Nepal, May 1st, 2005
Victoria’s tears burned a stinging chill on her face, but at the clip she and Tien Tzien were moving, it would be unsafe to take a hand from the reins to wipe at them. Her straw-blonde hair cascading behind her, she pursued Tien as he galloped out ahead. Tien’s leathery hands whipped his reins as he guided Victoria, now along a narrow brink cut into the curving flank of a cliffside. Far below, a patchwork mosaic of barley fields shimmered under the glare of a sky so infinite, she swooned with vertigo, as if she were at the very cusp of the Earth, and prone to slip off into outer space at the slightest pitch of the horizon’s azimuth. This heart-rending retreat, on these sinewy Marwari horses and along these soaring trans-Himalayan paths, was required in the aftermath of Victoria’s witnessing the assassination of Sher Khan.
Sher Khan. It was thought to be his real name, and he was believed to be Pakistani, but nobody knew for sure, not even he. Since being orphaned as an infant in a Buddhist monastery in this remote region of Nepal called Qo Nontoang, Sher Khan had never traveled abroad. A sprawling matrix of rural villages nested in the Himalayan mountain range, Qo Nontoang has been virtually untouched since the fifteenth century, and at 14,000 feet above sea level, is to this day accessible only by horseback. Disciples traveled to Sher Khan in pilgrimage, their voyage a test of their authenticity. Spurred by his burgeoning fame, his doctrine of Zen simplicity disseminated via written manifestos, audio interviews, and digital video clips taken away and posted on the web, on blogs, and on YouTube.
Victoria Penrose had arrived at Qo Nontoang oblivious to Sher Khan’s mystic celebrity. It was the music which drew Victoria to this outer reach: the exotic chanting of these rustic Buddhist monks, monks like Tien Tzien, the bearish guide tasked with escorting her here, who was now spiriting her away in a near-panic.
Her week at the monastery had gone fine until the end. The monks humored her with enthusiasm as she captured their alien vocal beauty on her flash recorder. The cult of Sher Khan’s charisma hummed safe in the background, under the vigilant eye of that Chinese colonel, Ying, and her squad of khaki-clad guards.
With Sunday morning came the outdoor ceremony, culminating with Sher Khan’s arms outstretched, early sun gracing his youthful visage, like Jesus, she thought. Just then, his head pitched back, his chest ruptured, and Sher Khan crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose master had vanished.
The Chinese colonel, Ying - a girl, really, with her athletic physique and pixie haircut - glared at Victoria as if she were somehow responsible. This was pointed out to Victoria later, after Ying and her squad grew frustrated from shouting into two-way radios which responded with silence, and mounted their horses, charging off toward the ridge.
The ridge. About a thousand yards out in the distance, Victoria had been only vaguely aware of it. She had lunged at Sher Khan, yanking off her headscarf and trying to tend with it to his bullet wounds, only to find herself cradling his lifeless head in her hands. She was glancing about in a state of shock when Tien Tzien said to her, “You should go.”
Victoria stood, gripping the blood-soaked headscarf, watching the billowing trail of dust Ying and her equine squad kicked up as they sped toward the ridge. She gazed around in elliptical blind stares, as if it were all a nightmare to endure before waking. Tien broke her spell by persisting, “I’ve seen that look Colonel Ying set upon you. You should go. I will take you. Now.”
Now, racing away from Qo Nontoang, she noticed him glance back to check that she was still with him, then swivel his head forward again, now hurtling along the dusty Khali Gandaki river valley, Victoria following close in his stead, her tears still streaming.