The Path Read Online Free PDF

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, andto 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