The Path Read Online Free PDF Page B

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

Chapter Four

    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.
    “Our farewells are only temporary, Duncan MacLeod,” he said, stepping back and smiling his merry smile. “We will meet again,
     if not in this life, then the next, when the Great Wheel spins.”
    Taking the reins of the pack pony in one hand, Duncan mounted his horse and rode away. As the sound of the nomads’ voices
     faded in the distance, so did Duncan’s smile. He thought of Zhi-yu’s parting words, and they brought him no comfort. Did reincarnation
     exist, as the Tibetans believed, governed by the spinning Wheel of Time? Did lives that touched once keep finding each other
     again and again? Duncan had no answers, but he knew that there were many people, mortal and Immortal alike, he had no desire
     to see again in any life.
    Perhaps for Immortals there was no returning. All spins of the Wheel gathered into one that could last through the millennia.
    What about an afterlife?
he asked himself. He had believed in one once, and there were people—parents and friends, teachers, past loves—whom he would
     like to think of as happy somewhere, eternally beyond the touch of pain or sorrow. He would like to believe he would see them
     again.
    The silence in his heart was the only answer he needed. It seemed that all such simple and comforting beliefs had died with
     his mortality.
    * * *
    Duncan rode throughout the day in a solitude more profound than he had ever known. The eternal silence of the mountains. It
     was different than being alone in the hills of his homeland. There the wildlife rustled and twittered and the trees, gorses,
     and heather were in constant motion from the winds. It was different, too, from the solitude of the ocean, where whales and
     dolphins danced among the waves and the waters below teemed with life, where seabirds would light upon the sails to rest from
     their travels and the ship’s creaks and groans were overlaid by the voices of crew and passengers.
    Here, on the mountain road of Tibet, it was as if those things belonged to another world, a world of grosser needs and appetites.
     The only relief to his solitude was the sight of an occasional bird soaring high overhead, or even more rare, of a building
     off in the distance. Constructed on tall stone outcroppings and rising upward like part of the mountains that surrounded them.
     MacLeod was unsure whether they looked dreadful or wonderful in their isolation.
    The silence in which he traveled soon became filled with memories, and his own thoughts turned deafening. By the time to make
     evening camp, it felt as if his mind would surely burst from the cacophony of voices and the swirling kaleidoscope of faces
     from the past two hundred years.
    He found a sheltered spot that would protect himself and the horses from the worst of the night air. He needed to be busy;
     he did not want to think or to remember. Not yet. He set up his small tent and made a fire, smiling with the thought of Zhi-yu
     as he set a few pieces of Yeti-wood on the flames. Then he fed the horses and melted snow for their water.
    His own dinner was no more elaborate—dried yak meat and strong, smoky tea. Duncan missed the fruits and vegetables of Europe.
     The thought brought a strong wave of memories of home. It was late May, and he knew that in Scotland the days were lengthening
     and turning warm and the nights were sweet with the fragrance of blooming heather.
    “It still feels like bloody winter here,” he