Текст книги "Bone Mountain"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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"Perhaps your friend should see a doctor. We have specialists here, all the way from Lhasa."

See a doctor. The expression sparked a flash of pain in Shan. The words had been a code in the gulag, a threat used by the guards for recalcitrant prisoners like Shan who were sometimes taken to knob specialists with cattle prods and small hammers and needle-nosed pliers.

"Have you had your affliction long?" Khodrak asked Tenzin in his solicitous tone. He seemed to be studying Tenzin's hands. Shan recalled the rongpa village, where Colonel Lin had studied Lokesh's hands. What was it? Was there something special about Tenzin's hands? They were not, Shan realized, the rough calloused hands of a rongpa or herder.

"We told you," Nyma interjected. "Tenzin was struck by lightning. He doesn't speak. We don't mind. He is a good worker."

Khodrak tossed the napkin by his cup across the table. Tenzin still wore the dust from the dung pile on his face. "You should wash," he said in an offhand tone. He studied the faces of the others at the table.

Shan watched Tenzin and Khodrak with a chill. Tenzin kept his gaze on the table with studied disinterest, then pulled his hands from the table and folded them on his lap where Khodrak could not see them. But Shan could. They formed a mudra, with the little fingers linked, the middle two fingers of each hand bent inward, and the tips of the index fingers and thumbs touching. It was called the Spirit Subduer, and it seemed aimed at Khodrak. Suddenly a light flashed, and Shan looked up to see the attendant with a camera, busily snapping photographs of Shan and his companions.

"Perhaps you have heard," Tuan said in an oily voice, "that my deputy was assassinated."

Tenzin stared at his hands a moment, his gaze drifting slowly toward Khodrak. The two men exchanged a hard, challenging stare. Shan watched the exchange in confusion. Tenzin had disappeared the night of Chao's killing. But surely they didn't suspect him or they would have seized him already. Suddenly he recalled Gyalo's words to his yak. Shan didn't know what swam in sacred waters. Gyalo had meant nagas. Khodrak might have been searching for a man connected to the water deities. Tenzin had gone from the hermitage once to get black sand from the nagas. He could have been seen by an informer as he performed a ceremony at a river. The howlers despised nagas as symbols of the Tibet's oldest traditions. If they were to detain Tenzin and interrogate him about his interest in water deities, even if they had to wait for the mute Tibetan to write his confession, they would eventually find out about the hermitage, about Gendun and Shopo.

"Was that the reason Padme Rinpoche was walking on the high plain?" Shan asked abruptly, trying to deflect Tuan's attention. "Helping restore public order?"

Tuan looked at Shan intensely, but without showing emotion.

Nyma and Lhandro frowned at Shan and fixed him with an annoyed stares. Shan was implying that Padme had been engaged in something other than religious pursuits.

But Khodrak seemed to find nothing extraordinary about the inquiry. "Everyone must be vigilant in times like these," the chairman suggested, with an appreciative nod toward Shan. "When so much important progress is at hand, that is when reactionaries are most apt to strike. Murder. Kidnapping. At least it validates our work."

"Kidnapping?" Shan asked.

"Surely you heard about the abbot of Sangchi. The blessed leader of such an important institution. A model of right thinking for all Tibetans. Creator of the Serenity Campaign. Another martyr of our cause."

"The newspapers say the abbot of Sangchi is being taken to India."

"We know now the abbot was kidnapped by the most radical elements of the resistance," Tuan interjected. "Possibly the same ones who killed Deputy Director Chao not fifty miles from here. They will doubtlessly try to harm the abbot as well."

Shan looked at the table, trying to steady his nerves. What were they suggesting? That they knew the infamous Tiger was in the vicinity? That the lost abbot was imprisoned by the Tiger somewhere nearby? Surely not, or the region would be saturated with Public Security troops.

"Dinner," Khodrak announced abruptly, smiling smugly. "Dinner will be served soon, in the assembly hall. Take a moment. Enjoy our hospitality." The Chairman rose and left the room, Tuan following close behind. Shan looked after Khodrak. Take a moment. The words seemed to be an idiom for Khodrak, a signature. The chairman spoke them gently, even graciously. But Shan had heard those words before. They were also an idiom of tamzing, the struggle sessions where correct thought was beaten, figuratively and literally, into wayward citizens. Take a moment, a tamzing leader would say to show his or her good nature. Take a moment to reconsider before we resort to more painful means to wrench you back to the Party's true path.

Shan lingered at the top of the stairs by the office, tempted to venture inside. As the monk called for him to join the others and he slowly descended, voices were raised in anger in the chamber beyond the office, but he could make out no words. He followed the others to what appeared to be a rear door opening to the courtyard between the buildings, and had almost reached Lokesh, when a hand closed around his arm.

"Comrade Shan," a stern voice said behind him.

Shan turned to look into the black, pebble-like eyes of Director Tuan. Tuan gestured toward an open office door. Shan hesitated, watching his friends disappear out the door. His chest tightening, his throat bone dry, he entered the chamber.

A small metal desk was pushed against the window to make room for four overstuffed chairs arranged around a low table with a long lace doily. Tuan closed the door behind them, lowered himself into one of the deep chairs and motioned for Shan to do the same. "Comrade," he repeated, like a cordial greeting this time.

Shan sat on the edge of the chair opposite Tuan and nodded slowly. On top of the lace were several stacks of the Serenity pamphlets he had seen at the lake.

Tuan drummed his hand on the arm of the chair as he examined Shan, looking at his tattered boots and patched clothing. "It must be difficult for a man like you," he began.

Shan nodded again. They knew his name. But surely they had not had time to find out who he was, that he was still officially a lao gai prisoner.

"How long have you been in Tibet?" Tuan pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and placed them on the wide arm of the chair.

"Five years."

Tuan seemed to welcome the news. "Most don't last a year. I salute you. People like you are the real worker heroes. Anyone could work back home in a factory. But you are here, in the front lines of our great struggle." He picked up the cigarettes and tapped them on the arm of the chair. Shan had met Religious Affairs officials before. Most were soft and bureaucratic, biding their time before rotating back to a better office in eastern China. But Tuan was different. Tuan was like a hard-bitten soldier. Tuan had already finished one career at Public Security.

"Your friends said you were traveling north, and came out of your way to bring Padme home. Padme said you were traveling with salt."

Tuan wasn't asking about nagas, or Yapchi and Lhasa, none of the questions asked by Colonel Lin. Indeed, Tuan didn't seem to be interrogating him so much as testing him somehow. "It's a tradition they have," Shan said.

"There are taxes to be paid to the salt monopoly," Tuan observed. "You could get a bounty for reporting them. I could arrange it, even have it deposited somewhere. They need never know."

Shan forced a small conspiratorial smile which caused Tuan to raise his hand, palm outward. "You've thought of it. Excellent." He lifted the cigarette pack to his nostrils and inhaled, lit one of the cigarettes, and carefully set it in the ashtray on the table. "You could not be blamed for the companions you acquire when traveling. A man like you has the opportunity to meet all types of Tibetans."

Shan clenched his jaw. "My companions brought an injured monk here," he reminded Tuan.

The Director's lips curled in a thin smile as he inhaled the smoke drifting from the table. It was as if he were using the tobacco as incense. "It's an untamed land, this region. Criminal elements in hiding on every mountain. The one who killed Deputy Director Chao is out there. He must have attacked Padme."

"You make it sound as though you know who it is."

"Of course. It is the same war that started when the liberation army arrived. It has never really concluded, it's just less visible."

"You mean you don't care who it is."

Tuan shrugged and leaned toward the smoke. "Do they? They take one of us, we take one of them," the Director said in a disinterested tone, then smiled icily. "There will always be more of us than of them."

Shan studied Tuan as the Director smoothed the long hair on the side of his head. Was Tuan so disinterested because he had already taken one Tibetan to balance his equation, because he knew he had already fatally wounded Drakte?

"There will be an accounting soon," Tuan said. "In less than two weeks. But meanwhile someone like you, a Han among them, will be in constant danger. Let me help you."

"I am not afraid of them." But Shan was scared of Tuan and the strange game he was playing. Tuan was going to account for Chao's murder in two weeks. He made it sound like one more item on his busy schedule.

Tuan leaned forward. "Things are changing in this district. A Han who knows how to deal with these Tibetans could have a bright future. We can use a man like you. We'll be looking for someone to manage all the other teachers. You will need to decide soon. Glory is coming, and there will be enough to share."

Shan almost asked him to repeat himself. Glory is coming? "Other teachers?"

"Special knowledge is coming to Norbu. A new world is coming for the people here," Tuan said.

Shan stared at the piece of lace. He usually recognized the special language of senior officials, but Tuan seemed to have developed a code all his own. "But for now all those doctors," Shan said tentatively. "They are frightening the people. Surely you do not need them to catch the killer."

Tuan offered an appreciative smile. "They have orders from Lhasa. National security is at stake. A senior Cult leader has infiltrated from India."

"We're more than four hundred miles from India."

"He's giving them a good chase."

"But why doctors? Why would disrupting the local people help the effort?"

"National security," Tuan repeated.

The Director glanced at his watch and stood. He reached into his pocket and produced a business card, extended it to Shan. "I know things. When we win, after May Day, give me a call." He tossed the cigarettes on Shan's lap and left the room without looking back.

Shan stared after him. I know things. The words probably meant nothing, just the idle words of an arrogant bureaucrat. But they made Shan recall the terrible night at the hermitage again. He doesn't care who has to die, Drakte had said, with nearly his last breath. He kills prayer. He kills the thing he is. Tuan was the senior official responsible for religion, and he killed religion.

Shan dropped the cigarettes on the arm of the chair, and found his friends outside waiting with the young monk under the fluttering flags.

"What was it?" Nyma whispered nervously.

Shan shrugged. "I don't know," he said truthfully. "He wanted to give me some cigarettes."

The monk led them into the adjacent structure and a large whitewashed chamber, where twenty monks waited at two long plank tables. Some acknowledged their visitors with polite but restrained greetings, others looked away nervously. Gyalo was not present. An old monk, the oldest present, rose and recited the opening text from one of the early teachings, what the Tibetans called the Heart Sutra. His words, or perhaps his deep, resonant voice, had a calming effect on the assembly. But Shan could not relax. He fought the temptation to grab Lokesh and run. He could make nothing of his strange audience with Tuan. Tuan and Khodrak were going to win something, and glory would follow.

At last Khodrak, holding his mendicant's staff like a scepter, arrived with Tuan a step behind, each of them adorned in a fox-fur hat. The two sat at a smaller table at the head of the long ones, and moments later two young monks appeared with a huge steaming pot of thugpa, noodle soup cooked with vegetables. The attendants quickly served out the soup, then distributed bowls of steaming white rice. They ate quickly, with little conversation, the monks restlessly watching both their visitors and the two men at the head table. At the end of the meal, as Chinese green tea was served, Khodrak stood to explain how Comrade Shan and his companions had saved Padme. Comrade Shan. Khodrak had turned Padme's rescue into a political parable of the selfless Han saving a troubled Tibetan.

When they had finished, a monk led them first to retrieve their belongings, then to the gompa's guest quarters, a dormitory-style room with eight beds in one of the low single-story structures, gesturing Nyma toward a similar room on the opposite side of the hall.

"We saw an old stable," Shan said. "We would prefer to sleep there." His friends said nothing. Lokesh moved his head in a small, tight nod.

"They said here," the monk protested. "Surely the beds would be more comfortable."

"Not for us," Shan said firmly. "Our bones are accustomed to sleeping on the ground."

With a reluctant sigh the monk turned and led them to the abandoned stable, only a few paces from the cart Shan had helped fill. Beyond the cart in the deep shadows of the wall he sensed, more than saw, the big yak watching them.

The monk pulled open the heavy timber bar laid across the door on iron straps, and handed Shan the candle lantern he had been using. They stepped into a small musty chamber with half a dozen stalls, straw covering half the floor. Above the stalls was a low, half loft, where fodder had once been stored, with a small loft door for loading the hay.

Lokesh and Lhandro were already pulling straw together for bedding as the monk bid them a good night and pushed the door shut. In a few minutes Shan was listening to the slow, relaxed breathing of his companions, and he quickly followed them into slumber.

He awoke just before dawn, invigorated by the night's sleep, surprised at how sound it had been. He quickly brushed the straw from his clothes and stepped to the door. Hearing what sounded like a heavy truck outside, he paused for a moment, then pushed lightly on the door for a glance into the compound. The door would not move. The truck seemed to stop and he heard the sound of heavy boots on the earth outside. He pressed his eye to a narrow slit in the door. One of the medical trucks was there, its lights flashing as if for an emergency. A whistle blew, followed by an order. Shan could not make out faces in the dim light, but with a sinking heart he saw a line of white shirts.

There was movement behind him and Lhandro appeared. The Tibetan tried his luck with the door, to no avail. They pushed together. It did not move. The bar had been lowered into place. Someone had imprisoned them, and the guards were surrounding the stable.

Chapter Nine

Shan quickly woke the others, explaining in urgent whispers that they were prisoners. Nyma rushed to the door and pushed it, without effect, and turned with fear clenching her face. Lokesh sat on his pallet and offered a mantra to Tara, protectress of the devout, as orders were barked outside.

Lhandro leaned his ear against the wall as Nyma used the tine of a pitchfork to pry splinters from a small crack in the old wood, trying to see outside better. "That ambulance," Nyma reported as she bent to the crack. "Maybe the doctors just wanted-" she turned back and saw Shan's confusion as he stood in the rear shadows where Tenzin had slept.

"They took Tenzin!" Nyma cried in dismay as she rushed to his side.

They quickly searched for any sign of the silent Tibetan, or evidence of his departure. Shan and Lhandro paced along the walls of the stable. There were no loose boards, no other doors, no ladder to the loft where the small door opened to the outside.

"He's just a…" Nyma began forlornly, and her voice drifted off.

A what, Shan wondered. A dung collector? None of them really knew who Tenzin was. Just a fugitive, like so many others. Sometimes, if you were not to be taken in by what Beijing was doing to Tibet, all you could do was be a fugitive, always moving, always shying away from settlements and crowds. Shan recalled the strange exchange between Khodrak and Tenzin the day before. Had Tuan and Khodrak truly known something about the man or had it just been Tuan's instincts, honed by twenty years in Public Security? Tenzin was guilty of something, and by the political accounting that governed them, Tuan and Khodrak would get credit for taking him.

Suddenly there was a scraping sound, the sound of the bar of being dragged out of its iron straps, and the door flew open, casting such a brilliant shaft of sunlight inside that Shan and his friends threw their hands up to shield their eyes.

Director Tuan walked in, followed by a middle-aged Han in one of the light blue uniforms. A stethoscope hung from the man's neck, a small radio protruded from one of his tunic pockets. Tuan took in Shan and his companions with a quick glance, then stepped into the shadows at the rear of the stable as the physician stood silently at the door, watching with anticipation on his face. Two younger men in the light blue uniforms hovered outside the door, as though standing by to assist the doctor. Shan stepped sideways and saw that a stretcher, collapsed, leaned on one man's shoulder. He heard, but could not see, the heavy boots again, several pairs. Soldiers seemed to be pacing anxiously somewhere near the ambulance. Someone angrily snapped an order. But he could see no soldiers, only men in white shirts with epaulettes or medical uniforms.

A slight, small-shouldered man suddenly stepped into the doorway, silhouetted by the brilliant sunlight. Shan recognized the man's boots before he saw the man's grey uniform. A chill crept down his spine as he looked up into a face that seemed to be pounded out of corroded steel. The man might have been in his early thirties, but he had already acquired the cold machine-like demeanor which would likely stay with him for the rest of his career– the frigid, permanent sneer that Shan had seen so many times in the gulag. The man in grey was a Public Security officer, the pockmarked one Gyalo had spoken of, the one with dirty ice for eyes.

The knob studied Shan and his companions with a cold glare. Looking at Tuan, he uttered a low growling sound. It could have been anger, or disappointment, or the rumbling, expectant sound some predators made before a long-awaited feed. The doctor looked at the knob officer with a frustrated, impatient frown and held up four fingers. Four prisoners, he must be saying, when there should be five. Not four fingers exactly, for curiously, the doctor had pushed his little finger down and held up three fingers and a thumb. The officer replied with something like a snarl, and a fist raised a few inches in the air.

Something extraordinary was happening at Norbu gompa. It wasn't just that the gompa was in the hands of political commissars, or even that Shan and his friends had been seized. There was something else, something to do with the way the Religious Affairs officials acted like Public Security soldiers, the way they were being detained by a howler, with only the single knob officer present. Maybe the howlers were looking for Tenzin because of his work with nagas, but Public Security wanted him for something else. There was another possibility that had so frightened Shan he had not mentioned it to his companions. The knobs were desperately searching for a man with a croaking, growling voice– the notorious Tiger, whose broken voice box made a sound like no other. The knob officer had been forcing people to read to him. The only way a man could hide such a voice was to stay mute. Wheels spun in Shan's mind. Tenzin had left the hermitage the night Chao died. The government thought the purba leader Tiger was the likely murderer. Tenzin certainly knew purbas. Was their entire journey an elaborate ploy by the purbas to keep the Tiger hidden?

Shan closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. He took a step back, to stand in front of Lokesh. Here was the way it ended, or ended again, in a dark musty stable while their captors waited for them to cower, or invite a beating by a hint of resistance. If Tuan and the knobs thought they had been harboring the Tiger, no mercy would be shown. A strange sensation surged through him, a floating distant feeling that he recognized, because he had seen it in others' eyes at execution grounds. This was how firing squads often worked when the political officers had decided against a public exhibition, putting their victims against a wall early in the day, before most people awoke. It was how they would treat the Tiger when they caught up with him. And perhaps any of those who sheltered him. Surely they wouldn't do such a thing in a gompa. But this was Khodrak's gompa, an instrument not of Buddha but of the howlers. And a doctor would have syringes that would preserve the quiet, and be even more effective than any bullet.

He saw that everyone was looking at him, and knew he must have made a sound, a small utterance of fear. He turned slowly to Lokesh, whose eyes, assuming the cast of a prisoner, had also grown distant. He could push his friend deep into the shadows and charge the officer, maybe distract them long enough for Lokesh to escape. At least the chenyi stone was still safe in the mountains, a voice whispered in the back of his mind.

Someone moved at Lokesh's side. Tuan stepped back into the light, looking expectantly at Shan, pausing, as if waiting for Shan to say something. But then a shadow crossed the door and another figure entered. Khodrak, holding his staff, and behind him, Padme, in a clean robe, his arm in a sling. The Chairman's eyes flared, not at Shan but at the doctor and the knob officer. No one moved. The knob and the doctor seemed confused.

Shan studied the monk they had brought from Rapjung. Padme stood straight, in no apparent pain now. His arm was in a sling, although he had not complained to them of his arm hurting. His robe was not only spotless, it was fringed with the same narrow strip of gold thread that Khodrak and the other committeeman wore. Shan recalled the third chair at the Committee table and the way the others had called the young monk Rinpoche. It had been Padme's chair.

"Some of the old ones can turn themselves into smoke and drift away," Padme said, casting a thin smile toward the knob officer, who replied with a sour frown and marched out the door.

Khodrak sighed and studied the loft and its little portal. Someone tall, and strong, and lean might have climbed out. He put his hand on Tuan's arm and seemed to push. One side of the Director's mouth curled down. He relented, stepping back out of the stable followed by the doctor.

"There is a mistake, Chairman Rinpoche," Padme said to Khodrak. He looked at Shan. "These people are our friends. Our heroes. We cannot allow them to be abused."

Shan stared in confusion. Public Security and Religious Affairs had been about to unleash their wrath on them but Khodrak and Padme had turned them away.

"Where is he?" Nyma cried out. "You have Tenzin. Why? You can't just-" Nyma looked from Padme to Khodrak, then to Shan, and her words choked away.

Khodrak seemed not to hear her. "Take a moment," he said, and gestured toward the ground. Padme hitched up his robe and sat on the stable floor, cross-legged, pulling out his rosary. He gestured for Nyma to follow, and in a moment all of them but Khodrak were sitting in a small circle. Padme began reciting the mani mantra, waving his hand to encourage the others to join in as Khodrak paced around the outside of the circle, tapping his staff in front of him like an old beggar.

It was a strange, unsettling ceremony. Padme stopped speaking after a moment but kept waving his hand, directing the others like a choir, Nyma and Lhandro chanting awkwardly as Lokesh and Shan uneasily watched the young monk. After perhaps two minutes, Khodrak halted and Padme abruptly rose, brushing off his robe, the words of the mantra slowly fading.

"Will we find their friend?" Khodrak asked Padme.

"We will find their friend," Padme replied quickly, as if reciting more of the ceremony. Then Khodrak turned and moved out the door, his staff resting on his shoulder.

Padme turned to address Lhandro. "There are no words to express my shame," he said to the rongpa. "There was a mistake." The monk looked back at the door and nodded, then turned to Shan. "It's an old shed used for little other than storage. Someone could have mistakingly inserted the door bar, that's all," he said tentatively, as if suggesting that was how they should explain what had happened. "The medical team is overzealous. They are trained to act extremely, for the containment of disease." He stood, waiting, as the ambulance pulled away, then turned back to them. "The kitchen will give you some food for the trail," Padme suggested. "I will see to it myself." With a gesture for them to follow Padme stepped out into the sunlight.

Tuan stood in front of a white utility vehicle beside half a dozen men in white shirts. Shan studied the seasoned faces of the men. But for their shirts he would have said they were a special Public Security squad– a boot squad, the purbas called them– one of the squads reserved for use against particularly stubborn political threats, which, to those responsible for public security in Tibet, typically meant purbas and other troublesome Buddhists.

The guards stared at Shan and his friends as they filed out of the stable, several glancing back at Tuan, whose eyes found, and stayed on, Shan. They watched Shan intensely, not accusing but calculating. When Tuan saw Shan return his stare Tuan nodded pointedly. You will have to decide soon, Tuan had told Shan. An accounting was coming.

"These are confusing times," Padme observed as they approached the gate ten minutes later, Lhandro holding a paper sack of dumplings and apples from the kitchen.

"May the Compassionate Buddha protect you," Lokesh called tentatively as they walked out of the gate.

Padme's head jerked back and he nodded. "Exactly," he said, in an odd, offhanded tone. "And you." Then he straightened and spoke more loudly, as though for an audience. "May the Compassionate Buddha protect you," he called out, and smiled toward the ragged group of Tibetans who sat among the houses outside the gate.

They walked for an hour without speaking, Lhandro in the lead, walking so rapidly Nyma had to trot sometimes to keep up. Finally, when the gompa was far out of sight behind the hills they stopped at a small stream.

"Who is that Tuan?" Lhandro blurted out in a low, urgent whisper, as if the question had burned his tongue since leaving the gate, and he still feared being overheard. "Why did they– what have they done to poor Tenzin? He never hurt anyone."

"Chao's murder," Nyma said slowly. "A murder like that would have everyone acting strange. They must have thought Tenzin could have information. They confused him with someone. The fools. All that time he was with us at the mandala."

Shan looked up from where he drank but he found no words to reply. Tenzin had not been at the mandala all the time. And there was something else he had almost forgotten. When Drakte had entered the lhakang, moments before dying, the first person he had looked to had been Tenzin.

Shan sighed, and watched as Nyma shifted her gaze to Lokesh, who had removed his coat and rolled up his sleeves nearly to his shoulders. He was vigorously rubbing his arms with the white sand of the streambed. Lhandro began to do the same. Lokesh rubbed his face. Shan and Nyma stripped off their coats, too. No one had words to explain anything that had happened at the strange gompa but they all felt the need to be cleansed. Nyma held some of the sand cupped in her hand for a moment, and glanced at Shan. They had seen such sand before, had seen it sanctified by the lamas and later washed with blood.

Lokesh lit a stick of incense and sat.

"We have no time," Nyma protested, but then hesitantly followed Shan and Lhandro as they folded their legs and watched the wisps of fragrant smoke. They had to calm themselves, to brace themselves against the frightening, confusing forces that seemed to be against them.

When the stick burned out, Lhandro rose with a deliberate air and reached into his sack. He produced the small scrap of cloth he sometimes used as a towel and laid it flat on a rock, setting his red plastic dorje pen on it. "It isn't a real thing," he said as he stepped to Shan with the cloth spread between his hands. Shan quickly dropped his own pen onto the cloth. None of them wanted the tokens of the gompa, he knew, but Lhandro's words referred to the plastic the dorjes were made of. He had known other Tibetans who reacted the same way with any implement made of plastic. It wasn't wood, or cloth, or stone, or bone– not of the earth– and somehow they didn't trust the plastic, as if it were one more of the tricks the Chinese played on them. They were just shadow things, a herder had told him once, you could tell just by feeling them. He had known a dropka who kept in a leather sack whatever plastic items he was given or found by roads, and left them in a small pile whenever he visited a town. The man wasn't sure what they were exactly, but he knew they belonged down below, which was how dropka often referred to towns.

An hour later they stopped suddenly as Lhandro, about to lead them over the crest of a ridge, raised his hand. "It's one of them," he said with a weary tone. "We'll have to wait."