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confused, and eventually found its natural path out through a tiny hole on the crown of his head. Old lamas would often pluck hairs from the top of a dead man’s head to clear the way. But Jamyang’s skull had two new, and unnatural, holes.
    “His spirit was well focused,” Shan offered.
    “No,” Lokesh replied slowly, with great conviction. “He killed himself. Which means something had taken over his spirit. Something wrapped around it like a serpent. It is still there. We have to pry it off.” His fingers gently touched the side of Jamyang’s face, lingering over the birthmark on his jaw that looked like a lotus blossom, one of the sacred signs.
    Shan opened his mouth to argue, to find some way to comfort Lokesh, but he knew that no matter what he said his friend would suffer this anguish for weeks to come. And perhaps Lokesh hit close to the truth in suggesting an evil spirit had possessed the lama. Certainly something evil had tormented him, had driven him to his abrupt suicide. Evil had also swept over the ancient convent that day, and now four people had suffered violent deaths. The logical part of Shan told him it was impossible that the events were connected. But the instincts of the former inspector said they had to be.
    “More police in the valley?” Lokesh suddenly asked, as if just hearing Shan’s warning.
    Shan closed his eyes a moment. He was not sure he could summon the strength to tell Lokesh what had happened at the old convent, wanted more than anything to not add to the pain the old Tibetan already felt.
    He realized his friend had stopped his ministrations to the body and was staring at him. “You were going for the nuns,” Lokesh said pointedly.
    Shan felt a great weight bearing down on him. “I went to find help at the convent. Instead there were bodies.” The words seemed to tear at his throat as he spoke them. “Three people were killed there.”
    Lokesh did not speak, only stared with moist eyes at one of the little bronze deities by Jamyang’s pallet as Shan described what he had found at the convent. Lokesh and the oldest lamas had always been pools of serenity amid the horrors of the gulag, had told new prisoners that the inhuman conditions at their prison were nothing more than a test of faith, had stood like rocks against the torture and deprivation. But even stone can crack against a torrent that lasts for years. For the first time since Shan had known him, despair clouded his friend’s eyes. He still had no words when Shan had finished, only lit some incense on Jamyang’s little altar and took up the death chant again. Shan’s heart broke as he watched the old man, seeing the tremor in his hand where none had been before, hearing him falter in remembering words he had recited countless times before.
    The moon was high overhead when the shepherds arrived. They would not speak with Shan, would not accept his help in rolling Jamyang’s body into a shroud and tying it to the back of the mule. Lokesh had withdrawn deeper and deeper inside himself. He had become an aged, frail creature who needed help in mounting the horse the shepherds offered to him. He made no reply to Shan’s words of farewell.
    Shan found a perch on the ridge above the hut and watched the forlorn caravan as it traversed the moonlit valley then looked toward the stars, struggling to control the emotions that raged inside. Eventually he curled up on a blanket outside the little hut but found only fitful sleep, beset by hideous dreams. Truckloads of troops were pouring into the valley in response to the murders. Farmers were being violently ejected from their homes. He awoke with a groan as a baton hovered in the air, about to slam into Lokesh. Shan gave up on sleep and stared into the sky. By dawn he was back at Jamyang’s shrine.
    The mystery behind the suicide began with the mystery of the pistol. He set the weapon on a flat rock in a pool of sunlight. It had been painted, not just with a lotus flower but