If two archaeologists had come to the valley, it would have been to that cave that held old rusty artifacts and strange markings on the walls. They might even have been caught inside inadvertently in the explosion. Except Metok’s message had stated “They knew.” He could only have meant that the ones who had detonated the explosives had known the archaeologists were inside, meaning two more murders had been committed.

At the corner of his vision a flock of birds fluttered, frightened no doubt by one of the blasts that regularly rocked the valley. But then he glanced upward and saw the brilliant colors. It was not birds but a long line of prayer flags, quickly gaining elevation as they soared toward the center of the construction. Lifting his binoculars, he discovered that the flags were arranged as the tail of a kite, a kite that was nearly invisible because its color matched that of the sky. He rose and began hurrying toward the anchor of the long line.

Ten minutes later he steadied himself on a huge boulder, gasping for breath, knowing he never should have run so hard in the high elevation. The kite flyer was a young woman clad in a gray chuba that matched the color of the ledge rocks around her. She was laughing as she played out the line, then cocked her head as if gauging the wind and cut the line.

Shan was strangely entranced as he watched the flags drift downward, and he remembered now how he had seen one of the red-helmeted foremen directing bulldozers toward trees with colored cloth caught in the branches. This was not the first string of prayer flags launched over the valley. Prayers drift down out of the clouds, Shan’s messmate had said.

Suddenly Shan looked back at the woman, realizing he had seen her before. She was already hurrying toward a field of tall outcroppings when he began running after her. By the time he reached the spot where she had been standing she had disappeared into the rocks. He bent to retrieve the short length of kite string she had left behind, and then gazed in the direction of the rock outcroppings. He had seen the woman at the gate of the Shoe Factory, waiting for the hail chaser.

When Shan reached the gap in the rocks where she had disappeared, his head was throbbing and he knew he had to rest. He spotted what he thought was the woman’s gray chuba on the ground in the shadows and stepped into the gap, then dropped to his knees in surprised exhaustion.

It wasn’t a sheepskin coat he had seen. A different young Tibetan female was lying in the rocks. Shan would have recognized the deep, inquisitive eyes anywhere. Tara the goat cocked her head at him, then rose and gave a short bleat before butting Shan onto his back and disappearing into the shadows.