Shan’s throat was so dry he had trouble speaking. “You saw Lokesh?”

“No. He and Dolma must be locked inside too.” Yangke recognized the furious expression that crossed Shan’s face. “Dolma will have ointments for Lokesh’s back. He will be safe. You can’t go down there.” Yangke scanned the slope above them with a worried expression.

“Hostene has started climbing,” Shan explained. “He wants to be alone. He knows where to meet us.” Shan stood, slung his pack over his shoulder, and starting walking. After half a dozen steps he paused and looked over his shoulder. Yangke had not moved.

“You are going to seek out ghosts,” Yangke said.

“Someone once asked Lokesh what I do,” Shan said. “He told the man I am a confessor of ghosts. It’s the best description I have ever heard. In my experience the only people who can be relied upon always to tell the truth are the dead.”

When they arrived at their destination it was late afternoon. The hermit Rapaki was not in his cave. There was no sign that he had been there since he’d fled during their first visit. Hostene had lit a small fire and balanced one of the hermit’s battered saucepans on two rocks to boil water. Shan could see the Navajo scanning the mountainside. Every hour that passed brought his niece closer to death. He had urged that the helicopter drop them off as high up the mountain as possible. Shan had resisted, explaining that they could not risk being spotted by the miners in Little Moscow or spooking the killer.

Shan lowered himself against a rock at the mouth of the cave and found himself blinking away sleep. A warm southern breeze carried the scent of gentians. A bird warbled from a grove of junipers. When he awoke, less than an hour of daylight was left. Soup was cooking. Somewhere behind him, in the dim cave, Yangke was whispering the soft syllables of a mantra. Hostene sat on an outcropping, watching another of Abigail’s videotapes.

When Shan entered the cave, Yangke ignored him. Had Rapaki returned? Shan lit a butter lamp and squeezed through the narrow opening that led to the chamber the hermit used for refuse. The chaos of trash and stores was gone. Someone had cleared the central part of the room, arranging the debris into piles in the two far corners. For the first time Shan saw that the floor had been painted, probably centuries earlier. There were faint broken lines of color, tiny staggered ovals that led from the eastern wall, defining a wide circle at first, then spiraling inward in a counterclockwise direction, making six-no, eight-ever smaller loops until it ended among images that had been recently ravaged. Since his last visit someone had destroyed the center, roughly hacking at the floor with chisel and hammer, leaving only a few colored shards that offered no clue as to what the focal images had been.

Ovals. Hubei’s brother had learned how to use the video camera so he could film ovals on a fresco Abigail could not reach. Shan explored every inch remaining of the strange pattern, following it outward now, discovering that the outer lines of marks did not exactly form a circle. The outer ring of the circle was broken. Two lines bent and climbed the adjoining wall. With his dim light Shan followed the lines upward. They each ended over his head in jagged shapes that looked like lightning bolts. Here, on the wall in front of him, the oval shapes were best preserved. He held the lamp against the wall and realized the little marks weren’t exactly ovals; they were more like plump figure eights. Footprints. The lines were made up of symbolic footprints. Abigail had been here, had probably helped clean the cave in order to study the old signs on the floor. She had found a map of the pilgrim’s path. This was the place of beginning-for pilgrims, for Abigail, probably for the killer. And now for Shan and his friends.

He followed the ovals back down the wall, unable to make sense of them. Then he stepped back to survey the faded characters on the wall as a group. They were all demons, the most fearful members of the Tibetan pantheon-not protector demons but the devils that had been integral to Bon belief long before the Buddhist saints had reached Tibet. They were the flesh-eating, fanged devils who wore skulls around their necks. The style of the paintings was like none he had ever seen in Tibet, crude yet powerful. But if Abigail was correct in her hypothesis, he should expect to see images unlike any found elsewhere. He followed the spiraling footprints, pausing at each of the demons along the way. When he reached the ruined centerpiece he gazed up, as confused as ever. There was no correlation to the mountain, no connection to the geography outside. It was simply a map to hell.

He took out the tiny piece of plaster he had been carrying with him since his first visit to Little Moscow, when he had been thrust against the fresco. He laid it beside the rows of ovals and walked around it, considering the ever-shifting pieces of the puzzle of the Sleeping Dragon, then studied the lines that led to the images on the wall, trying to identify the demons depicted based on their similarities to more modern images. There was a black bull that no doubt signified the Lord of Death, another signified suffering, others delusion and the impermanence of life. It was a map of the kora, though not a literal map.

At the mouth of the cave Yangke was stirring the soup. Dried branches had been added to the fire. Hostene was gathering twigs. As Shan lowered himself beside the fire he saw that Yangke was now cleaning containers in which to serve the soup. He had three of Rapaki’s empty cans beside him and was cleaning three others.

“There’s no need-,” Shan began, then broke off as Yangke nodded into the shadows.

“She wouldn’t let me join them,” Yangke said. “She still blames me for Tashi’s death.”

In an instant Shan was on his feet, the butter lamp raised as he walked along the wall of the outer cave, pausing every few steps, fingers extended to catch any moving air. He found a fold in the rock, barely big enough for a man to crawl through. After four feet it opened into a wide passage. Juniper smoke hung about the roof of the tunnel.

They were in a chamber near whose center was a cluster of four candles, and half a dozen butter lamps were scattered around. They sat facing a wall lined with old wicker chests and huge clay jars. Lokesh was gesturing, speaking in the soft, patient voice of a teacher. Dolma was learning a mantra. Lokesh was using his own method to help Gendun and save the people of Drango village.

Feeling like a trespasser, Shan extinguished his lamp. Dolma did not trust Yangke. If Lokesh had seen Yangke, he would have assumed Shan was nearby, but still his friend had remained hidden.

Lokesh paused in midsentence, raised his eyes toward the ceiling, then twisted slightly and without looking back extended an open, uplifted palm in Shan’s direction.

Shan approached uncertainly, painfully aware that he had been disappointing his old friend ever since arriving on the mountain. He had been in many secret chambers since he had been released from prison, had thrilled with discovery as Gendun and Lokesh explained the significance of old relics in hidden shrines, often felt satisfaction that he could now explain much of their content on his own. But here he was just another intruder.

More objects came into view. Holes had been hand chiseled into the rock and pegs inserted to hold equipment. But not the equipment of worship Shan had often seen in such rooms, not robes, not the twenty different hats used to signify roles and functions in the big gompas, not symbolic offerings. On the wall were ropes and staffs of wood, short yak-tail whips, manacles with hand-forged links, ritual axes and iron goads, wooden collars that looked like shorter versions of the canque Yangke had worn, many old leather bags with long drawstrings, and, even more strangely, felt vests with many pockets.