The encampment burst into frenzied activity. Shan could see children being herded toward the trees beyond the pasture. One group, a tight knot of boys with two Kazakh men carrying hunting rifles, ran from the Red Stone camp. The zheli were fleeing. Men collected in small groups at the entrance of each clan camp.

Shan looked up the slope and saw Lokesh, standing beside Gendun, waving at them. Shan gestured for them to get down and the Tibetans disappeared behind their rock. Moments later a moan escaped Jakli's lips as a sleek black utility vehicle appeared, followed by a troop truck. As the vehicles stopped at the first circle of tents and the troops leapt out, the knot tying itself in Shan's stomach grew ice cold. Knobs. One of the boot squads. He pushed Jakli toward the cover of a boulder.

"Maybe," he said without conviction, "it's just a security check."

Jakli just shook her head.

The knobs, clutching the compact submachine guns used for riot control, flanked their officers, as if expecting resistance, and marched forward, shouting at the inhabitants of the first camp to present papers. A line formed, but no papers were collected. One of the officers broke away and walked alone along the front of the encampments, studying the faces of those in line. Not walked. Strutted. It was Bao. He made a dismissive gesture and the first group of Kazakhs were ordered to go into their tents.

The knobs repeated the process at two, then three camps. Shan's mind raced. It could take an hour or two, and he and Jakli would have to stay on the hill, hidden, until they were done. He looked up the hill, wondering if he could steal his way to Gendun and Lokesh.

"Marco got away," Jakli said in a hollow voice. "I saw Sophie slip into the trees."

The knobs got no further than the sixth camp, the Red Stone camp. They did not bother to ask for papers, but just marched Akzu, his wife, and Malik toward the center, a hundred feet from their trucks. Bao paced around them, shouting at them. Shan glanced at Jakli. She had a knuckle in her mouth, and was clenching it so hard in her jaw that she seemed about to bite it off.

Bao barked at a soldier, who climbed into the truck and reappeared with chains in his hands.

When he looked back Jakli was looking at the mountains to the west and her eyes were full of tears. The knobs began to herd Jakli's relatives to the trucks.

Jakli slowly stood, still watching the mountains, as if Nikki might ride across a ridge at any moment. "It will be a good day for the races later," she said, the way she might make conversation over a mug of tea. Her tears were gone, replaced by a cool glint of determination.

Shan stood too, uncertain but scared.

Jakli began walking down the path to the camps. He stood alone for a moment, then caught up with her.

"You have been like an older brother, Shan," she said. "You have taught me things."

"We should stay back," Shan warned. The large rocks that hid them from view were thinning out. In another fifty feet they would be at the valley floor, in plain sight.

Jakli pointed to a rock. "There's a place with cover. The knobs will be gone soon."

She picked up Shan's hand and dropped something in it, then pushed him toward the rock. "Use it," she said urgently. "Get out of here. Go to your new life." She took a paper from her pocket and dropped it by her feet. "Nikki and I, that was like a dream. It could never have been part of this world. It will have to wait for another time." She took a step and paused, then spoke in a whisper, looking back up the slope toward the Tibetans. "Lha gyal lo." May the gods be victorious.

He darted to the rock but when he looked up she was not there. Jakli was walking to her white horse. If she rode hard, he realized, rode up the ridge where trucks could not go, she would make it.

But a moment later she slipped the saddle off, then the bridle, and slapped the horse's flank hard. It bolted away, up the ridge. Then Jakli stepped toward the knobs. There was a movement beside him, and suddenly Fat Mao was there, out of breath, shaking with exhaustion.

"I told her, don't do it," he gasped. "The knobs were all over Yoktian. Some in the school, dressed like teachers, waiting for the zheli. Some were secretly watching the horses, hoping the zheli would pick up their prizes so Bao could snare them. But she did it anyway. She said she didn't see any knobs, that she would make it look like an accident, like a gate was just left open. I told her these were boot squads. They had special techniques, they could hide and watch. Electronic surveillance. And you have three bowls already. If they take you, I told her, then you're gone, off to Kashgar, in some coal mine the next day. For the next few years."

The herd. Shan remembered how she had arrived late, her horse lathered, and recalled her words at the horse's grave. She had wanted to find a way to say goodbye, a gesture for the Kazakhs, and her uncle the horsespeaker. She was the one who had freed the herd.

"Jakli!" Shan called as painful understanding flooded over him. He stood but she was already seen by two knobs, who were running to intercept her. The knobs had her family. They had come for Jakli, who had openly defied them at Yoktian. If Jakli didn't go they would take her family to prison.

The soldiers grabbed her arms and roughly pulled her toward Bao.

"Jakli!" someone else called out. Wangtu emerged from the crowd and ran toward her. A knob slammed the butt of his gun into Wangtu's belly and the Kazakh crumpled onto the ground, groaning in pain.

Word seemed to spread through the encampment like a surge of electricity. Men, women, and children, some on horseback, converged around the knob trucks. A hundred Kazakhs, then two hundred, surrounded the knobs, who stood, weapons ready, as Bao strutted about her, ignoring the angry shouts. The knobs let go of her family and Malik charged a knob, jumping on his back, beating him with his fists. The soldier flung him to the ground and held him under his boot until two of the clansmen dragged him away. As they did so Akzu pointed. The white horse was on top of the ridge now, standing proudly on a ledge overlooking the camp. It seemed to be watching.

"Niya!" someone shouted. "Niya Gazuli!"

The knobs put chains on Jakli, at her wrists and her feet. Wangtu was on his knees, gasping, crying, holding his belly. The soldiers began to pull her by the chains, but she resisted and called out to them defiantly. The soldiers dropped the chains, and she picked them up herself, walking on her own, her head held high, to the truck that awaited her.

The murmur of Niya's name swept through the clans, which began to form a long line along the road out of camp. More horsemen began to appear on the slopes, where they had been hiding. At the north end of the valley, below the lake, Shan glimpsed a solitary man watching, astride a silver camel.

"Niya! Niya! Niya Gazuli!" the crowd chanted, until all the Kazakhs picked up the cry and it reverberated down the valley.

Bao glared at the crowd, then cast a poisonous look at the horse above them. The truck with Jakli began to move. Then Bao climbed into the black vehicle and it followed.

"Niya! Niya!" The riders on the horses stood in their stirrups and raised their fists high, the defiant shouts echoing through the mountains as the truck moved down the road.

Then, a hundred yards from the crowd, Bao's truck stopped. The major climbed out quickly and stood at the hood of the truck, bracing himself with a long range rifle, aiming up the ridge. He fired twice and the chant stopped. A woman screamed in pain and the majestic white horse stumbled. Then it dropped and its body fell off the ledge, rolling down the slope.