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  The Gurkha spy smiled to himself, playing his fantasy on the fabric of his imagination. He saw Nasiradeen’s arrival, himself opening the gates wide to admit the army, Nasiradeen smiling at him in acknowledgement of his good work. He saw himself mounting one of the army’s horses and, by his master’s side, riding through the streets of Lhasa, fighting, hacking, trampling all who stood in their way. The carnage would be great; the streets red with the blood that fed Shiva.

  He would take Nasiradeen to the Potala and up the stairs into the great monastic palace. What treasures its fifteen hundred rooms might contain, not even he could imagine. But in his mind’s eye he pictured the monks cowering in fear as he and his master strode through the vast building until they found the Dalai Lama. Yes, Edward thought, he would wait until the great Nasiradeen was with him before he accomplished his mission. He would show his master his skill and strength as he killed Tibet’s religious ruler.

  Then he would find MacLeod.

  Here the man known as Father Edward allowed his fantasy to vary just a little. He and MacLeod would fight, but always he was the victor. Sometimes he liked to envision MacLeod on his knees, begging for mercy. Other times, it was the swordplay that held his fancy—the blade in his hand flashing like lightning straight from Shiva’s hand, overwhelming this Westerner who knew nothing of the Destroyer’s might. In both scenes, the end was the same. His sword would pierce MacLeod’s heart, and he would fall lifeless at Edward’s feet.

  Thoughts of defeat, of his own mortality, never entered the impostor’s mind.

  There was a knock on the door. Father Jacques opened it and looked in. “I am glad to see you smiling again, Edward,” he said. “It has been a good retreat for you then?”

  The Gurkha spy was ready to resume the role he was put here to play. His frustration had been eased by his fantasies; his unrest calmed by the knowledge all this would soon be over. He kept the smile in his face, making sure it was cheerful and did not turn into a grimace as he looked at the priest.

  “Very good,” he replied.

  Father Jacques came into the room. He sat beside Father Edward on the bed, hands resting on his knees. Father Edward noticed that, as usual, he had dirt ground into the fibers of his cassock and caked under his fingernails. The spy suppressed a shudder of distaste.

  He’s as bad as an untouchable, a lowest caste, with his constant groveling in the dirt, he thought, but he was careful to keep his face neutral. He waited for what the priest had come here to say.

  Father Jacques cleared his throat. “Edward,” he began slowly, as if each word was a difficult task. “I know I have not counseled you much during this retreat, but I felt you wanted, even needed, to wrestle with this temptation alone for a time.”

  Father Edward said nothing. After a moment Father Jacques sighed and continued. “Well—then I’ll say only this and speak no more about it. It is easy when we are so far away from our home, our Community, to lose our perspective. But we must always remember that we are the face of the Church to the people we serve, and our conduct must therefore be even more circumspect than would be asked of us at home. To work in the mission field is a most difficult life. There is no shame to find one is not called to it. If your retreat has revealed that you would better serve the Church in another manner, then I will make the arrangements.”

  “No,” the Gurkha spy answered. “I need to remain here. I am sure my… calling… is among these people.”

  Father Jacques slowly nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “We’ll start fresh—a clean slate. But you understand this must never happen again. Should you fall to temptation a second time, you will be sent immediately home to the Vicar General for discipline.”

  Edward did not reply. He kept his head properly bowed in an attitude of quiet submission, though his thoughts laughed at the priest’s words.

  Father Jacques stood. “Come,” he said. “We’ll have a Mass to celebrate your return to service, then we’ll walk through the city to show the people that all is again well.”

  Keeping his face in a false, and he hoped, properly humble expression, Edward stood to join the priest.

  “I have fed and watered your birds each day,” Father Jacques said before he led the way from the room. “You will find them well cared for. I also found some writing things behind the cages. Are they yours? It is a strange place to keep them.”

  Edward felt his stomach tighten. He searched quickly for some acceptable explanation.

  “Yes, they’re mine,” he said. “I sometimes write things—poems, little prayers. When I let the birds fly free, I send my writings with then. An offering, you might call it.”

  Father Jacques frowned. “I must remind myself often, Edward, that you come from a pagan country. But you have, with your conversion and your vows, abandoned those beliefs and practices. We come to God only through Our Lord—not through fire or wind or the wings of a bird. If you must see physical form for your prayers, then Our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist is enough. Do you understand?”

  The Gurkha spy again bowed his head as if accepting the reprimand. “Yes,” he said. “I understand. In fact, I think that soon we shall come to understand each other very well.”

  “I hope so, Edward,” Father Jacques replied, his voice taking on its usual, more kindly note. And as the older priest turned once again to lead the way to the little mission house chapel, Edward’s smile turned genuine.

  Oh, we shall indeed, the younger man thought. When my master Nasiradeen arrives, and when I hold a sword to your throat, you shall understand everything.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The next morning, Duncan paced restlessly in the Potala garden, waiting for his daily meeting with the Dalai Lama. He had been here for nearly an hour already, and it was not like the religious leader to be so late. Duncan was becoming more concerned with each moment that passed.

  The Dalai Lama was a young man, it was true, and he appeared healthy enough, but there was also something otherworldly, almost ethereal, about him. Moreover, he was mortal, and in the last two hundred years Duncan had seen many hale, energetic men fall—victims of sudden illness, badly stored food, or the unexplained and inescapable weaknesses of the mortal body. Despite the Dalai Lama’s protestations about the soul’s indestructibility and continuing incarnations, Duncan did not want to see anything happen to this cycle of the young man’s existence.

  He was about to go back into the Potala and find Gaikho or some other monk to ask about the Dalai Lama, when he saw the religious leader hurrying along the pathway toward him. Although he wore a slight frown on his cherubic face, he otherwise looked as well as ever.

  He saw Duncan and lifted a hand in greeting. Duncan smiled at his own foolish worry, but he knew it stemmed from the affection that had grown between himself and the young man over the last several weeks—and that he would not change.

  “I am sorry, Duncan MacLeod,” the Dalai Lama said as he reached the clearing in the garden where Duncan waited. “I am late this morning, I know. I meant to send you word, but my mind sometimes gets distracted, and I forget many things. There is so much to do always, and now so much more, yes?”

  “I do not wish these meetings to cause Your Holiness any hardship,” Duncan said. “I understand that you have many responsibilities. You need not worry about me, I can find other things to do with my day if you need to be elsewhere.”

  The Dalai Lama held up his hands. “No, no, Duncan MacLeod,” he said. “Teaching is never a hardship. For what other purpose am I here, yes? These hours in the garden are a joy in my day. But now there are preparations to be made that eat away at the time I would spend doing other things.”

  The young man crossed over to the stone bench where he habitually sat. As he took his place, he breathed a deep sigh and lifted his face to the sun.

  “Ah,” he said, “it feels good to sit in the warmth and the quiet, yes?”

  Duncan nodded as he, too, sat in the dapple sunlight on the flower-studded g
rass. “What preparations are you making, Your Holiness?” he asked. “Is there some way I can be of service and help ease your burden?”

  The Dalai Lama looked at Duncan with a slightly quizzical expression. But it was fleeting and he smiled.

  “Sometimes I forget that your time in this land has been so brief and that you do not yet know all our ways,” he said. “We prepare now for the great Kalachakra Mandala ceremony. In three days it begins and does not end for twelve days after that. Many, many people will soon arrive in Lhasa. Monks and nuns from the monasteries throughout this land will come. People from other towns, from farms and villages, from high mountain camps all will come to Lhasa. Some will stay here at the Potala. Others will stay with friends and family in the city. Many more will bring tents to cover the land outside the walls. Two cities almost, we will become, with the gates between us always open. There must be food available for so many, needs anticipated for their comfort. Many details and decisions.”

  “Before I came to Lhasa,” Duncan said, “the nomads with whom I stayed spoke of this ceremony. I promised them I would attend on their behalf, but when I arrived I thought I had missed it after all.”

  The Dalai Lama shook his head. “We wait until this time so that no rain or cold will disturb the meditations. Even if one is trained, it is a difficult thing to sit at prayer for twelve days if the rain is pouring on the head or too much cold is filling the body. Yes?”

  Twelve days of prayer and meditation; Duncan tried to put it in perspective with the hours spent on a single move in sword or kata, weeks spent on the open stillness of the sea, years of lonely travel. The difference, he realized, was that each of these things, occupations that had so far defined his life, were physically active. Even the time he had spent at Brother Paul’s monastery had been quiet and restful, but it had also been filled with the gentle activities of communal life.

  Perhaps it is time, Duncan thought, to learn the activity of being still.

  As was so often the case, the Dalai Lama seemed to know what he was thinking. “Twelve days seem a long time to you, yes?” he said. “I tell you, Duncan MacLeod, they are not. It is only once, maybe twice in a man’s lifetime that this ceremony occurs—only once every forty years. What are twelve days out of forty years? Nothing? But they are also everything, for they are days which build us and bind us as a people.”

  MacLeod felt humbled by the religious leader’s words. They reminded him that this young body housed the soul of someone who was truly holy.

  Duncan thought back to his own land, half a world away. What did they have, he wondered a little sadly, that could be said to bind them together, to define them as a people and a faith? Memorials of battles, athletic games, religious holidays such as Christmas, Lent, and Easter—but did these unite the clans or reinforce their separation, their sense of competition?

  They had put aside their differences rarely. Most recently, many of the highland clans, especially the MacDonalds and the Camerons, the MacPhersons, and MacGregors, had united around the Bonnie Prince. Even his own clan had been divided in this cause. But why? Duncan asked himself. For war; to separate themselves from the English with blood and battle.

  Was it the worthy cause Duncan had once thought? Charlie had said that peace would follow victory, but now, with the perspective of the years, MacLeod doubted that would have happened. The clans would soon have pulled apart again, each vying for the royal favor.

  Well, Culloden Field had ended the dream of Scottish sover-eignty, and the clans had returned to their long history of petty skirmishes and hatreds. Nothing changed.

  Perhaps, Duncan thought, it takes a land as isolated as Tibet to be able to find a way to put such differences and discord to rest. For the sake of the years that were to come and the world he might well live to see, Duncan MacLeod truly hoped not.

  “Now, Duncan MacLeod,” the Dalai Lama said, his voice pulling Duncan’s thoughts from the morbid path they threatened to take, “where did we leave off our discussion yesterday? Ah, yes—with the bardo, I think, the state of between death and rebirth.”

  Duncan could have said that he knew that state well. How many times had he “died” in the last two hundred years?—A dozen? More?—but by the Dalai Lama’s words he had not died at all.

  “Death does not come with the ending of our breath, the stopping of the heart and the blood,” the young man was saying. “Death does not truly come until the mind changes into the clear light. This often takes three days or more. Only then, when one’s mind has changed, does one enter the bardo, the between, and begin toward the process of rebirth….”

  When Duncan went down into the city he noticed the subtle changes that had come over the place. People were still as pleasant, smiling as he passed, children still played in the streets, dogs still barked and romped among them, but there was an air of expectancy and a greater sense of purpose in the way the people were going about their daily tasks. Everywhere doors and windows stood open, welcoming in the fresh air of the day. Time and again, Duncan saw people washing the front of their houses, scrubbing away the grime of winters past, trimming overgrown bushes and cleaning out garden beds. The already bright fairy-tale city of Lhasa was becoming a wonderland.

  Perhaps, he admitted, these things had been happening for days and he had not noticed. His mind had been too full of Xiao-nan to notice much else but her.

  When he reached her home, he found that her family was also busy. Furniture was being carried out into the garden so that the house could be scoured from ceiling to floors while the bedding and sleeping mats were aired and the rugs and cushions beaten free of dust. Duncan, who had come to appreciate cleanliness during his months in Japan, did not hesitate to join in.

  He enjoyed working beside Xiao-nan. She smiled at him often while he moved and carried at her direction. It was like a gentle preview of some of the moments their life together would contain—a life he wanted more with each passing hour.

  Soon all of the furnishings were outside. While Xiao-nan helped her mother in the house and her father worked on the front, Duncan aided Mingxia with the rugs and cushions. It was the first time they had been alone together since the incident with Father Edward. Duncan was uncertain what she would say to him.

  Mingxia, however, acted quite happy to be working beside him. She laughed and chattered as if there had never been anything amiss between them. Is it her youth and the natural flexibility of mind that is part of the young? Duncan wondered as he swung the bamboo rug-beater against the heavy fabric. Or is it something more—a practice of forgiveness woven into the very bones of this society? There is so much for the world to learn here.

  Yet, Duncan also found himself hoping that the world, with all its ways of hatred and pain, would never come to this land, never contaminate its peace and beauty.

  “If you become a farmer, Duncan MacLeod,” Mingxia said, “what will you grow?”

  “I thought I’d let Xiao-nan and your father guide me,” he answered.

  She made a face at his words, and Duncan almost laughed. “They’ll only tell you to grow rice and beans and cabbage,” she said, her disapproval as obvious in her tone as in her expression.

  “Those are good crops, Mingxia. People must eat.”

  “But anyone can grow them.” She stopped swinging her rug-beater and looked at him. “You should do something else, Duncan MacLeod,” she said emphatically. “You must do something special.”

  Again Duncan held back his laughter. “What would you suggest I do then?” he asked, quite seriously.

  “I don’t know,” she replied, “but I will think about it.”

  They resumed beating the rug in silence, in rhythmic, alternating strokes. While Mingxia concentrated on the problem of his future, Duncan had the chance to watch her out of the corner of his eye, and he smiled to see she wore the same little frown that appeared on Xiao-nan’s face when she was deep in thought.

  “Mingxia,” Duncan said a moment later, “what would you say i
f I raised horses as well as vegetables? Would that be special enough? I could train them and trade them with the other farmers or even the nomads.”

  Mingxia considered. “Yes, Duncan MacLeod,” she said at last. “I think that is what you should do.”

  “Do you think your sister and father will agree?”

  “Xiao-nan will agree to whatever you want,” she answered, “and my father will wait to say anything until you have spoken all of your reasons why horses are a good choice. He will ask you many questions—then he, too, will agree.”

  “If you wanted to come stay with us sometimes, I could teach you to ride, and you could help me with the horses,” Duncan told her.

  Mingxia stopped beating the rug. She turned to MacLeod, her eyes wide with sudden excitement.

  “Truly?” she asked. “You would teach me?”

  This time Duncan did laugh. “Aye,” he said. “I think you’d be very good at it.”

  He did, too. She was much like many a wild colt he had known—headstrong, vibrant, unwilling to be broken by harsh methods but responding well to a gentle touch. He thought she and the animals would quickly understand each other.

  “Yes,” Mingxia said with a nod as she went back to her chore with renewed energy. “I will be good at it. You will teach me, and I will become best at it.”

  Duncan smiled; it was good to be part of a family again. Soon he would have a wife to cherish and care for, a little sister to watch grow, parents… only children would be missing.

  And he would have peace. Here in this land where peace and compassion were more than words spoken by mystics and idealists, he would live out the fulfillment of too many a lonely dream.

  He had been alone far too long.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Nasiradeen ground his teeth together. His hands clenched on the pommel of his saddle as he struggled not to strike the messenger kneeling in the dirt. Anger and frustration gnawed at him, but it was not this man’s fault, and Nasiradeen never punished one of his men unjustly. His men knew that, counted on it, took pride in it. Punishment was swift and often brutal when it came, but it was never unjust.