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They walked to the head of the bridge, where Remi paused. She stared at the bridge nervously. The ramshackle crossings they’d encountered first in Chobar Gorge, then again on their way to King’s secret dig site in the Langtang Valley, had clearly made more of an impact than she’d realized.
Sam walked back to where she was standing and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “It’s solid. I’m an engineer, Remi. This monastery is a tourist attraction. Tens of thousands of people cross this bridge every year.”
Eyes narrowed, she looked at him sideways. “You’re not humoring me, are you, Fargo?”
“Would I do that?”
“You might.”
“Not this time. Come on,” he said with an encouraging smile. “We’ll cross together. It’ll be like strolling along a sidewalk.”
She nodded firmly. “Back on the horse.”
Sam took her hand, and they started across. Halfway there, she stopped suddenly. She smiled. “I think I’m all better.”
“Cured?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m okay. Let’s keep moving.”
Within a couple minutes they’d reached the island. From a distance, the church buildings appeared almost pristine: sun-bleached rock walls and red-tiled roofs. Now, standing before the structures, it was clear to Sam and Remi the buildings had seen better days. The roofs were missing tiles, and several of the walls were either sagging or partially crumbling. One belfry was missing a roof altogether, its bell slouching sideways from its support beam.
A well-groomed dirt path wound its way through the grounds. Here and there, pigeons sat clustered on eaves, cooing and staring unblinkingly at the island’s two new visitors.
“I don’t see anyone,” Sam said. “You?”
Remi shook her head. “Selma’s brief mentioned a caretaker but no tourist office.”
“Then let’s explore,” Sam said. “How big is the island?”
“Ten acres.”
“Shouldn’t take long to find the cemetery.”
After taking a cursory stroll through each of the buildings, they followed the path into the pine forest beyond the clearing. Once they were inside the tree line, the sun dimmed, and the trunks seemed to tighten around them. This was old-growth forest, with knee-high tangles of undergrowth and enough rotting logs and stumps to make passage a bit of a challenge. After a few hundred yards, the path forked.
“Of course,” Remi said. “No sign.”
“Flip a mental coin.”
“Left.”
They took the left-hand fork and followed the winding trail before coming to a rickety, half-rotted dock overlooking a marsh.
“Bad flip,” Remi said.
They backtracked to the fork and began heading down the right-hand path. This took them generally northeast, deeper into the forest and toward the wider end of the island.
Sam jogged ahead on a scouting mission, turned and called back to Remi, “Spotted a clearing!” A few moments later he appeared from around a bend in the trail and stopped before her. He was smiling. Broadly.
“You generally don’t get this excited about clearings,” Remi said.
“I do if the clearing has tombstones.”
“Lead on, bwana.”
Together, they walked down the path to where the pine forest parted. Oval-shaped and roughly two hundred feet across, the clearing was indeed a cemetery, but almost immediately Sam and Remi realized there was something very wrong here. On the far side was a jumbled stack of pine logs; beside this stack, several house-high bales of withered boughs and branches. The earth in the clearin
g was pockmarked, as though it had undergone an artillery bombardment, and about half of the graves appeared to have been freshly churned.