Read Online Prayer of the Dragon by Eliot Pattison - Free Book Online Page B

ahead.
    Gendun did not seem to notice when Shan lifted the stranger’s wrist. The man’s pulse seemed stronger. Shan immersed his fingers in a bowl of water beside Lokesh, then held them over the man’s mouth, letting the water drop onto his open lips. The man’s tongue slowly reacted, seeking the liquid. Shan immersed his fingers again. He continued the process for some time, pausing when he caught himself staring at the marks on the lama’s arm.
    A voice abruptly spoke behind him, “Yangke is being punished. You may not use him as your servant.”
    “My servant?” Shan asked Chodron “You forced him to guide you to the scene of the crime.”
    Shan faced the angry headman. “I envy Yangke. It must be a relief to know so exactly the dimension of one’s burdens.”
    “You are closer to that luxury than you think, Prisoner Shan.” Two sturdy farmers stood in the shadows behind Chodron, one holding a length of rope similar to that which had bound Gendun.
    “Have you ever visited a hard-labor prison camp?” Shan asked.
    “I had the honor once of attending a camp for May Day events,” Chodron replied. “I remember a banner. KNEEL TO THE ALL-POWERFUL PARTY.”
    “You date yourself,” Shan said, shuddering. He recalled sitting under such a banner, many years earlier, as one of the privileged guests watching a prison parade outside Beijing. “The verses are more subtle today. Think of advertising slogans for some global enterprise. PERSIST FOR PROGRESS. BILLIONS SERVED.”
    Chodron’s eyes narrowed. “Yangke defies me. You are making matters worse.”
    “You don’t understand Gendun.”
    “I understand he is made of flesh and bone.”
    “There’s your mistake. After my first year in prison with Tibetan lamas,” Shan related, “I realized many of them did not really see their guards. It was as if they were undergoing a long meditation in which constant suffering was a method for focusing the mind. What they expected of a man like you was little different from what they expected from the natural elements. A beating was like sitting in a hailstorm. A bullet in the head,” he said, trying to keep the sorrow out of his voice, “like a bolt of lighting.”
    “What a pathetic creature you are, Shan. Enslaved by worthless old men who live in the past. A trained dog for a crew of scarecrows.”
    “If you mean Gendun, I can only aspire to be his dog.”
    Chodron muttered something over his shoulder in a low voice. The men behind him laughed. “Where is Yangke?” the headman demanded.
    “He is attached to his sheep almost as closely as to his collar.”
    Shan saw a flash of nervousness in the headman’s eye and replayed in his mind’s eye his last minutes with Yangke. He had been sitting with the sheep scattered on the slope above. But he had been gazing at a trail that wound through the flock and continued higher.
    Chodron glared at Shan a moment, then motioned with his hand. The two men stepped forward, one holding a short stave that looked like an ax handle. They moved behind Shan.
    “What is the yellow beetle?” Shan asked Chodron.
    “He must declare that it should go back to the mountain god.”
    “Where is it now?”
    For a moment Chodron studied Shan, then gestured toward an inverted bowl lying on a plank. Shan warily stepped past the two farmers, then kneeled and lifted the bowl.
    The two-inch-long object inside was unmistakably an insect, an exquisitely worked image of a long scarab. Its bent legs glittered brightly, and the shifting flames of the lamps gave them an illusion of motion. The head was smooth, the thorax dimpled, its eyes made of polished turquoise. He lifted it, feeling the weight of solid gold. Two jointed antennae folded back along the carapace. It was beautiful. It had a look of great age. It was not Tibetan.
    “Why must this leave the village?”
    “People are saying it protects the killer. It encourages dangerous speculation.”
    Shan glanced at Lokesh, who gazed at the