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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What kind of bloodwalker is this? Shan almost added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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