The dzong was empty as they entered. The brazier in the large room where they had eaten was cold. There was a half-eaten plate of tsampa on the table. They stood at one of the open portals, silently looking out over the vast empty plain until Shan became aware of a presence behind him.

It was Jowa, but not the proud purba he had known. This was a subdued, haggard Jowa, looking half-dead with fatigue.

"You came back," Shan said. "You didn't go with the purbas." He remembered the boasting that last night they had been together, how Jowa the warrior had taunted even Gendun. And he remembered the confused Jowa on an earlier night when Gendun had first disappeared, the Jowa who had said fighting was futile if the lamas didn't survive.

Jowa seemed not to hear him. "I've seen them like this," he said in a haunted tone. "Three days and two nights now. Someone's got to stay with them when they're like this. He could try to fly out the window. His spirit wouldn't know what his body had done until it was too late."

Shan found a ladle of water on the table and handed it to Jowa, who seized it and swallowed the liquid in huge gulps that somehow seemed like sobs. Shan led him to a pallet in one of the cells. When the purba dropped his head to the floor he fell asleep so fast it seemed he had simply lost consciousness.

Lokesh was not in the hall when he returned. But Shan knew where to look. He stepped over the sleeping form of Bajys, sprawled across the threshold of the doorway to the fragrant room, and found Lokesh sitting beside a single oil lamp. With Gendun. The old lama had anchored himself with a gomthag strap, a strip of cloth used by hermits that ran around the knees and the back to prevent the body from toppling over while the spirit was elsewhere.

For Gendun was indeed not there.

Shan had seen deep meditation, had meditated himself for hours at a time, but never anything like this. The man's eyes were open, but he saw nothing. He seemed to have stopped breathing. Shan bent low with a lamp and watched his wrist. There was almost no pulse, only the barest of flickers every few seconds. The danger in talking to mountains, Shan thought, was that you could become one yourself.

They waited for an hour. Lokesh lit more incense and began a mantra. "Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhih svaha," he chanted. Shan had been taught the ancient mantra in prison, though he had almost never heard it used. "Gone, gone completely, totally crossed over to enlightenment," Lokesh was saying. Gendun, like Shan, was seeking the truth.

Shan brought more lamps. Still, Gendun did not stir. Three days, Jowa had said. As strong as Gendun's spirit might be, his body was not young, and Shan feared for it. He rose and brought a ladle of water from the stone cistern at the back of the corridor of cells. But Gendun's mouth was closed, his head perfectly perpendicular to the floor, so Shan could not drip water into it. He dared not push Gendun's head back, dared not to touch his body, for a body in such a state sometimes had its own kind of fear. It could react to the slightest touch with spasms or flinch so violently it could harm itself. Imagine he is a ceramic pot, a monk had once said to him of a hermit in deep meditation, and your finger the sharp point of a nail.

Shan let the ladle drip on Gendun's hands. At first they did not react. Then slowly, like tendrils seeking a spring, his fingers unraveled and, as if with their own consciousness, searched the back of the hands for more. Shan let a few more drops fall, and the fingers found the moisture and brought it to the lips, which quivered at the sensation of the liquid. The fingers lowered and Shan repeated the process. Gendun's eyes did not move. He dripped the water a third time and finally there was a blink. He heard an audible sigh of relief from Lokesh, then raised the dipper to the lama's lips. At its touch they opened to receive the water. He offered a quarter of the ladle, then leaned back, sharing Lokesh's relief. It might still be an hour before Gendun returned but the water was bringing him back, reminding him that at least part of him was still bound to the earth.

They sat in the fragrant room until there was a sharp, audible exhalation from Gendun, the kind of sound monks trained in the old gompas often made when awakening from deep sleep. His respiration rose and his eyes began to flutter into focus. He gazed upon Lokesh and Shan for a moment as though he did not recognize them, then a serene smile rose on his face.

"You know," he said in a, hoarse but casual voice, as if they had been speaking all the while, "I have an exquisite hunger."

They found barley kernels in a sack, lit the brazier, and roasted the kernels for tsampa. Lokesh brought water from the cistern in a clay jar and Bajys, revived but as frail and exhausted as Jowa, found a ceramic pot filled with pickled turnips. They ate the simple fare with relish as a gibbous moon inched across the open portal, brilliant as a flame. At the far end of the table, where no one sat, Lokesh had arranged the items from Khitai's sack. The battered cup. The pen case, the iron chain, the beads.

When they had finished, Shan cleaned the pan and boiled water for tea. Lokesh discovered a bundle of incense and lit three sticks as Shan explained the death of Khitai to Gendun.

The lama sighed. "It is so difficult for a child to find its way," he said. His shoulders sagged, and he seemed a frail old man.

"I am going to talk with Jowa tomorrow, Rinpoche," Shan said to the lama as Bajys wandered out of the room. The diminutive Tibetan had frozen, barely breathing, as Shan had explained about Khitai's death. But he had not taken his eyes from the floor, had not shown any sign of grief, or even surprise. For him Khitai had already died, at Red Stone camp, where Bajys had found a dead boy and concluded that his world was ending. "The soldiers are looking for Tibetans," Shan continued. "Jowa knows the way of soldiers. You must let him take you somewhere safe." He heard the low rumble of the hallway. Bajys was turning the ancient prayer wheel. "You and Lokesh must go deeper into Tibet, away from the border." So difficult for a child. The words echoed in Shan's mind. Gendun meant, difficult for a dead child to make the progression to the next incarnation.

The lama looked at the patch of the night sky visible through the open portal. "I talked to a monk once who had spent years down below," he said, meaning the world outside the high ranges of Tibet. "He had gone away lighthearted and came back full of sad news. He said to me that many people had lost the way, that they ignored what was in their hearts because it was the safe way. He thought, incredible as it sounds, that there were millions of people down below who just wanted to live to be old, as if they were enslaved to their bodies."

Gendun lifted one of the sticks of incense and waved it slowly in the space over the table. "So instead of human beings fighting the wrong, he told me, they just say it is for governments to do so. And governments say we must have armies to be safe, so armies are raised. And armies say we must have wars to be safe, so wars are fought. And wars kill children and devour souls that have not ripened. All because people just want to be old, instead of being true."

"The history of the world," Lokesh sighed.

Shan poured the tea into three chipped mugs and they drank in perfect silence.

"I have never expected to grow old, Rinpoche," Shan said at last.

Gendun gave a small laugh. He studied Shan over the steam of his mug, then looked towards the open portal. "Sometimes I wonder, have I just been hiding all these years? Did I take the easy path, while so many have suffered?"