Prodigal Son

approached.
        "A messenger," he said. "The surgeon in the dream spoke truth."
        The old monk could not at first see the visitor. His eyes, the color of vinegar, seemed to have been faded by the unfiltered sun of extreme altitude. Then they widened. "We must meet him at the gates."
        
        SALAMANDERS OF TORCHLIGHT crawled the iron-bound beams of the main gate and the surrounding brick walls.
        Just inside the gates, standing in the open-air outer ward, the messenger regarded Deucalion with awe. "Yeti," he whispered, which was the name that the Sherpas had coined for the abominable snowman.
        Words escaping him on plumes of frosted breath, Nebo said, "Is it custom now to precede a message with a rude remark?"
        Having once been pursued like a beast, having lived two hundred years as the ultimate outsider, Deucalion was inoculated against all meanness. He was incapable of taking offense.
        "Were I a yeti," he said, speaking in the messenger's language, "I might be as tall as this." He stood six feet six. "I might be muscled this solidly But I would be much hairier, don't you think?"
        "I… I suppose so."
        "A yeti never shaves." Leaning close, as if imparting a secret, Deucalion said, "Under all that hair, a yeti has very sensitive skin. Pink, soft… quick to take a rash from a razor blade."
        Summoning courage, the messenger asked, "Then what are you?"
        "Big Foot," Deucalion said in English, and Nebo laughed, but the messenger did not understand.
        Made nervous by the monk's laughter, shivering not only because of the icy air, the young man held out a scuffed goatskin packet knotted tightly with a leather thong. "Here. Inside. For you."
        Deucalion curled one powerful finger around the leather thong, snapped it, and unfolded the goatskin wrapping to reveal an envelope inside, a wrinkled and stained letter long in transit.
        The return address was in New Orleans. The name was that of an old and trusted friend, Ben Jonas.
        Still glancing surreptitiously and nervously at the ravaged half of Deucalion's face, the messenger evidently decided that the company of a yeti would be preferable to a return trip in darkness through the bitter-cold mountain pass. "May I have shelter for the night?"
        "Anyone who comes to these gates," Nebo assured him, "may have whatever he needs. If we had them, I would even give you Cheez-Its."
        From the outer ward, they ascended the stone ramp through the inner gate. Two young monks with lanterns arrived as if in answer to a telepathic summons to escort the messenger to guest quarters.
        In the candlelit reception hall, in an alcove that smelled of sandalwood and incense, Deucalion read the letter. Ben's handwritten words conveyed a momentous message in neatly penned blue ink.
        With the letter came a clipping from a newspaper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The headline and the text mattered less to Deucalion than the photograph that accompanied them.
        Although nightmares could not frighten him, though he had long ago ceased to fear any man, his hand shook. The brittle clipping made a crisp, scurrying-insect sound in his trembling fingers.
        "Bad news?" asked Nebo. "Has someone died?"
        "Worse. Someone is still alive." Deucalion stared in disbelief at the photograph, which felt colder than ice. "I must leave Rombuk."
        This statement clearly saddened Nebo. "I had taken comfort for some time that you would be the one to say the prayers at my death."
        "You're too full of piss to die anytime soon," Deucalion said. "As preserved as a pickle in vinegar. Besides, I am perhaps the last one on Earth to whom God would listen."
        "Or perhaps the first," said Nebo with an enigmatic but knowing smile. “All right. If you intend to walk again in the world beyond these mountains, first allow me to give you a gift."
        
        LIKE WAXY STALAGMITES, yellow candles rose from golden holders, softly brightening the room. Gracing the walls were painted mandalas, geometric designs enclosed in a circle, representing the cosmos.
        Reclining in a chair padded with thin red silk cushions, Deucalion stared at a ceiling of carved and painted lotus blossoms.
        Nebo sat at an angle to him, leaning over him, studying his face with the attention of a scholar deciphering intricate sutra scrolls.
        During his