Marco waited ten minutes after the whine of the engine had faded, then called a hasty word to the camels and the animals unfolded their heads. Moments later they were moving up the trail at a fast trot.

A quarter hour later Lokesh rose in his saddle and called out. "Lha gyal lo!" He waved to get Shan's attention.

"The field!" Batu exclaimed.

They had been to the lama field before, Shan saw as he followed Lokesh's pointing arm. The huge red prayer flag on the rock monolith was before them, rumbling in the wind.

Batu led them to a small outcropping three hundred yards from the monolith, where low mounds of rocks outlined the remains of a four-room structure. It had been built against the rock, facing the monolith. A place of hermits. "On the other side, there are more walls," Batu explained excitedly as they dismounted, "and you can see the faces of Tibetan gods." He ran toward the ruins, stopping every few seconds to call out that it was safe, that it was only Batu and their friends.

They caught up with the boy at the back of the rock, where a large room had been built against the outcropping, staring forlornly at the wall. As Shan approached he smelled fresh paint. There had indeed been a mural, no doubt a beautiful one, protected even after the collapse of the outer walls by an overhanging shelf of rock. But it was no more. The wall had been covered with black spray paint, and over the paint two posters had been freshly pasted. Escape the Chains of Feudalism, one said. The other, in fine Chinese print, was a copy of a state decree prohibiting religious practices which had not been authorized by the Bureau of Religious Affairs.

"The rocks," Marco muttered suddenly, and pointed toward Sophie. The camel had taken a step forward and was stretching her neck toward a large outcropping on the slope above them. The Eluosi jogged stealthily toward the rocks, gesturing for Shan to follow as he disappeared into a narrow opening between two huge boulders.

Shan caught up with him as he stood on the far side of the boulders, at the edge of a large clearing ringed with several rock cairns and the remains of a long rock wall consisting of hundreds of long thin stones. Shan recognized it, a sacred mani wall, each of whose stones was inscribed with a Buddhist prayer. They had found the lama field itself, and in the center of it was a single boy who knelt at a fresh mound of earth.

It was Malik, from the Red Stone camp, and he was stroking the top of the mound, speaking in a low tone.

Malik turned and gasped as he heard them approach, then leapt away, running toward another outcropping further up the slope, where Shan saw a grey horse tethered. He had almost reached the horse when he was stopped by a call from behind Shan.

"Seksek Ata!" a young voice called out. Shan turned to look at Batu, ten feet behind him. He had heard the words before, the name of the protective deity for goats, the nickname for Malik.

Malik turned and stared at them, not moving until Shan reached his side. The boy's eyes seemed glazed over with grief, and he looked not at Shan but at the mound of earth. "I came fast, because the other boys I found said Khitai might be here. But they were already lowering him into the ground when I arrived," Malik said, his voice cracking with grief. "If I had come a few hours earlier I could have taken him away to safety." The boy was swaying on his feet. His hands trembled. He seemed but a shadow of the sturdy youth Shan had met at the Red Stone camp. It had been nearly a week. The boy had been riding the hills, tracking the zheli, knowing death was lurking everywhere, desperately trying to do something to stop it. He had brought two boys back to the Red Stone camp, Jakli had reported. But when he had finally found another of the boys, the grave had already been dug.

Lokesh appeared and stepped to the side of the grave. A burlap sack lay on a rock ten feet from the mound of earth. Lokesh stared at the sack with wide, frightened eyes, then moved toward it in tiny, mincing steps. As Shan stepped to his side, Lokesh bent and emptied the bag onto the rock. His friend's face seemed to collapse.

On the rock lay a short chain of small iron links and a long tarnished copper case inlaid with turquoise circles- a pen case. A battered metal cup lay beside the case with several short strings of beads, different colored beads of wood and plastic and a single one of green jade. He looked back at the pen case. It was the one Lokesh had asked about in Lau's office.

Something had lodged in the mouth of the bag and Shan pulled it free. A wedge-shaped piece of wood with a top that slid open. One of the Kharoshthi letters.

The embers inside Lokesh had ignited and seemed to be consuming him from within. A noise was coming from his chest- it had the tone of a mantra, but it was just a long continuous moan, as if he had forgotten the words. The old Tibetan clasped the metal cup with both hands and he looked up at Shan with moist, forlorn eyes. For the first time since Shan had known him, Shan saw something else on Lokesh's face. He had seen the expression before, on Bajys's face when they had found him at Lau's cave, when Bajys had proclaimed that the world had ended.

"The herders thought he had fallen at first," Malik said from behind him, "that maybe he was trying to climb the rock with the god flag on it." Shan turned. The Kazakh youth stared stiffly straight ahead, like a soldier making dutiful report. His lips quivered as he spoke. "But his pants were covered with blood. It was because a knife had gone into his belly, up into his heart. His pants were ripped, and a shoe was off. They said his face was battered, like it had been kicked. I think Khitai fought back."

Batu stepped to Lokesh and began patting the old man's back.

"What was in his pockets?" Shan asked. "Did he have something around his neck?"

Malik still stared woodenly at the grave. "Nothing. His things were in his bag. Because they were getting ready to leave."

"The herders, boy," Marco said grimly. "Where did they go? What did they see?"

"Gone, back into the shadows. Those dropka came here for the day because Khitai said so, and left their sheep alone with their dogs. All they could do was say words over Khitai and hurry back to their flock. They won't come down for a long time." Malik looked at Lokesh as he spoke. The frail old Tibetan was rocking back and forth now, as if Batu's touch had set him in motion. "I asked. They didn't see anything. They left Khitai here, sitting at the painting while they checked the high pastures above here for strays. But it was that woman who did it, the one they call the Jade Bitch. I saw her later, after the herders left. I had told them that I would stay, because Khitai was my friend, that I wanted to talk to him a while, that I could say words for a Kazakh burial that dropka might not know. That's what I was doing when I saw her come back to blind the gods."

Blind the gods. He meant the spray paint on the deities, Shan realized.

Marco handed the boy a water bottle and a piece of nan, which he consumed ravenously. "God's breath," the Eluosi muttered to Shan. "They're practically babies. The bitch hunts them down like carrion." He put his hand on Malik's shoulder. "We have to go," he said, scanning the sky. "She knows this place."

Shan silently returned Khitai's possessions to the sack, prying the cup from Lokesh's hands as Malik and Batu helped the old Tibetan to his feet. He lingered at the grave as the small, sad procession disappeared between the boulders. Four boys were dead. A third of the zheli list had been extinguished. A wave of helplessness, as palpable as a blow to his belly, struck him, and he found himself on his knees, with his hands on the grave.