"Not long. Five, maybe six years. But he's in good health. A nun came once and told us."

"What," Shan asked slowly, "what exactly did the nun do?"

"Gave us the message. No letter. She said a letter would be dangerous. She brought a dried flower, that's how we knew. Rinpoche likes to meditate on flowers. She smiled a great deal and gave us incense and bricks of tea and asked to go to the Yakde's room. She offered prayers there for a long time, and then she climbed down and sat by the oracle lake. She said she had always heard about this place, from her teachers, and she was glad to have seen it before she died. Then she asked for messages to the abbot from each of us and memorized our names and our messages. She said mostly she had come because the abbot was worried about us."

Lau had been there. Lau had sat in front of the thankga and no doubt had recognized the eyes as Bajys had. She had sat by the oracle waters after she had delivered the message from the abbot of the Raven's Nest, the waterkeeper who sat in Glory Camp. Shan vividly remembered the old lama's serene face and the dried flower in his fingers.

"Sometimes," Shan suggested, "sometimes you have other visitors."

"Herders come," the monk said, pointing out the narrow trail that followed the left side of the valley. "They bring grain and new blankets, sometimes. The herders have always kept the gompa alive. They say they can't bring their children for training anymore. But they bring us food." He looked toward a small ledge on the rock face fifty feet away. It held a nest. Three ravens sat there, all watching the two men intently. "Except, one day, the ravens were very scared, and one of the cloud riders came. Loud, like thunder."

Shan closed his eyes. "What did they want?"

"Up on his rock, Rinpoche, our old one, was rejoicing. He said there were some Buddhas who flew like that. But the rest of us saw that they were just Chinese."

"They came to find you?"

"Not really. They paid us no attention at first. We watched from here for a long time as they worked by the lake. Then I put on the clothing of a herder and went down to the valley, and they met me. The man in charge said he knew we were illegal monks. He said that bad Chinese would arrest us, but that they were good Chinese and were our friends. He and his friends came back to the gompa and we offered them tea, and they gave us boxes of sweet biscuits. They asked about us, about who our leaders were, about our sect."

"You mean they were scientists?" Shan asked in confusion. "Professors?"

The monk was watching another group of ravens, flying in circles over the lake as if engaged in some aerial dance. Shan repeated the question.

"Not scientists," he said, still watching the birds. "Builders."

"I don't understand."

He turned back to Shan, puzzled, apparently trying to find words. "Wait here," he said and trotted back to the door, leaving Shan alone.

Shan looked out over the valley with an unexpected contentment. The Raven's Nest was so high, and the horizon so distant, that the clouds seemed to be moving below them, across the mouth of the valley. The place seemed disconnected from the planet, its remoteness a quality unto itself, as if a piece of the world had indeed broken off into the wind, unaffected by time, unaffected by the world below.

But then the assistant abbot appeared, with a satisfied smile, and in his hands was a red nylon jacket and on the breast of the jacket, where he pointed, was a gold emblem of a man and a woman reaching over an oil derrick, a sheep, and a tractor in a field.

Shan felt as though he had been kicked in the belly. He turned away for a moment, fighting a sudden flood of dismay and fear, the emotions of defeat. The world had found the Raven's Nest after all.

"It's a strong coat. We all got one," the monk said in a consoling tone, as if trying to convince Shan not to be worried. "When Rinpoche goes on top this winter he can wear it."

"When they came," Shan said with a sigh, "did they give names?"

The assistant abbot shrugged. "Our Mandarin is poor, I'm afraid. The one in charge smoked many cigarettes, and we couldn't see his eyes because he wore glasses that were very dark. He asked questions about the lake."

Shan looked out over the shimmering waters. "What about it? What kind of questions?"

"When did it freeze, how deep is it, did we drink the water ourselves, where were the sources of the streams that replenished it."

"You said he worked at the lake, before you went to talk. What did they do?"

"I don't know. Maybe they prayed. Maybe they drank some. It is a holy lake, it has been holy for as long as people remember, even before the teachings of Buddha arrived."

"And his questions, how did you answer them?"

"It is always replenished, because it has no bottom. And of course we drink the water, even in winter when we melt its ice. It freezes much later than other lakes."

"Because it is protected," Shan said, "because it is exposed to the south and heat is radiated from the huge walls."

"No," the monk said with a patient smile. "Because the mountain deities bathe in it."

Shan nodded. "And that is all he asked?"

The assistant abbot stared out into the sky. "He wanted to know about the animals in the ranges here. I told him the land below is thick with antelope and wild yak, that the mountains have wild goats and lynx and snow leopard. He wanted to know how many people could sleep in the gompa. He said workers might come to help us, and afterward important people might stay here sometimes."

"Help you?"

"Build things, I think."

"Did they come back after that?"

"Twice. Once to take many buckets of water out of the lake. Once to take many photographs. They brought us more of the sweet biscuits that the old ones like."

"Did you wear your robes when he came those times?"

"No. He asked us not to. He said it could be dangerous for now, that we couldn't trust every Chinese. But he gave me great hope."

"You mean because they are coming to-" To what? Shan wondered. To shoot animals, doubtlessly, but not just that. Not if workers needed to come first. "To build?"

"Of course not, we could not permit it. But I told the old ones," the monk said with a generous smile toward Shan, "I explained that it is a new time, we don't have to be afraid of all the Chinese anymore."

"Why could you not permit them to construct something?"

"We hold the valley and the gompa in trust. We await the return of the Yakde Lama. Maybe in ten years, maybe twenty, I told him."

"I don't understand."

"Only the Yakde Lama could give such permission."

Suddenly the ravens on the ledge shot into the sky, flying in a straight line toward those who circled the lake. They began to chatter, so loudly Shan could hear the echo down the valley.

The monk studied the birds silently for a moment, then nodded and turned to Shan, excitement mounting on his face. "You have luck," he said brightly, "the cloud riders are returning."

Shan and Jowa jogged along the valley floor toward the trail the monks had described as the route of the herders. There was time if their visitors had to flee, the assistant abbot had confirmed, for the ravens always sensed the approach of the cloud riders from a great distance, in enough time for some of the monks to walk to the lake to meet the machine when it arrived. But there was nothing to fear from the men in the machine, he had insisted. What's more, there was no place to go. They had no more than two hours of light left and in the autumn night of the high Kunlun they would be blind, they would freeze. Sometimes travelers just shriveled in the cold, dry wind and blew away.