The Skull Mantra Read Online Free Page A

at risk over a dead foreigner, but the
mudra
silenced him like a spell.
    He clamped his eyes shut but still Shan could not focuson Choje’s message. He kept seeing something else each time he tried to concentrate. He kept seeing the gold cigarette lighter hanging five hundred feet above the valley floor. And the dead American who had beckoned to him in his daylight nightmare.
    Suddenly a low whistle came from the door. The candles were extinguished, and a moment later the ceiling light switched on. A guard slammed open the door and moved to the center of the room, a pick handle cradled in his arm. Behind him came Lieutenant Chang. With mock solemnity Chang extended a piece of clothing so that no prisoner could mistake it. It was a clean shirt. He jabbed it toward several men as though feinting with a blade, laughing as he did so. Then he abruptly flung it at Shan, who lay on the floor.
    â€œTomorrow morning,” he snapped, and marched out.
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    A sharp, chill wind slapped Shan’s face as Sergeant Feng escorted him through the wire the next morning. The winds were harsh to the 404th, which sat at the base of the northernmost ridge of the Dragon Claws, a vast rock wall rising nearly vertically behind it. Updrafts sometimes ripped roofs from huts. Downdrafts sometimes pelted them with gravel.
    â€œAlready reduced,” Sergeant Feng muttered as he locked the gate behind them. “Nobody already reduced ever got the shirt.” He was a short, thick bull of a man, with a heavy stomach and equally heavy shoulders, his skin as leathery as that of the prisoners from years of standing guard in sun and wind and snow. “Everyone’s waiting. Making bets,” Feng added with a dry croak Shan took to be a laugh.
    Shan tried to will himself not to listen, not to think of the stable, not to remember Zhong’s white-hot fury.
    Zhong’s temper was in control for once. But the warden’s gloating smile as he paced around Shan scared him more than the expected tantrum. He gripped his upper right arm, which often twitched in Zhong’s presence. Once they had connected battery wires there.
    â€œIf he had bothered to consult with me,” Zhong said in the flat nasal tone of Fujian province, “I would have warned him. Now he will have to find out for himself what a damned troublemaker you are.” Zhong lifted a piece of paper fromhis desk and read it, shaking his head in disbelief. “Parasite,” he hissed, then paused and scribbled on the paper to record the insight.
    â€œIt won’t be for long,” he said, looking up expectantly. “One wrong step and you’ll be breaking rocks with your bare hands. Until you die.”
    â€œI constantly endeavor to fulfill the trust the people have bestowed in me,” Shan said without blinking.
    The words seemed to please the warden. A perverse gleam rose on his face. “Tan’s going to eat you alive.”
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    Sergeant Feng had an unfamiliar look, an almost festive air about him. A drive into Lhadrung, the ancient market town that served as county seat, was a rare treat for the 404th guards. He joked about the old women and goats who ran from the side of the road, spooked by the truck. He peeled an apple and shared it with the driver, ignoring Shan, who was wedged between the two men. With a spiteful grin, he repeatedly moved the key for Shan’s manacles from one pocket to the next.
    â€œThey say the chairman himself sent you here,” the sergeant finally said as the low, flat buildings of the town came into view.
    Shan didn’t reply. He bent in his seat, trying to roll up his cuffs. Someone had produced a pair of worn, oversized gray trousers for him to wear, and a threadbare soldier’s jacket. They had made him change clothes in the middle of the office. Everyone had stopped his work to watch.
    â€œI mean, why else would they put you in with them?”
    Shan straightened. “I’m not the only