They passed houses on stilts, dusty roads leading to small villages, their entrances marked by wooden portals. At one, a tangle of branches was strewn on the pathway, and a piece of tattered paper covered with swirls of writing was pinned to the portal. Doctor Carroll explained that smallpox had struck the village, and the script was a magical formula to fight the disease. “It is terrible,” he said. “We vaccinate people in England now with cowpox—it has been mandatory for several years—yet they won’t give me enough supplies to do so here. It is a horrid disease, so contagious, and so disfiguring. If one survives.” Edgar gripped his reins uneasily. When he was a boy, there had been a smallpox outbreak in the slums in East London. Sketches of victims had appeared daily in the broadsheets, young children covered with pustules, gaunt, pale cadavers.

Soon rocky outcrop began to appear, pushing out of the earth like worn molars. Edgar was mindful of the comparison, for the broad open landscape narrowed quickly, and they followed a ravine down between high pinnacles, as if descending into the earth’s intestines.

“This track would be completely flooded in the rain,” said Carroll at his side. “But we are experiencing one of our worst droughts in history.”

“I remember reading about it in a letter you wrote, and everyone I have spoken to has mentioned it.”

“Whole villages are dying of starvation because of the meager crops. If only the army understood how much we could accomplish with food. With food alone, we wouldn’t have to worry about the war.”

“They said they can’t bring in food because of the dacoits, because of a Shan Bandit Chief named Twet Nga Lu—”

“I see you have read that history too,” the Doctor said. His voice echoed off the cliffs. “There is some truth to that, although Twet Nga Lu’s legend is exaggerated in all the boisterous conversations in the officers’ messes. They just want a face to put on the danger. That is not to say he isn’t a danger—he is. But the situation is more complicated, and if we are to hope for peace, it requires more than the defeat of one man…But I am philosophizing, and I promised you I wouldn’t. How much of the story do you know?”

“Only a little. To be honest, I am still confused by all the names.”

“We are all confused. I don’t know which report you read or when it was written—I hope they gave you something I wrote. Although officially we annexed Upper Burma last year, the Shan States have been impossible to control, and thus it is almost impossible to station troops here. In our effort to pacify the region—‘peaceful penetration,’ in the parlance of the War Office, a term I find vile—we have been engaged in fighting a federation of Shan princes calling itself the Limbin Confederacy, an alliance of Shan sawbwas–the Shan word for their princes—who want to overthrow British rule. Twet Nga Lu is not part of the Confederacy, but an illegitimate chief operating across the Salween. We would call him a dacoit, but he has too many followers. His name is perhaps more legendary because he works alone. The Limbin Confederacy is less easily vilified because they are organized, and even send their own delegations. In other words, they seem like a real government. But Twet Nga Lu refuses to cooperate with anyone.”

Edgar began to ask about the rumors of the Bandit Chief that he had heard on the river steamship, but there was a rattling from above. The men looked up to see a large bird lifting off from the crags.

“What was that?” asked Edgar.

“Raptor, although I didn’t get a good look at it. What we need to beware of here are the snakes. They often come out at this time of day to get warm in the sun. Last year I had a pony bitten by a viper, leaving her with a terrible wound. The bite can cause humans to go into rapid shock.”

“You know much about snakebites?”

“I have made a collection of poisons and have tried to study them. I have been helped by a medicine man, a hermit who lives in the hills, who, the villagers say, sells the poisons to assassins.”

“That’s horrid. I—” ‘

“Perhaps, although death by poison could be quite peaceful, compared to the other methods one sees…Don’t worry, Mr. Drake, he has no interest in English piano tuners.”

They continued their descent. Carroll pointed down the ravine. “Listen,” he said. “Soon you will hear the river.” The clip-clop of hooves was answered by a distant, deeper rumbling. The trail continued to drop, and the ponies struggled to keep their footing over the stones. At last Carroll stopped. “We should dismount,” he said. “This is too precarious for the ponies.” He swung himself off with a single, graceful movement. Nok Lek followed, and then Edgar, still thinking about the snakes. The sound of the river grew louder. The ravine narrowed sharply, and now there was scarcely enough room for the ponies to pass. Above him, Edgar could see branches, logs, wedged into the narrow chasm, testament to past flooding. Soon the ravine took a sharp turn, and the floor seemed to disappear beneath them. Carroll handed the reins of his pony to Nok Lek and walked carefully to the edge. “Come and look, Mr. Drake,” he shouted over the roar.

Edgar walked gingerly to join the Doctor where the trail dropped steeply away to a river that flowed twenty feet below them. The stones were silver, polished by the flow of water. Edgar looked up. The sun winked down through a sliver of sky. He could feel spray on his face, the thunder of the rapids shaking the ground.

“In the rainy season this is a waterfall. The river is twice as high. This water comes all the way from Yunnan, in China. It is all from melted snow. There is more. Come.”

“What?”

“Come here, come and look.”

Edgar picked his way uneasily over the stones, wet with the spray of the river. The Doctor was standing at the edge of the precipice, looking up the rock.

“What is it?” asked Edgar.

“Look closely,” said the Doctor. “At the rock. Do you see them? The flowers.”

The entire face of the ravine was covered by a dull moss, sprinkled with thousands of tiny flowers, so small that he had mistaken them for beads of water.

Carroll motioned to a smooth surface on the wall. “Now put your ear there.”

“What?”

“Go ahead, put your ear up against the wall, listen.”

Edgar looked at him skeptically. He crouched and put his head to the stone.

From deep within the rock came a singing, strange and haunting. He pulled his head away. The sound stopped. He leaned back. Again he could hear it. It sounded familiar, like thousands of soprano voices warming up to sing. “Where is it coming from?” he shouted.

“The rock is hollow, they are vibrations from the river, a high-pitched resonance. That is one explanation. The other is Shan, that it is an oracle. Those who seek advice come here to listen. Look up there.” He pointed to a pile of rocks on which a small wreath of flowers had been placed. “A shrine to the spirits that sing. I thought you would like it here. Scenery fit for a man of music.”

Edgar rose and smiled and wiped off his glasses once again. While they talked, Nok Lek unpacked several baskets filled with stuffed banana leaves, which he laid out on the rocks away from the precipice, where it was dry. They sat and ate and listened to the river. The food was different from the rich curries Edgar had eaten in the lowlands. Each banana leaf contained something different, sliced and seared pieces of chicken, fried squash, a pungent paste that smelled strongly of fish but tasted sweet with the rice, which too was different, sticky balls of grains that were almost translucent.

When they had finished, they rose and led their ponies up the little path until it became flat enough to ride. The trail climbed slowly out of the coolness of the ravine and into the heat of the Plateau.