The Path (4 page)

But not even their merry temperaments could completely penetrate MacLeod’s indifference. It filled him like a dark void, a
hole in his soul too many years in the making. After almost two hundred years of life, he was weary. He was tired of the Game.
It felt as if his existence was only about death anymore—killing to survive.

So he wandered, as he had wandered here, looking for that word or smile or touch, that one moment that might bring his heart
back to life. For the last two years he had been through China, renewing old acquaintances, perhaps looking for the man he
had been when he had visited the “mysterious East” a century before.

He had seen Kiem Sun again, only to find that the last hundred years had sadly changed his Immortal friend. Fearful of the
Game, Kiem Sun lived on Holy Ground, obsessed with perfecting an ancient formula of herbs that would create an invincible
warrior. He thought it would protect him when the time of the Gathering finally arrived, but in his search for the preservation
of his life he had ceased to truly
live
.

Kiem Sun had sent him to May-Ling Shen—delicate as a flower, deadly as an Immortal warrior had to be—and for a time he had
found comfort in her arms. But the restlessness had come, as it had come to him here on the Tibetan plateau, and he had needed
to be on his way again. He left May-Ling with a kiss and a smile, both of them hoping to meet again, and both of them knowing
there could be no permanence for Immortals. Death might await on the blade of the next sword.

“You will leave with the sunrise, you say?” Zhi-yu’s wife, Ruoyin asked, her voice bringing MacLeod’s thoughts back to the
present. She handed him a steaming bowl of spiced yak milk, one of the staples of the nomad’s diet.

Duncan nodded. “That’s right,” he said.

Ruoyin gave him a patient smile that seemed to say how foolish she thought he was to be leaving at all. Then she went to sit
beside her daughter, a new mother who was nursing her infant son.

Duncan wrapped his fingers around the bowl, enjoying the heat. He had almost said, “as soon as it is warm enough,” but he
was not certain that time ever came at these altitudes.

That was all relative, he supposed. Back home in Scotland, no one would believe anyone could live at these heights, let alone
flourish. Yet these mountain nomads did just that. They lived happily, raising their families and their herds of yak at altitudes
of 14,000–17,000 feet.

Here on the Tibetan plateau, the daytime temperatures rose barely above freezing and at night were cold enough to almost stop
a man’s blood in his veins. This was the “Land of Snows,” the “Rooftop of the World.”

It was a harsh life, but one lived among breathtaking beauty, where rainbows could appear in a cloudless sky and be reflected
back again by the deep crystal of mountain lakes. And the mountains themselves, snowcapped and shining like a jewel-encrusted
crown of the earth. Duncan had seen other mountains—the Alps, the Pyrenees—but nowhere had he seen anything like the mountains
of Tibet.

In spite of the hardships, the Tibetan nomads were a merry people. They lived communally, relying on their herds for almost
all of their needs. They housed themselves in huge tents woven from the animals’ thick hair, fed themselves with its milk
and meat, and burned its dung for fuel.

The tent in which MacLeod was sitting was one of great comfort by the nomads’ standards. The largest in the camp, it was over
twenty feet square. The thick yak hair from which it had been woven kept out most of the wind and the night chill. The small,
portable brazier in the corner, which had replaced the ancient practice of a central fire pit, heated the air to a moderate
temperature, and the double layer of rugs, hand-knotted and also made from dyed yak hair, both insulated and added beauty.

Over in the corner one of the tribal grandmothers was spinning her small prayer wheel and chanting softly to herself. Nearby,
two other women were talking and laughing while they
combed and spun from the ever-present basket of yak hair at their side. Ruoyin still sat next to her daughter and grandson,
crooning a lullaby to the now sleeping infant.

The men in the tent were clustered around MacLeod. They had accepted his decision to leave with the same good humor they had
shown on his arrival, and now their conversation had turned to other matters, such as where next to move the herd. As they
talked, the men’s hands worked ceaselessly, almost mindlessly, with the bowls and pestles in their laps. They were grinding
natag
, a powdery snuff made of cardamom, cloves, tobacco, and the fine ash of burned juniper.

This grinding went on every evening; Duncan had quickly realized the slow, methodical action was more of a habit than the
snuff itself. He had tried the
natag
once, out of good manners, when he had first come to live among the nomads. That once had been enough. But he enjoyed sitting
among the men, watching the almost hypnotic movement of the pestle in the bowl and smelling the pungent aroma of the crushed
spices.

As he sat there, hearing their voices without really listening, it was like being transported back in time, back two hundred
years to the Highlands of Scotland when his people had lived much this same way. Had the world really changed so much, he
thought, or was it just him? Somewhere in the last two centuries, the
wonder
in him had died.

With that thought, restlessness again gripped him. He stood abruptly and headed toward the thick hide-flap that served the
tent as a door.

“There is a Yeti-wind blowing, Duncan MacLeod,” the tribal leader called after him. “The Demon of the Snows will be prowling
tonight. Do not go beyond the smoke of our fires.”

“I will be careful, Zhi-yu,” Duncan assured him, not quite smiling at the old man’s words.

In this, too, the Tibetans reminded Duncan of his own people. He could almost hear his mother’s voice telling him not to go
out when the “goblin moon” was high. Goblins, witches, wood sprites, fairies—his childhood had been filled with stories of
these creatures stealing human babies from their cradles and human souls from the unwary. The Christian Church had never quite
banished the fears of ancient lore.

Tibet, too, had its horde of demons the people feared. Some
were creatures of spirit and fire; others walked the world in physical form, but were demons, nonetheless. The most terrifying
of these was the Yeti. It was said to be eight feet tall, with long white fur and with teeth and claws powerful enough to
rend man or beast. The nomads burned branches of a special bush to keep the demon at bay. This was “Yeti-wood,” their only
fuel besides dried yak dung, and at night they did not go beyond the boundaries of their camp’s comforting blanket of smoke.

In two hundred years of life and all of his travels, the only demons Duncan had seen were the human kind—and usually they
had a sword in their hand.

The night air did little to refresh MacLeod as he walked through the nomads’ camp. There was not much to see at this late
hour. The large black tents were but deeper shadows rising on the darkened landscape. Prayer flags hung everywhere, squares
of brightly colored cloth on which prayers had been printed, and during the day they fluttered gaily in the sun. But now they
hung still, silent, and dark. The only light came from the sliver of the waning moon and from the stars, which here on the
high Tibetan plateau looked almost near enough to reach out and grab by the handful.

MacLeod pulled his long fur-lined coat more closely around himself and felt the comforting presence of his
katana
. Even here he would not go unarmed, though out of respect for the beliefs of his hosts he tried to make his weapon as unobtrusive
as possible.

He walked to a nearby boulder and sat, waiting for the silence of the night to enter and calm him again. But it was not really
silent; as he sat there, Duncan could hear the voices of nomads, laughing and talking in their extended families. This was
the sweet and gentle sound of communal life. It was a life Duncan knew he could never be a part of, even if he stayed. He
could never live and grow old among people he loved. That knowledge kept him moving and fed the restlessness he had lived
with for so very long. That—and the Game.

Even here he knew it would eventually find him. It always did. And with the Game came death. Mortals had their wars, their
causes and laws; Immortals had their swords and the end was the same. More death. Always death.

Duncan drew in a deep, cleansing breath and let it out again slowly. The cold of the night air was beginning to penetrate
even through his thick coat. One more deep breath, then he started back toward the tent. He would stay here tonight and be
on his way in the morning—to Lhasa to attend this ceremony that meant so much to his Tibetan friends, a final thank-you for
their kindness. After that, Duncan gave a mental shrug.
Who knows?
he thought.
Does it really matter?

Many miles to the south, on the other side of the massive Himalayas, the kingdom of Nepal was a land of ancient splendors
and ancient sorrows. It was a land of warrior-Kings and fierce, bloodthirsty gods, where a man’s fate was decided before his
birth by the caste into which he was born.

But three hundred years was enough to overcome any stigma of birth, if one was determined and ruthless enough. Nasiradeen
Satish was both. No one but himself remembered his origins, the filth and squalor of his earliest years, the pain and soul-numbing
poverty of being the only child of outcasts, untouchables.

His parents had died of hunger and disease when he was only eight years old, and he had watched their maggot-ridden corpses
decompose because no one cared enough to bury them, and he was too small to do the work himself. Even at that age, something
in him had been fierce enough to stand against fate. He vowed that he would not die forgotten and alone. He would find a way
out of the caste into which he had been born.

Now, Nasiradeen Satish stood at the pinnacle of power. Over the centuries, from the time of his first death at age twenty-nine,
he had fought and clawed and killed relentlessly to get here. He had “died” countless times; with each reawakening, he had
renamed himself into a higher caste, gathering the strength and skill, the training and knowledge, and the wealth to back
up his claims. He paid homage to the gods only when their will coincided with his own and otherwise ignored them, as he ignored
or overrode the will of any who stood in his way.

Nasiradeen was not the king—he was something far, far better. Nasiradeen was the leader of the Gurkhas, the royal army of
Nepal. Ten thousand men vowed to fight and die at his command. Only the King had greater power, at least in name, and
to Nasiradeen’s most elite troops, the five hundred men he had picked and trained himself, even the word of the King was not
enough to alter their allegiance.

He would soon use those troops to gain a kingdom.

Tonight he stood alone on the rooftop of his grand home, a dark silhouette against the star-filled sky. At nearly six and
a half feet, he would have been tall among any people, and among his own he was a giant. The turban on his head, like the
clothes that covered his muscular body, was of the finest silk, with a large ruby burning at the cross-hatch of the wrappings.
Other jewels sparkled on his restless hands, and a large brooch of diamond and sapphire pinned the cloak he wore against the
cold. Boots of leather and lamb’s wool encased his feet like clouds of warmth.

Below him, the whitewashed walls of his many rooms were hung with silk brocades and tapestries. Slaves waited to serve him
on gold-washed plates and with jewel-encrusted goblets. Concubines were ready to give themselves for his pleasure. He had
only to make a gesture, mention a desire, and it would be fulfilled.

But his mind was on none of these things. In truth, they bored him. Tonight, standing in the cool, crisp air under the light
of the waning moon, he faced north toward the mountains and beyond. Toward Tibet.

His plan was already in place, and his spy, his instrument of betrayal, already living among the people in the Tibetan capital
of Lhasa. The information he had already sent—maps of the city and of the roads, reports on population, water and food supplies—had
helped Nasiradeen firm his plans.

There would be more reports coming, as Nasiradeen readied his troops, and there was one, in particular, for which he was waiting.
He must know when the Dalai Lama was again in Lhasa; no conquest of the country could be complete without the Dalai Lama’s
death.

That
was the true purpose his spy served; information, yes, and to open the gates when the army arrived—but above all, to kill
the Dalai Lama. It would not be long before together they would strike.

Before the rains come again
, Nasiradeen promised the night, the darkness, himself,
Tibet will be mine
.

The entire tribe turned out to wave Duncan on his way as he prepared to ride off in the morning sunlight. They had provisioned
him well, including a bundle of Yeti-wood to burn in his evening fires and a small tent in which to sleep, all loaded onto
one of their sturdy mountain ponies. Zhi-yu himself gave Duncan directions on which trails to follow in order to reach Lhasa.
Then the tribal leader enfolded him in a bearlike embrace.