Free Prayer of the Dragon by Eliot Pattison Page B

“Can you describe what was drawn in the sand?”
    The man knitted his brow, then shook his head. “You are speaking of old things. We are forbidden to learn those things.”
    “Could you draw it?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Did you recognize the dead men?”
    The man gazed into his hands. His hesitation brought Dolma’s head up. “Who were they?” she demanded. “Chodron said they were strangers. Tell Trinle. Tell your father and me the truth.”
    “Strange people in a strange place,” the man said. Then, with a single bound, he leaped into the stair hole and was gone.
    Dolma and the old man named Trinle exchanged a silent worried glance.
    “Who is missing from the village?” Shan asked.
    “No one,” Dolma replied, puzzled.
    When Shan returned to the stable, Dolma followed with a bucket of water. Neither Gendun nor Lokesh acknowledged him. As he settled to the earthen floor Dolma handed him a moist cloth, and together they began washing the comatose stranger’s arms. Shan let himself be drawn into the silent rhythm of the task, sometimes washing the man himself, sometimes wringing out the cloth for the Tibetan woman, aware that what they were doing was usually done for the dead. He paused only once, to check under the overturned bowl. The beetle was gone.
    They worked in silence. Then Dolma, distracted, failed to grasp the cloth Shan extended toward her. He followed her gaze. The stranger’s hand had closed around her arm.
    “Lha gyal lo!” Lokesh whispered in joy.
    “Lha gyal lo,” the old woman repeated and began stroking the man’s hand. They watched as the man’s other hand was slowly lifted. Its fingers started moving, pointing into the shadows as if through his eyelids he sensed things they could not see, pointing here, pausing, pointing there. No, not pausing, Shan decided. Drawing. He was drawing something in the air. When the hand finally settled back onto his chest, the man sighed deeply. And whispered something.
    Shan leaned forward, cradling the man’s head now, desperately trying to understand the words.
    “Dsilyi neyani. Dsil banaca.”
    The words meant nothing to Shan. They were not Tibetan, not Mandarin, Cantonese, neither English, Russian, nor any of the dozen other languages Shan thought he could recognize.
    The words continued, still whispered, though in a stronger, even an urgent tone. “Tsilke nacani! Nigel icla, nace hila!”
    Dolma and Shan exchanged a confused look. Gendun had reminded him that there were obscure ancient dialects still alive in remote areas of the mountains. Dolma cupped her other hand around the man’s, cradling it the way a mother might that of a sleeping child.
    The man’s eyes opened. Shan feared he was blind for they seemed dull and unfocused. Then they settled on the worn, kind countenance that hovered above him, mouthing prayers. The stranger’s eyes grew round and he hastened his strange, urgent chant, twisting about to face Gendun, a hand reaching out as if to touch the lama. Then it stopped as if he was afraid to test whether Gendun was flesh and blood.
    “Qojoni qasle, quojoni qasle!” he whispered, fear in his voice as he bowed to Gendun. “Qojoni qasle,” he repeated weakly, then collapsed, dropping back on the pallet, unconscious again.
    When Shan turned the man over, his unseeing eyes were filled with tears.

Chapter Three
     
    SHAN LEAFED THROUGH the wondrous parchment book the now-conscious man had given him, trying make sense of the stick figures that matched the one on the man’s arm, the ancient poems written in Chinese, the prayers in Tibetan, trying to grasp why it displayed a photograph of a young Shan standing proudly in a tight-collared Mao jacket with his newly graduated class of investigators. Why did his foot itch so terribly? he wondered. The man sat across from him, smiling serenely, counting Tibetan beads in one hand, holding a bloody rock hammer in the other.
    “Take the book with you,” the man said in a voice