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The door guard was gone. But a bar had been placed across the door, locking any occupant inside. He lifted the bar and used it to wedge the door open. Inside, only a few pots of butter remained lit, enough to show the man lying exactly as Shan had last seen him. But he was alone. The villagers who had maintained a vigil were gone. Gendun was gone.
    Lokesh and Shan exchanged alarmed glances. Lokesh approached the pallet and sank to the floor beside the comatose man. “Go,” he said to a Shan in a hollow, frightened voice. “Find him.”
    Shan ran to the house they had slept in. They had never seen its owner, but the night before they had found blankets in the corner of the stable below the living quarters, on rough straw and canvas pallets. Their three pallets were now rolled up against the wall. A shadow moved at the top of the ladder leading to the second floor. When Shan followed, he saw the woman of the house standing at the only window, staring out through the battered pane of sooty, cracked glass.
    “At times like this Gendun will forget to eat or drink unless we remind him,” he said to her back. “There are stories of lamas in meditation rising up as if sleepwalking and stepping off cliffs.”
    The woman didn’t respond. Finally, she said, without turning, “When the wind blows just right, I can hear the whirling of the prayer wheels on the porch of the old temple.”
    “If you are one of the few who can remember the temple perhaps you also remember compassion.” He could not understand the strange breed of people that inhabited Drango village. Why did these Tibetans, alone among all those he had encountered, make him feel so resentful? He recognized her as he came closer. She was the elder from the night before. Chodron had given a name to the widow who owned the house. Dolma.
    “I need to talk to one of the men who found the bodies,” he said to her back.
    When the widow did not reply he left her staring out the window and began to search the town, trotting up the street, then back, and around the houses on each side, pausing to gaze into the stone-fenced yards behind each. No one protested as he searched for Gendun but no one offered any help. Some yelled at him. One man threw a stone toward him. Most glanced at him and looked away, as if they might will him to leave.
    After a fruitless search, he reached the rear door of Chodron’s house. He knocked, then tried the latch. The door opened and he found himself in the lower chamber, facing the Chinese flag. To the left was a heavy plank door, padlocked shut. To the right, the door to the rest of the house was also locked. Shan tapped, then pounded on it, calling first the name of the headman, then that of the lama. He paced around the entry chamber, pausing at a small table beneath the red flag. On it lay stacks of brochures. Scientific Principles of Village Management, one was captioned. The Power of Community Socialism , read another. They were all in Chinese, though he doubted more than a handful of the villagers read the language. Beside the brochures was a little copper bust of Mao Tse-tung. Chodron had an altar after all.
    As he left the building he glimpsed a child, the girl who had brought food to Yangke, standing by the nearest stone granary, peering inside. When she discovered Shan at her side the girl gave a yelp of fear and scampered away.
    “Gendun!” he cried as he opened the door wider. The lama sat in the middle of the stone floor, a solitary lamp flickering at his knee. His arms were bound behind him, wrapped around the heavy center post. He acknowledged Shan with a weak smile.
    “What have they done?” Shan groaned. Across the lama’s cheek was a discolored line of little drops of dried blood. Across the back of his right hand was a similar mark. Gendun had been caned.
    “He raised a hand and spoke words I could not understand,” the lama said hoarsely as Shan knelt behind him, untying the ropes.
    “Did the man on the pallet