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Shajda was on such good terms with the monastery....
    Shajda beckoned the group forward with his good, toothless grin, raising de Lis’ grey eyebrows. He quickly took up the guide’s offer—also realizing the monks’ potential value—
    and followed the two men into the interior of the monastery. Waters, Valagua, Mason and Gilmour hustled themselves to catch up with the invigorated doctor’s high steps. The monk rested his arms on the temple’s large wooden doors, and with a small push, introduced the foreigners into his sanctum. They were received by a brisk, dark corridor lined with prodigious candles billowing a hypnotic wave in the new breeze. Each member of the group stared incredulously at the Spartan quarters that these monks inhabited, marveling at their modest, yet majestic, domicile.
    Gilmour noted silently how awed the three scientists he accompanied had become. Yes, they could appreciate a culture as serene and orderly as this one; science was a curious and intuitive study. However, he was discovering that their fascination with the temple was not purely about knowledge...but faith.
    The monk picked up a lit candle and made his way to a closed door at the side of the corridor, stopping at its threshold. Speaking his strange tongue again to Shajda, he cracked the door, giving them his permission to enter. His business finished, he gave a nod to each team member as they approached, before finally taking his leave.
    Shajda’s hand peeked through the crack, admitting himself and the other five. Inside sat an elderly abbot hunched over a wooden desk, meticulously inscribing script into a small, antique paper book and immersed in a haze of candle and incense smoke. Decades of India ink splashes had stained his fingers black, but he didn’t appear to mind as he skillfully manipulated a stylus between them. Surrounded by hundreds of relics, books and a small Buddha behind him, the abbot seemed small in comparison, but Gilmour felt a vibrancy from him that he could only describe as larger than most lives. Seeing that he had guests, the abbot rose from his seat, placed two fingers to his mouth to stifle a yawn, and greeted Shajda. The Sherpa returned the welcome with his palms together, bowing in deference. The abbot nodded to the team, also welcoming them to his quarters.
    Shajda spoke to him, gesturing excitedly with his hands. Their dialogue continued for several moments, as it appeared that Shajda was informing the abbot of the team’s entire journey here. Mason wondered if Shajda had mentioned de Lis’ impatience with their Sherpa guide, but thought better of it. Besides, Mason figured the guide was probably oblivious to these odd Westerners’ habits and eccentricities, anyway, so why bring it up?
    The abbot nodded and crossed over to a cabinet set to the side of his quarters. He gingerly removed a wooden chest and placed it on his desktop. Unlocking it, the abbot produced a folded, dark mahogany cloth, embroidered in yellow thread and encrusted with dozens of stones or jewels that gleamed warmly in the candlelight. Mason and Gilmour instantly recognized the ornamentation: Mason’s stone.
    Swallowing their surprise, the agents watched the abbot hand the cloth to de Lis, who shared it with Waters. The pair spoke in enthusiastic whispers, careful to not only handle the cloth with a delicate touch, but their voices as well.
    Shajda nodded and pointed to the cloth’s ornamentation. “He wait for you.”
    De Lis furrowed his eyebrow. “What?”
    The Sherpa smiled. “He knew you come...some day.”
    Behind the guide, the abbot also grinned, as if knowing the punch line to a joke in a foreign language the Westerners couldn’t comprehend.
    “A gift...for you,” Shajda said, his eyes finding the jewels on the cloth. Waters turned to de Lis. “I think he means, the monk has been expecting us.”
    “Expecting?” de Lis asked. “But we just discovered....” The journey here, the monastery, Shajda’s