Free Prayer of the Dragon by Eliot Pattison Page A

returned to the cliff, bent under the weight of the heavy battery. It flew in a low arc as he heaved it over the edge, like a small boulder ejected by the quaking of the mountain.
    Dolma was standing in the entry of her house when he left the cliff. She beckoned him as she glanced nervously up the street. So as not to be noticed he circled behind the buildings, approaching indirectly. By the time he reached the door she had disappeared. When he climbed up the ladder stair, her quarters were empty. He quickly surveyed the modest room. It was simple and tidy, all of wood, lit only by its solitary window. Feeling like an intruder, he had started to descend when he noticed how uneven the shadows on the far wall were. He hesitantly approached it, finding a large piece of black felt suspended from wooden pegs. He lifted the felt. Behind it was a tangka , a very old painting on cloth of a deity, richly colored, under which was a small incense burner. The widow, who as an elder supported Chodron in his campaign to deny the village its traditions, actively prayed to Tara, the mother protectress of Tibet.
    He was about to descend when muffled voices rose from below. The big man, the first guard in the stable, appeared on the stairs, his beefy face apprehensive. He glared at Shan, who backed away. Then two more figures rose behind him: the elder with the wispy white beard and Dolma, who hustled her two companions forward like an impatient shepherd. She positioned herself like a sentry at the head of the stair.
    “The investigator desires to know about the bodies,” Dolma declared.
    “He’s a convict,” the big man spat. “He deceived us.”
    “He’s the answer to our problems,” Dolma replied with strained patience.
    The big man looked at the elderly man. Then he uttered a low curse and began speaking, looking at Dolma, not Shan. “We were moving a flock of sheep up the mountain to a new pasture. The dog found the one in the stable first. He was all bloody, with those signs near him. The other two were inside a circle of tall rocks, what was left of them.”
    “What was left?” Dolma repeated in a quivering voice.
    “Their hands were gone, chopped off. We ran and sent for Chodron.”
    A chill settled along Shan’s spine. He had seen the evidence, but having the butchery described aloud was still unsettling. “The camp,” he said after a moment, his tongue dry as tinder. “What did you see in the camp, by the trees?”
    “Blood. Ashes. Some equipment, though it was gone when we went back. Pots and pans. A blue pack. A red pack with a rising sun on its flap. Sleeping bags.”
    “Could vultures have taken the hands?”
    “No. It was too early for vultures. They come when the stench starts.”
    The old man started to sway. Dolma helped him to a chair and fetched him a cup of tea.
    “Where did you take the bodies?”
    “Tibetans know what to do with bodies.” Resentment was building in the big man and his voice betrayed it. “There are the fleshcutters. . . .”
    “Where did you take the bodies?” Dolma repeated reproachfully. “You did not take them to the ragyapa. That would have meant at least a three-day trip.”
    The elder with the beard looked at the man again. “We never touched the bodies,” he admitted. “They were there the first day and gone when we returned the next. Only white lines were on the ground where they had been. Someone said that the lightning had taken them, leaving only the white dust of their bones. Chodron said not to tell anyone.”
    “What about the colored sand,” Shan asked, “the mandala?”
    The man looked up in surprise. “There was something like that, I almost forgot. It was there the first day. I only glanced at it.
    We were scared. It was gone the next. Like the bodies.”
    Shan studied the man. If that was true, he now knew something about the killer’s priorities. Taking the hands had come first. Then the removal of the bodies and the obliteration of the mandala.