Free Prayer of the Dragon by Eliot Pattison

beetle with wonder in his eyes. “You mean you originally found the beetle at the murder site?”
    “One of my men tried to move it. Your lama put a hand on his arm to stop him. By protecting it, your lama protects the killer.”
    Shan met Chodron’s icy gaze. “Gendun is not your puppet.”
    Chodron seemed to welcome the comment. “He is an old man, exhausted from lack of sleep and food. But, more important, he is an outlaw, in need of an active tamzing . Surely one with your experience in the world understands this. We gave him just a taste of the main event.” The headman leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I need to know I have your undivided attention.”
    Shan fought down a shudder. Tamzing. Though it sounded like one of the demon names Tibetans are loath to utter, it was entirely a creation of Beijing. It was a ritual of another generation, a favorite tool of the dreaded Red Guard, in which many innocents had died. A tamzing was a struggle session, where correct socialist thought was pounded into the unreformed, usually with words but sometimes, Shan well knew, with batons, boots, hammers, or lead pipes. An unfamiliar fog seemed to envelope him for a moment. He found himself between Gendun and Chodron.
    “You were about to say something?” Chodron chided.
    Shan gazed forlornly at the floor, gradually becoming aware of the headman and his bullies staring expectantly at him. It had taken his prison commanders months to discover what Lokesh called his flaw, the weakness the officers had learned to use against him. Chodron had grasped it in a day. Shan would not lie, would not let himself be used, would not jump at the bidding of men like Chodron, except to protect the old Tibetans.
    “The beetle must be returned to the god of the mountain,” Shan whispered in Chinese.
    “I can’t hear. We must all hear what the lama says, so the rest of the villagers can be told by each of us. In Tibetan.”
    “The lama says this jewel of the mountain deity does not belong here, that it must be returned.” Shan felt his lips move but the thin hollow voice that spoke the words seemed to come from far away.
    “And the lama says this unconscious man may be the killer,” Chodron added.
    Shan looked at the dirt floor. “And the lama says this man may be the killer,” he repeated.
    Chodron, a victorious gleam in his eyes, flicked his wrist and one of the men grabbed the beetle and dropped it into the bowl, then covered it with the overturned bowl as if it might fly away. Chodron muttered something, his men laughed again, and the trio left the stable.
    Shan looked at the empty door, looked at the lamps, looked at the comatose man, looked everywhere but at Gendun’s face. He knelt and extended his fingers into the water bowl again, then quickly withdrew them. They were trembling. When he glanced at Lokesh, his old friend wore an expression Shan had never seen before. He would never openly reprimand Shan but Lokesh could not hide the look of betrayal in his eyes.
    Shan left the building, quickly walking beyond the end of the village to the edge of the high cliff. The wind rushed against him as he tried to lose himself in the emptiness that stretched below. Chodron did not begin to fathom the nightmare he was creating for Shan. To stop the headman’s torment of Gendun and the comatose stranger it might be necessary to use outright violence. But if Shan lifted a hand against Chodron to save Gendun, Shan would never be able to sit at the old lama’s side again. Already Shan had been forced to lie in Gendun’s name, in front of him, to save him from Chodron’s cruelty. He had left that morning desperate to find an answer to the murders. Now all he wanted was to save Gendun and Lokesh. Drango village was not the rustic enclave it had first appeared to be. It was a strange gray place in which the worst of both worlds was combined.
    When he turned back, he went straight to the granary where Gendun had been imprisoned, then he