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Lay down your sword

Sandra McDonald

         Author's Notes:
         Not my everything. You know that. This is part of a loose series of stories I talked about in "Epicenter." Background info is in "Epicenter," "Choices After Evil" and "Epilogue: Studies in Light" but it's not necessary. Now, I didn't make up this "There can be only one" stuff, but I'm bound to stick to it. Remember, it's not over until it's over. Comments, criticisms, goofs, typos, all to me please!

         London
         European Community, United Kingdom Division 2435 A.D.

         Amanda stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of the hotel room, gazing at the dirty Thames flowing below. She remembered once, maybe eight or nine hundred years before, when the winter had been so cold that the river had frozen nearly solid. She remembered the winter fair on the ice, the tents and sports and frivolity. She remembered what winter had been, before the earth's climate changed and made London a year-round hothouse. From where she stood she could see thousands of pedestrians moving slowly through the normal crowds, umbrellas protecting them from the torrential rain. When they looked up, she knew, they wouldn't see her. MacLeod had picked a hotel with a fashionable new invisibility shield that came off and on during the day, delighting spectators.
         "Let me get this straight," she said to the people behind her, without turning around. "You want me to break into a monastery to seduce some young Immortal so he'll run away to Sanctuary with us."
         Duncan MacLeod glanced uneasily towards Tsaganis, but the blind Immortal in the corner showed no sign of alarm. Or of anything else, for that matter. His normally inscrutable expression beneath locks of blond hair hadn't changed. The sensor scan and damper in his palm, then, were doing their job and keeping this particular conversation from the prying ears of SIDI.
         "Yes," MacLeod said. Holland Greer, beside him, tightened her grip on his hand but said nothing, her eyes wide and solemn on Amanda.
         Amanda's eyes focused on a small demonstration going on below in Charring Cross Memorial Park. She could see the bright green and yellow flags of Free Wave protesters, and then the inevitable crush of police to stop them. The park, built on the site of the Underground station that had been destroyed during one of the food riots and massacres of the unbearably hot summer of 2189, was a favorite Free Wave spot.
         She turned from the window, unable to watch. Almost sixteen hundred years old, she still projected a vitality and vigor that attracted MacLeod like a magnet. The death of her mortal husband Tristan, gone to dust just eighteen months now, had marked her with a graveness that only heightened her beauty. MacLeod had loved her for centuries - sometimes intimately, now as a dear friend - but he'd never before needed her as much as he did now.
         "I have many charms," she said now, with a wry smile, "and I'm not beyond the challenge of a monk. But what's so important about this Jason Sanger? We're not putting classified ads in the newspaper for every Immortal, are we? How many people can Methos fit in his sanctuary anyway?"
         Tsaganis, who'd been born too late to personally experience newspapers or classified ads, answered crisply before MacLeod or Holland could. "He's not a monk, and the sanctuary can hold enough."
         Amanda didn't like Tsaganis, and once again considered the enjoyable fantasy of separating him from his young, condescending head.
         "Jason was a friend of Richie and Felicia," Holland said.
         On the other hand, Amanda did like Holland, despite the fact the other woman seemed to have won MacLeod's undying love and devotion. There was no missing the soft regret in Holland's voice as she said her mentor's name. Felicia Martins had trained Holland since her very first day. Amanda sobered at the memory of Richie and Felicia. That tragedy, four years past, was a faded but enduring injustice behind her still-fresh sorrow over Tristan. They shouldn't have died the way they did.
         MacLeod looked away, his jaw tightening at thoughts of Richie.
         "Still," Amanda persisted, "is he worth it? Switzerland's been good so far, but I hear the borders are becoming impossible."
         "You don't have to," MacLeod said. "We can try some other way."
         "That's not the point." Amanda threw herself into a body-molding chair and flicked her gaze to the silent wall screen, where the morning's international reports were scrawling by in silence. "I just want to make sure we've explored every option besides the one where I lose my head to SIDI."
         MacLeod's face became even more grave. "Jason was badly injured during the Versailles problem. He saw what they did to Richie and Felicia. He doesn't trust any of us. He blames me... for being too late. But I owe him this. I owe it to him for Richie's sake."
         Amanda nodded very slightly. "So, what you're really saying is that this is a personal favor to you."
         "Yes," he said, firmly and clearly. "Do you want me to beg?"
         The hotel room nearly shifted out from under Amanda. MacLeod had never begged her for anything. He'd cajoled, once or twice, he'd threatened and bribed, he'd good-naturedly tricked her or made a good faith bargain - he'd once wanted her to steal him a cross, and she had. For Duncan. And now he was willing to beg.
         The world was surely coming to end, as the doomsday prophets were constantly proclaiming.
         "All right," Amanda said solemnly. "I'll get you your monk."
         "He's not a monk," Tsaganis corrected.
         Amanda ignored him.
         For two more hours they worked the time-tables and travels arrangements, the schematics and security, the contingency plans and failsafes. Holland and MacLeod would stay in the town of New Stans, below the mountainous perch of the monastery. If she didn't meet them in four days, they would know she'd failed. If she didn't reach Bangkok in ten days, with or without Jason Sanger, they'd go on to Sanctuary without her.
         Tsaganis was going ahead to be with Methos and Ceirdwyn and the others, as they made their final preparations to withdraw from the beautiful, terrible, heartbreaking chaos the world had become.
         In the elevator, Amanda wondered more about Jason Sanger. He was thirty years old, four years Immortal, all four spent hiding in a monastery of the order of Cistercians of the Strict Obedience. Somehow he'd managed to survive the atrocities Richie and Felicia had not, in a blood-soaked prison cell in Versailles palace. She was sure there was more about him than Duncan was revealing, but that was just another part of the challenge.
         From the window, MacLeod watched Amanda exit the hotel and slip away into the sea of faces below. Over one billion people lived in the chaos of metropolitan London, grown from the first tribes of hunter-gatherers going back ten thousand years. The world now had too many people. Thirty billion sweating, breathing, fighting, waste-producing people. The Ozone Wars, the famines, the riots, the plagues, the severe birth control policies - nothing had stopped the mortals from reproducing themselves to the point of world collapse.
         But it wasn't the world's overpopulation crisis that made his heart feel heavy and tired in his chest. It wasn't the global warming catastrophes that had turned Miami, Hong Kong, and most of the Caribbean into scuba diving attractions. Instead, it was the intensely more personal heartache of Versailles pulsing back at him, the unending sorrow and injustice that hadn't faded a single fraction in four years.
         Down in the crowd, he caught sight of a woman whose features sent him into a momentary lift of recognition. She turned her face up to him, although the hotel was currently invisbile and she couldn't have been aware of his scrutiny. Then she was gone, and he remembered that Tessa Noel had been dead for over four hundred and forty years. A trick of genetic heritage had probably bestowed some distant descendent with her loveliness, or a trick of his own imagination had made it seem so.
         Holland came up behind him and encircled her arms around his waist. MacLeod leaned back carefully against her, and allowed himself the rare luxury of a sigh.
         "How many lies did we tell Amanda?" he asked softly.
         "As many as we had to," Holland answered, kissing the back of his neck, and tightening her hold on him with a sorrow all her own.


                                                    ***


         On the platform of the Ultrabullet train to Zurich she saw two SIDI agents working their way throughout the crowd. Amanda had no cause to believe they were after her, but no desire to find out, either. She could take a later bullet train, but it would go through France, and France was too dangerous to risk. Amanda edged her way out of sight, focused on a pale looking businessman, and struck up a conversation that got her onto the train, into his compartment, and from London to Zurich in just under 2 hours.
         In Zurich she rented a pod with credits under someone else's name, and told it her district destination. The computerized transit authority matched her with two other people going that way, and they shared the swift, efficient, machine-controlled mind in polite silence. At the district station she had to rent a private pod for the trip to New Stans, but it gave her a luxurious privacy for the last part of the trip that she thoroughly enjoyed.
         It had been so much easier in the age of horses. Even automobiles, with their terrible exhaust systems that had poisoned the planet, had offered more independence than pods and trains. Well, Amanda thought dismally, at least she didn't have to worry about it past New Stans. No automated transport existed up to the monastery, and the only outside deliveries they accepted came infrequently, via airpod. She would have to go in on foot.
         Still, a horse would have been nice.
         She remembered the time when there had been horses in the world, and dolphins, and whales, and white rhinoceroses. A time before the glaciers melted, sending water to destroy the coasts and cities and edges of continents. A time when there had been room to breathe.
         Amanda gazed out the pod window and wished, for literally what had to be the thousandth time, that she wasn't a sentimental person. She usually tried to hide it behind witty repartee, or smart defiance, but Tristan had seen through it the first time they'd met and undone her for sixty years of marriage.
         Tristan. Oh, love.
         The town of New Stans lay halfway up the slope of the mountain Stanserhorn. The old town lay submerged under the risen waters of Lake Lucerne, along with Altdorf, Gersau, Weggis, Stansstad, Buochs, and a dozen other doomed cities. Lucerne itself had held out the longest, but the floods of melting water down the Alps had finally wrested its gates and barriers to ruins also.
         Amanda checked into one of the town's small hotels. Switzerland was a Free Wave bastion, and instead of scanning her retinal print the clerk gave her an old fashioned key, heavy and solid in the palm of her hand. The hotel wasn't as prehistoric as to not have I-mail, and a message was already waiting in her room queue.
         "Good luck with your writing!" it read. "May the timeless beauty of the Alps aid your creativity. Love, Paul and Millie."
         Duncan and Holland. They were in town, and everything was still on track.
         Amanda flopped down on her bed and reviewed her plans. She went out only once, for dinner. On the way back she retrieved the sword Duncan had left for her under a park bench. Traveling without her sword always made her extremely nervous, but there'd been no way to get it past the security sensors at the transit stations. The next morning, shortly after daybreak, she checked out of the hotel and hiked up the mountain with only a small backpack for provisions.
         The mild February weather hovered with temperatures in the mid- fifties on the ancient Fahrenheit scale as she climbed, and her exertions soon had her sweating beneath the dark nylette of her jacket and trousers. The little-used path went back and forth through dying forests, past jagged boulders and sheer inclines, up, up, up, three thousand feet, and she cursed whoever's bright medieval idea it had been to build the Gethsemani monastery at the very top of the mountain. The ground beneath her boots was soggy with water that drowned the grass, the trees, the other natural growth. The mud was treacherous, and after breaking her right ankle in a nasty fall she took the opportunity while it healed to down some nutrition pills and gaze at the splendid valley below. By mid-afternoon she was safely ensconced in a reasonably thick copse of trees four hundred yards beneath Gethsemani's north wall, and she settled in a high vantage point in an old oak to wait for nightfall.
         Through her binoculars she carefully observed the monastery. It had been built at the very top of the mountain, and rose seamlessly from the sheer incline around it. A low gated wall, gray and ancient but sturdy, ran around its sizable compound. A five story medieval fortress rose behind the wall with slits as windows that looked blankly down the slopes. It would never win any awards for aesthetics, and looked like it would be unbearable in whatever winter was left here. From somewhere behind the main building came woodsmoke, and she knew from MacLeod's maps that the kitchens, stables, and gardens were also within the wall. Gethsemani was capable of cutting off all contact with the world, although it hadn't. She wondered if Methos had ever considered it as a home for his Sanctuary.
         The sound of men singing in Latin rose through the peaceful afternoon air, and Amanda checked her watch. The Trappists believed in choir offices seven times a day. Two o'clock meant this service would be None. Amanda's Latin was fairly rusty, but she could pick out a few words. Men singing about God, high on the rooftop of the world, their voices surprisingly good. Maybe Jason was with them, unaware of the plans and plots to save him from himself.
         She hated waiting, but there was nothing else to do. Vespers came at 5:30 p.m.. A short time after it ended she saw three of the monks come out the main gate in their white habits and sandals. They walked peacefully, silently, although Amanda knew the Trappist vows of silence had been greatly reduced through the centuries. The monks seemed deep in thought as they walked and watched the spectacular sunset edging the western sky towards thick ribbons of pink, purple, and gold. She wondered again why men would choose to lock themselves away from the rest of the world, and decided it must be because the world had hurt them very badly.
         Visions of herself as a nun were quickly squelched. Amanda enjoyed the world too much. She enjoyed being part of it, even if it brought terrible sadness like Tristan's death. And she didn't believe in a God for Immortals, who were destined to hack and chop at each other in an eternal quest for heads and Quickenings.
         The monks returned from their walk without ever having come near her position. The last choir office of the day was Compline, at 7:30 p.m., by which time the sky was completely dark and the temperature had dropped considerably. Amanda knew most of the monks would soon be fast asleep in bed. They had little other choice - the singing, praying and whatever else they did would begin again at 3:00 a.m., surely an ungodly time if ever there was any.
         She planned to be in Jason Sanger's bed by that time, persuading him to leave with her.
         Shortly after nine p.m. she scaled the monastery's low wall and dropped soundlessly into the darkened compound. The canopy of stars overhead provided the only light, but it was more than enough for her eyes. In the compound behind Gethsemani's main building she found everything she expected, including a smaller, rectangular structure that was home to the novices and infrequent guests. Breaking into the novice house was a little harder, because it had been locked from the inside with a deadbolt. She resorted to climbing up the side of the building with micro-grips in her gloves and boots, prying open the roof trap door, dropping down through a cleared-out attic, and making her way along the closed wooden doors of the second floor passage until she found the room MacLeod had said was Jason's, and felt through the door the unmistakable buzz of another Immortal.
         The door was unlocked. Amanda rapped ever so softly, then eased it open into the small cell. A man's silhouette in bed sat up, his features and details too dark to see.
         "Jason?" she asked.
         Something dropped from above, whacking her soundly on the back of the head. Amanda staggered and then collapsed to her knees, the world spinning out beneath her with sickly flashes of red across her vision and bile rising to the back of her throat. She tried to pull out her sword but her fingers were lifeless, and the first horrible thought to clear her muddy mind was that SIDI had found her. Or their sadistic predecessors, the Hunters, but the Hunters had been extinct for nearly three hundred years.
         She felt a second Immortal, then a third, but saw them only as blurry figures coming up the passage behind her with swiftness and silence that seemed inhuman. They dragged her upright, one with his hand firmly clasped over her mouth to keep her from screaming. The second - a woman, Amanda realized in surprise - took her sword. Amanda's head was already healing, her strength returning, but she didn't fight them. She focused instead on the man in the bed, who reached over and lit a small kerosene lamp on the bench beside his narrow bed.
         Amanda recognized him instantly. If this was Jason Sanger, than Duncan certainly had a great deal of explaining to do.
         "Hello, Amanda," Connor MacLeod said grimly.

         "I love being a writer, it's the paperwork I can't stand" – Unknown


         Valery Constantine's only ambition in life, his only passion, his only concern, was a paradox even in his own mind. He wanted it, but he didn't know what it was. He'd killed for it, stood to be killed in turn, but couldn't be sure it was worth the price of a single life lost. He didn't know where it was, where to find it, what color it was, what shape it came in, what he would be able to do with it when he found it. But he wanted it, and that clear acknowledgment made everything possible and everything worthwhile.
         He wanted the Prize.
         The mysterious, awesome, undefinable Prize. Like Tao, the Prize that could be defined was not the Prize at all. For the first few centuries of his three thousand years he'd made it a habit to ask his victims what they thought the Prize was. The answers were usually so inane and desperate, so obviously ignorant, that he'd finally stopped asking.
         Of course, he rarely took heads anymore. His occupation made it nearly impossible, and he had his champions for the dirty work, anyway. His own trained Immortals, hand picked, forged of steel and pride, who did the killing for him and whittled down the field to the few true challengers. He gave them decades of training and education and money, and sent them off into the world to battle their fellow Immortals. Only one had ever tried to turn on him, and Valery had easily defeated the man. Instead of beheading him, however, he'd nailed the traitor to the stockade wall of their training camp in Africa and left him impaled, naked, burning in the sun, howling in agony, until someone defied Valery's direct order and cut off his head.
         The Immortal who'd defied Valery was named Goran Riswanathan, and he'd been a lawyer from Madras, India when he first achieved Immortality five hundred years before. Ris, now his most trusted and brilliant champion, who stood across from him in their hotel suite in New Lucerne, Switzerland with a glass of wine in his large, smooth hand.
         Their well-decorated suite came with only the finest furnishings - a rich blue carpet that seemed like an ocean, magnificent marble sculptures from the hands of geniuses, furniture almost too beautiful to sit on. Real flowers in crystal vases that caught the sunlight with prisms and rainbows. The cleverly disguised wall screens doubled as windows with stunning views of the valley and the Alps above. None of it mattered. They could have been in a filthy underground cell, blood and waste to their knees, oily torches flickering with light, and had the same focused attention on the only issues that mattered.
         Methos. Valery's arch-enemy. His plans to take a select handful of Immortals to Sanctuary. Ceirdwynn, Methos' lover, a woman who'd once spurned Valery by firelight in a muddy Celtic camp. Duncan MacLeod, that meddling Highlander who should have been dead centuries ago but who always bested Valery's champions. Connor MacLeod, who'd barely escaped Ris' sword a few months back and was probably hiding up in the Gethsemani monastery, along with Methos' most prized asset, Jason Sanger.
         A Prize in and of himself, although Valery couldn't define why.
         "A woman matching Amanda's description was seen in Zurich yesterday," Ris said now. "She's probably on her way up the mountain even as we speak."
         Valery knew all about Amanda. He'd made it a habit to always keep himself informed about other Immortals. Ris could beat her easily, probably with one hand tied.
         "She'll try to persuade Jason to leave," Ris said.
         Valery shook his head. "He won't go."
         "He might. He's said to be... changing his mind."
         Valery moved to the view of the valley, and raised his eyes towards the top of the Stanserhorn. The monastery truly was too small to be seen by normal eyes, but sometimes he thought he could distinguish its tiny silhouette against the limitless sky.
         "If he leaves with her, all the better," Valery said. "You take him from her. You bring him to me. Head intact."
         Ris smiled. He was a striking man with straight white teeth and luminous eyes, and had been born with a natural charm that won over almost everyone. "And MacLeod? If he's here too?"
         Valery paused in thought. Duncan MacLeod had always been a meddling annoyance. He'd taken Slan Quince, one of Valery's favorites, back at the end of the twentieth century. He'd killed another favorite three hundred years back, during the Ozone Wars. He was an excellent swordsman, and stood almost as good a shot at the Prize as his clansman Connor, who Valery hated with a vengeance.
         "Duncan MacLeod is all yours," Valery said. Quite unconsciously, his fingers twitched in search of his sword. "Connor MacLeod is all mine."


                                                    ***


         The same night Amanda was getting her head clubbed in up at the monastery, Duncan MacLeod and Holland Greer made love as if it were their first time, all over again. Charged by a passion that seemed like a sensual Quickening of its own, bodies coming for each other with fire and hunger and bottomless need, they merged on the bed into one charged mass, hands and lips and legs in constant motion, few words, small laughter, sounds of passion.
         Then they merged on the carpet.
         Then in the shower.
         The bed again.
         Exhausted finally beyond anything more than sweet kisses, MacLeod rested in her arms and watched Holland sleep only inches away. Centuries ago he'd realized there were no words to describe his love for her, only that it was the deepest, truest, most meaningful love he had ever known. He didn't believe in astrology, but it seemed as if all the stars and planets and constellations had finally aligned into perfection, and delivered Holland to him as a miracle.
         Not that they or their love were perfect. Not that they didn't disagree, or miscommunicate, or have bad days. Not that they hadn't had to work through several layers of trust and intimacy to reach the point they had. Not that other loves had mattered, or counted, or weren't still cherished in their separate hearts.
         He loved her so much he knew that he couldn't live without her.
         Holland said she felt the same way.
         Which was probably why it had been a hideous mistake to come to New Stans together, because the potential for tragedy was limitless. Even Methos had seen fit to warn them. But being separated held no greater appeal, and MacLeod had one last duty to hold true to before he followed Methos to whatever corner of the world the Sanctuary was in.
         He remembered Versailles with a shudder that woke Holland.
         "What is it?" she asked softly.
         "Richie and Felicia," he said. "Why them?"
         "Methos told you why," Holland answered.
         MacLeod allowed himself a bitter laugh. "Methos said, 'Why not them?'"
         "He's a practical man."
         "Too practical," MacLeod said.
         They lay in silence together, wondering how Amanda was doing.


                                                    ***


         The other female Immortal, Minette, still had Amanda's sword. She wanted it back. But Connor said no, for now. "You won't need it here," Connor reminded her. "The whole place is holy ground."
         Amanda didn't answer. The cell was bare and small, maybe ten feet by ten feet. With the bed, the bench, a small desk, and a wooden clothes cabinet, there was barely enough room for the four of them. Connor sat on the edge of the bed, Amanda stood in the corner, Minette guarded the door, and the fourth Immortal, Gregor, stood by Connor.
         "Why did Methos send you?" Connor asked.
         Amanda eyed them suspiciously. "He's late with his Christmas presents and wanted me to make a special delivery. Sorry, but I left them on the roof."
         "He knows Jason doesn't want to leave," Connor said, ignoring her sarcasm.
         Amanda paused. "So where is this Jason?"
         Connor was staring at the floor, as if answers could be found in the smooth stone. "What were you going to do? Seduce him?"
         "The thought had crossed my mind," Amanda admitted.
         The look Minette shot her, of unbridled hostility, warned her that the small, lithe blonde claimed Jason Sanger for herself.
         Amanda moved to kneel by Connor's side and took his hands in hers. She turned on her best charm. "Are you mad at me, Connor? Did I do something wrong? Because all I wanted to do, really, is to convey a message to Jason."
         "What message?" Gregor asked.
         Connor didn't seem inclined to comment, so Amanda turned her attention to Gregor. He'd died in his late twenties or early thirties, had dark hair and eyes, an intensity that spoke of passion and intelligence. Unlike Connor or Minette, he wore the Trappist habit. He was a brother of the order.
         "It's not for anyone else to hear," Amanda said firmly.
         "Then you'll leave with it undelivered," Connor said, fixing his gaze on her. "Because he won't see you."
         Amanda was taken aback by the conviction in his eyes. Whatever Connor, Minette and Gregor were doing here - and she wasn't unconvinced that Duncan hadn't known they'd be here, the bastard - they clearly thought they were protecting Jason.
         Protecting him from what? What did he need protection from, here on holy ground, that he warranted his own cadre of bodyguards?
         "Ask him," Amanda said.
         "He won't," Connor repeated. "Duncan or Methos could have come up here themselves, but they knew it would be useless."
         "So they sent me?" Amanda asked, arching her eyebrows. "Thinking I'd be useless? You know I'm far from useless, Connor."
         She still had his hands. Connor managed a quirk of a smile and pulled them free.
         "Minette will show you to a room," he said. "Go with her. Don't cause trouble. Stay in your room until I consult with Dom Stephan and the others. Someone will bring you breakfast. You understand, Amanda?"
         "I understand," Amanda said dutifully. She looked as if she might want to say more, but instead followed Minette from the room.
         Connor sighed. Gregor patted his back in sympathy, and then sat down on the bed beside the older Immortal.
         "Quite a woman," Gregor said, stifling a yawn.
         "That's one way to put it," Connor agreed. "I see what Duncan and Methos are doing. If there's anyone who can tempt him, Amanda just might be the person to do it."
         "So what are we going to do?"
         "She's right. We can ask. And he'll say no, just like he said no when Duncan came, when Holland came, when Methos came, when Ceirdwynn came. This spot has become a regular pilgrimage, you know that?"
         "I know," Gregor said with a smile. "It's what brought you here, isn't it? And Minette? No one told you. You just came."
         Connor didn't answer. He often spent most of the choir offices singing with the brothers, and praying for guidance that rarely came. He couldn't define the vague, persistent draw that had brought him to the Stanserhorn and kept him, away from the world, away from the Gathering.
         "Get some sleep," Gregor advised, standing. "I'll see you at three."
         "Next time, I'm picking a place that lets you sleep in," Connor grumbled, turning down the lantern.
         Gregor went to the rectory and prayed for some time, then went upstairs to the fifth floor and the room where they'd moved Jason just a few days earlier. The younger Immortal was asleep, his face relaxed, his hands smooth on the blanket. His sword hung on the wall, and in the starlight Gregor could see that Jason had cleaned it again. He cleaned it every day, but would never raise it in practice. If he remembered how to heft it, how to thrust and parry and defend his life, he never showed it.
         Gregor said a prayer over the bed and went to sleep on the floor, an old habit he fell into whenever he or his charge were troubled. For the first eight months of his stay Jason hadn't been able to sleep alone, and Gregor had spent sleepless nights soothing him, listening to nightmares and inarticulate cries that had to hurt God as much as they hurt the Immortal tormented by them.
         In the bed above Jason stirred from the sleep he'd feigned for Gregor's sake, and stared at the gleaming sword on the wall until he could no longer keep his eyes open.


                                                    ***


         Brother Gustaf was one of the oldest of the monks, but unfailing in his dedication to rise a half hour earlier than his brothers every day to make the ten gallons of hot coffee that were needed before Vigils. A man like that, Connor had long ago decided, was surely destined for sainthood. He made it to the refectory with bleary eyes, filled up a mug, and gulped down the hotness as much for warmth as for caffeine. The world might be warming up, but Switzerland nights still had a way to go.
         The order had over sixty monks, and the brothers filled up on coffee with a few sleepy words and yawns. Connor knew he could never live this way forever - every other sane person in Switzerland was just rolling over for the second half of their night's sleep - but there was something to be said about the quiet and stillness of the hour, the peacefulness of both the interior and exterior world.
         In the chapel, Connor automatically took his place in the tribune with Minette. They were still visitors, after all, although Dom Stephan allowed them most of the same activities as the monks. Minette's presence was not disturbing per se to the order - Trappistine nuns from other orders often came for extended periods of time - but aside from Amanda, she was the only woman currently at Gethsemani. And no one else but Gregor knew about Amanda, who Connor hoped had stuck to his admonition to stay in her room.
         But Amanda was unpredictable. The sooner Connor warned Dom Stephan, the better.
         The monks glided to their stalls, their white habits reflecting the slimmest of candlelight. Some knelt on the cold stone floor, others lowered themselves gently into the folding seats, others remained standing. The stalls were full long before the monastery bells began ringing. Connor's heart lurched as he realized Jason was late. He caught Gregor's gaze from across the gallery, and Gregor's alarm mirrored his own. If Amanda had gone to him - but, no. Jason was coming in now, only a few seconds late.
         As he came in, Connor felt a same ripple of confusion and awe that distinguished Jason's presence and set him outside of time and mere humanity. It wasn't just the song of his Immortality, which only other Immortals could sense. Something else emanated from him, touching almost every other monk at some point or another, a quiet shine that Dom Stephan had said marked him as touched by the grace of God.
         Gregor said the same thing. That Jason had been graced.
         Connor wasn't sure what exactly SIDI had done to him in the torture, agony and bloodbath at Versailles, but bestowing grace probably hadn't been part of the plan.
         Jason took his place beside Minette. They bowed their heads as Dom Stephan knocked sharply, and after the reading of the psalms the first voice lifted up in sung prayer. It was Brother Frederick, a sour-looking man whose heart was more full of love than any Connor had ever known.
         As visitors, they weren't required to sing. But Connor did anyway, and Minette followed in a softer version. Jason remained silent this morning, his attention turned inward.
         After Vigils the monks scattered to early morning tasks and the making of breakfast. Connor saw Gregor go to Dom Stephan and say a few words. Dom Stephan glanced up, his thick face furrowed in thought, and then nailed Connor with a gaze that clearly indicated the need for privacy.
         Dom Stephan's office was smaller than most of the monks' cells. The abbot himself, a tall man with thick arms and heavy shock of pure white hair, settled into his chair with coffee and crossed his long legs. His feet were too large for his sandals.
         "This woman, Amanda," he said. "I take it she's one of you?"
         "Yes," Connor said.
         "And would you say her intentions are honorable?"
         Gregor made a small sound but kept quiet. Connor studied the abbot in the light from his lantern. Gethsemani owned an electrical generator, but it hadn't worked in decades. Dom Stephan was a fair man, very intelligent, very wise. He'd been the one who allowed Jason to stay all these years. But he was a man who had to look after the safety of his order as well.
         "I believe her when she says she merely came to try and persuade him to leave," Connor admitted. "I believe our friends in the outside world are genuinely concerned about his well being. They want to convince him rationally, not drag him out kicking and screaming."
         "Others might," Gregor put in, his eyes darkening.
         "Do you intend to give this Amanda her opportunity, then?" Dom Stephan asked.
         "That's up to Jason," Connor answered.
         Dom Stephan nodded. "Talk to him, then. Did you know he's fasting?"
         "No," Connor said.
         "If he were of the order, I would not mention it to you," Dom Stephan said. "And if he were, he would have had to seek my permission first. But he's not, no matter how warmly we'd welcome him. So I feel free in voicing my concerns."
         Connor knew through Gregor and through observation that the Trappists followed limited but not strict diets. They were vegetarians - well, who in the world wasn't, now, since it cost too much land to raise animals to feed thirty billion people? - and fasting was an accepted part of their life, although only for the highest purposes. Dom Stephan, himself, was known to always leave one food on his plate as part of his prayers. Gregor had once been sturdier than he now was. Jason had been on the thin side since they brought him in, and never regained lost weight.
         "How long?" Connor asked.
         "Since dinner yesterday," Dom Stephan said.
         Dinner in the monastery came at noon. Connor couldn't be sure, but that might have been about the time Amanda scaled the mountain top.
         After Lauds came breakfast, and Connor watched Jason as he sipped only from a tankard of hot water. The monks ate breakfast in traditional silence. Although they all had private mailboxes in the monastery's main office, it was not unheard of to leave notes under plates. Jason retrieved the note Gregor had left for him, but didn't read it.
         Connor went in search of Amanda. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, obviously impatient, her breakfast tray untouched. The morning sunrise outside her window held no interest for her.
         "You better eat that," he warned. "There's no snacking between meals here."
         Amanda picked up a pancake with her fingers and leveled him with a long, steady gaze. "I need to see Jason."
         "So you said before." Connor took the chair from her desk, turned it, straddled it. "Why is it so important to you?"
         "Maybe I should be asking the questions," Amanda said, "since you seemed to have had the upper hand since clubbing me in the head last night."
         "I still have the upper hand," he said.
         Her gaze narrowed. "Why the trap?"
         "Because you're not the first one to try and see Jason against his will."
         "Who else?"
         "Another Immortal came three weeks ago. He wasn't from the Swiss Welcome Wagon. We kicked him off the mountain."
         "Why did he come?"
         "The same reason Minette came," Connor said. "The same reason I did. Because he draws you. You haven't felt anything since you arrived?"
         "Like what?" Amanda asked blithely.
         But he'd seen the look in her eyes.
         "Methos didn't tell you everything, did he?" Connor asked, without reproach. "Or was it Duncan who sent you?"
         "I know enough."
         "You're gong to Sanctuary with Methos, aren't you?"
         Amanda finished off her pancake. "Maybe."
         "It won't work. It's the wrong decision. I know that Methos is only trying to keep safe, but withdrawing from the world doesn't help."
         "This, from a man whose locked himself up in a monastery."
         "The world is here," Connor said. "The world is what we carry with us and do to each other. People don't come here to hide from it."
         "You could have fooled me. Isn't that what Jason's doing?"
         "He's not hiding, he's healing."
         Amanda's eyes were bright. "Must have been a serious wound, to take four years to heal."
         Connor pushed back the chair and made for the door. Amanda caught him halfway to it.
         "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean it."
         Connor didn't answer.
         "Look, I don't know this kid, but I know he means a lot to Duncan and that's why I'm here. Whatever happened in Versailles... whatever they did to him, and to Richie Ryan and Felicia Martins... I'm sorry. But all I'm supposed to do is convince him to leave. To join us."
         "In hiding from the world."
         "You've been out there, Connor, it's not the world we knew."
         "But it's the world we helped shape," Connor said.
         "Thirty million mortals, and how many of us?" Amanda snapped. "Hunting us, dissecting us, taking our Quickenings. You know what SIDI does. But all we need is time. They'll collapse, as all civilizations eventually do. And when it's safe, we'll be back."
         "And in the meantime, the mortals can fend for themselves?" Connor asked.
         "When has it been any other way?" Amanda asked. "Come on, Connor. Much more of this and I'll think you're a card-carrying, flag-waving member of Free Wave."
         Connor removed her hand from his arm. "Gregor went to tell Jason about your request," he said coldly. "If Jason will listen to me, I'm going to tell him not to meet with you."
         She cocked her head curiously. "Why?"
         "Because the world needs him here," Connor said angrily, without exactly knowing why. But as abruptly as the anger came it left, and he remembered what he'd been sent to do. "Come on," he said. "The abbot wants to see you."

         "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to the change the things I can, and the weaponry to make a difference." - coda from Immortals Anonymous


         Holland left the hotel after breakfast to go to the transit station. Duncan could have made the trip, but he was too easy to pick out of a crowd even with his gorgeous hair cut short these days. She blended much better. At the station she checked for I-Mail to a false account she'd set up two days before. Methos was supposed to use the account to warn them of any last minute changes. It was empty, and she relaxed ever so slightly.
         On the way back to the hotel she felt another Immortal's presence, and immediately detoured from a side street into a more crowded marketplace. The streets were shiny with remembered rain, the market stalls bustling with activity, the crowd of unfamiliar faces pressing close against her coat and hidden sword. Public places, Felicia had taught her a rule number one, were the best place to be to avoid a fight, but they made Holland feel claustrophobic.
         Holland used other tricks Felicia had taught her to try and spy her follower, but he or she evaded him deftly.
         Until she turned and saw a man only a few feet behind her, a man with perfectly straight white teeth and strong Indian features, a man who had knelt to talk to a young girl and her brother.
         He glanced her way and with a smile, in English, said, "Meet me on the other side of the square. Or I kill them now."
         Holland felt herself pale. English was a rare public language these days, since the fall of the United States, but his words would have chilled her even in Esperanto.
         "I'll be there," she said in a steady voice.
         Across the square lay a warren of side streets and alleys, all neat and orderly in the early morning sunshine. The Swiss houses, built of plastisteel, mimicked the bright colors and wonderful variety of the old town of Stans under the lake. A cleaning robot on a balcony methodically beat out rugs of dust. Another, across the street, wiped clean a window. Holland waited for the stranger. He bowed like a gentleman, and escorted her up the street.
         She knew who he was. She knew from Duncan's description of the man who'd nearly bested Connor a few months ago in a private courtyard of olive vines and fountains in Cairo.
         He introduced himself anyway, so she would be absolutely certain of who had killed her.
         "Goran Riswanathan," he offered as he shrugged out of his raincoat. "Ris for short."
         She hefted her sword. "Holland Greer. You're not going to live long enough for us to be on first name terms."
         He laughed in sincere delight. "An honor, dear lady," he said. "Don't be like the others. Don't try and charm me, don't smile winsomely, don't wiggle your hips. You'll be easy to beat, but at least you won't beg."
         "You talk too much," Holland offered. Felicia had warned her never to worry about the talking. It was the eyes to watch, to prepare for that first blow.
         Obligingly he struck out with that first blow.
         And nearly knocked her immediately to the ground with the force of it.
         Holland had taken more than a dozen heads in her four hundred years, although she wasn't proud of it. She understand the rules of the Game. She knew what she was, and why total strangers desired to slaughter her. If she preferred to avoid a fight than wage one, it made her no more or less successful than other Immortals her age. She'd had excellent teachers, including Felicia and Duncan, and felt confident going into almost any situation.
         She also knew that lesson Duncan had hammered into her for a hundred years - that she didn't have to lose because she was less strong than a man. She had speed and agility on her side.
         With Ris' first blow she knew speed and agility would not be enough.
         She was going to die.
         She blocked, retreated, and managed a blow of her own that he parried as if her blade were a gadfly. Their swords clanged with sparks, and she retreated further down the street as he increased the tempo.
         "Thirty seconds more," Ris promised, "and I'll take your head for you."
         She wasted no breath on witty replies. Holland faked a thrust, came up underneath, scored a scratch on his arm. Ris' smile merely grew wider. He wasn't even breathing heavy, the bastard, and looked as if he were exerting as much energy as a leisurely park stroll required.
         Her back was already running with sweat, and she couldn't breathe enough oxygen into her lungs.
         Ris slashed downward suddenly, catching her leg. Holland felt the flesh and muscle rip with a searing intensity. She fell but rolled, and came up on her good leg with a blow that he deflected at the last possible second.
         He'd nearly beaten Connor, she remembered. How could she ever have stood a chance against him?
         "Time," Ris said, and caught her with a blow that sent her staggering into an alley wall.
         The buzz of another Immortal swam through her dazed senses.
         Duncan, she thought.
         But he would be too late, too late, too late -
         Or not.
         A flash of lightning, the clang of her future. Duncan's sword saved her neck.
         "Try taking on someone your own size," Duncan MacLeod hissed, his eyes smoldering with an inner fire, his voice laced with rage.
         Holland thrust her sword up into Ris, driving it through his diaphragm and out through the back of his white silk shirt.
         Ris gaped at them both, blood spilling from his mouth, and collapsed to the pavement. He clawed at the ground, mouth desperately working to suck in air, eyes bulging. Then he collapsed lifelessly, his body sliding into death.
         It reminded Holland vividly of her own death, on an airport hangar floor so many centuries ago. She felt MacLeod raise her up and hold her until her legs steadied. His face worked in rage, but he couldn't say anything. And neither could she. She pressed herself up against his chest until she could breathe regularly again, until the tears that threatened to blind her vision cleared and focused on Ris' corpse.
         MacLeod gently released her.
         Went to Ris.
         Lifted his sword.
         Holland watched him silently, with a new kind of dawning horror. She knew what he knew. That killing him now was a violation of the rules. Intentionally or not, it had been two against one at the very last second.
         No one else need ever know.
         Just the two of them. The world would be rid of Ris, and others would be safe.
         "Duncan," she breathed, her voice raw in her throat, "you can't."
         But he wanted to. She could see it in his shoulders, his intense stare, his grip on his katana.
         She wanted it too.
         MacLeod lowered his sword. Across his features played the awful combination of confusion and pain that Holland knew cut deep, a wound of its own. He was one of the best Immortals on the planet, but he was just a man. He could only live by his code of honor.
         Holland took him by the hand and away from Ris' body. Only then did she realize the robots above were screeching out alarms, and that the sirens of approaching police pods were cutting through the air.
         They had no choice but to flee up the mountain.


                                                    ***


         Gregor prayed long and hard for guidance before he went up to Jason's room.
         There was no denying that he had initially come to the monastery centuries ago on the advice of his Immortal doctor, Sean Burns, who'd felt that a retreat from the pain of the world might be a healing balm. Sean had never intended him to stay more than a few weeks, under the care of an old Trappist infirmarian Sean knew from his army days. Instead, Gregor had ended up spending thirty years in Gethsemani before leaving. His leaving had only been to avoid more speculation on why he, of all the monks, was not aging.
         He'd gone back to the world outside, forging new lives for himself, but his heart had always stayed with the Trappists. He spent a third of each successive century living among them all over the world, then would leave to protect his Immortality.
         Now he was back in Gethsemani. And the Lord that Gregor had once shunned had seen fit to send him Jason, who was more than he appeared to be. The graced one.
         Gregor could remember very clearly the pain and misery he'd been in before reaching Sean. The awfulness of living forever, feeling nothing, watching tragedies play out over and over again, feeling nothing, having everyone he loved die, feeling nothing. Because he'd made himself forget how. The pain had been too intense, too agonizing, to be felt.
         Blocking it only hurt worse. Duncan MacLeod had taught him that, on the roof of a hospital.
         But try as hard as he could, Gregor hadn't been able to teach Jason that.
         Gregor tightened his hands together in praise of the Lord, although his thoughts were racing him along paths he had no control over. Amanda's presence in the monastery had brought him to an unexpected crises. Connor had relayed Methos' plan to take Immortals to Sanctuary until the world was ready for them again. It was an amazingly tantalizing offer, living in a community of only Immortals. Despite his closeness to his fellow monks, Gregor had only managed to find three or four in the past four hundred years who could be trusted with the enormous secret of Immortality. Dom Stephan was one of them. Leaving the old abbot behind, along with the life Gregor had forged in this abbey, was a very painful idea.
         He'd finally dismissed the idea.
         Now Amanda was here, to bring Jason away. Connor was here, when he should have left weeks ago. Minette was here, drawn by some undefined force she said called to her across the mountains.
         God worked in mysterious ways, but sometimes a clue or two would be helpful.
         Gregor climbed to stiff knees and went upstairs. Jason was in his room, meditating on his bed lotus-style.
         "You're troubled," Jason said.
         Gregor pulled up the chair. "May I?"
         Jason opened his eyes. "If you have to ask, then I know we're in trouble."
         Gregor sat. He took a deep breath. "Someone's come to see you."
         Jason nodded very slightly. He relaxed his legs and swung them over the side of the bed. "I heard something last night. Who is it?"
         "Her name is Amanda." Gregor watched closely for a reaction, but there was none. He went on with the risky part. "She's come to make you an offer to leave."
         "Maybe I don't want to leave," Jason said.
         A shiver ran down Gregor's spine to the very bottoms of his feet. Never before had Jason even entertained the thought aloud. When MacLeod and Methos confronted him on it, he'd pulled back into near catatonia. That was the least of the reactions Gregor expected, but certainly not this calm assuredness.
         "No one's going to make you," Gregor nearly stammered.
         "I know," Jason said confidently. "You and Connor would stop them."
         Them. Not just Amanda. Methos and MacLeod, and anyone else. Gregor had never been sure that Jason understood the depth of his devotion to the younger Immortal, or realized that Connor had fallen somehow under that spell as well.
         "Jason," Gregor asked, "why are you fasting?"
         Jason's gaze took on a far away introspection. "Because I have a decision to make."
         "To stay or to leave?"
         "I don't know." Jason's attention returned from wherever it had gone. He gave Gregor a small, helpless smile. "I don't really know."
         Gregor wasn't really surprised. Jason had been graced. He displayed, on occasion, startling insights that must have gone from God's mouth to his ears. ESP, divine intervention, astrology - whatever. Jason knew things, sometimes, that he shouldn't have.
         The look Jason was giving him now, however, spoke of other things. In that moment, Gregor would have sworn Jason saw right through him, to very heart of him, to the secret places he didn't dare share with the younger Immortal. That Jason saw everything, and that there was no condemnation. That, like God, Jason saw only the goodness and absolved him of the rest.
         The thought was too unsettling to hold for very long. Gregor asked, "Do you want to talk to her?"
         Now a shadow did cross Jason's eyes. His gaze went to his sword on the wall. "Amanda," he said, as if testing the name. "No. I don't want to see her."
         Abruptly he rose. "But I do want to get to the carpentry shop. I promised Brother Hans I'd make him a new bench."
         Gregor stood as well, shaken and disturbed by forces he didn't understand, and accompanied Jason out of the room.


                                                    ***


         Amanda instantly liked Dom Stephan. She'd been prepared to instantly dislike him, only because he was the abbot of all these men who'd fled from the world, but she found instead that he put her instantly at ease with a handshake and a deep voice that rumbled, "Call me Steve."
         Connor raised his eyebrows. No one ever called Dom Stephan "Steve." He excused himself, however, because this was a discussion that clearly Dom Stephan wanted to conduct in private, despite the fact they were out behind the courtyard. Dom Stephan was splitting firewood with an ax that looked as old as Connor felt this morning.
         "I hear you're extremely long-lived," Dom Stephan said, swinging down his ax.
         Amanda took a seat on a nearby tree stump. She found it interesting this monk wanted to talk to her with an ax in his hands. Hopefully, he appreciated the dangers. "You could say that," she admitted.
         "You don't look a day over five hundred," Dom Stephan joked.
         Amanda smiled, "I hope I don't look a day over thirty."
         Dom Stephan grinned. He split another log with a neat, powerful blow that sent it sailing apart in two equal halves. "You've come to take Jason away."
         "I've come to ask him. There's a difference."
         "And what would you like to ask me?"
         "Who says I want to ask you anything at all?"
         "The look in your lovely eyes."
         "I didn't think monks were supposed to notice things like that."
         "Monks notice everything. That's why they're monks." Dom Stephan piled his split logs, then placed another beneath the edge of his ax. He split six more before Amanda caved in.
         "Why do you lock yourselves away up here?"
         "You view us as limiting ourselves."
         "Yes."
         "What if I tell you we're freeing ourselves? That by abandoning the priorities of your world - careers, possessions, ambitions, riches - we bring ourselves closer to what God wants of us. In solitude and solidarity, we find out what's truly important."
         Amanda studied him in the weak winter sunlight. Clouds were moving in from the east, and she expected bad weather by noon. She pulled her sweater tighter. "Did Connor tell you I was once a thief?"
         "Connor has told me very little about you."
         "I stole things. Lots of things. I was very good at it. If God didn't stop me, he must have wanted me to have those possessions."
         "You confuse what God wants with what you want. God's power, versus your own free will."
         "God's not omnipotent?"
         "He could choose to be," Dom Stephan admitted. "But he doesn't. He took a risk on making you, Amanda. He could have just as easily made a tree. But he made you, and gave you free will, and suffers the consequences of your actions along with you."
         Amanda concentrated on the fall of the ax. She doubted very much that God mourned Tristan the way she did. Anger over Tristan's death tried to work its way up from the place in her chest where she'd locked it away. "That's all very well," she said tightly, "but it doesn't concern why I've come to see Jason Sanger."
         "Maybe. Maybe not." Dom Stephan paused to rest. She reminded herself that he was not young - sixty five, at least, with wrinkles to prove it. Outstanding health aside, he didn't have the energy of younger men. Of herself, aged sixteen hundred.
         "Jason is God's child as much or more as any of us," the abbot said quietly. His words carried softly on the cooling breeze. "He was brought her for a reason. We've sheltered him, and helped him heal himself. He has the free will to leave or stay. You won't make that decision for him."
         "I know," she said.
         "You don't know as much as you need to," the abbot said, somewhat sharply, and then took in a deep breath to calm himself. "I'm sorry. I don't know as much as I need to, either. But I get by."
         "Can I talk to Jason?"
         "That's up to him," the abbot said. "Gregor's asking him."
         The shivery sense of Immortals approaching brought Amanda to her feet. She turned and saw two figures across the courtyard stop mid-stride. They'd been on their way to what must have been the carpenter's shop, but now, as one, they turned to face her. One wore the habit of the order, and was obviously Gregor. The other, beside him, was less obviously Jason Sanger.
         She felt Connor's return and heard him mutter an oath to himself. She hadn't been meant to see Gregor or Jason, not like this.
         From Jason she felt the same odd song that went beyond
         Immortality to something deeper, clearer, cleaner. An awareness of something ancient and powerful that called to her all during the night, with a presence she hadn't understood.
         Actually seeing him put things in no clearer perspective. Because although she knew now why Duncan had been willing to beg for this favor, she didn't understand yet why deceptions had been necessary.
         Still, the shock of recognition was enough to keep her feelings from being instantly hurt. Her mind seemed flushed with numbness, and only one word escaped her.
         "Richie," she whispered.

         "We had to make 6 of them. There were just so many unanswered questions." Bobcat Goldthwaite to Jay Leno, finally revealing why so many Police Academy movies were inflicted on the public.


         Amanda crossed the courtyard. She no longer felt the breeze, or the sunlight, or the impending sense of the weather changing. She wasn't even sure those were her own legs, carrying her across the mud. The world ended and began with the blue eyes of Richie Ryan.
         "Richie," she said again, because all other words had left her.
         Beside him, Gregor gazed anxiously at the younger Immortal's face, not even breathing.
         "I'm sorry," Jason said clearly. "I don't know who that is."
         He spun away and left them standing in the mud.
         "But - " Amanda started, and moved as if to follow him. Gregor stopped her with a firm grasp on her arm. Connor caught up to them both, and watched Jason go into the shop without a look backwards.
         "I don't understand," Amanda said.
         "Actually," Connor said, "that went better than I expected."
         Inside the carpentry shop, Jason took out a bin and the pieces of plank that he'd already measured to build Brother Hans' bench. His hands were trembling, but he ignored them. He took out some sandpaper and began smoothing down the wood.
         Someone's silhouette fell across the doorway. He didn't even look up.
         "I'd like to be alone," he said simply.
         The silhouette, whether it was Connor or Gregor, went away.
         Jason's knees began to give way and his head swam. He couldn't have said if the weakness came from his fasting or from the woman's words outside, but he reached blindly for a stool and sat before he fell. He put his head down between his knees and took ragged breaths. He felt very cold, and very vulnerable, and very alone.
         The dots before his eyes vanished. He lifted his head and waited for the queasiness in his stomach to abate.
         Richie.
         The same name that the men had used when they came to see him. One had been slight and mild and mature, with eyes that spoke of eternity. The other had been taller, younger and stronger, a handsome man with a very faint accent and a face that seemed strangely familiar.
         Richie Ryan, they'd called him.
         Jason had never heard of him before in his entire life.
         Although, truth be told, it was just recently that he'd begun to realize he had no entire life. Nothing that dated previous to living at this monastery, specifically. Although in the mirror he guessed he was maybe nineteen or twenty years old, no childhood memories came to his mind no matter how hard he concentrated. He must have had a mother and father, maybe sisters and brothers, but they refused to show themselves. He must have grown up somewhere, but no images of homes came to him.
         He'd thought about asking Gregor or Connor, but then he would catch them staring at him with an odd intensity that warned him that maybe he didn't want to know the answers.
         Jason tried standing. He did well. He went to his bench and looked down at the wood for Hans' bench. For a moment he was staring instead at a workbench full of metal shapes and power tools, in a workshop filled with sunlight and glass, and the presence of a woman at his shoulder sent the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up.
         "Richie," she said.
         He turned but he was alone, in a monastery carpentry shop, and Tessa was gone.
         Tessa. A name. His mother? Jason clung to the sense of her being with him, but couldn't envision her face or shape. The only sense that lingered was the aura of someone who loved him.
         Jason squeezed his eyes shut. They were wet, for some reason. He picked up the sandpaper and started rubbing. When his fingers started bleeding he stopped, and realized he'd lost track of what he was doing.
         Who was Richie Ryan?
         He went to the doorway of the shop. Brother Gustaf had taken Dom Stephan's place at the woodpile, and the sound of his ax splitting wood cracked like thunder. The woman Amanda had gone. Gregor and Connor were nowhere to be seen. Jason was as alone as he'd asked to be, and the solitude crashed down on him like an tidal wave.
         Everything at Gethsemani, he'd noted, swung between a balance of solidarity and solitude. The solidarity of men come to journey on unique paths in a community forged of common vision. The solitude of silence and a daily routine of choirs and prayers that drove him personally crazy with boredom. Except for his occasional and disturbing visitors, Jason found life at the monastery excruciatingly dull. In that dullness he'd been forced to turn inward, into contemplation of the world and God, but he'd always resisted examination of his own mind.
         He didn't know if he could bear to remember what his mind so desperately wanted to keep hidden from him.
         But they were there, the memories, held back behind a dam that was leaking dangerously around the edges. A dam threatening to crash inwards with what he knew would be tragic results.
         Terrified, Jason fled to the chapel. He knelt on the stone floor and clasped his hands together and prayed like he'd never prayed before. Not for memory. Not for solace. For strength, because he desperately needed some about now.
         A hand on his shoulder startled him from grayness.
         "Are you all right?" Minette asked, her young face framed with concern. "Jason?"
         He stared at her. Of all the people in the monastery, she was the one who so obviously loved him. She'd proven it to him, night after night, giving and loving and touching but never pushing him, never taking anything he didn't offer. But in the same frightening way that he could sometimes see into other people's minds, Jason knew that Minette represented some terrible danger.
         "Dom Stephan," he gasped. "I need Dom Stephan."
         Minette fled to fetch the abbot. When he came in a few minutes later, he knelt on the floor beside Jason and took his icy hands into his warm ones. Dom Stephan knew a personal crisis when he saw one. Sometimes brothers suffered collapses that called for more professional expertise than the order could provide, and had to be taken to the mental hospital in New Lucerne.
         Something about the look in Jason's eyes, the imploding grief, sent Dom Stephan's heart clubbing in his chest.
         "What is it?" he asked, trying to sound reassuring. "What is it, Jason?"
         "Why does God do it?" Jason demanded. "Why does he let it hurt?"
         "He hurts with you. He's here for you, if you let him be."
         Jason struggled away. He retreated, nearly tipping himself over the stalls. "He wasn't there!" he yelled at the abbot. He didn't know why he was yelling. His emotions and body and mind seemed beyond his rational control, flooding through with anger and grief that cut like dozens of swords into his flesh. "He didn't come!"
         Dom Stephan stood in alarm. "Jason, you must calm down."
         Jason pointed a shaking finger. "I was there, and you weren't. God wasn't. What they did to her - "
         Her who?
         Memories of a dark haired woman with eyes full of laughter, a woman he'd shared his bed and heart with, a woman he'd watch be dismembered as he screamed -
         Jason whirled, the sense of Connor and Gregor crashing in on him as they appeared in the doorway. Truths kept flooding into his mind, visions, memories, the woman, the name, the chaos. He backed instinctively away from the two Immortals who meant to help him, but could only inflict more and more harm. He tried to talk, but the words caught in his throat.
         Gregor said grimly to Connor, "I thought this might happen."
         "Jason," Connor said, taking a cautious step forward, "it's all right. We want to help."
         But he wasn't Jason. Didn't they know that? Couldn't they see? Jason had never been, and could never be again. He sucked in a ragged breath and shook his head as Connor tried to get closer.
         "It hurts too much," he whimpered. "Make it stop."
         "What hurts?" Connor asked.
         How could he explain to them the equivalent of a Quickening ripping open his mind, again and again? How is it that he even remembered what a Quickening was? The dark-haired woman's energy and light had taken him as their tormentors watched, ripped him into a thousand shreds of sorrow -
         Somewhere a bell rang. He whirled to face the pulpit, where a shaft of sudden sunlight cut through the narrow windows to illuminate the cross. But he wasn't in the monastery anymore, and what he saw came completely from inside. He saw Felicia Martins' face, and Tessa Noel's face, and Duncan MacLeod's face, and Darius' face. He saw the skylines of Paris and Seacouver and London and Rome, slicing into him like knives. He saw Angie, Sargeant Powell, Kristin Gilles, Kamir, Benny Carbassa, Joe Dawson, Anne Lindsey, Hugh Fitzcairn, Maurice. He spun out on racetrack into a tragic motorbike accident and fiery death, took bullets into his chest meant for Joe, beheaded Mako. He pulled Mark Roszka, Tessa's killer, from a vengeful death. He lopped off the heads of dozens of enemies. He lay with Felicia, her hand soft against his chest. He stood on the deck of barge in the middle of the Seine, on a beautiful spring day, and Amanda was smiling at him and calling him Richard.
         And the last thing he thought before the world blacked away was that he didn't want to be Richard Ryan.


                                                    ***


         The temperature dropped twenty degrees in three hours, the sky sent down torrents of rain flecked with hail, visibility went down to a dozen feet. They hadn't gone back to their hotel room for fear of discovery, and weren't wearing proper hiking boots or clothes for a three thousand foot hike up the Alps.
         Cold and storms wouldn't kill them. But it made the journey a whole lot harder.
         MacLeod felt the mud start to slip out beneath his shoes. He groped for a hold on the sheer rockface beside the path, and then Holland's hand grabbed him and steady him. Stupid. She could have just as easily been sent tumbling down the slope with him, and then where would they be? But he bit down on his reproach, and swallowed past the lump of fear in his throat.
         He'd come so close to losing her.
         A few seconds later and he would have found Ris taking her Quickening. As it was, only a vague and persistent nagging doubt had persuaded him to follow Holland without her knowledge or awareness to the transit station. He had no reason to fear they'd been discovered by the SIDI, but he'd followed her just the same.
         For a few seconds he'd lost her in the maze of alleys, even though he could hear the clash of her steel and Ris' blade. As he turned frantically, trying to trace the sound, he'd caught sight of motion in the shadows and focused for the briefest second on the woman who stood there, dressed in white, her blond hair framing a face whose loveliness he'd never forgotten.
         Tessa.
         In the shadows, watching him.
         Then he'd blinked, or the sun had shifted, or the awareness of Holland's need had intruded, and there was nothing in the shadows but the shadows themselves.
         He raced towards them because in that direction lay Holland, and he'd been barely in time to keep Ris from severing her head.
         He should have killed Ris forever, damn the rules.
         On the mountain, Duncan MacLeod was sure that he should have killed Ris.
         But now was too late. Ris would have revived and gone on his merry way, slaughtering other Immortals with the same casual indolence. He'd nearly beaten Connor a few months ago. Holland had never stood a chance.
         She turned him now in the rain, her hair plastered to her head, her body fighting off shivers.
         "We're lost!" she told him over the wind and freezing rain.
         "Just keep going up," MacLeod told her. He grasped her for a tight embrace for a few seconds, trying to transfer his body heat to her. Immortals might not die from hypothermia, but they could be slowed by it. They might not die from frostbite, but they could suffer from it.
         "You know, MacLeod," she said awhile later, as the rain blinded them to the path ahead, "a girl really gets around the world with you."
         They stopped periodically for rest and to wait for the storm to lessen. The rest came fitfully, and the storm raged without any consideration whatsoever. The changing world climate which had sent massive hurricanes and typhoons across the planet worked its influence everywhere, MacLeod knew. The storm could last for days, and they'd be stuck right in the middle of it. Or it could end and clear into sunny blue skies within minutes, which would have made him very happy.
         For every step forward, wind and mud drove them back two. For every foothold gained, another washed away and nearly plummeted one or both of them into the sharp ravines below.
         Finally MacLeod pulled her into the half-shelter of an outcropping. Darkness was falling fast with the end of the day, and he had no idea how close they were to the top. Holland huddled against him, and clumsily rubbed his bare hands between hers. MacLeod could barely feel them.
         Water poured down on their heads but the rock cut down the whipping wind, and for that MacLeod was glad.
         He clenched Holland tightly against him. "If it doesn't clear," he said, "we'll have to go back down."
         "How?" she asked. "We can't see a thing."
         "It's easy," he said, with a confidence he didn't feel. "Just drop and die. Drop and die. We'll get down eventually."
         But he didn't like the plan. He didn't like the thought they could be separated by ravines or chasms, or the very nasty idea of accidental decapitation by a particularly sharp boulder.
         Holland buried her head in his shoulder. Then she twisted up and kissed him. "Thanks again," she said. "For saving my life."
         "All part of the service," he said wearily. The vision of Ris standing over her had burned its way like acid into his brain. "Will you marry me?"
         "What did you say?"
         MacLeod caught his breath. He hadn't meant to say the words. He didn't know why they'd picked this moment to slip out, after nearly fifty years of living together.
         "I said," he repeated cautiously, "will you marry me?"
         Holland laughed. "In the middle of a storm, on the side of a mountain, with who knows what ahead of us, a killer probably behind us, and you decide to propose?"
         "Does that mean 'no'?" he asked.
         She kissed him on the mouth. Hard. Her tongue met his. After several minutes, she broke away.
         "It means, ask me at the top," she said, and he imagined she was grinning.
         MacLeod had some choice words to say about that, but the sense of another Immortal approaching cut the sound off in his throat. It was pitch black outside, and he couldn't see anything. But he could feel someone. Vis, probably, following them.
         "Stay here," he whispered.
         "Duncan, how can you fight if you can't see?" she demanded.
         "If I can't see, he can't see," MacLeod said, disengaging himself from her and the rocks. He was lying and he knew it. Vis might be equipped with night vision goggles. He might have a robot aid. He might even have an old-fashioned flashlight.
         MacLeod stood in the wind and rain and darkness, his sword ready to slice out on instinct, if need be.
         "Who's there?" he called.
         The storm answered, with more water, more rain, and hail that felt like whirling glass. The wind howled like a banshee. MacLeod stood poised at the center of all the natural power of the world - battered and soaked by it, but part of it, part of the world taking a Quickening of its own. Far away, too faint to be real, he thought he heard a scream that arched across the roof of the world.
         "I'm Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod!" he shouted to the elements. "Who are you?"
         Abruptly a voice spoke at his shoulder.
         "Some clan, different vintage," Connor said. "Really, Duncan, there's no need to shout."


                                                    ***


         The bells of Vespers woke him. He was lying in bed in his own room, under thick and warming coverlet. The sky had turned to furious rain. In a short time it would be dusk. Gregor was praying at the foot of the bed, although there really was no need for that.
         "How do you feel?" Gregor asked.
         "Fine," he answered, although he didn't really know how he felt. They'd taken his shoes but left his clothes on, and he bent to remedy the situation.
         Gregor asked, "Where are you going?"
         "I have to leave," he said. He felt empty and tired, but knew his duty. Something was calling to him, and although he couldn't be sure if it came from outside his head or inside his chest, it was a true summons all the same.
         Gregor moved to stop him from leaving the room. "Jason, you can't."
         So it wasn't obvious. He took Gregor's hand in his own, and squeezed it reassuringly.
         "I have to. Trust me, Gregor Powers. I can't be free if you keep me imprisoned here."
         Gregor's eyes filled with tears. Maybe he sensed the truth from the use of his full name, or from the look in the younger Immortal's eyes. Whatever it was, he crossed himself and stood aside.
         He went downstairs. The brothers were still at choir. Their voices, rising in Latin, felt like gentle caresses against his chest. He'd never learned Latin, although Darius had once tried to instruct him the basics. He'd been too impatient to learn. He'd been young, in France, in love with everything new and exciting, and Tessa and Duncan were teaching him about the world through their love for it and for each other.
         The world he was now prepared to abandon.
         Out of the building, out through the courtyard, out past the gate he went. The wind and rain immediately ripped into his clothing, but he didn't feel it. The summons was the only thing that mattered, and if the time ever came for discomfort it would come later, after he'd reckoned with the memories that seemed too vibrant and too large and too painful to ever be kept in the confines of one mind.
         Richie Ryan, who'd once been Jason Sanger, went out into the storm to make his decision.

         Evil Boss: "Maybe, when this is all done with, they'll even name a continent after you."
         Julia Heller: "Yeah. They can call it Hell." - Earth 2
         Earth 2 convention April 19-21, New Mexico! But I'd rather go to SydniCon.


         Connor MacLeod sat in the cleared attic of the novice house, cleaning his sword. He'd discovered the large space shortly after retreating to the monastery, and fashioned it into an exercise room where he could practice the art of death without disturbing the monks. For hours he would duel against the memories of his most vile enemies, until his muscles betrayed him with exhaustion. He would rest, renew his strength, and then duel again. He had to stay in shape, if he were to ever leave Gethsemani.
         Leaving. An interesting concept. He didn't even know why he was still here, four months after Ris had nearly taken his head in Cairo.
         Surely it wasn't fear.
         He sat by the small window set in the far end of the attic, cleaning his sword by the afternoon light. A storm had come down on the mountain, but it was still bright enough for him to do his work. As the rain and wind rattled the tiny pane he thought about the vista that usually greeted him from his perch - a stunning view of the Alps and the green valley below that poignantly reminded him, for some reason, of home.
         Only in this place had he found the same wonderful isolation amidst wilderness that the Highlands had. The clean air, the closeness to the sun. Of course, Switzerland was taller, but he could live with that. At their fundamental cores, both places shared a focus on ancient power and the natural cycle of the earth's seasons, not on the crazy, mixed-up, misplaced priorities of thirty billion arguing mortals.
         Fear of Ris was not what kept him here.
         Instead, maybe it was just a weariness of the world.
         He'd been thinking a great deal of the Highlands lately, and of Heather. Time had blurred many details of his eight hundred years, but could never erase her face. She'd grown old in his arms. She'd been his life. And she'd gone, as they all went, into the ground, leaving him cold and grieving by the graveside.
         He'd loved others. But never as he'd loved her.
         Connor cleaned his sword methodically, thinking of Heather, thinking of Ramirez. Why, after eight hundred years and thousands of friends, did they stick in his mind so completely? Because he'd been young then, and new to it all, and had all the time in the world.
         He still had forever, but forever didn't seem as long as it once did.
         Amanda came up into the attic. "Well, well, well," she said, surveying the space. "Why is it the MacLeod men claim all the territory they can, wherever they go?"
         "Territorial is not the first adjective I'd use to describe myself," Connor replied steadily.
         She rest her hand on an overhead beam and gave him an appraising look. "How about humorless?"
         "I'm not humorless."
         "You're not exactly a laugh riot, Connor," Amanda said, and moved to sit across from him with her knees drawn to her chest. She rested her head on her knees and gazed out his window. "The weather's getting worse."
         "With over two thousand years of life between us," he said, "you have to pick the weather as a conversation starter?"
         "Are we enemies?" she asked, without looking at him.
         Connor paused for thought. "Not exactly."
         "I've had warmer receptions from glaciers."
         "You complicate things."
         "I take pride in complicating things."
         "You heard what happened to Jason in the chapel."
         She nodded solemnly. "Minette came to me, distraught. She said he suffered some kind of collapse. You blame me?"
         "Maybe the sight of you precipitated it."
         "I've been known to inspire a lot of reactions in men, but never nervous breakdowns."
         "That's not funny, Amanda."
         "I didn't mean it to be." And from the solemn expression on her face, the lack of beguilement in her eyes, he knew she was telling the truth. Amanda drew herself tighter against the breeze that came from the cracks around the poorly insulated window. "Why does he call himself Jason?"
         "He really believes he is Jason Sanger."
         "And Jason Sanger was who?"
         Bells began ringing from the chapel, calling the monks to Vespers. Connor waited for them to fade before saying, "Jason was a mortal friend of Richie's at the Sorbonne. He was killed the night SIDI raided Felicia's flat and dragged Richie and Felicia to Versailles. By the time Duncan, Methos and Ceirdwynn could come to the rescue, Felicia lay in small severed parts and Richie was mentally shattered. They brought him here. He recovered physically, but with nearly complete traumatic amnesia. He insisted his name was Jason Sanger, and would withdraw into catatonia or hysterics whenever he saw Duncan or Methos."
         Amanda took a deep breath. "Duncan's been lying all these years, saying Richie was dead."
         "Not exactly lying. For all intents and purposes, Richie is dead. Jason remembers nothing of his life before this place. Whatever Richie was has been wiped away."
         "I refuse to believe that," Amanda said. "He's still Richie, no matter what protective devices his mind has set up to shield him from whatever happened in Versailles. If Duncan didn't believe that, he wouldn't have sent me here."
         Connor sheathed his sword and shrugged. "I'm not a psychiatrist. I couldn't say."
         Amanda drew her legs in tighter. "That girl, Minette. She really loves Richie. Or Jason, whichever. She's just a baby."
         "She's seventy five years old, Amanda. Hardly a baby."
         "Not by my standards," Amanda said wryly. Then her small smile faded. "Oh, Connor. I didn't mean to cause Richie pain or distress."
         "You didn't know."
         "When this storm clears, I'm leaving. There's nothing for me to do here. He's in your hands and Gregor's hands, and I can't think of a safer place for him to be."
         "You assume I'm staying here."
         "You're coming to Sanctuary?"
         "There are other places to go. The whole world." But he didn't believe the words even as he said them. And because she had opened to him, because his code of honor was telling him to do it, he said, "Amanda, I'm sorry about your husband. I never told you that."
         "All the miracles of modern medicine," she said softly, "couldn't save him from his own aging heart."
         He thought of Heather, how she'd begged him to leave her before her youth fled. Mortals had died younger then. There'd been no medical miracles, no faith-healers of science.
         Amanda unfolded herself and climbed to her feet. "You know what, Connor? We're not Immortals. We're just charter members of the Dead Spouses Club. I don't know about you, but I'm starved. Let's go raid the kitchen while everyone's at choir."
         But everyone wasn't at choir. Gregor was sitting in the rectory, alone in the dark, his hands flat and square against his knees, his head bowed. For him to miss choir offices meant something terrible, Connor knew.
         "What happened?" he asked immediately.
         Gregor's voice was barely audible. "He left."
         An alarm shrilled in the back of Connor's mind. "Who left?"
         "Jason," Gregor said. "He left. He said he had a decision to make. And he walked right out the door."
         "And you let him?" Minette demanded, appearing in the doorway. "How could you? He's confused, disoriented, he hasn't had anything to eat in almost two days - "
         Amanda couldn't help but feel for the young woman, her obvious concern for the man she loved. Or thought she loved. How could she love a man who didn't even know his own history, tragedy, accomplishments? Connor's face darkened, although he made no immediate comment.
         "You let him go out into this storm?" Minette continued to hammer at Gregor. "What if he falls into a ravine and can't get out? What if he gets trapped by falling rocks or mudslides?"
         Gregor lifted haunted eyes to them. "What else was I supposed to do?"
         Minette's face turned bright pink. "You were supposed to stop him!"
         Amanda said to Connor, "She's right. He's in no condition to be out in this."
         Gregor shook his head. "You don't understand. He wants this. He needs this."
         "A few hours ago," Connor said tightly, "he was nearly hysterical in the chapter. He could barely speak to us. And now you're saying he told you calmly and rationally that he needed to take a walk?"
         Gregor held Connor's scathing gaze. "Yes. Leave him be."
         Connor shared a look at Amanda. Whatever their differences were, they now had a common goal.
         "No," Connor said. "Grab your coats, ladies. We're going to look for him."


                                                    ***


         Richie walked for what felt like a long time in the freezing rain and hail, his thin body buffeted by the whipping winds, his clothes soaked and useless as protection after the first few feet. He couldn't see in the darkness, but some deep-rooted confidence kept his feet moving beneath him without misstep. He didn't know where he was going, and he didn't suppose it mattered. God, or Fate, or Destiny, or the Game, would take him to where he needed to be.
         Alone, afraid, he stumbled on the mountain and sought guidance from the turmoil in the skies and in his heart.
         To be Richie Ryan again he had to accept everything - all of the memories, the joyous as well as the horrific. The feel of Felicia as she took him inside her. The agony on her face as SIDI agents tortured her. The first time Tessa ever came to his room and soothed him, a seventeen year old who'd never really had a mother, from the nightmares that plagued his youth. Mark Roszka's bullet, ripping into her chest and shattering her life. The day Duncan took him to the park and taught him how to wield a sword so he could face Annie Devlin. The cold afternoon Duncan had shut him out of his life for killing Mako. Their reconciliation, months later, in Paris. And then the night he couldn't imagine ever forgetting, the night Duncan lifted his blade to complete an arc that would have sliced Richie's head neatly away from his body.
         Four hundred years of memories had broken through the barriers in his brain, filling his mind with the triumphs and tragedies he forged in his life as an Immortal, and they cut like twin swords of good and evil through his middle. Every breath felt like fire, and every remembered face brought wetness to his eyes.
         In a way, it would be so much easier to just admit defeat and become Jason again, whose memory would be a blank wall but who would be safe from the horror. Richie wasn't sure, but he felt deep within a seed of enormous power that could be used to transform himself back into dumb, naive Jason, if he used it right.
         He realized he was no longer walking. That he was poised on the brink of a greater darkness than that which surrounded him. Richie looked down, trying to focus, but the weakness in his empty stomach and shaky knees made him regret the idea. It came to him, by degrees, that he was standing on the precipice of a deep ravine.
         He resisted with all his might the urge to fling himself into the nothingness.
         It wouldn't accomplish anything. He was Immortal. Doomed to walk the face of the earth while beloved mortals died, while murderers took away his friends and lovers, while the whole world order fell to chaos and mayhem.
         The wind seemed to be lessening. He raised his arms to the sky, beseeching whoever might be watching, and felt power rip through him from the ground to the churning, boiling clouds.
         Immortal.
         He couldn't change that.
         If he was very lucky, he could fling himself down into the ravine and land in such a way on a sharp boulder or rock that he'd cut his own head off. He could go back to the carpentry shop and rig a guillotine that would do the job more neatly. He could ask Gregor as a final favor to sever his head for him, rather than let it fall into the malicious hands of SIDI. He could walk off the mountain and find the first nasty Immortal wandering around Switzerland, let him do the job for fun or practice.
         Or he could block it all out again. He could destroy himself with the power he held within, and in doing so destroy whatever Duncan and Tessa and Felicia and his mortal wives and his octogenarian adopted children and the rest of the world had loved.
         He could choose not to be.
         He lifted his arms up higher, and let out a scream that seemed to shake the very earth.


                                                    ***


         Connor went out looking for Richie, but found Duncan and Holland instead. He brought them back to the monastery and fixed them up with dry clothes and hot coffee in the rectory. Amanda and Minette returned a short time later, their faces written with frustration. Gregor had disappeared, but at the recognition of more Immortals he returned with a prayer book firmly in his hands.
         "It's good to see you," MacLeod said, grasping Gregor's shoulders and pulling him into a hug.
         "And you, my friend," Gregor said, holding him warmly. "You're looking well. If just a little wet."
         MacLeod introduced him and Minette to Holland. She was still too cold and storm shocked to make much conversation, but listened with wide eyes in MacLeod's reassuring arms as Connor recounted the events of the day.
         "What decision do you think he has to make?" Duncan asked Gregor.
         "I'm not sure," Gregor admitted. "But it's his, and his alone."
         A shadow at the doorway made them turn. Brother Hans, one of the oldest of the order, shuffled in with a vague look on his face. Gregor immediately rose from his bench and went to the old monk.
         "It's late, brother," he said. "You should be in bed."
         The old man muttered in German about looking for some cheese.
         Connor slapped Duncan on the back. "Come, let's find you someplace to lay your weary head. The day starts very early around here."
         "How early?" Duncan asked warily.
         "Three a.m. early," Amanda said as they left the rectory.
         Gregor went off to see Brother Hans to his room, and came back to find Minette clearing the coffee cups from the long tables and rinsing them in the old cast-iron sink. Gregor helped her, working in silence, aware of her feelings for Jason. She no longer seemed mad at him, just withdrawn and afraid.
         "He'll do what he has to do," Gregor said finally. "It's his life and decision to make. You must trust in God."
         Minette sank slowly to a bench. "I don't. I never have. I'm sorry to say that to you."
         Gregor sat beside her and admitted. "There was a time I didn't either."
         "Do you think... " she started, then reworded her question. "Does God really forgive people every wrong they do?"
         "If they seek forgiveness, he gives it," Gregor answered.
         "What about to those people who are so awfully evil? Like the ones at Versailles. Like the one who nearly killed Holland in New Stans. How can God forgive them?"
         "I think God only sees the goodness in people. You could be a terrible person, done terrible things, but that's all invisible to God as long as there's one flicker of something good in your heart."
         Then, because he sensed a need, he asked, "Minette, is there something you want to confess?"
         Her face lit up with a small smile. "No, Gregor. There's nothing I want to confess. It's just that being around all of you makes me feel very young, and very ignorant. I haven't lived as long as you all have. I don't know that I ever will."
         Gregor patted her hands. "Trust God."
         Minette kissed his cheek and left the rectory.
         Alone, in her room, she sat on the edge of the bed and stared out at the howling storm. Jason, Richie, whoever - he was out there, alone and defenseless.
         Exactly as she needed.
         Minette activated her I-mail transceiver and sent a message down to Ris and Valery, waiting ever so patiently below.

         "I'm on planet X looking for a dweeb who wears this jacket and glasses and clucks like a chicken." Kurt Russell, about James Spader's character, in Stargate


         The Gethsemani monastery, whose foundations and oldest structures dated back a thousand years, had endured harsher winter storms than the one which descended that February of 2435. The sixty four Trappist monks and their handful of unique visitors dealt with the foul weather, drafty halls, and freezing rooms with general stoicism. One Immortal, however, was quite vocal with her opinion.
         "You can't even get a hot bath around here!" Amanda fumed in the second floor hall of the novice house.
         Connor watched her with crossed arms. It was just past Sext, almost twelve-thirty in the afternoon. They'd come back from another fruitless search for Jason and their dripping coats hung on wooden pegs downstairs.
         "Sure you can," Connor said reasonably. "Go cut down enough firewood for your own fire, haul in ten or twenty gallons of water from the well, heat the water, dump it into a tub, and throw yourself in. After all, Amanda, you were born in the ninth century. You remember life before indoor plumbing."
         Amanda fixed him with an unflinching gaze and crossed to stand just inches away. He became acutely aware of the smell of her, the fine lines around her eyes, the silky look of her hair. Her chest rose and fell with breath very close to his own.
         "You need to learn respect for your elders, MacLeod," she said.
         Connor didn't move an inch, for fear she'd misinterpret his slightest gesture. At the same time, a slow and delightful awareness spread through the pit of his stomach.
         "And what are you going to teach me?" he asked.
         Amanda seriously considered the question. Connor MacLeod simultaneously reminded her of everything she loved and hated about Duncan. But he was his own man, older than Duncan if just by a few decades, with a wildness of the highlands that had never been tamed, and a look in his eye that matched what she felt in her suddenly increased pulse.
         A smile spread across her face. "I'm not sure where to start."
         Connor leaned forward. "Let me show you," he suggested.
         Their lips brushed with the faintest electrical tingle.
         They both imagined certain possibilities.
         Then someone slammed the door downstairs, and Gregor came up.
         "Almost time for dinner," he said. If he noticed anything unusual in the sudden pink of Amanda's cheek or Connor's shifted stance, he said nothing. Dark circles rimmed Gregor's eyes, and Connor wondered if the Immortal monk had gotten any sleep at all.
         Gregor nodded his head towards Duncan's door at the end of the hall. "Are they still sleeping? Dom Stephan wants to meet them after we eat."
         "They'll get up," Connor predicted. He went to the door and pounded on the ancient oak. "Wake up, Duncan! You can't sleep away the entire day!"
         They all heard a thump, as if someone had fallen on the floor, and then came the sound of Duncan fervently swearing in Gaelic. A few seconds later the door was yanked open, and Duncan's head came out to glare at Connor. Duncan saw Amanda and Gregor and hastily shut the door. When it re-opened, he had a sheet around his body and a sheepish look on his face.
         "Sorry," Duncan said to Gregor. "The blasphemy was meant for Connor."
         "Get your clothes on," Connor told him. "You've got an appointment."
         "We're busy," Duncan retorted, but a few minutes later he and Holland both came out.
         Dinner was the largest meal of the monks' day, served on pewter plates in the rectory. Holland followed Connor and Duncan to a large bench against the wall, and took a seat on the smooth bench across from Amanda and Minette. The long, low room seemed larger in the daylight, and the white habits of the monks reflected back the diffused light of the stormy afternoon outside. A man whom Amanda whispered was Dom Stephan gave the signal to begin eating, and although there were a few whispered words, they ate the meal of fruits, bread, and hot soup in near complete silence.
         Afterwards, Dom Stephan and Duncan disappeared into the abbot's office for what seemed like a very long time. Restlessly shifting on the smooth wooden bench just down the passage, Holland said, "Duncan can't possible have *that much* to confess."
         Connor smiled. "It's probably not confession at all. When novitiates come to the order, they have the choice of taking a new name or not. Gregor kept his, but Dom Stephan used to be Angus Scott MacIntyre."
         Holland laughed.
         "Wherever I go," she said, "I keep running into Scottish men."
         Connor studied her profile. "Duncan loves you very much, you know."
         "Not as much as I love him," she said softly.
         "How long have you known each other? Four hundred years?"
         "Four hundred and forty, almost. He was there the night I died, the night he and Felicia rescued Richie from one of her old students." Holland picked at the ends of her fingernails. "I went off to train with Felicia, and eventually went out on my own. Over the centuries Duncan and I would run into each other, but it wasn't until about fifty years ago in Greece that we realized what we really felt."
         "What happened in Greece?"
         "We'd met by accident on Mykonos. He was there with a girlfriend from the University of Athens, where he was teaching. I was there with a boyfriend from London. We agreed to have lunch, just the two of us, by the water. When we got to the restaurant it was terrible crowded, and we got seated smack dab in the middle of a scorching terrace with no umbrella. The service couldn't have been any slower, and it was about ninety five degrees out. I could see Duncan getting madder and madder. Finally he stood up, picked up the table, carried it over the retaining wall into about twelve inches of Mediterranean, put the table down, fetched our chairs, and escorted me to our new seats. The waiter was incredibly mad, but the manager sent us champagne. All the other customers thought we were lovers. Later that night, we were."
         "What happened to his girlfriend and your boyfriend?"
         Holland smiled. "I guess it would be nice to say they hooked up together, but instead they didn't. I never knew what happened to them."
         The abbot's door opened. Dom Stephan and Duncan came out, sharing smiles. Dom Stephan was saying, "Stay out of trouble, Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod."
         "I will," Duncan promised.
         Holland went into her own interview with the abbot. Shaking his head, Duncan said, "I'm nearly nine hundred years old, and he's sixty, but sitting in there you would have sworn he thought he was my father."
         "Pity he's not one of us," Connor agreed.
         They went back to the novice house and practiced swords below the low rafters in Connor's attic space. The wind and rain still rattled the window and wooden eaves, but inside the two Highlanders quickly worked up a gleam of sweat beneath their loose shirts. Duncan thought Connor had grown more cautious with age. Connor thought Duncan was taking too many unnecessary risks.
         During a few minutes of rest, Connor remarked casually, "Did Dom Stephan tell you he thinks Jason is blessed?"
         Duncan gulped down some water. "He's not blessed."
         Connor shook his head. "I don't know. There's something about him. . . something different than any other Immortal I've ever seen. He never had it before he came here."
         Duncan sighed, his eyes focused on something Connor couldn't see. "A long time ago, when Richie was a young, he took a Quickening from a man who was unlike any other Immortal I'd ever met. The other Immortal was an Indian from somewhere in South America and I swear to you, Connor, he had the ability to control people's minds. He did it to Richie, and he did it to me."
         "A telepathic Immortal?" Connor snorted. "Try again."
         "I was there," Duncan said firmly. "You weren't. Listen to me. He could make young Immortals especially do what he wanted them to do. Only Methos seemed unaffected. Richie took Xan's head, but he's never showed any sign of having that same ability."
         "Is that why Methos values him so highly? Why he wants to take him to Sanctuary?"
         Duncan nodded. "If Richie has developed this new... talent, skill, curse, whatever.... Methos wants to know."
         "But he doesn't even remember who he is," Connor said. "Why does Methos believe he has this Xan person's ability?"
         "You'll think it's insane."
         "No more insane than the rest of it, Duncan. Trust me."
         "When we first found Richie, Methos and Ceirdwynn and I all felt... something. Something like an earthquake. Methos felt the same thing from Xan, all those centuries ago. And Richie was the epicenter."
         Connor waited until Duncan met his gaze. The older Immortal offered, "I haven't felt the ground shaking lately around here."
         Duncan shrugged. "Neither have I. But it was there, for a few seconds. And Methos believes whatever power Xan had, Richie has now."
         "But there's no Richie," Connor said, picking up his sword again. "Only Jason."
         They practiced until the bells of None at two p.m., and then stopped to listen to the monks' voices rise up into the churning storm. Gregor and Minette went out again, but came back empty handed. Amanda moped around, complaining of nothing to do in the monastery.
         Holland and Duncan lay in bed, side by side, but didn't make love.
         Connor cleaned his sword again.
         Gregor prayed.
         Vespers at five thirty brought no sign of Jason, and darkness came without any ease in the storm. Duncan didn't say anything, but Holland knew he was calculating, over and over in his head, exactly how long they could wait for Jason before they had to go on to their rendezvous with Methos. The storm wouldn't make their journey down the mountain any easier than the nightmare it had been coming up, and she could see the worry magnifying in his eyes.
         She decided to say a few prayers of her own, just in case God was listening.
         The last choir office of the day came at seven thirty p.m.. The Immortals took spots in the visitor's gallery in deference to Dom Stephan, whose wish it was they attend at least a few services. He was running an abbey, after all, not a hotel. Holland and Duncan stood with Connor, and Amanda and Minette stood behind them. Gregor helped them by laying out sheaves of paper that held that evening's psalms and readings.
         Duncan watched Gregor with pride. Whatever Gregor had made of his life, whatever choices he had made, his vocation obviously meant a great deal to him.
         Duncan whispered as much to Gregor. Gregor blushed, but Holland didn't miss the shy, pleased look in his eyes.
         Holland focused on the neatly arranged monks, ten rows of six men each, on the cross on the wall behind the alter, on the last traces of dusk out the narrow window. After a sharp knock by Dom Stephan they began singing in one perfectly harmonized voice, their words careful and precise. She realized they were not just singing, but instead talking. Talking to God, wherever he or she was, and expressing love more eloquently and tenderly than even Duncan did sometimes, in the sheets of the bed.
         She wasn't sure what they were singing about, but the blend of notes and words worked at something in her chest. She felt not an unpleasant jab but instead something softer, something dissolving, and as she pressed her eyes closed she thought of Felicia.
         Not the Felicia who'd suffered so badly at the hands of the SIDI in France. Not the Felicia who'd finally been beheaded by mortals who could never fathom the miracles of Quickenings. Not Felicia as she must have spent her last weeks, in agony and suffering, in a cell next to Richie, the two of them unable even to touch hands. But Felicia when she'd been young and strong and vibrant, teaching Holland the way of the world.
         Outside Phoenix, in the desert, as they studied the stars and the vastness of the Milky Way. In a filthy, snow-filled alley in Manhattan, as they went two against two with a pair of nasty European Immortals ought for rape and murder. Sailing around the Mediterranean, learning the language of rich sailors and exotic ports. The night Felicia had called her from Paris to say she and Richie were together again, for however long it lasted, because every once in awhile it was good to have an old lover to fall back on.
         Two weeks later, Richie and Felicia were in the hands of the SIDI.
         Weeks after that, Felicia was gone.
         But now she appeared before Holland, her face alight with laughter and strength, and there was no pain, no agony, no fear. "Hey, there," she seemed to be saying. "Come on, Holland, don't grieve for me. I had the best life I could ever have hoped for."
         Holland closed her eyes, feeling wetness leaking out. Duncan gripped her hand and whispered something, but she didn't answer.
         Then they felt the song of another Immortal.
         Jason.
         He stood in the back of the chapel, perfectly still in the archway, his hands loose by his sides, his eyes fixed on Dom Stephan. His clothes had been ripped and shredded in several places. His skin bore no bruises, but layers of dried blood and smeared dirt. He was still wet from the rain, and must have been freezing cold, but his body was perfectly still and relaxed.
         Duncan motioned urgently to Connor. Connor turned, and Amanda and Minette followed.
         Jason didn't even look at them. Instead he turned and left.
         Duncan made an instant move to follow, but Connor shook his head with a glance towards Dom Stephan. It would be disrespectful to tear out of the service. Connor's warning glance barely contained Amanda and Minette, but in the end the five Immortals kept their places until the very last word of the office.
         With Gregor barely keeping pace behind them, they followed the twisting passage behind the chapel to the rectory and found Jason sitting at a long table with three plates of food, two tankards of drink, and half a sandwich sticking out of his mouth. Duncan stopped short. As sharply as if he'd been kicked in the shins, he remembered the first time he and Tessa had taken seventeen year old Richie Ryan out to McDonald's for lunch, and the kid had wolfed down three Big Macs, two large fries, and an extra large soda.
         The kid was gone. But the four hundred and forty three year old man in front of them dislodged the sandwich from his mouth and waved apologetically at them with hands full of bread.
         "Sorry, I know it's against the rules, but I'm starving," he said. "If Dom Stephan wants to make me say forty Hail Marys, I'll take it. And I'll take another sandwich, too. The food here has never been really good, you know, but at least they have a lot of it."
         Duncan merely gaped.
         It was Connor who stepped forward and said, "Richie?"
         "Yeah," he said. Richie stood and took a step towards them. His clothes truly were a mess, and more than anything he needed a bath, but he stood in front of them like a ghost returned to human form. He gave a very small smile. "It was a close call, but yeah. I'm Richie."
         Then he focused exclusively on Duncan, who had been one of three who'd risked so much to drag him out of Versailles and give him a chance at life again.
         "Hey, Mac," he said.
         Duncan found that he couldn't breathe. That he couldn't really think, either. That the only thing he could do was take a step forward, and put his arms around his one-time student and ward, and hold him tightly against a rush of relief and joy.
         "Hey, tough guy," he managed, before tears blurred his vision.

         St Jerome - the patron saint of librarians and scholars. St. Jerome is probably the correct saint to pray to when your computer seems to have evaporated a 25,000-word manuscript. Warning: Parts 7 & 8 do have violence, death, some horror, maybe an obscenity or two.


         The Immortals in the rectory were all talking, and laughing, and rushing over one another to give hugs and kisses, congratulations and jokes, when Dom Stephan poked in his head.
         "I see the lost lamb has returned," he said.
         They immediately sobered. Richie, who remembered everything Jason knew, said quietly, "Hello, Dom Stephan."
         Dom Stephan considered him carefully. "Hello, Mr. Ryan. Welcome to Gethsemani." To the others he said, "Please keep it down."
         Then, with a wink, he was gone.
         "Scots everywhere," Holland said, which made Connor start laughing all over again.
         In deference to Richie's appetite they sat around the table and watched him quickly demolish several plates of leftovers. In between bites, he told them as much as they needed to know.
         "I think the dam was trying to break for a long time," he admitted. "Seeing Amanda yesterday just made it go faster. It was all so... overwhelming. Four hundred years in four seconds. Everything I'd ever done, everyone I'd ever known or loved... " For a moment his voice shook, and he gulped down more water. When he looked up, he fixed Duncan with a profound look of gratitude.
         "Thanks," he said. "For having faith in me. For rescuing whatever was left of me."
         Duncan couldn't answer. Holland squeezed his hands.
         "I went out to the mountain because I wasn't sure I wanted to be me, anymore," Richie went on, swallowing several large pieces of bread. "I thought if I tried hard enough, I could just become Jason again, and not have to deal with any of the crap."
         "Do you think it would have worked?" Connor asked quietly.
         Richie nodded. "Yeah. I think it would have. Until the next time the dam broke."
         After several more minutes of gorging himself, during which time Duncan began to feel the need for an antacid, Richie finally sagged back in his chair. "I'm beat," he announced. "I hate to be the party-pooper, but I might just fall asleep here if you guys will clear a spot."
         They agreed it would be better for Richie to sleep in his room, for them all, in fact, to go to bed, and after numerous good-nights only Richie, Duncan and Gregor were left in the rectory. Richie motioned for Duncan to go on for a minute. Gregor, who'd been very quiet, busied himself with cleaning up the dishes and plates.
         "You know," Richie said conversationally, "you were the first one who ever hinted that I would be an Immortal someday."
         Gregor's heart started racing. He put the dish he'd been lifting back on the table. "Was I?"
         "We were walking by the waterfront. You were this up and coming photographer with all the nasty pictures, and I was just a punk kid hanging around MacLeod and Tessa. You knew then what I would become."
         Gregor flushed slightly. "Yes. I did."
         "But you didn't tell me. Duncan, Connor, you, Darius, I don't know who else - you all knew, but you didn't tell me."
         "I almost did," Gregor admitted. "But it would have been wrong. You had to live your life as a mortal first - grow old, have a chance at a real life first."
         "It didn't happen," Richie said. "I was killed just a short time later."
         Gregor didn't answer for a moment. Then, gingerly, he offered, "I did other things besides walk on the waterfront with you."
         "That's right. I remember a certain bike stunt. I remember you coming by the shop, and being a little upset."
         Gregor turned away from him. "I was more than a little upset, Richie. I nearly killed you."
         "Scared the shit out of me," Richie agreed softly.
         "Can you forgive me?"
         "Forgive you?" Richie asked incredulously. He put his hands on Gregor's shoulders and turned him back. "For four years, you've been the only thing holding Jason Sanger to earth. You cared for him - for me- from the very day MacLeod and Methos carried me in here. Of course I forgive you. I owe you everything."
         With those words Richie folded Gregor to his chest and held him tight against the guilt that finally spilled over from the monk's eyes.
         After Gregor had been comforted and sent to bed for well-deserved rest, Richie and Duncan climbed to the top of the stairs and to Richie's room. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, they uncorked the bottle of wine that Connor had smuggled to Duncan from the infirmarian, who swore it was only used for medicinal purposes.
         Over four hundred years of common adventures and tragedies came back to life between them, a product of wine, the late hour, the slush of freezing rain against the windows, the warmth inside, the love of old friends.
         They talked about Tessa and Seacouver, of Richie's pre-Immortal days. Of Paris and Darius, then later Maurice. Kirstin, who'd nearly come between them. Methos, the most ancient of all the Immortals, and his fondness for cheap beer. Joe Dawson, who'd died at the age of eighty with a blues guitar in his wrinkled old hands. Mako, who'd been Richie's first Quickening.
         And although Richie was tired to the very center of his bones, he insisted on hearing everything that had happened since Versailles.
         Duncan told him the Free Wave movement had become more and more widespread, with even greater tragedies in its wake. The dictatorships in the world, straining under the burden of overpopulation and environmental collapse, struck down harder and harder on the Free Wave protesters who called for the return of democracy and civil rights.
         SIDI was growing worse in their blatant attacks on Immortals. Richie and Felicia hadn't been the first to fall under their evil.
         Richie's eyes shadowed at the mention of Felicia, but he didn't flinch away from her memory.
         "She fought them until the very end," he said softly. "Cursing them, giving them hell, making them earn every single inch of ground. I caved in long before she did."
         "You survived," Duncan said, laying his hand on Richie's arm. "That's what matters. You're here, and we're leaving, and we're going to Sanctuary."
         Richie shook his head. "I'm going with you, Mac, but only to tell Methos I don't agree with his ideas."
         "What do you mean, you don't agree?"
         "Running away isn't going to help anything," Richie said flatly. "That's what he's doing. That's what you're all doing. Sure, the world is a mess, but we're the ones who can help it get back on track. We're the ones who have the knowledge and the experience."
         Duncan scowled. "We're the ones they hunt and destroy, Richie. Just like the Hunters used to. But we can outlive them. We go away for awhile, we wait. Time is the only thing we have. And then they'll be gone."
         "And how many innocent mortals will die in the meantime?"
         Duncan upturned the empty wine bottle. "I don't want to fight, Richie."
         "We're not fighting," Richie said firmly. "We're just not agreeing. You taught me that was okay."
         Duncan smiled. "Yeah, it's okay. Tough guy. Welcome back."
         "Good to be back," Richie said, from under another hug.
         When MacLeod was finally gone, Richie sank down on his bed without even bothering to get out of his filthy clothes. He could easily have slept for a week. But a knock on his door disturbed him almost immediately.
         It was Amanda, carrying a large bucket of steaming water, a washrag over her shoulder, and a smaller empty basin.
         "I figured you could use this," she said.
         Richie eyed the hot, soapy water. Suddenly he wasn't as tired as he thought he was. "That's for me?"
         "Welcome home present," Amanda said. "Take off your shirt."
         Although it was cold in the room he did as instructed, and she seated him on the low wooden bench. By candlelight she soaked the rag into the water, then began a gentle scrub of his filthy back. Richie relaxed beneath her firm movements, his mind pleasantly blank, his stomach full for the first time in three days. He hadn't had enough wine to make him feel more than slightly heady, but the smell and closeness of Amanda was an intoxication of a different sort.
         Amanda moved to his chest. She wouldn't meet his gaze, and seemed enormously absorbed in her work.
         "Why are you doing this?" he finally asked.
         She said, "Why not?"
         Then, a short time later, she asked, "Why was it the sight of me brought your memory back?"
         Richie hesitated, then said slowly, "I remember standing on top of Mac's barge in Paris, soon after we met at the circus. You came out to talk to him. The way you looked at me, the way you said my name... I don't know. I guess I fell in love with you."
         The soft glide of the rag and the soothing hot water across his stomach stopped as Amanda lifted her eyes to him. "You did?"
         Richie didn't look away. "I was an eighteen year old kid in Paris, Amanda, and you were absolutely gorgeous.
         Then, softly, he added, "You still are."
         "But you're not eighteen years old anymore," she said, just as softly.
         Then her hands moved down.
         "Take off your pants," she said.
         "Why don't you do it for me?" he asked.
         So she did.
         Sometime in the next few hours, as their bodies met and joined in the ancient room high in the storm, as they filled each other's emptiness with genuine warmth and giving, as he taught her he was still young and she taught him what experience will bring, he might have murmured, "Felicia."
         She might have murmured, "Tristan."
         But it didn't matter.


                                                    ***


         The storm held through the next afternoon.
         Richie and Amanda didn't emerge from Richie's room. Holland brought them food, and came back with a grin on her face. Duncan tried to feel some jealousy about Amanda, but couldn't. Holland was the only one whose sexual activities mattered to him, and during the long, languid afternoon they explored an infinite variety of ways to please each other.
         Connor cleaned his sword again.
         Gregor did whatever monks did on stormy days.
         Minette moped.
         Sometime before the bells of Vespers, at perhaps five o'clock, Amanda emerged from Richie's room with a bucket of cold water in her hands. She went back to her own room, feeling delighted and exhausted and whole. The rain had stopped, and she thought she could see blue beginning to poke its way through the eastern skies.
         Minette came by a short time later.
         "Can we take a walk?" the younger Immortal asked, her face flushed. "I want to talk to you about... Jason. Richie."
         Amanda contained a sigh. The young could be very possessive, sometimes, and she should have remembered Minette's obvious infatuation. "All right," she said. "If you'd like to."
         "Yes, please. There's a path that winds around the woods. We can have some privacy."
         Amanda nodded and grabbed her coat.
         Minette took her down the path in the falling darkness, and delivered her into Ris' waiting hands.
         She never stood a chance.


                                                    ***


         Duncan was laying in bed with Holland, tracing lazy circles on the bare skin of her back, when the western sky lit up with lightning.
         "That's funny," Holland said, her voice half-muffled in the pillow. "I thought the storm was over."
         He sat up. Bolts of white ran up into the sky.
         "That's not lightning," he said, as a cold saber ran its way through his gut. He grabbed his boots and pants. "That's a Quickening."
         He flung open his door, shouting Connor's name. But there was no answer.
         He and Holland were halfway out the door of the novice house when the carpentry shop erupted into a fireball of hungry, searing flame. A few seconds later, something blew out the windows of the two floors of the main building. The explosions threw both of them to the mud. Duncan staggered to his feet and hauled Holland upright.
         "Someone's bombing us!" she shouted.
         "Trying to get us off holy ground!" Duncan yelled back. No rain came now, to drench the flames. Instead, a full moon was clearing out from a bank of clouds, and the fire went unchecked. "Find the others and get them to safety!"
         "Like hell I will!" she shouted.
         The novice house roof went up into a volcano of flame and shattered debris.
         They ran out the gate and down the path to where the Quickening was ending. Duncan could feel the song of at least two other Immortals, but as he burst through the brush he saw only one. He saw Ris, his arms outstretched to the sky, standing above the bloodied heap of someone who'd lost his or her head.
         He began to realize with the edge of a dull knife dragging across his mind that something huge and horrible and irrevocable had happened.
         He tried to close his eyes but couldn't. He tried to blot out the vision before him, but knew instantly that he would carry it to the end of his Immortal life.
         Amanda's head, six feet from her neck. Her eyes, wide with surprise. Her dead gaze, on something MacLeod couldn't see.
         A churning rage exploded up from his bowels into his chest, his arms, his sword. But he controlled it. He controlled it with every ounce of strength he had, because it would do absolutely no good to go insane just yet.
         "My God," Holland whispered. "Oh, dear Lord."
         "She couldn't fight worth a damn," Ris smiled.
         Duncan could barely see but for the crimson waves dancing before his eyes. Without taking his eyes off Ris, in a voice shaking with fury, he growled, "Holland, go back. This is between us."
         Holland backed away on the path. Then she realized she too was blocked. By Minette, who was gently laying aside the remote control for the bombs which she'd planted around the monastery and drawing her own sword.
         "You'll be dead in a few seconds, too," Minette said. "I'm sorry, Holland. But this is the way it was meant to be."
         Holland heard the first clash of steel between Duncan and Ris. She realized, in an instant, that Minette must have lured Amanda out to her death. Amanda had been sixteen hundred years old, she'd known better, she should have been more careful -
         Holland took a deep breath to steady herself against the burning in her chest and eyes.
         She drew her own sword.
         She'd had the best teachers an Immortal could ask for, including Amanda.
         "We'll see who dies first," Holland said, clearly and coldly, and threw herself into battle.


                                                    ***


         Connor had been in with Dom Stephan when the first bomb went off in the courtyard. He hadn't even noticed lightning to the west, and had no idea that Amanda lay dead and lifeless at Ris' feet. A few seconds later something exploded above him, sending dusty shaking in the abbot's office, and Connor thought instantly of Richie on the top floor.
         "What is it?" Dom Stephan asked. "What's going on?"
         "You have to get everyone out," Connor ordered, dashing for the stairs. "Find Gregor. He'll protect you."
         The monastery walls and floors were stone, but the roof had been rebuilt through the years and was as vulnerable as the flammable furnishings in most of the chambers and cells. Flames were already licking down the fourth floor tapestries as Connor raced up to the top floor. Half of it had been ripped open to the sky, and the night air poured in. He pushed past blazing rugs and benches to Richie's room, which had been only a few rooms away from the blast.
         Richie's bed had flipped over, and his trapped corpse lay burning beneath the sheets and covers. Connor grabbed a smoldering blanket, used it to smother the flames, and then wrapped Richie into it and up into a fireman's carry. Going down the stairs put him in a haze of thick black smoke that choked Connor's lungs and nearly sent him spiraling into nothingness.
         He felt the buzz of another Immortal, but held off shouting for help. Someone had set the bombs. Someone wanted Richie dead, if not actually beheaded.
         "Connor!" a voice shouted. A desperate, hacking voice. Gregor.
         "Here!" the Highlander yelled, and stumbled against the monk in the thick, oily blackness. Choking and gasping, Gregor led him through the maze-like floor plan until they stumbled into the outside air. Dom Stephan and several of the more able-bodied monks were fighting a doomed battle with water buckets to save the novice house. The older brothers lay gasping and shivering in the courtyard mud, their frightened faces reflecting back the horrid destruction of their home. Some were praying, but as Connor eased Richie's corpse into the mud, prayer was the last thing on his mind.
         He felt another Immortal. Immediately he lurched to his feet, sword in hand. The burning of his lungs was easing, the burns on his hands healing. He squinted against the flames, seeking his quarry, and then turned to focus on a man standing outside the gate.
         A man with a sword. A man with a smile.
         "Connor MacLeod," he said grandly. "My name is Valery Constantine. I've come for your head."
         Connor felt within him the wild call to battle that had forged his life in the Highlands. A glorious and awful surge of blood red thunder roared in his ears.
         "Then try and take it," he said.

         When the deepest part of you becomes engaged in what it is doing, when your activities and actions become gratifying and purposeful, when what you do serves both yourself and others, when you do not tire within but seek the sweet satisfaction of your life and your work, you are doing what you were meant to be doing." - Gary Zukov, "The Seat of the Soul." Sandra: Writing Highlander fiction works for me! Warning: violence, language and a small hint of games Duncan plays in bed!


         Who wants to live forever?
         Amanda and Rebecca, dressed as men, strolling through a French marketplace of the seventeenth century. She'd lifted his purse from his pocket with an astonishing deftness. Amanda, hanging in a harness in a dead-silent museum as she prepared to liberate yet another treasure for her own personal gain. Amanda, in his bed, her eyes devilish as she tormented his trapped body with toys and tickles and a number of creative ideas.
         Amanda, gone forever.
         She'd had a special way of looking at him that sent his heart hammering against his ribs every single time. A look that told him she knew all his secrets, all the way to the bottom of his soul, and loved him just the same. A look that threw caution to the wind and could have charmed the devil into doing her beck and call.
         Amanda, dead, and this bastard had taken her head.
         These thoughts of Amanda nearly got Duncan killed as he threw himself at Ris with a flurry of swipes and blows released in wild anguish. Ris easily parried the inaccurate, ineffective thrusts. Duncan cried out his anger with sounds that meant nothing in any language but the heart. He knew nothing but a red haze of fury, a fresh outpouring of hate, the need to annihilate the enemy in front of him.
         Ris sliced him across the right shoulder. Duncan recoiled, reason coming back to him a bit, and then he brought over eight hundred years of training and practice to the moment. He parried the next blow, retreated again, thrusted, advanced, caught Ris off guard, feel back.
         He could hear more blades clashing behind him, the sounds of the women fighting, but couldn't turn to see if Holland needed help. She was as good a swordfighter as most, but had no natural instinct or flair for it the way Duncan, Connor and Richie did.
         The way Amanda had. And Amanda was dead.
         Duncan was the one who needed help. Ris was the best enemy he'd ever faced. They battled across the clearing, up the path, back down again - slipping in the mud, lost a little in the darkness, but focused on destruction all the same.
         He heard a woman's death cry. Saw, out of the corner of his vision, the lightning return with supernatural force. It jumped tree to tree, rolled through the earth, leapt towards the moon.
         A woman's cry.
         The anguish and joy of the most wild thing Duncan knew, a Quickening.
         But who was taking it? Minette or Holland? Would he walk away from this battle to find both women he loved dead on the ground?
         Duncan threw himself against Ris. Their swords arced with power.
         A woman fell to her knees behind them.


                                                    ***


         Gregor's whole world was coming down around him. The burning monastery, the injured brothers, the horrible weeping of Dom Stephan as their best efforts failed. Richie, dead at his knees. And, in the mud beyond the gate, the last stand of Connor MacLeod against the force of evil that had brought them all to this ruinous moment.
         Connor fought with every bit of strength he owned, refusing to believe he could be beaten. His hands went numb, and sweat made it desperately hard to hold onto the grip of his sword. His shoulders failed to lift fast and high enough. His breath came roughly as iron bands tightened around his chest and stomach, driving redness into his brain.
         Ris had been good. This man, this Valery Constantine, was ten times better.
         Gregor watched helplessly, knowing that even if the rules of the Game allowed him to team up with Connor against this monster, he could not do it. He'd taken an oath to God that transcended his needs as an Immortal. He could not serve both the holy and the murderous at the same time. It had been decades since he'd lifted a sword, and any skill he might have once used in his battle against Duncan on a hospital roof in the twentieth century was far too rusty to be of any use anyway.
         Sweat blinded Connor's vision. Valery danced in and out of focus.
         "You've been a thorn long enough," Valery told him, mocking him, his voice betraying no effort or fatigue. "You killed my most prized champion, the Kurgan. You cut him down in the best years of his life."
         Connor could barely remember now the fight that Valery meant. He was too busy trying to stay alive to relive old victories. Every second beneath Valery's hammering blows was a triumph. He'd landed maybe two blows that meant anything, and Valery had already healed. Connor himself was not wounded, not yet, but he was fatiguing fast. Already his legs were like tree stumps as he dragged them through the endless mud, and his arms could barely lift the sword.
         Who wants to live forever?
         He'd practiced for centuries. He'd taken the heads of hundreds of men and women. He'd never grown so cocky as to believe there wouldn't come a day when he would fail, but the actual realization that the day had finally come sent ice running through his veins.
         He'd tried his best, there was no doubt about it. If Valery was stronger, faster, better, then there could be no shame in it.
         Connor dragged up everything he was and danced forward into a blow that should have knocked Valery's head straight off the mountain.
         Valery stopped it. Spun it out, so that Connor's sword arched away into the trees. With a swift, vicious cut he slashed down, nearly severing Connor's legs, sending the Highlander to his knees.
         Who wants to live forever, anyway.
         The last thing Connor saw as Valery's sword came around to cut off his head was Heather's face.


                                                    ***


         Duncan was losing.
         Ris had gone for a tiny opening that shouldn't have been there, that Duncan had somehow overlooked. The resulting rip of flesh and blood and bits of rib out of his side sent Duncan gasping to the ground. Discipline held him where his body did not, and somehow he lurched upward to avoid a downward blow that would have at the very least severed his shoulder. But Ris kept at him. Blood welled across Duncan's forehead, blinding him in one eye. Sweat and blood down his arms made it hard to keep the katana from turning beneath his tingling fingers. A jab to his right thigh brought an excruciating bolt of pain that went straight to the base of Duncan's skull, and he might have cried out his torment.
         "Give me what's mine," Ris snarled at him. "Your head."
         Duncan left knee went out from under him. He rolled with the pain, trying to get by Ris, but Ris caught him with the edge of his boots and smashed two ribs. Only instinct brought up Duncan's sword, and he did so with a last minute desperation that barely, just barely, saved his head.
         "You're pathetically bad, you know that?" Ris asked.
         "And you talk too much," Duncan gasped, dragging himself upright.
         Their swords clashed in a flurry of action. Paused. Clashed again.
         Whosever Quickening had just been taken behind them died to small flames in some of the trees, and an unnatural stillness that tore at Duncan's heart.
         He tried to drag more air into his aching chest, but no air would come and give him strength. He tried every trick he knew, but Ris countered with a grim, sweating, straining superiority.
         Until one misstep.
         Until Duncan lost his balance, went down.
         Ris tried to drive his sword through Duncan's stomach.
         Duncan drove up first, instead, impaling him, seeing his face change from obvious triumph to stark terror. Blood from Ris' mouth splattered down on him. Duncan kicked him away, heaved back on his sword, and then growled, "This is for Amanda."
         He swung around the sword.
         And when Ris' Quickening had finished blasting through him, he found himself laying on the ground beneath a full moon, the sky clear and starry above, the mud cool and soothing to his cheek, and Holland was holding his head and crying and laughing at the same time.
         Exuberant and flushed with the rush of power into their bodies, they held each other for a long, impassioned moment. Then they remembered Amanda, and broke apart to stare at her body with shared tears.
         Then another Quickening lit the sky.
         Duncan dropped his sword. He'd never done that before in his life - just dropped it, left it, abandoned it. The katana meant too much to him for such casual indifference. But he dropped it, and scrambled up the steep slope back towards the monastery.
         The Quickening was done by the time he reached the gate.
         The one who'd taken the Quickening had vanished back into the woods.
         Only the body of a fallen warrior remained, in the mud, his body still warm, his neck still pulsing blood, his head far from where it should be, his eyes closed, his expression at long last peaceful.
         Connor MacLeod of the clan MacLeod lay dead.
         "No," Duncan heard someone say. Whoever was saying it repeated it. Whoever was saying it broke into a howl of denial that reached up to heaven and yanked on God's ear and poured out an anguished explosion of grief.
         His knees went out. He stumbled forward. His hands found the head, and he clutched it to his chest weeping as if all the world were lost, which it was, and if there were no justice or kindness or life left in the world, which there wasn't.
         "Connor, no," someone cried, over and over, and the small, icy, rational part of Duncan that still seemed to function wondered who could be wailing like that. He would have looked, but his eyes didn't seem to be working. The rain had returned - hot, scalding, burning, acid-like rain, washing down his face, searing through his heart, boiling through his stomach.
         Cooling blood drenched his hands. He rocked, back and forth, as if rocking could do anything, as if anything could ever be fixed again.
         Someone was calling his name. Calling Duncan MacLeod back from the land of the dead. A woman's voice. But not Amanda, because she too was dead, her beautiful body back somewhere in the mud, her head gone like Connor's, but she'd never even stood a chance because Minette had tied her hands behind her back and put her on her knees and let Ris take a swing at her just for fun. Sixteen hundred years gone, just for fun.
         "Connor, no," he whispered, his throat raw. It couldn't be true. This couldn't be the end. If he put Connor's head back on his neck, perhaps, then he would heal and be whole again, would rise to his feet, would fix Duncan with his small ironic smile and serious eyes, and they would go back to the Highlands together, they would go home.
         He began crawling with Connor's head.
         Hands and voices tried to stop him.
         "Duncan, no!" Holland said. "Please, Duncan, stop!"
         He pushed her aside blindly. Connor's body lay crumpled; he straightened it out, arranging his lax arms and legs. Horrible cuts marked the corpse. The glimmer of bone beneath flesh stopped him for just a moment. Connor wasn't healing yet. Well, of course not. He didn't have his head. Duncan had to put it back on.
         The hands again, trying to stop him.
         "Get back!" he shouted at them.
         They backed away. Duncan took Connor's head and put it down on the ground, carefully aligning with the neck, and he made sure the jagged flesh was wedged precisely together despite the fact he still couldn't see very clearly, and he sat back to draw his knees to his chest and sit in vigil.
         Connor would need a friend when he woke up.
         "Oh, Duncan," someone was saying, but he didn't know if it were Holland, or Gregor, or Richie. All he knew was that he would sit there forever, so that he and Connor go could back to the Highlands together.
         He was still sitting there when the sun rose over the Alps the next morning.
         Only when he saw at sunrise that Connor was truly dead did he realize that Richie and Holland had sat with him all night. He let them take him inside, into the ruins of Gethsemani. He was confused, so very confused, and very tired, and the sun played a trick on his eyes. Because at the gate he looked back, to where Connor still lay peacefully, as if napping in the morning light, and swore that he saw Connor and Amanda and Tessa in the trees, watching him.
         Tessa in a white dress. Amanda, with her brightest smile. Connor, his sword in his hand, his kilt straight and crisp with the MacLeod colors.
         Duncan raised his hand to say farewell.
         But then the light shifted and they were gone.


                                                    ***


         Gregor didn't go with them.
         He said his job was still at the monastery, which needed extensive repair work. With his injured brothers, who'd suffered so badly that night of the Quickenings. With the graves of Amanda and Connor, who'd been buried on holy ground so that they could rest easily for the rest of time.
         They went to Methos, and with Methos to Sanctuary. Even Richie, whose grief over Amanda made him change his mind about staying to fight the battles of the world. Gregor knew that Richie would be all right. He worried more about Duncan, who seemed crushed by Connor's death, but only time could heal that wound.
         Gregor hadn't been able to identify the man who took Connor's Quickening, but when the man walked into Gethsemani a week later, the monk's heart turned to ice.
         "So you remember me," the man said, in the courtyard.
         Gregor didn't answer. His first thought was for the safety of his sixty three brothers. His second was that if the man intended to take his head, it would be a very short fight.
         "What do you want?" Gregor asked.
         "Where have they gone to?"
         "Who?"
         "Don't patronize me. Methos, MacLeod, Jason Sanger. The whole pathetic group."
         "Away," Gregor answered truthfully. "I don't know where."
         Valery took a careful look around the courtyard and monastery. "I think you do."
         "You're wrong," Gregor said bravely. "They didn't tell me, and I didn't ask."
         "MacLeod and his woman killed two of my colleagues," Valery said, sounding calm and strong, like an iron fist under a silk glove.
         "In self-defense. And you killed Connor MacLeod. When does it all stop?"
         "With the Prize," Valery answered, as if it should be perfectly obvious to him. Again, he took a long look around the compound and monastery.
         "There's nothing for you here," Gregor insisted, as fear dried his throat.
         "There's you. Come away with me. You may have some passing skills in swordsmanship. I might find you useful."
         Gregor shook his head. "No."
         "You still don't know who I am, do you?" Valery asked.
         "No."
         Valery took out his wallet. He displayed his credentials in a sharp three-d hologram that spun lazily in the sunlight and fresh breeze.
         Gregor paled, but didn't run. He became aware of Dom Stephan in the doorway, praying.
         "You'll have to come and take me," he said. "Or take my head now. I'm not leaving."
         "Stupid man," Valery said, disapprovingly. "You know what we did to Richie Ryan and Felicia Martins."
         He went to the gate.
         "By the way," he offered, "I know Richie Ryan and Jason Sanger are the same person. I don't know why that's important, but you might. And wherever Methos has taken him, I'll find him. I'll find them all. And I'll cut them down, the same way I cut down Connor MacLeod."
         Gregor didn't answer.
         That night, he told the monks to leave. But they didn't. Instead, all sixty four brothers stayed up through the night, singing to God, praying, holding mass. When the airpods commanded by Valery Constantine's forces arrived the next morning with warrants and weapons, Gregor went peacefully.
         He was a thousand feet up in the sky when he saw the SIDI officers open fire on the monks below, slaughtering every one.
         He himself died several months later, as a prisoner at Versailles, and there was no one to take his Quickening.
         Another triumph for the Special Investigations Division, Interpol (SIDI) Taskforce on Immortals.


                                                    ***


         Connor woke in the sweet green grass of the Highlands. "Come on, brother," a voice was saying merrily. "You don't want to be late."
         A woman's voice said, "How can you be late for the end of time?"
         He sat up with a gasp for air. Ramirez was sitting on a rock beside him, polishing his sword. Amanda had her arms folded across her chest. "Well, it's about time," she said, although her voice was kind and a smile played around her face.
         "Where are we?" Connor demanded.
         "The Gathering," Ramirez said, and lent him a hand. "Up you go."
         Connor knew the place the minute he was upright. "This is the home of the MacLeods," he said in awe.
         "If that's what you think," Ramirez said agreeably. "Come on."
         The Spaniard set off across the grass. Connor took a moment to examine himself. No wounds or traces of wounds. He put his hands to his neck, and realized Amanda was shaking her head.
         "Don't even ask," she warned. "I just got here myself. Get the feeling you've recently been separated from your head?"
         Connor frowned, although the thought brought no pain or specific memory. "Maybe."
         "Me, too," Amanda said, and set off after Ramirez.
         The summer sun felt warm and life-giving on Connor's face and arms. He could smell the sea on the air, and if he strained hard enough he could hear music on the wind. Or maybe that was Ramirez, whistling as he set the pace. They came to a plain where the sunlight seemed more golden than yellow, and the sky changed to lovely hues of rose and purple, and thousands of men and women stood shimmering in the a breeze that came from nowhere and went nowhere.
         He saw many of his old Immortal friends there, good men and women who'd lost their heads. And he saw many of his own enemies - the Kurgan, Slan Quince - although, when he looked at them, he couldn't remember why they'd been bad or why he'd hated them. He felt only goodness radiating from them, and when they looked upon him there was no more malice in their eyes.
         "Where are we?" he asked Ramirez.
         "Look," his mentor said grandly. "This is what we're all here for."
         Connor gazed past the sea of Immortals through a different shimmering, and focused on a scorched, barren plain. Three Immortals stood there - the two who would fight for the Prize, and the third who would judge them.
         "This is it?" he asked Ramirez.
         "This is it. The Prize awaits."
         The battle was fought.
         An Immortal won.
         And when it was through, Connor went back through the grass to the home he'd once built, where Heather saw him, smiled, and came running to his arms to stay forever.

         Author's End Notes:
         Coming soon... "The Heat of the Sun" - Hundreds of years have passed since Methos led his fellow Immortals to Sanctuary. While world civilizations collapse outside, inside pressures build... Richie deals with startling reminders of Versailles in his quest for love, Duncan and Holland struggle as parents, and Ceirdwynn tries to hold the Immortals together. Meanwhile, Methos is beginning to remember his very early days as an Immortal... and having visions of a scorched, barren plain where the final battle for the Prize will be fought... (P.S. Also includes Joe Dawson!) "Come to Dust" - The world has been reduced to ashes. And the last Immortals on the planet square off for the Prize...

         Credits:
         The excellent book "Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappist Monks Today" by Frank Bianco served as source material for most of the monastery information. The series of choirs/hours is Vigils (3 a.m), Lauds (5:30 a.m.), Tierce (8 a.m.), Sext (noon), None (2 p.m.)Vespers (5:30 p.m.) and Compline (7:30 p.m.). The real monastery called Gethsemani is in Kentucky. If you climb the Stanserhorn today, you ride by train and funicular to a very popular tourist spot and can take your picture where I took mine - at 6,300 feet. The story about the restaurant couple served in the sea is from a Reader's Digest excerpt by, I believe, Robert Fulgham. Disclaimers: So you think I wanted Connor to die? I honestly wept... I didn't make up that rule, remember. . .and I'll dearly miss Amanda in this arc of stories.

         Notes:
         Writing this was like a marathon - 25,000 words in 4 days. Thank you to Janette92 for proofreading and putting up with two days (what an enormous amount of cybertime!) of cliffhanging. I didn't want to turn this into a sci-fi story so used terms and technology just for show... I-mail is the successor to e-mail, but I don't know what it is either. I never intended to go back and show what happened at Versailles because 1. it's way too horrible and 2. I thought I'd give Richie and Felicia some privacy.

         Thanks to Rachel Shelton at rjsheltnAtol.net for forwarding stories - my bill has gone way down! Wendy Kelley at ladyslvrAxmission.com has generously offered ftp space and hopefully we'll get the stories up there soon. Thanks also to Lisa Krakowka at hck1Acornell.edu for putting stories on her page, and to Janine Shahinain for her wonderful support. (I feel like I'm at the Oscars now, I'll speed this up!) !

         As for when "Heat of the Sun" and "Come to Dust" will be posted - I can't do back-to-back marathons like this, I'm going on 10 days of leave to find a house to buy, I'm moving myself, my stuff and two cats to Connecticut, I'm going to SyndiCon and I'm starting a new job. All within the next six weeks. So, I don't know. Something with only three or four parts would be nice. Right now, Richie is tapping on my shoulder to tell me how after he left France in "Testimony" he wound up in a deserted Washington D.C. airport and had to take Special Agent Dana Scully hostage... and Tessa wants me to tell about the time she, Duncan and Richie got involved with some unsavory criminals in London...so we'll see.

         And I want to thank each and every person who has ever written me. If I haven't written back, it's purely an oversight, and I apologize. I deeply and sincerely appreciate reader comments because, although I write for myself, it can get lonely sitting at a computer for hours on end... and you all are a great motivation and inspiration. Sincerely, Sandra (not of the clan MacDonald, but of the tribe sitting around Kelly's Bar on St. Patrick's Day)