[h1]Tibet[/h1]
[h2]Lhasa[/h2]

Seated on the patio, Samten looked out across Lhasa. Nestled between the heights of mountains and in the middle seat of a long valley, the city was longer than it was wide. A long worm of stone and concrete that had stood to withstand the collapse of civilization. The sparkling lakes it was built alongside glistened in the late evening sun.

Though the city had withstood, not nearly everyone who had once lived here remained. Over the decades many had slowly migrated out, seeking fortunes in the wild regions of Gansu where a man good with the bow or the gun were rumored to live a good life as an adventurous mercenary to the Hui city-states of the low Chinese dry-lands. Or even to the east where the fertile valleys beyond Kham beckoned for farmers and warriors to wrench the land from the natives there.

Or if not having left, simply died of disease, hunger, desperation. It was no wonder then that in the chaos, the Potala Palace remained as the standing structure of reverence among the Tibetan people, or those who resided within Tibet. Once as a museum, now as a powerful monastery. The prestige that the people felt in it had lead the palace to be the foremost important structures in Lhasa. It was one of the few not stripped bare or abandoned and left to crumble. It was everyone's one universal material love.

He would also need to leave it soon for the evening.

Despite the palace serving as the center of Samten and his father's administration it was still a monastery. And the monks and the dob-dobs that guarded them only had so much tolerance for their day-time residency. He and his father both took up the old seats of the Dalai Lama, though the most important were reserved for the Lama of Lhasa.

As the evening horns blew into the night, Samten knew it would be his time to ride out with his retinue to night time-estate and to enjoin with his wife and dine with his sons.

He rose from his seat on the stone veranda to make his way out. His heart stopped and skipped when he found lurking in the shadows the ancient Lama of Lhasa. He let out a dry gasp as he jumped back, startled at the sudden appearance of the silent old man.

“Namaste.” the elderly monk bowed.

“Lama Manali.” Samten greeted. Of the other figures in Tibet, Lama Manali was his most deserving of respect.

No stranger to the eons, Lama Manali Bordhu was a squat impish monk. His bones had shrunk within his body but his skin had not nearly got the message, much of it hung limp and leathery from his sinewy limbs. His dark sun-kissed skin glowed a dull earthly brown the same as his eyes, which glowed with sharp wisdom under a low bushy brow. Apart from his eyebrows, the man was bald in his heavy woolen monk robes of orange and yellow.

The old monk simply nodded and smiled as he walked to Samten. His steps were light and calculated. And though there was a light shiver in his steps he still moved with great strength despite his ears. “I am planning a pilgrimage to Dharamsala, child.” he said softly, invitationally, “Would you like to come?”

Samten leaned against the wood railing. “I'm afraid I can't.” he refused.

“I understand.” Lama Manali acknowledged in a slow distraught voice, “After all, you are declaring war. No, it is not wise for a king to abandon his people when the iron will be hot.”

“That, and a pilgrimage would distract me in Ngami.”

Lama Manali nodded again, a little slower, a little heavier. His eyes dropped distraught over his king. He rose a leathery hand and said: “Forgiveness my friend, is a powerful virtue. When we are willing to forgive our enemies for their wrongdoings then we have found compassion and peace between man.

“So why do you act so rash?” he was critical. And his tongue bit harder than any hit from his hands could do. Yet he was guarded. Not physically by guards, but by position and faith. He was a man that put no walls up, and in doing so made him difficult to strike. The fact made Samten furious, and he ground his teeth at his opening questioning. Yet childishly, he made him feel almost guilty at that. He wasn't just an old man, he was a senior and a teacher. In a way he was nearly his grandfather.

“Justice begets what the unjust offer.” Samten replied behind pursed lips, “The man ordered my father dead, in his own way he killed my whole family. There is no one left to speak for them but myself!” he banged his fist against the railing. His entire body shook with anger, “Would you forgive a man for killing one of your own?”

“If it were to happen, I may have to find myself doing so much.” Manali sadly admitted.

“If they killed more, if they would keep going until all were dead? That they killed the entire unit, the monastery. This is the justice I seek to correct.”

“Yet an eye stolen to make a man blind does not justify that the other's eyes be stolen. In such a way both are made blind and are in suffering.” the old monk began to lecture, “My lord, there is a limit to justice and that is you must be careful with it. To answer without calculation entails only a blind revolution of the wheel of violence. You should stop early before the wheel spins so fast it is out of control. It then may only stop until annihilation.”

“To be damned with annihilation!” Samten bellowed, “If there is no answer to misdeeds than what use is honor and respect.”

“You drive a fiery chariot. How long until you are consumed by its fire until you hit annihilation?” Manali worried, “I desire only for the best. For you, for Chodak, for all the men who will die on both sides. This consuming rage and thirst for vengeance is what annihilated the old world and brought upon us the suffering we must endure.

“I ask, at the last precipice: you find compassion and peace in it and recall your rider.”

Samten was hot with fury. Yet he could not strike the monk. His fingers clenched tight the handrail until splinters dug into his palm. “The wheels are in motion, I can not stop this.” he admitted, “I'm committed.”

“Then I forgive you.” Manali muttered, distraught and compassionate as he bowed low. As if answering for crimes of his own that he did not commit. “I hope that you are only merciful to the enemy.”

“Those who did wrong will be the ones who need to fear. For the rest, they need not be harmed if they lay themselves down and let me pass on by.”


[h2]Potala Palace Shol Prison[/h2]

A flash of eerie green light illuminated the darkened chambers as a single oil lamp came to light. Burning softly in the darkness the wrinkled and scarred face of Gyaltsen hovered in the darkness as if detached from his body. He watched the flame as he gently set the stone pot down one the ruddy surface of a wooden table. Distantly at the edge of the light the depressed and sullen captive of earlier that day sat upright against a wall, a heavy wooden collar hung from his neck, dropping clear down to his lap. The board so wide that he would not be able to cross his arms around it. A bowl of half-eaten rolls sat in his lap.

Gyaltsen regarded the cangue with a morsel of humor for his job. He was considered well enough below the monastery above that its rules hardly applied to the prison. It was perhaps the only constant piece of property Samten owned in the palace.

“You are having a fortunate day.” he chided softly, pulling parchment from his wool and leather coat. Laying the crinkling dry paper flat he produced a pen and vial of ink. He dipped the pen – having been modified as a quill of sorts – into the ink and lay the tip to the paper, “So who are you?” he asked.

“Gyaincain Yeshe.” the man answered. His voice was cracked and dry. He had wept himself dry as soon as he found himself in the dungeons of Shol prison. Gyaltsen nodded as he scribbled the name down in sweeping Tibetan script.

“Where are you from?” he asked again.

“From Lhasa itself, my lord.” Gyaincain answered. He sucked up a glob of depressed snot into his nose and tried to lean forward to lay, the cangue prevented him from doing so much as that.

“Your mother and father, did they do anything?” Gyaltsen continued with the questioning.

Too depressed to refuse to answer, and too tired to cared the prisoner answered, “They tended yaks east of the city. Every week we would lend a local farmer one of our yaks to till the fields. I and my two brothers would help...” he trailed off. Then a wave of terrible remorse washed over him and he broke down wailing and crying.

“My lord please, do not go after them! They had nothing to do with this!” he begged, screaming. Gyaltsen merely regarded the pleading with a wayward disinterested look. He nodded all the same, scratching his cheek as he bid him to continue. His quill speeding across the parchment as he swept into each line of each word.

“We even came here to pray at the palace! We made offerings to the monks. Fed the medicants! We're good people. I'm a good person!” he pleaded.

“Yet you flatly admitted to being an accessory to a conspiracy to kill our king.” Gyaltsen tossed out nonchalantly, as if it were the matter-of-fact information of townly gossip. “Whether or not you did your duties as befitted a man of proper stature does not rightly add into this. You still need to answer for what happened.

“Now believe it or not I can do this for longer than you can.” he smiled, tapping the tip of his pen into the wood, and dug into the coarse unprotected grain, “I once spent three days hunting a murderer and horse thief in the Nyingchi area. It was a really beautiful trap if I must say so. Had myself a nice high vantage point with my rifle. Right alongside this pass leading from the back of this rancher's land.

“Took him three days to come back around. Middle of the night. I shot his leg as soon as I saw the soft blue glow of the moon on his boots. I let him lay until morning when I tracked and caught him.” he smiled satisfactory to himself. Combing his fingers along his chin as the pleased smile of his own capabilities faded to that of silent wonder as he looked to the chained Gyaincain with measuring wonder, “So, can a yak farmer hold his own for over three days? Because you might doze off, and I will still be here. So scream yourself mad until you pass out. I'll be waiting for you to come to.”

“W-what'll happen to me?” Gyaincain asked.

“I don't know, depends on what I'm told. Samten might let you go someday. Or he might bury you head down in clay by the lake. Or he could offer you the simple mercy of beheading you and make it quick. So it's your choice.”

Gyaincain's eyes glowed with panic in the oil light. “I-ah.. ah... What do you want to know?” he asked.

“First I want to know who you are. Tell me about your brothers.”