"No!" Marco picked up a stack of books from the floor, then dropped them. He lowered himself to his knees to retrieve them.

"I saw Nikki."

Marco seemed to move in slow motion, lowering the book in his hand, as if it had grown too heavy to hold. "You never said this before," he said, looking up with a wooden face.

"I did not understand before. It was the baseball at the nadam camp that finally made me see. Then I began to realize. I had seen Nikki. I saw him shoveling coal at Glory Camp."

"I don't think so…" Marco said in a voice spiked with fear. Shan realized that somewhere, deep inside, Marco knew.

"They captured him and took him to Glory Camp. There was a white horse there. Nikki had brought a white horse for Jakli from Ladakh. It was the horse that Wangtu brought."

The worm that had been gnawing inside was nearing the surface. Agony began to twist Marco's face.

"Then I saw him later," Shan said in a very quiet voice. "There was a scar on his right shoulder."

"A border patrol rifle, during his first caravan," Marco said in a whisper. "I told him not to move during daylight, so close to the border."

"The second time I saw him…" Shan clenched his jaw until it hurt. "He had a piece of paper in his pocket, with English letters. I thought it was code. I thought he was American, he spoke English to me so well. But the paper was just about baseball. First base, second base, third base, written in abbreviation so he could remember all the places." The baseball game at the nadam had broken the code for him. Shan had been reading the abbreviations wrong- it wasn't rows of letters, it was clusters of one-and two-letter abbreviations in columns. FB was first base, SB was second base, SS stood for shortstop. He reached into his pocket for the slip of paper and unfolded it.

"In America," Marco said in his tiny voice, "he thinks he will be asked about baseball on his citizenship test. He tries to play all the time, so he will know."

"The second time," Shan continued, "it was that night at Glory Camp. I wiped off his hair. There was black boot polish in it. It was blond. I saw a birthmark, at his hip. He was dead, Marco." He dropped the paper beside the Eluosi.

"No," Marco insisted, with a flash of anger. "You can't know that. He's coming back. He's going to America to make babies with Jakli…" His voice trailed off.

Jakli had known too, Shan was certain. Her parting words had haunted him during the long ride to Marco's cabin. Nikki and I, that was like a dream she had said. It will have to wait for another time, she had said, and it sounded like she meant another life, another incarnation. And her eyes, before she had gone to surrender to Bao. It had not been fear he had seen there, or hatred, he realized later. It had only been emptiness, for she had already discovered in her heart what Shan could only prove later. In a way he had shown the terrible truth to her, when they had gone to the Tadjik camp. She had not responded, only ridden away later to her special place of mourning, when Hoof had admitted to Shan that his brother who rode with Nikki worked for the knobs.

"Bao killed him. I was sure he was an American. Blond hair and blue eyes. I never understood." Shan seemed able to speak only in short bursts. But it was his heart, not his lungs, that was gasping. "They had been closing in. Bao had the scent of the Americans. He was desperate to catch them, it would mean promotion for certain. He hatched a plan to catch them when they were leaving, a trap for the caravan that took them out. He captured Nikki, when Nikki was bringing in the white horse and silver bridle. He had to be sure only one caravan would go out with the subversives, yours, so he could track it and capture it with his helicopters. He paid one of Nikki's men to help, the Tadjik who brought the bridle to town, to make sure you didn't grow suspicious of Nikki's absence."

"No! Damn your eyes, no!" Marco shouted. His face seemed to collapse. "No!" Marco cried. There was no anger left. "He'll be here soon." The tiny voice returned. "I love my boy."

"It has been a season for losing boys," Shan said in a faltering voice. He pulled the steel ring from his pocket, where he had kept it since that night at Glory Camp, and placed it on the log table beside Marco, then left the room.

He climbed the tower, into the night. Five minutes later came an enormous, wretched sound that Shan hoped never to hear again in his life. It was the sound of the worm eating through the thin shell, burrowing into the man's soul. It was fury. It was misery. It was confusion and despair, all in one long inhuman howl. It was the sound of complete desolation.

Shan found himself trying to see the stars through the moisture in his eyes, desperately hoping for a distraction. The horrible sound seemed to echo through his mind, making his flesh crawl. For a moment he longed to be able to howl the same way, to give release to the agony in his own heart.

He stayed on the tower past midnight, trying not to think or feel. In the small hours of the morning he found Marco sitting in a corner of Nikki's room. The big man looked as if he had been fighting all night, as though he had been beaten, and broken, for the first time in his life. He let Shan help him into his bed, as feeble as an old woman.

The others were awake, in the kitchen, on the floor by the stove. A pile of dirty rocks sat in the middle of their circle, and a pot of water was beside Gendun. But they appeared to have stopped the exercise long before. They had heard and understood. Gendun and Lokesh were saying prayers. Jowa sat with a confused expression, looking into his empty hands.

Fat Mao was angry. "It's just this thing, this ugly cloud that gets bigger every day," the Uighur said suddenly, and looked at Shan. "And you know it can't be stopped. What do you do about it? You just make it more painful."

"The Yakde Lama. We came to help the Yakde Lama," Shan said quietly, looking at the rocks.

"To hell with the Yakde Lama!" Fat Mao snapped. "One little boy, is that all you care about? Nikki was a friend of mine, and Jakli. What about the clans that have to disband? The big investigator, you don't do anything! You didn't save the Yakde Lama, he's dead. The wizard from Lhadrung, come to solve it all. Four boys dead. You didn't save them. All you do is get involved. All you do is discover bad news." There was something close to rage in the Uighur's voice. "You have no logic! You have no rules!" The Uighur glared at Shan, who sat across from him in the circle, leaning forward, tensing his muscles as if he might attack Shan. Then he grew silent as he seemed to remember the others.

Shan returned Fat Mao's smoldering gaze for a moment, then looked into his own hands as the great tide of sadness surged through him again.

They sat without speaking, in the cabin, on the distant mountain, the wind moaning around the rock walls of the tower, the fire cracking. After a long time the lama moved. He raised a ladle and slowly poured water over the pile of stones. "These are Shan's rules," Gendun said somberly as the dirt washed away. "The properties of water."

They left when there was enough light to see the trail, with no words to Marco. Nearly an hour later Shan saw the smoke. He called to the others and began to urge his mount back, but Lokesh raised his hand. Marco was burning his cabin. There was no time to save it, no time to save him if he had gone into the flames. Shan dismounted and watched helplessly as the flames rose over the ridge, silhouetting the stone tower. Even from their distance he could hear the cracking of the big logs as they fed the inferno, and Shan thought he saw a figure on the top parapet. Then the wind shifted and fire and smoke engulfed the ancient tower and Marco was gone.