

They stood at the entrance to the valley, dressed in their travel worn clothes, pinched and hungry, gazing at the scene in front of them like damned souls gazing into paradise. Chindamani’s eyes were wide with amazement: she had never known a world that was not bound by winter. The seasons meant nothing to her. She touched the grass with unbelieving fingers, smelled the warm air, and watched the birds collect twigs for their nests.

Christopher picked a flower for her and placed it in her hair.

“I’ll keep it always, Ka-ris To-feh,” she said.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said.

“It will die soon. If you put it in water, it will last a few days more. But then it will die.”

She looked crestfallen for a moment, then smiled.

“Perhaps that is why it is so beautiful,” she said.

He looked at her, at the flower on her temple.

“Yes,” he said. And he thought she was beautiful. And that she would die.

She spent most of the day following their arrival closeted with the abbot, Khyongla Rinpoche. When she emerged that evening, her face was serious, and Christopher’s best efforts could not secure a smile. She would not tell him what the abbot had said.

They slept in separate rooms, and that night she did not come to him. He waited for her until dawn, but in the end resigned himself to her absence and slept fitfully through the morning.

A week passed, during which they ate and rested and gained strength for the journey ahead. Each day they left the monastery and walked together in the green valley, or sat on the banks of the river. Dorje-la seemed worlds away, a place of horrors unimaginable here. They were lovers in a world made for love. The rest was a nightmare or an illusion. But when she came from her talks with the abbot her eyes were clouded with sadness neither the sunshine nor his words of endearment could dispel.

“Do you love me truly, Ka-ris To-feh?” she asked.

“Yes, little Drolma,” he said.

“Please. I’ve asked you not to call me that.” Her face grew troubled.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

He frowned.

“Does she still live in you?” he asked.

She nodded. A shadow passed over the water.

“Yes,” she said.

“No matter what happens, she lives in me.”

“I see. Very well, I promise not to call you Drolma if you promise to call me what my friends call me.”

“What’s that?”

“Chris,” he said.

“Ka-ris.” She laughed.

“That’s all right. I’ll call you Ka-ris from now on.”

He smiled at her.

“And you,” he said.

“Do you love me truly?”

She bent forward and kissed him. In the sky a lammergeyer plunged.

They talked of his life: India, England, the war. It was all fresh to her, all beyond imagining. When he talked of cities, she could see nothing but gigantic monasteries, seething with people. When he told her of ships sailing the sea between India and home, she thought only of a vast expanse of rippling snow. The river beside which they walked was the first flowing water she had seen: the ocean was beyond all thought. When he spoke of tanks and aeroplanes, she shook her head in disbelief and closed her eyes.

Once, an early butterfly passed over their heads, bright-winged and doomed to die by nightfall. He watched it go and thought of Puccini’s opera, of Butterfly waiting year after year for the return of Pinkerton, of Oriental fidelity and Western treachery.

“My Butterfly,” he murmured, caressing her cheek with a thoughtful hand.

She smiled and looked at him, thinking of the painted wings that had passed her a moment ago. He looked away, remembering a painted stage and a woman in a kimono, dying for love, waiting for smoke to appear on a distant horizon.

In a cave above the monastery lived an old hermit, a gomchen who had been immured there at the age of twenty, forty years earlier. The cave had neither window nor door, but inside a spring rose up and flowed through a small opening in the wall before running down to join the river below. Every morning, the villagers would leave food in the opening; every evening they would collect the empty bowl. Otherwise, nothing passed in or out of the cave:

no light, no sound, no fragrance. If six days passed without the food being touched, they would break down the wall and take the old man’s body for burial.

They went up the hill to visit the cave.

“What does he think about?” Christopher asked.

“If I knew, I would be walled up like him.”

“Don’t you know? Doesn’t the Lady Tara tell you?”

She shook her head, irritated.

“I’ve told you. She tells me nothing. I’m just the vehicle. But it’s different anyhow. I have no choice about being a trulku. He chose to enter his cave. He will escape rebirth through his own efforts.

The Lady Tara will go on being reborn, in me, in others after me.”

“We have holy men,” he said.

“But they don’t wall themselves up like this. They pray, but not incessantly. They fast, but not to excess.”

“Then they cannot be very holy men,” she replied.

“Perhaps they may have the fortune to be reborn as gomchens.”

“I think it’s horrible,” he said, ‘to be walled up like that. To have no light or company or fresh air, year after year for forty years. It’s worse than prison. A man might go mad in there.”

“This world is a prison,” she answered.

“He is seeking to escape.

Light and fresh air and conversation are nothing but bars and walls. We are doomed to be reborn to them. In his cave, he is already free.”

He took her hand and held it tightly.

“Do you believe that?” he asked.

“Do you believe that when we make love, when I lie with you? Do you believe that now, here with me in the sunlight?”

She looked away, at the cave, at the little stream running from it, at the hillside.

“I don’t know what to believe any more,” she answered. She could hear nothing from the cave, not even the sound of the old hermit’s voice reciting prayers.

In front of them, the valley stretched out of sight. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the huts that made up the village. In a field, yaks were grazing. At their feet, the monastery glistened with gilded cupolas.

“I remember,” she said, ‘paintings on the walls of the Chqje’s room.”

She paused.

“Yes. Go on,” he said.

“They were bright paintings. I used to think they showed scenes from the next world, from hell. In one of them, a man was being held by a band of monks. His arms and legs were tied, and they were lifting him.”

She paused again. Beyond the valley, stark peaks rose into a sky of ice. She shivered.

“Yes,” he said.

“Go on.”

i “There was a hole. They were lifting him to lower him into the , hole.”

i “I see.”

“And in the next picture, he had been lowered through the hole and was standing in a dark room. I think .. .” She shuddered.

“I

think he was held there by a spider’s web.”

“I understand. And was there more? Were there any more pictures?”

She nodded.

“Yes. Another one,” she said.

“In it the man was lying down.

Perhaps he was not a man, but a boy. He seemed very small. And demons with several arms were attacking him. I tell you, I thought it was hell.”

“Yes,” he said.

“It was hell.”

But he thought though he could not be sure why of the photographs he had found in Cormac’s desk.

“Simon, Dorje-la?, 1916’, “Matthew, Dorje-la?” 1918’, “Gordon, Dorje-la?” 1919’.

“I think they must have lowered the victims into the room a few days before it was time to go down to the first chamber to bring up the Chqje’s things. The rest of the time, there would be some guardians to watch over the treasure; but while the treasure was needed, they would all be feasting at the other end of the tunnel.”

He shuddered. Had his father known what went on? Had Carpenter known to what uses the boys he sold were put?

“When was the last time the Oracle appeared in public?” he asked.

She thought briefly.

“About... a week before you arrived at Dorje-la,” she said.

He remained silent. It fitted. The fresh body. No traces of spiders in the treasure-chamber.

“I think we’d better go back down to the river,” he said.

On the fourth day, the abbot called for him. Chindamani took him

there, then left them alone. The abbot was old and stern, but

Christopher sensed that some at least of the lines that creased the skin round his eyes were laughter lines; he guessed that, at another time and under other circumstances, the old man might have shown himself less severe.

“You are the son of the Dorje Lama? Is that correct?” the abbot asked after tea had been served.

“I am the son of a man who was called Arthur Wylam,” Christopher answered.

“In my world he died. In yours, he became the abbot of a monastery. I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it.

I don’t even seek for an explanation any longer.”

“That’s very sensible of you. There are no explanations that you would understand. You say you thought your father died. Perhaps it is best if you continue to think of things that way.”

The abbot paused, then looked up at Christopher.

“Tell me about Zam-ya-ting, the Burial.”

“What do you want to know?”

“The truth. As you understand it. Who he is. What he wants with Dorje Samdup and your son.”

Christopher told him what he could. Each time he was about to let his personal feelings about Zamyatin interfere with the facts, a look in Khyongla Rinpoche’s eyes stopped him. It was not a conscious thing, but afterwards he realized it had happened throughout the interview.

When he had finished, the abbot nodded and poured tea into Christopher’s cup. For the first time, Christopher noticed that the cups they used were to-tai, identical to those he had drunk from in Dorje-la.

“And the woman, Jebtsumna Chindamani,” the abbot said.

“Do you love her?”

“Has she told you that I do?”

“Yes. She has told me so. And that she loves you. Is that true?”

Christopher felt like someone walking on an ice-covered lake, who hears the ice groaning beneath his feet. He was sure he had contravened a fundamental law of this ritual-obsessed society.

What did they do to mortals who ravished their goddesses?

“Have you slept with her?”

Christopher could not keep himself from nodding. Perhaps whatever death they chose to inflict would be quick.

“You don’t have to conceal it from me. She herself has told me.

I am glad.”

“Glad?” Christopher was sure he had misheard.

“Of course. Did you think I would be angry? We value chastity this is a monastery, after all. All Buddhist monks and nuns are celibate. But Jebtsumna Chindamani is not a nun. She is not bound to the Sangha by vows. It is merely a convention that the Tara trulku at Dorje-la remains unmarried.”

“But I’m not .. .”

“Divine? Neither is she. Not exactly. But I expect she has already tried to explain that to you and failed. I am not sure that I approve of her choice ofapee-ling for a lover. That may be unwise. But the Lady Tara dwells in her. And you are the son of the Dorje Lama.

I cannot criticize her. If she has chosen you, then the Lady Tara has chosen you.”

Christopher began to wonder if he had any choice in this at all.

He had never felt more like a puppet. And he knew exactly whose hands held the strings.

“Go back to her now,” said the abbot, ‘and tell her I wish to speak with her again. Do not ask her to tell you what she and I talk about there are things it is better for you not to know. But do not resent that. You have an important task. You have been chosen for it, see that you fulfill it.”

On their last night at Gharoling, she came to his room, wearing a Chinese gown of white silk and small stitched shoes of Indian brocade. She brought tea and barley cakes and purple incense that smelled of honey and musk and wild roses. As they sat and sipped from their tiny cups, coils of smoke wreathed their heads, filling their nostrils with a heavy, intoxicating fragrance. The smell reminded him of his childhood: of church on high holy days, of spring evenings crammed with the sweet smell of holiness, of the white hands of the priest turning bread to flesh and wine to blood.

But there was no priest, no altar, no life-renouncing god to stand between him and his senses. He feasted on her hair and eyes and lips, on the simple miracle that she was there. He had grown to need her, and he wondered how he had lived before he knew her.

“Do men love women where you come from, Ka-ris?” she asked.

He smiled.

“Of course. And women love men.”

“And do they marry?”

“Yes.”

“The person they love?”

He shook his head.

“No, not always. Perhaps very seldom. They marry for money or land or to please their parents.”

“And may a woman have more than one husband?”

He laughed.

“No,” he said.

“One is enough.”

“In Tibet, a woman may marry several brothers at one time.

When the oldest brother is away, she has to sleep with the next.

She is never lonely.”

“What if she does not like her husbands?”

She shrugged.

“She may like one. What if an English wife does not like her one husband? Can she choose another?”

i “Sometimes. If she is wealthy.”