Akzu and Jowa had already disappeared inside the center tent by the time Shan and Lokesh dismounted. The girl reappeared, her eyes round with excitement. Three women, one with grey hair tied in a red checked scarf, and two others a few years younger, looked up from blankets spread on the ground, where they were crumbling pieces of soft cheese to dry in the sun. The older woman called out excitedly to Jakli, as one of the others leapt up, grabbed a white dress hanging from a tree branch, and darted inside the center yurt. Two men with strong, leathery faces and thick black moustaches appeared at the flap of the center tent, smiling at Jakli, then casting suspicious glances at Shan. Akzu's sons, Jakli explained after she had greeted each of them.

"Jakli!" a youth of perhaps twelve or thirteen years exclaimed from the nearest of the stables as the woman entered the clearing, walking her horse. A tiny goat lay draped across his shoulders. He gently deposited it beside an older goat, then ran to Jakli's side and embraced her.

"My youngest cousin," Jakli explained to Shan. "Malik. He stays with the animals so much we call him Seksek Ata sometimes. The protective spirit for goats," she added.

The boy's smile faded and tension crossed his face as he hugged her again. This time it was not for joy, Shan saw, but for solace, for comfort.

Jakli held him tightly against her shoulder, planting a light kiss on the top of his head. "Khitai was your friend," she said in a melancholy tone.

An angry shout rose from the tent on the left. A disheveled, wild-eyed woman stood in the entrance, pointing at Shan and yelling in her Turkic tongue. Jakli stepped in front of Shan as though to shield him from the shrill woman, then pushed him away, toward the stables. The woman took a step into the sunlight, still shouting at Shan.

"She's crazy," Jakli said in a low voice when Shan asked her what the words meant. "Something about children." Jakli frowned as she saw that Shan would not turn away. "She says you always want the children. She says you killed the children." Jakli pushed his arm but Shan did not move. "Years ago she was pregnant. They told her she had to go to a government clinic to give birth. When she went, they gave her a needle that made her sleep. When she woke up the baby was out of her, and it was dead. Later she found out that she had been sterilized."

The angry woman picked up pebbles and began throwing them at Shan. "She changed after that," Jakli continued. "In winter, she sits with a rolled blanket and sings a besik zhyry to it."

"Besik zhyry?" Lokesh asked as he watched the woman.

"Kazakhs have songs for everything. Weddings, births, horses races, the death of a friend, the death of a horse," Jakli explained, and thought a moment. "She sings cradle songs. The songs that Kazakh women sing to babies."

They stood in silence. Several pebbles hit Shan in the leg.

"Every time a child dies," Jakli added quietly, "she thinks it was hers."

In the light Shan saw the woman's clothing was covered with dirt. Bits of dried leaves clung to her shoulder-length braids.

Shan let Jakli pull him away as a larger stone hit his knee. But a moment later Jakli stopped. Malik was waiting for them on a path on the slope above the stables. She looked back at the crazed woman, as if maybe she preferred to face the woman than to follow Malik, then sighed and gestured Shan toward the path. As they approached the boy, Shan saw that he had a sprig of heather in his hand. Jakli bent and picked a sprig for herself, then Shan did the same.

As they followed Malik, a dark form rushed past them. The woman's anger seemed to have disappeared, replaced by sobs that sounded almost like the bleating of one of the animals.

They made a silent procession up the path: the dark, wild-eyed woman, then Malik, followed by Shan and Jakli. After perhaps a hundred paces they entered a small hollow near the top of the hill, a sheltered place closed to the north by a huge slab of rock, open with a view for miles to the south, into the Kunlun, toward Tibet. At the back, in the shadow below the rock slab, was a five-foot-long mound of earth.

To the left of the grave was an indentation of packed earth. The wild-eyed woman, he realized, had been sleeping by the grave. Strips of bark lay at the head of the grave, bearing offerings of food. Two large feathers and twigs of heather had been pushed into the earth at the foot of the mound of earth. Shan and Jakli followed Malik's example and offered their sprigs in the same manner.

The woman sat at the head of the grave, rocking back and forth, her face now twisted with grief, singing a soft song, giving no acknowledgment of Shan.

Feeling helpless, not knowing what to do, Shan knelt at the foot of the grave. A moment later Jakli silently knelt beside him and began murmuring under her breath in the Kazakh tongue. Malik stood behind Jakli, his hand on her shoulder. Shan became aware of movement behind him and turned to see Lokesh, Jowa, and Akzu approaching the grave.

Lokesh sat and placed a palm on the grave. "Khitai," he said in a low, doleful voice, and stared at the freshly turned earth, his jaw open. As the others watched in silence, the old Tibetan's other hand found his rosary and, leaning back, he began a low mantra. Jowa sat beside him, then hesitantly produced his own rosary and joined the mantra.

The woman at the head of the grave blinked several times and rubbed her eyes as though awakening from a trance. She looked uncertainly about the circle, as if wondering how so many had joined her, or perhaps who was mortal and who was visiting from another world. Her eyes fixed on the rosary beads, first Jowa's, then Lokesh's, and light seemed to return to her face. She spoke to Akzu in their native tongue. The Kazakh headman looked at the two Tibetans and replied to her, then turned to the visitors. "She said it is good to have a mullah at last. I said you are not mullahs, you are Buddhists, but you are holy men nonetheless."

The woman was nodding vigorously, then patted the dirt the way she might a sleeping child.

"Who did he belong to, this boy?" Shan asked. "He was an orphan, but where was the rest of his clan?"

"Gone. Extinct, probably. We do not know the details of his birthing. Nor did he. He was from the zheli," Akzu said, as if it explained much.

Shan watched the haggard woman in silence, then pushed back from the pile of earth to stand beside Akzu. "You mean he lived here, but Lau was his teacher."

Akzu nodded. "Lived here for a short while. Some children have to be taken care of by everyone. He wasn't any trouble," Akzu said. "One of the zheli often comes and stays a month or two. Lau didn't like them staying in the town all the time. In the warm weather she arranged for them to go to the clans."

"But Khitai, he was new?"

"New to us. He had not stayed with the Red Stone before. But sometimes, when we took one of the orphans to Lau's meeting place, we would see him. Always smiling. He was luckier than most, because he at least had his companion, this man Bajys." He winced as he spoke, as if understanding the irony of his words.

"So Bajys was an orphan too?" Shan asked.

"Yes. But older, so he didn't go to school. They said the two of them had discovered years earlier they were from the same clan in the north and had promised to watch over each other. Bajys taught Khitai things."

"What happened to their clan?" Shan asked, remembering Akzu's words at the trailhead. Maybe the demon was finishing something started years before.