The Shadow Read Free

Ko sat up with a start, sensing that someone was in the room. He listened intently for a moment, then cautiously climbed off the foot of the bed, the women repositioning themselves behind him. He glanced at the balcony and moved toward the center of the room. He hadn’t made it halfway when he glanced movement in the crepuscular light.
    The meaty fist that caught him on the chin and knocked him unconscious seemed to appear out of nowhere.

2

Temple of the Cobras
    C onsciousness ebbed and waned through indeterminate hours, abetted by a rocking motion that carried him back into vivid dreams each time he neared sleep’s liquid surface.
    He awoke facing a rising sun to find himself on horseback, his hands bound behind him. The horse was tethered to a lead animal, atop which sat a large Tibetan wearing a fleece-lined longcoat, a short fur cape, an ear-flapped cap, and muddy trousers tucked into knee-high felt boots. When the man turned to give him a look, Ying Ko saw that he had a red scarf pulled up over his mouth and nose. A second man, similarly attired and also powerfully built—the likely owner of the ham-sized fist that had stiffened his jaw—rode nearby.
    They were following a narrow trail, lined at intervals with prayer flags and mani walls constructed of flagstones inscribed with the sacred Buddhist mantra: Om mani padme hum. In the near distance, Ying Ko could discern the pinnacle top of a large stupa.
    He was wearing his black silk trousers, and someone had thrown a black goat hide over his bare shoulders. The coppery taste of blood lingered in his mouth, and his wrists had been chafed by the rope.
    “Are you Li Peng’s brothers?” he asked in Mandarin. “Or do you simply belong to him?”
    The rider beside him seemed to grin, and shook his head as if to say, you should be so lucky.
    Ying Ko shrugged it off. Perhaps they were no more than thieves. Drawing pilgrims as it did, the Kailasa region was notorious for the robbers that preyed on them. Either way, he was impressed. Only capable agents could have infiltrated the palace and spirited him from it unseen. Or had there been a gunfight as well?
    “Where are you taking me?” he asked.
    The same rider nodded in the direction of Kailasa.
    Ying Ko assessed his surroundings. The thin air told him that they had climbed several thousand feet above the valley floor and the road that ringed the mountain, along which pilgrims performed their circuit of prostrations.
    “A tulku wishes to see you,” the rider added after a long moment.
    Ying Ko raised an eyebrow. The term referred to a lama of supreme rank—a living Buddha. “A holy man wants to see me?” He laughed heartily. “I think you’re going to find out you grabbed the wrong guy.” He laughed and settled in for the ride.
    Hours passed. The trail switchbacked higher up the slopes toward the tree line, gradually leveling out as it closed in on a sheer rock wall that buttressed the southern flanks of the sacred mountain itself. The area was strewn with elaborate stupas and chortens, and a profusion of prayer flags snapped in the wind. The only structure that might have served as a home, however, was a simple wattle-and-daub goat herder’s hut, centered in a grouping of stone corrals. A far cry from the monastery Ying Ko had been imagining.
    “Nice gompa,” he said when the horses had stopped. “Or maybe you meant to say that a hermit wanted to see me.”
    The Tibetan riders dismounted. One of them helped Ying Ko down. He was still regarding the hut with a look of bemusement when the Tibetan nearest him shook his head and said, “No. There.”
    Ying Ko followed the man’s finger to the sheer wall, astonished to see a lamasery shimmer into visibility. Modeled on Lhasa’s Potola, its manifold roofs were four-hipped and its towering white walls were dimpled with scores of narrow windows. Though unlike the Potola, the main entrance lay deep within the open mouth of an immense cobra, whose hood alone had