The Path

by Rebecca Neason

  He looked at her face. Even in death she was so beautiful. His fingers trembled as one last time he touched the softness of her cheek.

  “For all the lives to come,” he whispered to her. He truly wanted to believe, at that moment he had to believe, they would someday be together again. Drawing a deep ragged breath, he put his arms beneath her and lifted.

  How light the body felt, as if her soul had been all that weighed her to this earth, and with its departure she had become a creature of air. Duncan shifted her position in his arms. Her head fell against his shoulder where a few hours ago it had lain in love. He could not stop the tears that filled his eyes. For one too-brief moment, he let them flow, burning like hot lava down his cheeks. Then he shut them off, shut every feeling part of himself away, and turned to follow Mingxia and Father Jacques.

  Duncan did not stay long with Xiao-nan’s parents. Their grief threatened the numbness in which he wrapped himself. He left them in Father Jacques’s care, knowing that for all his protestations, he would be better suited to comfort them.

  Duncan had no comfort to give anyone—not even himself.

  Xiao-nan…

  Her presence was there in every beat of the heart he could not allow himself to feel. It was part of every breath he must force himself to take.

  Xiao-nan…

  The silent streets of the city accused him. He had not protected her, not kept her safe. She was dead.

  Oh, God… Xiao-nan was dead….

  Duncan stopped and drew a deep shuddering breath. Another. He forced his thoughts away from the pain in his soul and focused on strategy, on what could be done to keep this city safe if he was defeated tomorrow.

  Lhasa would only have to hold out a few days, only until the troops from the Chinese Emperor arrived. With help, he should be able to accomplish that much. For Xiao-nan’s sake, he would save these people she had loved as he had not been able to save her.

  Xiao-nan…

  A slow, loud pounding echoed through the mission house as Brother Michael hurried toward the front door, the soles of his sandals slapping on the hardwood floors, the long brown robe of his habit hampering his haste. Deep inside, some half-forgotten part of him tensed; this intrusive pounding was so unlike the well-mannered tap usually heard in Lhasa.

  Brother Michael reached the door and pulled it wide, interrupting the next blow of the closed fist. With a quick glance he saw MacLeod standing there, a glance that filled with horror as the monk’s eyes took in the sight of the blood staining the blade in Duncan’s hand, the clothes spattered and smeared with drying gore.

  But that was not what make the monk tremble. It was the face—Oh, Dearest God, the face.

  Duncan’s face was cold—hard as iron. His eyes were burning coals of rage and pain straight from the deepest pit of Hell. Brother Michael knew that face; those eyes were burned into his memory. He had taken his vows, praying to God never to see them again.

  Many years ago Brother Michael had worn that face.

  He stepped from the mission house and closed the door behind him. His Brothers, gentle and young, must be spared this.

  “Oh, my friend,” he said, “you have been in a fight.” It was a statement, an understanding offered and he saw MacLeod’s relief.

  “Aye,” the Highlander answered, briefly closing those death-embittered eyes. “And I must face another at dawn. If I fall, can you defend the walls of Lhasa against an army?”

  For a single moment Brother Michael stood still, feeling the impact of Duncan’s words. It was like a hammer blow to his insides; how could he become, even for a day, the person he had turned from, he had fled. Yet if he did not, how many more deaths would his soul carry?

  Wordlessly, he nodded once, accepting the role into which he was once more—Oh, please, Sweet Jesus, let it be for the last time—being thrust.

  Stepping away from the mission house, he let his eyes rove over the parts of the city walls that he could see.

  “It’s meant more to keep out sheep and goats than an army,” he said, raising an eyebrow in the black irony of the statement.

  “Can you hold the wall?” Duncan asked again.

  Brother Michael shook his head. “Myself, my Brothers, maybe Father Jacques—four men to hold three, no, five miles of wall?”

  He saw MacLeod open his mouth to speak and held up a hand to stop him. Then Brother Michael rubbed his chin, the sergeant once more, and considered with a soldier’s eye all that he had seen since coming to Lhasa.

  “The merchants sometimes cross the borders and travel through lands thick with bandits. They do not trust to spinning prayer wheels for the safety of their goods and profits. I have seen them hide their weapons when they reach this city. They honor the Dalai Lama and the teachings of Buddha, but—”

  He turned back to MacLeod. Glancing around at the few people hurrying through the streets, he continued, “I think there are others who will understand that the cost of keeping a peaceful mind will be the rape of their wives and daughters, the murder of everyone they love—their lives torn into shambles and horror. They will join us.”

  Brother Michael heard Duncan’s sigh, saw the weariness take hold of the man. His eyes asked the question once again.

  “Tomorrow morning,” the monk answered him, “I will be on the wall with every soul I can muster. The rest will be in God’s hands.”

  Duncan nodded and turned, his footfalls leaden as he started toward the Potala.

  Brother Michael reentered the mission house, preparing to call his Brothers together. His eyes fell on the crucifix hanging from the wall. Two quick steps, then he dropped to his knees. The last few minutes had reopened scars the monk bore upon his soul, and he felt them now as the wounds in the Sacred Body.

  “Sweet Jesu,” he whispered, “help me. I know my vows have called me to another path, but I cannot let these gentle people die. Give me strength to do what must be done.”

  Brother Michael bowed his head. When this was over he would have to do penance, forty hours of fasting and prayer before his Lord in the Eucharist. He would pray to cleanse his heart—and he would trust that a carpenter who had made tables and chairs from imperfect wood would not fail to forgive his imperfect servant.

  Crossing himself, the monk-now-sergeant, rose. “Brother Peter, Brother Thomas, to me,” he called in a booming voice he had not used in years. “We have many things to do and only a night to do them.”

  Duncan fought the weariness of black and heavy grief as he walked with dragging feet up the Potala steps. He should go back to Xiao-nan’s house and be with her family, but he could not make himself look again so soon at her dead body.

  He wanted to remember her warmth, not her death.

  His grief was a private thing, and he would work it out as he always did. He would go to the silence of his room and to his kata. Sweat and tears would mingle as he pushed himself through the pain.

  And on the other side of it, what would he find? Acceptance? Peace? No. Only his own Immortality.

  He reached the great doors of the Potala and stood with his forehead pressed against them. For a moment, he did not even have the will to open them.

  Xiao-nan, his heart screamed, and this time he let it have voice. The sob that rose from his throat was like the cry of a wounded beast. His knees slowly buckled beneath him. He slid to the ground and let the worst of the tears come.

  Finally, long minutes later, he could breathe again. He dragged himself to his feet and once more put his hand to the great doors.

  They opened silently and he stepped inside. The Dalai Lama stood waiting for him. The young man’s face was an impassive mask as he looked Duncan over. His expression held neither welcome nor condemnation, but MacLeod could feel the sudden unassailable resolve about him, several lifetimes strong. In that instant, more than any other, Duncan felt an absolute certainty that all the Dalai Lama’s claims of reincarnation were true and that youth was only a facade.

  “Come with me, Duncan MacLeod,�
� the Tibetan leader said in a tone as hard as forged steel. “We must talk.”

  Duncan bowed. The Dalai Lama turned away and began walking; with heavy steps Duncan followed. He knew what now must come.

  Chapter Thirty

  They went into the audience chamber where so many pleasant hours had passed in conversation. Today, however, when the Dalai Lama took seat upon his cushion, he sat it like an imperial throne. The atmosphere in the small room felt charged with the energy of his emotions.

  Is it anger I’m feeling from him? Duncan wondered. For what—trying to save his city from invasion and his people from death?

  One look in the Dalai Lama’s eyes and he had his answer. There was nothing merry in them today. They did not twinkle; they stormed as they looked Duncan over, stopping at the sight of the blood on his clothes and the sword hanging at his side. Duncan waited for the storm to break.

  “Have you understood nothing I have said to you, Duncan MacLeod?” the young man said. “Have my words fallen on a heart of stone, that you would bring violent death into my city?”

  “I did not bring it here, Your Holiness, nor was the first death at my hands,” Duncan replied.

  “Do you deny that you have killed this day?”

  “No, Your Holiness, I do not—but I had no choice.”

  The Dalai Lama’s eyes flashed like lightning in a thundercloud face. “There are always choices, Duncan MacLeod,” he said, repeating the lesson he had used before.

  Duncan closed his eyes for a moment as again weariness engulfed him. For all his incarnations and the ancient wisdom that came so easily to his lips, the Dalai Lama lived in an ivory tower of dream and ideals. It was a beautiful place when those around you shared your views. When they did not, it was only a place that invited death.

  Duncan opened his eyes and straightened his back, standing unrepentant and unflinching before the Tibetan leader’s stare.

  “Yes, there are choices,” he said, lifting his chin a bit higher, “and I made mine. He killed Xiao-nan. I killed him.”

  “One death begets another.”

  Duncan nodded. “Yes,” he said, “it often happens that way, too often. But the man I killed today was a spy for that army out there. He opened the gates to them—gates you had ordered closed. Two of your own monks are dead at his hand. Should I have stood back and done nothing while that army swept into the city? There would have been hundreds of deaths.”

  With this last word, the grief closed in again. It took almost all his strength to push it away. Control; he still must remain in control.

  “And was this your only intention, Duncan MacLeod?” the Dalai Lama asked. “Look into your heart and tell me you felt no anger.”

  “Of course I was angry,” Duncan snapped, nearly shouted. “I was almost blind with anger. Must I say it again? He killed Xiao-nan.”

  “And you took pleasure in his death.”

  “Yes,” Duncan answered through gritted teeth. He would not deny what he had felt, still felt. He began to pace restlessly, feeling like a trapped animal.

  The Dalai Lama watched him silently, waiting for the worst of his inner storm to pass. “And what of tomorrow, Duncan MacLeod,” he said at last. “I know you go to meet the leader of the army in combat. Will you kill again?”

  “If I must.”

  “And will this death also give you pleasure, Duncan MacLeod?”

  Duncan stopped pacing. He closed his eyes again, against the despair he felt welling in his soul.

  “No,” he said softly. “There is no pleasure—only necessity.”

  “Why, Duncan MacLeod? The death today might be called justice by some, but not tomorrow. I forbid you to do this.”

  “I must,” Duncan said. He was tired, suddenly so tired his legs almost refused to hold him up. He wanted no more questions, no more half-said explanations. He was what he was. It was time the Dalai Lama knew the full truth.

  “You said there are always choices, but that’s not true, not for my kind,” he said, turning to look at the youthful face of the Tibetan Priest-King.

  “Your kind?” the Dalai Lama cocked his head to one side in his old familiar gesture. “You are a man as other men.”

  Duncan found he wanted to laugh a the black, sardonic humor of the Dalai Lama’s words. But it was the laughter of tears and exhaustion so close a hand.

  “No,” he said. “Not as other men.” Once more he pulled himself up straight and looked into the Dalai Lama’s eyes.

  “I am Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1592 in the Highlands of Scotland. I am Immortal….”

  The Dalai Lama listened while Duncan told him of his “death” in 1622 during a battle with a neighboring clan and of his many “deaths” since then. Duncan was not sure whether it was horror or sorrow he saw on that gentle face when he told of the many true deaths that had come at the end of his sword. He held nothing back, speaking of the wars he had been in, the causes he had supported, the deaths that had brought him the satisfaction of justice and the others that had shown him only grief. The tale of his life unfolded like the lotus flower of Buddhist lore, revealing at its heart a man of honor who longed for peace but who was also a warrior; a man who accepted, sometimes with deep remorse, that he must kill to stay alive. It was both his weakness and his greatest strength.

  They talked long into the night. It was better to accept death, the Dalai Lama said, than to carry the stain of killing into the next life. Duncan listened, sometimes in silence, sometimes vocal in his disagreement. He wanted to believe as the Dalai Lama did, but he could not.

  Finally, they both knew there was nothing more to say. The Dalai Lama remained seated while Duncan went wearily to the door of the audience chamber. He must now get what sleep he could before the dawn. As he put his hand to the latch, the Dalai Lama spoke one last time.

  “I tell you again, Duncan MacLeod,” he said, “do not do this thing. Do not go to kill.”

  Duncan stopped and turned around. He stared at the young man who for the last weeks had been teacher, mentor, and friend, wishing there were some way to make him understand. But the differences were too great. Duncan had never felt so very alone.

  “I’m sorry, Your Holiness,” were in the end the only words he had left.

  Duncan walked through the door, closing it softly but firmly behind him.

  A half mile outside the city gates the Gurkha army made camp, spreading like a blight across the gently sloping land. Smoke from their campfires filled the air like a thousand specters, and the wind carried their voices through the silence of the night.

  Nasiradeen walked among his men. Everywhere he went, the eyes that watched him shone with pride and devotion. He was their leader and their champion. Nowhere did he see the slightest doubt that he would win on the morrow.

  Nasiradeen drank in his men’s surety. It fed his own confidence. Why should he not expect to win tomorrow? The Immortal he had seen today was good, and the sword he carried was an impressive weapon, but over the centuries Nasiradeen had killed hundreds of men, mortal and Immortal. He knew his own power was formidable.

  He left his men to their food, drink, and song. They were in good spirits tonight. Their campaign was nearly over; Tibet was nearly theirs. Once Lhasa fell, their claim to this country would be complete.

  Nasiradeen went to stand at the top of the rise where he could see the holy city and the great palace of the Potala. In the moonlight, its whitewashed walls shimmered like silver. The light shining from the many windows made it look studded with slabs of gold. The sight of it made the hunger grow in him again.

  Yes, he thought, it is a fitting palace for a conqueror—and a King. An Immortal King.

  Then Nasiradeen frowned as he noticed the dark spot outside the gates where the body of his spy still lay unattended. The man had been a nuisance through much of his training, given to flights of fantasy his skill with a sword had never been great enough to fulfill. But he’d had other talents and had been a useful tool. He
deserved to have his soul sent home to the gods.

  Nasiradeen turned and called back to the camp. Immediately, half a dozen men left the nearest campfire to answer his summons.

  “Build a funeral pyre,” he told them when they reached his side. “Then go down to the gates and retrieve the body. Prepare it, but do not light the fire yet. Tomorrow I shall lay the body of an enemy at his feet as an offering to Shiva.”

  “Yes, Great One,” the men said, touching their hands to their hearts. Then went quickly to do his bidding.

  Nasiradeen turned back to his contemplation of Lhasa. His thoughts went to the battle the would face at dawn.

  A man from the West was a new experience for Nasiradeen. Who are you, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod? he wondered. What will I gain from you when I drink your Quickening?

  And there was the Quickening itself. It had been too long since he had felt that raw power surging through him like the thunderbolts from Shiva’s hand. How long? Nasiradeen tried to remember. Ten years, twelve? No matter; he had kept his skills sharp, honing them on mortal blood.

  In Kathmandu, he had often spoken to the boy-King of the glories of a warrior’s life, trying to convince the boy to become a man. But such glories were nothing compared to a Quickening. Riding into battle, sword tasting the blood of the foe, seeing your enemies fall at your feet, even taking a dead man’s woman when the battle was won—these mortal pleasures paled when compare to what one Immortal felt when the Quickening of another entered him in the searing, savage ferocity that shook the heavens. Here was proof, Nasiradeen believed, of an Immortal’s power, of their strength and superiority over the poor mortal creatures that surrounded them.

  And you, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod? he thought, staring down at the city of Lhasa. What are these mortals to you? Have you lived long enough to see them for what they are—instruments of passing pleasure, tools to be used and discarded at leisure—or do you foolishly still count yourself among them?