Highlander(TM): The Path

by Rebecca Neason

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

In The Path, published to tie-in with the fantasy adventure TV series Highlander, Scottish warrior Duncan McLeod meets the current Dalai Lama after having departed Tibet in 1781. He has to know whether the Dalai Lama remembers him or not.

Release date: September 26, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 224

Sample

Duncan MacLeod smiled as he raised a glass of orange juice toward his lips. Some mornings were better than others, and this
had been one of the good ones.


He had begun his day with an hour of kata, both sword form and open hand, pushing himself through the stylized movements until his body warmed and his mind focused.
For over two hundred years this had been his way of putting the mundane concerns of daily life into perspective; it was his
path to the balance he needed to survive his Immortality.


Suddenly, the presence of another Immortal seared through MacLeod like the blare of a trumpet felt in the bones. His hand
went to the hilt of his katana, the Japanese samurai sword that was never far from his side. His muscles tensed, ready to spring into the action of survival
as his eyes swept across his familiar surroundings, automatically checking defensive positions and strategies.


A second later a voice reached him. “Hey, Mac—Mac, you home?”

As quickly as it had come, the tension drained from MacLeod’s body and he smiled again, not bothering to answer. By now Richie
would have felt MacLeod’s presence the same way Duncan felt his, the way one Immortal always sensed another.


The old-fashioned freight elevator connecting the dojo and the apartment started to rattle; Richie was on his way up. From
the sound of his voice he was excited about something. But then, MacLeod thought, Richie was always excited about something.
That was his age, or rather, that was his youth.


Richie was a young Immortal, new to the Game, and his age still matched his physical appearance. He looked to be, and was,
a well-built young man in his early twenties. MacLeod, on
the other hand, looked in his thirties, maybe thirty-five, but the reality was quite different.


Duncan MacLeod was four hundred years old.

Whether thirty-five or four hundred, MacLeod looked good for his age. Some of his appearance—the thick dark hair he usually
kept pulled back in a ponytail, the heavy-lidded dark eyes that flashed beneath thick lashes, the high cheekbones and strong
chin—were genetics, and he could take no credit for them. But the sleek, well-toned body, the broad shoulders, muscular chest,
stomach, and thighs, the balance and catlike grace were all things he worked hard to maintain. It was not vanity, it was survival—a
sloppy Immortal lost his head.


The elevator stopped. Richie opened the slatted wooden door and stepped out into Duncan’s apartment. It was as though a wave
of energy crested through the confined space, sparking out of his hazel eyes and the curls of his light reddish brown hair.
MacLeod turned to look at the young man who was his student, and his friend.


“Hey, Mac,” Richie said, “I’ve got something you’re going to love.”

“And what’s that?” MacLeod asked, his smile not quite hiding the cynicism in his voice. Richie’s idea of fun was sometimes
as far removed from MacLeod’s as, well, as their generations. Centuries apart.


“You know there’s this big rally down at the stadium tomorrow?” Richie walked over to the counter and poured himself a glass
of juice from the pitcher MacLeod had left sitting there.


“I’ve heard about it,” Duncan replied.

“Well, I got us tickets.”

He looked at MacLeod, full of self-congratulatory smiles, obviously waiting for Duncan’s enthusiasm to match his own. But
MacLeod just shook his head slightly and turned back to his half-finished breakfast.


“I don’t think so, Richie,” he said.

“Oh, come on, Mac—I thought this was just the sort of thing you’d love. You know, world peace, brotherhood of man…”

“Look, Richie,” MacLeod said as he forked up the last piece of egg on his plate. “I think it’s great that you want to go,
but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me.”


MacLeod stood and carried his plate to the sink, trying to ignore
Richie’s disappointed expression. Richie’s face was always expressive; it could go from one extreme to the other and back
again in an instant. MacLeod had ceased letting himself be influenced by it. Most of the time, anyway. Seeing that, Richie
changed his tactics.


“I don’t get it, Mac,” he said. “I mean, the Dalai Lama’s the main speaker at this rally, and even I know who he is.”


“Then you should definitely go hear him, but count me out.”

MacLeod headed for the elevator. Downstairs at the back of the dojo was his office and some paperwork he had promised himself
he would finish today—and he had a new member due in an hour. It was days like today when he most missed Charlie’s deft hand
at running the dojo. Duncan knew his friend was doing something he believed in, but in the three weeks since Charlie had left
for the Balkans, the rhythm of the dojo had changed—and MacLeod found he missed Charlie’s style of in-your-face caring.


Richie followed MacLeod into the elevator. As soon as the door closed, he started in again.

“What am I missing here, Mac? You can’t mean it’s because of the Dalai Lama you won’t go to the peace rally?”


“That’s right.”

“But he’s one of the ‘Great Men of Our Time,’ isn’t he? I mean everyone respects him—except, maybe, the Chinese government
that exiled him. Even living in exile he keeps working for world peace. I thought you’d want to go hear him. He talks about
a lot of the same stuff you do.”


“If we talk about the same thing, why do I need to go hear him?” MacLeod countered with a smile as they stepped off the elevator.
“Let it go, Richie.”


It was a vain hope, and MacLeod knew it even as he said it. Richie never let anything drop until his curiosity was satisfied—or
he got his way.


MacLeod walked into his office and took the seat behind the desk. Again Richie followed him. He paced restlessly across the
small area and back again. Then he stopped and leaned forward on the desk, looking into his mentor’s eyes.


“Talk to me, Mac. So far you haven’t given me a single reason that makes sense. Besides”—he straightened and gave MacLeod
one of his best “trust-me” smiles—“I had to pull a lot
of strings to get these seats—eight rows back, right on center aisle. They’re great seats, Mac, and expensive.”


Duncan leaned back in his chair and looked up at the young man, pleased in so many ways by what he saw. The Richie of today
was very different from the seventeen-year-old petty criminal who had broken into MacLeod’s antique shop a few years ago.
Oh, he still thought he could charm the bees out of their honey—and sometimes he could—but the old Richie Ryan would never
have attended anything more serious than a rock concert, not unless there was a get-rich-quick scheme involved.


But the years with MacLeod had made quite a difference in the young man, and Duncan was proud of the changes. It was more
than the martial arts and sword training, though MacLeod was a great advocate of the physical and mental discipline they accorded.
By the time Richie “died” the first time and became aware of his own Immortality, he had already seen enough to know the Game
was in deadly earnest. He had thrown himself into his training with the single-mindedness felt only by the young. It had paid
off; MacLeod no longer worried about Richie meeting another Immortal each time he left the dojo.


While this physical training would help him stay alive, it was the internal changes that would in MacLeod’s opinion, make
the years, perhaps centuries, ahead of the young man worth living. Under Duncan’s sometimes stern, sometimes amused tutelage,
the street-wise opportunist that circumstances had forced Richie to become had given way to the man of honor Richie had always
been beneath the veneer.


MacLeod knew he could not take all the credit. Much of it went to Tessa, the remarkable mortal woman with whom Duncan had
been living when Richie first appeared. She had been a woman of rare beauty, beauty that began with her face and went all
the way through to her soul. MacLeod had loved her as he had loved few others.


To Richie she had been a friend and, though perhaps he did not realize it, something of the mother for whom he had always
been looking. She had known and accepted the truth about MacLeod. Her example had helped Richie do the same so that, in time,
he was able to face his own Immortality without the
terror and confusion that MacLeod, and so many others, had experienced.


The same act of random violence that had given birth to Richie’s Immortality had ended Tessa’s life. For her there was no
awakening, no continuance except in the lives of those she had loved. MacLeod would have continued teaching Richie anyway—as
Connor MacLeod had taught him; as the Immortal Ramirez had taught Connor; as Graham Ashe had taught Ramirez, on and on back
through time—but in Tessa’s memory he did so with more understanding and patience than he might otherwise have offered.


Richie was still waiting for an answer. Now MacLeod was ready to give him one.

“You’re not going to give up on this, are you?” he asked, already certain of the answer.

Richie’s smile broadened. He lifted his hands in the familiar gesture that was half a shrug, half a brag. “Hey, you know me.”

“Yeah, I do,” MacLeod said.

He waited a moment longer, still studying Richie. Then, mentally, Duncan gave a small sigh; he might as well get this over
with, he thought as he gestured toward the chair across from him.


“Have a seat, Richie,” he said, “and tell me what you know about the Dalai Lama.”

Richie sat in the office’s other chair and leaned back. “I know he’s some sort of religious leader from Tibet who’s been living
in exile for, like, thirty years, since the Communists took over his government.”


“Thirty-seven now, since 1959. What do you know about how the Dalai Lama is chosen?”

“I suppose he’s the most holy dude in the temple or something. Wait a minute—isn’t there some sort of reincarnation thing
involved?”


“That’s right,” Duncan answered. “The current Dalai Lama is the fourteenth incarnation in a line that goes back hundreds of
years.”


“But you don’t believe that stuff, do you, Mac? I mean reincarnation—isn’t that, like—”

“Impossible? As impossible as, say, Immortality?”


“Good point,” Richie conceded with a quick grin. “But that still doesn’t explain why you won’t go to the peace rally.”


“Richie—it’s a long story.”

“Well, Mac,” Richie said with an expansive shrug, “you keep reminding me I have plenty of time.”

Duncan looked down at the papers in front of him. Again, he gave a silent sigh; he knew he would have no peace until Richie
had his answer.


Still the words did not want to come. With four hundred years of memories, not all of them were pleasant ones. Some were filled
with regrets and sorrows that he preferred to keep private. He stared for a moment more out of the windows of the office into
the empty interior of the dojo, where everything was orderly and calm. A part of him wished life could be just as serene.
But it was not; life was, well, life—full of all the twists and turns that made a man who he was.


Duncan looked at Richie’s expectant face and knew he would honor the young man’s friendship with honesty. “Richie, I knew
the Dalai Lama once, a long time ago, and we didn’t part on the best of terms. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to attend
this rally.”


“You knew him? When, Mac—before he left Tibet?”

MacLeod could not help the quick grin that quirked the corners of his mouth. “Yes, before he left Tibet. It wasn’t this Dalai Lama I knew. It was the eighth, two hundred years ago.”


“The eighth Dalai Lama,” Richie repeated. “And this guy’s like the fourteenth, right? Well then, Mac, where’s the problem?
I mean, why would he even recognize you?”


“Because one of the ways the Dalai Lama is verified in each new incarnation is the ability to recognize the people and things
from his past lives. I don’t want to be one of them. Now, I’ve got work to do. Go find a girl you can impress by your social
consciousness and take her to the rally.”


“That wasn’t what I had in mind when I bought the tickets,” Richie said, nodding, “but it might work. See you later, Mac.”

“Yeah, later. Now get out of here.”

As the young Immortal left, MacLeod shook his head, amused. Richie would, no doubt, find a way to turn a rally for world peace
and freedom into a night of romance.


Oh, to be that young again.


The door closed behind Richie, and, in the sudden silence, MacLeod once more stared at the papers in front of him. They were
balance statements for the dojo’s expenses, minor bookkeeping that he had done hundreds of times in different jobs over the
centuries, but today the words and numbers passed before his eyes without entering his brain. There were too many memories
already there.


Damn Richie for bringing all this up, MacLeod thought a bit savagely, but part of him was grateful, too. It had been too long since he had thought about his time
in Tibet two centuries ago—too long since he had thought about her.


In four hundred years there had been many women in his life. Some were no more than brief and pleasant encounters, some were
passions lasting months or even years. But there was one whose name he rarely spoke. He kept her name and her memory locked
away, guarded in his heart like a precious jewel.


Xiao-nan Choi—even now, two hundred years later, her name called up all that was best in him. Her love, given with such tenderness, had
brought his heart back to life at a time when he was drowning in weariness.


MacLeod put down his pen, sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Immediately Xiao-nan’s features filled his mind. He smiled
in his solitude as he saw again the softness of her skin, shining golden as polished amber washed in the roseate blush of
dawn; her eyes, dark with all the mysteries of womanhood yet bright with the light of love and laughter; her lips, her smile,
so artless and beguiling…


But memories are fickle things, not easily controlled, and with a sudden twist all the pain two centuries had not dulled came
crashing in on MacLeod—the loss, the sorrow, the anger. He should have protected her better.


Nor was his own anger the only one he remembered. The eighth Dalai Lama, that gentle young man who for months had been Duncan’s
teacher and friend, had been angry, too. He had banished Duncan from the holy city and from his company. And Duncan had fled
back to Europe, only to find a world about to go mad with the Reign of Terror called the French Revolution.


Now, remembering that day from the safe distance of two
hundred years, Duncan saw in the Dalai Lama’s face what he could not see at the time. Anger, yes—but hurt and disappointment
as well.


Was there a chance their wounded friendship could be healed, even after so long a time? Duncan wondered. Or perhaps, as Richie
had said, it was something for the past, something that would remain forever buried where not even an Immortal could resurrect
it.


With that thought, Duncan knew he would go see the Dalai Lama; he did not want to carry this regret forever.



MacLeod’s assessment of Richie’s libido might have been correct, but he forgot about the young man’s tenaciousness. Like the
Airedale terrier his curly hair made him resemble, whose jaws closed upon prey and locked, not letting go until one of them
was dead, Richie would not so easily give up his original idea. He had bought these tickets for himself and MacLeod—a gift
for the teacher who had given him so much.


And there was still a part of Richie that needed to prove himself to MacLeod, that needed the older man’s approval. The need
was less obvious than it had once been and manifested less frequently, but it was there. So he returned to the dojo a few
hours later determined to persuade MacLeod to come with him to the peace rally.


He arrived at the martial arts school just as one group of members was leaving. The dojo would be empty now for a couple of
hours. Plenty of time.


MacLeod was back in his office again. Richie waved at him as he hung his jacket on a peg, then walked over and drew one of
the practice katanas off the wall. This, he knew, was one sure way to draw MacLeod onto the floor. He would pretend not to watch at first, but
soon he would be out here correcting something in Richie’s form, showing him how a slight variation in balance or swing could
make it more effective—and help him keep his head.


A few stretches to wake up his muscles and get the blood flowing, then Richie began moving through the basic motions he had
been taught: guard, slice, thrust, upward cut, downward cut, diagonal left, right, different angles, entries, and parries,
keeping his balance on the balls of his feet, imagining an opponent’s sword, his body, his head.


Soon Richie was sweating; his taut muscles warmed and
loosened. He almost forgot about MacLeod as he tightened his focus on what he was doing. Make the sword a part of yourself, an extension of your arm; in the past few years these words had become as familiar to him as the sound of his own name. Extend your energy, your ch’i, to the tip of the blade. Let the sword do the work.


“You dropped your left shoulder on that one,” said the familiar voice behind him. “It left your guard open. I could have disarmed
you and taken your head.”


Richie nearly smiled. MacLeod was just the right kind of predictable. He turned to face his teacher. Duncan stood there with
a sword in his hand. It was not his own katana—he never drew that lightly—it was the other practice sword from the wall.


Without further discussion, MacLeod saluted Richie, one swordsman to another, then dropped into his favorite stance with the
graceful ease of a big cat stretching. His movements were always so precise they inspired, and slightly intimidated, Richie.
He did his best to match MacLeod’s position.


A few seconds later the dojo rang with the clash of blade upon blade. The sound echoed off the walls, filling the space like
a miniature thunderstorm. Richie pressed his advantage every time MacLeod gave him an opening, and each time Duncan forced
him back. Whenever Richie dropped his shoulder, MacLeod’s blade would come up and slap him. Through it all, the older man
kept smiling. It was infuriating.


Finally, shoulders sore and forearm aching, Richie stepped back and saluted, signaling a halt.

“You’re improving,” MacLeod said, still smiling.

“Yeah, right. Then why do I still come out of these encounters with my shoulders bruised?”

“Because you keep dropping your guard. Don’t worry, Richie—another couple centuries of practice and maybe you’ll beat me.”

“I doubt it.”

MacLeod smiled over his shoulder as he walked to the wall and returned the katana to its holder. “So how did your search for a date go?”


Richie shook his head. “It seems that listening to the Dalai Lama isn’t what most girls think of as a fun way to spend a Friday

night. I guess I’ll just have to eat the cost of these tickets. Unless—”


MacLeod turned and leaned back against the wall, casually folding his arms across his chest. He was still smiling his same
infuriating I-know-what-you’re-going-to-do-before-you-do-it smile.


“Unless what?” he said.

“Unless you go with me.”

“I already said no.”

“I know, Mac, but I’ve been thinking. I know I said these are good seats—and don’t get me wrong, they are—but there’ll be
hundreds of people there. You’ll see the Dalai Lama okay from where you’re sitting, clear as a bell, but there’s no reason
to think he’ll see you.”


“I don’t know, Richie—”

“Think about it, Mac. It’s not like he’s one of us who’d be able to feel your presence, right? You’ll just be a face in the
crowd, same as everyone else.”


“Okay, Richie.”

“What—you mean you’ll go?” Richie could hardly believe it. This had gone a lot more easily than he expected.

Then it hit him. He had not talked Duncan into anything. MacLeod had given in this easily only because he had already changed
his mind. That made it Duncan MacLeod 2—Richie Ryan 0, all in the space of an hour.


Someday, Richie thought, someday I’ll win one.


“So what time does this thing start?” MacLeod asked him.

“Eight o’clock.”

“Fine. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Eight rows back and on the aisle, and just as Richie had promised, they were good seats. The indoor playing field at the Seacouver
Municipal Stadium had been transformed into the site of an Event. Across the field that usually hosted football, soccer, and baseball games, folding chairs in neat sections and rows and
a large wooden stage had been assembled. The quest for victory had, at least for a single day, given way to the quest for
world peace. In spite of his earlier reluctance, Duncan found that he was glad Richie had invited him.



The place was filling up fast. Richie turned to MacLeod and smiled at him triumphantly.


“See, Mac, it’s like I said—hundreds of people. Nothing—”

“—to worry about, I know. And thanks, Richie.”

“Hey, anytime.”

Out of the corner of his eye, MacLeod watched the young man’s face beam with pleasure and pride and felt a certain gratification
at having changed his mind. Richie, the foundling, the child of orphanages and foster homes. . .