They had walked until dawn, when they had met Lokesh at the ancient rope bridge that spanned the gorge separating the hermitage from the rest of the world. Lokesh and Shan had embraced as old friends, for such they had become during their time together in Lhadrung's gulag labor camp, then the three had walked another hour until a truck had stopped for them. Shan had thought it was just a coincidence, just a favor from the driver. But the driver had been Jowa, and after Gendun had examined the vehicle with wide eyes, having never been so close to a modern machine, the lama had blessed first the truck, then Jowa, and climbed inside. Jowa had eyed Shan resentfully, then started the engine and driven for twelve hours straight. That had been six days earlier.

Shan had been confused from the outset, waiting each day for the clarification from Gendun that never came. But Lokesh had never seemed to doubt their purpose. For Lokesh their job was to resettle the dead woman, meaning that they must address her soul and assure that it was balanced and ready for rebirth. For Lokesh, the woman had to settle into her death the way the living, after a momentous change, had to settle into life. Not her death, really, for to Lokesh and Gendun death was only the reverse side of birth. But a death not properly prepared for, such as a sudden violent death, could make rebirth difficult. When a monk in their prison had been suddenly killed by falling rocks, Lokesh had carried on a vigil for ten days, to help the unprepared spirit through the period when it would discover it needed to seek rebirth.

Shan gazed toward the valley floor again. The rider continued his breakneck speed, bent low now, as if studying the ground.

Shan looked at his companions with grim frustration.

"Perhaps," Shan said to Jowa, "it is one of your friends." Jowa had been a monk once himself. But the Bureau of Religious Affairs had refused to give him a license to continue as a monk, and a hard shell had grown around the monk inside him. Jowa wasn't worried about resettling a soul. A teacher had been killed and a lama was missing, things that the Chinese did to Tibetans. Jowa had simply understood that they were being sent against an enemy. Shan studied him now as Jowa unconsciously rubbed the deep scar that ran from his left eye to the base of his jaw. Shan had known many such men during his years in Tibet. He knew the familiar hardness of the eyes and the way such men turned their heads when encountering a Chinese on the street. He knew the scars made by the Public Security troops, the knobs, who were fond of wielding whips of barbed wire against public protesters. The hard labor brigade from which Shan had been released four months earlier had been heavily populated by men like Jowa.

It had taken less than a day on the road from Lhadrung, however, for Shan to understand that the essential truth about Jowa was something else. As the former monk had stealthfully exchanged passwords with the horsemen who had taken them away from the Lhasa highway, Shan had realized that Jowa was a purba, a member of the secret Tibetan resistance, named for the ceremonial dagger of Buddhist ritual. He had replaced his monastic vow with another vow, a pledge to use up the rest of this incarnation in fighting to preserve Tibet.

"No, not one of us," Jowa replied curtly. "Not like that," he added enigmatically. "If it's soldiers I will go to the truck," he said in a low, urgent tone. "I will lead them away on a chase to the south. Gendun and Lokesh cannot move fast enough. Just climb higher and hide."

"No," Shan said, watching the rider. "We stay together."

Lokesh sat near the edge of the ledge and stretched, as if the approaching threat somehow relaxed him. He pulled his mala, his rosary, from his belt, and his fingers began reflexively to work the beads. "The two of you have strength," the old man said. "Gendun needs you, both of you. I will stay with the truck. I will tell the soldiers I am a smuggler and surrender."

"No," Shan repeated. "We stay together." As much as he needed Jowa for his wisdom of the real world, the world of knob checkpoints and army patrols, he needed Lokesh for his wisdom of the other world, the world the lamas lived in, for while they had to traverse Jowa's world to get to the place of death, once they arrived Shan knew he would be seeking answers in the lamas' world. Lokesh would have been a lama himself except that long ago, before the Chinese had invaded, he had been taken from his monastery as a novice to serve in the government of the Dalai Lama.

Shan watched Jowa remove the canvas bag that hung over his shoulder and his thick woolen vest, then wrap his hand around the pommel of the short blade that hung at his waist. Jowa would not speak about the priest within him, but at their campfires he sometimes spoke proudly about his bloodline that traced back to the khampas, the nomadic clans that tended herds in eastern Tibet, a people known for centuries as fearless warriors. Jowa no longer watched the rider but the cloud of dust behind him. Soldiers would have machine guns, but, like thousands of Tibetans before him, Jowa would rush them with only his blade if that was what it took to remain true.

"But the road," Shan said suddenly. "Why is he staying on the road?"

Jowa stepped to his side and slowly nodded his head. "You're right," he replied in a puzzled tone. "If someone chased one of the nomads, first thing he'd do, he'd get off the road." As he spoke, he swept his hand toward the wilderness that lay beyond the rough dirt track. They were in the wild, windblown changtang, the vast empty plateau that ranged for hundreds of miles across central and western Tibet, a land where the dropka had hidden themselves for centuries.

Lokesh cocked his head, then looked toward the opposite end of the valley, to the south. "He's not running from someone. He is running to someone."

They watched as the rider sped past the outcropping that hid their truck, reappeared, then abruptly reined in his horse. As the horse spun about in a slow circle, the dropka studied the road.

"I thought you hid the tire tracks," Shan said to Jowa.

"I did, for Chinese eyes."

The rider dismounted and led his mount toward the outcropping. Moments later he stood by their empty truck. After tying his horse to the bumper, he warily circled the vehicle, then climbed to the edge of the open cargo bay, his hand on one of the metal ribs designed to support a canvas cover over the bay. He stepped inside and lifted the lids of the barrels that stood there, then jumped out and studied the slope above him. Most of the slope was covered with loose scree, fragments of rock broken from the ledge above. Winding through it was the solitary goat path which they had climbed after leaving the truck at dawn.

"Sometimes the soldiers have Tibetan scouts," Jowa reminded Shan.

He touched Shan on the shoulder, motioning him into the deep shadow of the overhanging rock.

The dropka began climbing the path at a fast trot. Shan fought the temptation to pull Gendun to his feet, to scale the ridge and disappear with him. The others could explain themselves, they had identity papers. But no one could explain Shan or Gendun. Gendun, who had lived so hidden from the rest of the world that Shan had been the first Chinese he ever met, had no official identity. Shan, on the other hand, had suffered from too much official scrutiny. A former government investigator who had been exiled to slave labor in Tibet, his release from the gulag had been unofficial. If captured outside Lhadrung, he would be considered an escapee. Jowa pushed Shan against the rock in the darkest part of the shadow, beside Gendun, and waited in front of them, his hand on his blade again.