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also with images of a sacred conch shell and a fish. But why? Had Jamyang really meant to pacify the weapon somehow, as Shan had first believed, or to sanctify it for its intended mission? It was a small semiautomatic, the kind issued to police officers and soldiers. Private possession of such a weapon was a serious crime anywhere in China but a Tibetan who possessed one would be treated not just as a felon but a traitor. It seemed impossible that Jamyang would encounter such a weapon without being arrested by its owner, just as impossible that another Tibetan would have given it to him. It was almost as unlikely that he would know how to use it, yet in the last instant of his life he had lifted the gun with the alacrity of one trained in weapons, flipping off the safety and pulling the trigger in one fluid movement. Shan lifted the pistol and released the magazine. It was empty. Jamyang had kept only one bullet.
    When Shan had tried to warn him of the dangers in the valley, Jamyang had repeated his own words back to him. You don’t always understand how dangerous it is. Only once, just the week before, had Jamyang probed Shan’s background, showing a surprising interest in his years as an investigator. Had that been why Jamyang had wanted Shan there in his last moments? Had he planned the celebration to be certain Shan would be with him? Had he been inviting Shan to unravel the mystery of his own death and those below? Jamyang’s face rose before him, wearing the cryptic, questioning expression he had shown at the pilgrim shrines. For a moment it was so real Shan could have reached out and touched the smudge of dirt where he had prostrated his forehead to the mountain. It has taken us four billion years to get to where we are, the lama had said.
    Suddenly the vision was gone and he saw only the pistol. He stared at the gun with a desolate expression, then finally rose, walked a hundred feet from the shrine, and buried it under a flat rock by a clump of heather.
    The deities carved on the rock wall seemed to return his gaze as he settled before them, looking at him with melancholy question in their eyes. He recalled the first time he and Lokesh had encountered Jamyang, surprising him as he had been trying to restore a crumbling wall of mani stones along a lonely path in the upper valley. The lama had been as skittish as a wild animal, darting away before they could greet him. Lokesh and Shan had spent an hour working on the wall themselves, hoping he would understand they intended no harm, and had felt his gaze the entire time, but he had not reappeared. A week later when Shan had responded to the screams of a shepherd girl by leaping into a pool of quicksand to save her lamb, Jamyang had suddenly appeared to help Lokesh haul Shan and the lamb out of the pit. He remembered the shy smile on Jamyang’s face and his laughter when Lokesh had quipped that Shan looked like one of the offering figures shaped in mud by the nomad families. They had seen him more often then, on high trails, sometimes waving at them like an old friend, sometime watching them in silence as they cleared ditches, even stopping to meditate near them. Shan had seen it before. Tibetans, especially those of a certain age, sometimes grew to know each other through shared silences. He remembered the contentment on the lama’s face when he had finally taken them to meet the deities he was so reverently restoring, and the greater joy when Lokesh had described how a similar carving had once existed outside a private chapel of the Dalai Lama’s in Lhasa, long ago destroyed.
    Lokesh had suggested they might clean the faded, grime-covered paintings on the rock face above the sculpture and the three of them had begun the task together. They had spent many hours there in the following weeks, the air sometimes filling with cries of glee from the two Tibetans as their delicate brushes uncovered images of nearly forgotten gods. The benches used as altars had come