| |
|
Share the disater
Sandra McDonald
Author's Notes:
This is the second in a three part story arc leading to the final Gathering. Reading Lay Down Your Sword, Epicenter, Seeds and You Break It (etc) helps but is not absolutely necessary. Criticism, complaints, errors, etc to me - thanks!
- 1 -
Methos flung himself into the river gorge.
First he hacked his way through miles of lush jungle, the bright sun muted to green by the canopy of trees above. He was the only person around for miles, but he didn't walk alone. Birds of rainbow colors swept from tree to tree, squeaking and singing in the one language he would never understand. Snakes, insects and frogs also made their presence known. The jungle itself, ancient and powerful, pulsed around him in an endless cycle of growth and decay, driven by forces he didn't comprehend.
Today marked a shifting of those forces, in a way he instinctively respected. Summer solstice, the turning of the year.
His birthday.
Which was one reason he was throwing himself into the gorge.
He reached his favorite spot by noon, with clothes soaked by sweat and muscles aching from the climb. Unslinging his pack and canteen, he sat in a small patch of grass by a stone and enjoyed several minutes of rest. To the east, Connor Falls thundered and crashed in a spectacular tumble to the narrow canyon below. The rising mist over the jagged rocks at the base of the falls shimmered in the open sunlight. A plunge there would be sheer suicide, even for an Immortal, but suicide was not what he had in mind.
Ceirdwyn had packed him a lunch for what she thought was just another of his expeditionary hikes. He decided to save it for later, because he hated dying on a full stomach. He stood up now and stripped away his clothes. Poised at the very edge of the cliff, the dirt dark and moist between his toes, his arms extended and eyes closed, he mentally recited an ancient Egyptian birthday prayer.
Then plunged.
Predictably, the shock of impact from this height drove the air from his chest and he drowned without remembering it. He revived some time later and hiked all the way back up to his favorite spot. Humming a little ditty popular in Julius Caesar's day, he ate his lunch and stretched out for a nap in the warm sun, still nude, his clothes pillowed under his head as a pillow.
Hour later he awoke, dressed, strapped on his backpack, and plunged into the gorge again.
***
He didn't do it because he liked it. Launching himself into vast open nothingness only to drop, flailing, twisting helplessly as the water and rocks rushed to meet him, stomach clenching, testicles shriveling, heart ripped into his throat - none of that was fun. He'd gone over cliffs, bridges, fjords, castle towers, even skyscrapers. Not fun. Fun was a softball game at twilight with Duncan pitching badly. Fun was when Ceirdwyn met him at the door with a yellow rose between her teeth and nothing on her body. Fun was Cheating Poker Night, when he, Duncan, Richie and Michel tried to outdo each other in outrageous schemes to win millions of useless credits.
He dove because he could and because it terrified him. Twin reminders of who and what he was. The surmounting of fear and the rejoicing of his Immortal power started and ended with each of his passing years, at Midsummer, in private, away from the twelve other Immortals who'd come to seclusion to hide from the outside world that would hunt and kill them. They'd started with fourteen, but Amanda had fallen one horrible night atop a Swiss mountain. That same night, Connor MacLeod met a sword he could not beat. The mention of that night, forty years past, could still bring pangs of grief to Duncan's eyes.
Methos shook off the memories. Five and a half thousand years had taught him not to dwell in the past. The dead and vanished passed like quicksilver through his hands, flashes of joy and sorrow that defied grasp. He preferred it that way. Too much holding on led to more pain and sometimes obsession.
He made his way leisurely back through the jungle to his house, set on a hill by the stream above the community dojo and Friendship Hall. His low and graceful house blended behind Ceirdwyn's garden walls into the forest and night. Torches blazed in the darkness as a welcome, but when he passed through the arches into the open foyer and hall there was no sign of Ceirdwyn in the darkened rooms.
He could sense the presence of at least one other Immortal, but in these decades and in this place he had no reason to fear others of his kind. Ceirdwyn had said that Michel and Naseem might come to dinner. He slipped his shoes off at the door and made his way through the open halls, beneath the darkened forest, listening to the insects. A white card sat on the dining room table, and a trail of yellow rose petals led towards the courtyard.
In the card, Ceirdwyn promised she was wearing nothing under her dress but a thin gold chain around her waist. Once their guest lefts, she would be amenable to certain suggestions that nice Celtic girls usually didn't agree to.
Methos smiled.
He followed the rose petals down the hall, called out her name, and then let out a yelp of surprise as hands grabbed him and hoisted him into the air. He caught a dizzying glimpse of torches and faces. Voices shouted encouragement. Then his captors dumped him unceremoniously into his own fountain, and he sputtered upright with a cry of protest.
"Surprise!" Twelve Immortals shouted, followed by a resounding, off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday to You!"
Holland MacLeod came towards him carrying a cake topped with so many candles it was a wonder it didn't show up on a satellite scan. Mouth agape, sitting in the fountain, soaking wet for the third time that day, Methos did the only thing he could do - he blew out the candles, to applause and laughter.
"Come on, old man," Duncan said cheerfully, clapping him on the back and helping him out of the water.
"Happy Birthday, darling," Ceirdwyn said, kissing him sweetly, eyes alight with mischief. "Surprised?"
"More than you can imagine," Methos admitted, trying to appear non-chalant. "But what makes you think this is my birthday?"
Holland kissed his cheek. "Since you claim to not have one, or want one, we decided to celebrate it for you and just picked a day."
"Actually," Michel said, his thick Slavic face crinkled by pleasure, "Richie picked the day."
"Months ago," Naseem added.
Richie was hanging back from the handshakes and kisses, patiently waiting his turn, drinking a beer beside Joe Dawson. In the forty four years since Versailles he'd claimed a place for himself in the back of the crowd. The gregariousness he'd shown in his youth had been carved away by mortal butchers, leaving him friendly but wary, interested but detached. Jenir hovered near Richie, ever hopeful, but he showed no sign of falling in love with her.
"He did, did he?" Methos asked. Not surprising, really. The Richie Ryan who had come down from the Swiss mountain was not exactly the same one Methos and Duncan had carried up to it.
Tsaganis fixed on his voice and came to him with an outstretched hand. "You're all wet, boss," the blind Immortal said. In rapid succession Gustaf, Huang, Alan, Paulo and Jenir all followed with their own congratulations and laughter.
In the middle of the celebration Methos noticed that Holland and Duncan, although seemingly in good moods, stayed on opposite sides of the courtyard. Which meant they were fighting again. He mentioned it to Ceirdwyn after their guests had left.
"They'll get over it," she said, wrapping him in her arms, lips coming to press against his.
Sparks of pleasure shot up from his groin, pushing away thoughts of Holland and Duncan. Methos brushed his fingers through her long hair. "So," he started conversationally, "what are you really wearing under there?"
"A gold chain," she said.
"And on it?"
"The key to my heart," she grinned. She unwrapped her arms from his waist, reached up behind her back, and undid her zipper. The silk of her dress fell to a pool around her ankles. Her skin glimmered in the torchlight.
"So what about it, birthday boy?" she asked. "Want your birthday present?"
"More than you can imagine," he said, and let her slide his pants from his hips.
Words gave way to touches.
So marked the turning of the year.
***
Shortly after sunrise the next morning, Duncan MacLeod walked down the stream and over the hill to where Richie lived apart from the rest of them. Joe Dawson was outside, sitting on a tree stump and picking out a new melody on his guitar.
"He in?" Duncan asked tersely.
"And good morning to you, too," Joe said. "Cranky this morning?"
"None of your business."
"Don't take it out on me, MacLeod," Joe said. "Just because I'm a hologram doesn't mean I don't have feelings."
"You *don't* have feelings," Duncan reminded him, albeit a trifle more kindly. Joe represented Sanctuary's computer, deep in the heart of the settlement. "Unless Tsaganis has been up to something he hasn't told us about."
Joe grinned. "Actually, it's just a guilt subroutine. I should use it on Richie, for setting me up as his own personal doorbell. He's in, just didn't want to be disturbed by anyone. Except you, of course. You always can go in."
"Thanks," Duncan said, and went inside Bright and airy, the first three rooms were completely devoid of furniture. The kitchen had a low table and three pillows. Richie's bedroom, in the back of the building, was open on three sides to the jungle, and in the middle of it the Immortal was sitting lotus-style in deep meditation.
Three inches above the floor.
Duncan blinked. The sunlight and burnished wood and the white of Richie's gee must have tricked his eyes. Richie was sitting on the floor, shirtless, eyes closed his chest rising and falling with the barest motion. Nineteen forever, his mortal life stolen away too soon. Duncan decided to leave him alone - his problems could wait - but before he could turn, Richie spoke aloud.
"You think he was surprised?"
Duncan remembered the expression on Methos' face and grinned. "Very."
"It made him uncomfortable as well," Richie said, opening his eyes, and fixing on Duncan with a solid gaze.
"Surprise birthday parties are supposed to do that."
"More than that."
"Did you sense something?"
"Something more than surprise," Richie admitted. A frown crossed his face. "But it's not clear. I shouldn't have mentioned it."
Duncan squatted down next to him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Hey, remember who you're talking to. You can tell me."
"But I can't tell them," Richie said abruptly, rising and crossing to the bathroom. He ran the water, slapped some on his face, and then forced some lightness into his tone. "So, did you come by for practice? I tried that move we talked about on Paulo yesterday. Knocked him on his ass."
"Richie -" Duncan started.
Richie patted his face with a towel. "Alan laughed so hard that I thought Paulo was going to take a swing at him," he persisted.
Duncan decided not to push. He wandered around the room, annoyed for at least the dozenth time that Richie didn't have anything for him to play with. The teenaged, mortal Richie had specialized in clutter, to the point where Tessa had once threatened to wash out his bedroom with a high-pressured water hose. Tessa. Still dead, still missed. He dreamed of her sometimes, her golden head resting against his chest.
Memories of Tessa took him away for a moment. He came back to find himself starting at the thick greenery of the forest, with Richie just a few inches behind him.
"Holland again?" Richie asked. Duncan nodded. "What are you going to do?"
"What can I? Keep saying no. Keep telling her what a bad idea it is. Keep hoping she'll drop the idea."
"I don't think she will."
"Thanks for the optimism."
"I've seen it happen before," Richie said. "Mortal, immortal, doesn't make a difference. They get the urge, they can't be denied."
"Now you're really trying to cheer me up," Duncan sighed, turning on Richie and fixing on him with a dour look. "Cut the jokes, and tell me what to do. It's not like we can just drop by the local orphanage and pick up a foundling because she wants to be a mother."
Richie's face was unexpectedly serious. "And you wouldn't, even if you could."
"No." Duncan said. Never again. He'd made a promise, on a cold winter's night in the twentifirst century while hugging his dead wife's headstone. Rachel had wanted to be a mother, and it had only led to tragedy.
Richie shook his head. "Dari wasn't your fault."
Duncan took a steadying breath. "Tell me how you knocked Paulo on his ass."
Richie didn't press. After so many centuries of friendship, they each knew when to back away. "I'll do better," the younger Immortal promised. "I'll show you."
"Get your sword," Duncan said, but before they could cross steel Naseem came running up, breathless, her face flushed.
"You'd better come quickly," she said, "Ceirdwyn caught an intruder on the west ridge. You better come before she takes off his head."
- 2 -
Long ago they'd each divided up the duties of the settlement according to skill and desire. Ceirdwyn handled physical security and perimeter defense. Despite the precautions she and Tsaganis had devised, someone managed to cross the thirty miles of the outer zone before setting off an alarm on the west ridge of Mount Amanda. Enraged by his success and heady with the thought of a real fight after so many decades, she met the intruder with her sword in a mossy stretch lit by a shaft of sunlight. He was in his mid-thirties, dark and swarthy, her height, and didn't immediately cower. Good.
"Where do you think you're going?" she asked.
He studied her warily. "Who wants to know?"
"I'll ask the questions," she said. The tip of her blade circled his neck. Interesting that he hadn't pulled his sword from its sheath. "What's your name?"
"Luc Marchet," he said. "From Toronto, Canada."
"So what's a nice boy from Canada doing here?"
He hesitated. "Looking for someone."
"Someone like who?"
"I don't know," he said, sounding truthful. "I can't tell you. It doesn't make sense. But he's here... somewhere."
Ceirdwyn considered taking his head off there and then. He was most likely a spy, sent by SIDI or some other enemy, and she wasn't going to risk bringing him any closer to the settlement. It had been a long time since she'd taken a Quickening, and she missed the blinding agony and ecstasy that came with the loss of someone else's head.
Instead of beheading him, however, she settled for killing him with a quick thrust through his chest. He died with blood staining the moss beneath him. Ceirdwyn let out a piercing whistle to call in Naseem and Gustaf from where she'd made them wait in the forest, and sent Naseem back to the settlement to fetch Methos.
By the time Methos arrived she had Luc Marchet trussed to a tree, and he didn't look very happy about it. She and Methos conferred. When she told him Luc claimed to have been drawn to the forest by an unknown forest, a subconscious siren, he grimaced.
"You don't seriously believe him, do you?" she asked her husband.
Methos quirked an eyebrow. "I can think of worse excuses."
He went to Luc and crouched near him. "Let me explain something to you," he said, coldly and clearly. "Your life hangs in the balance. My companion will take your head at the slightest hint that you are lying to us. If you value your life, you'll explain in exhaustive detail exactly how you came to be here."
Luc swallowed hard. He wasn't fighting the rope that bound him to the tree - Ceirdwyn always came prepared - but he twisted his hands against the bonds nervously. He told them that he had been Immortal for fifty years. His mentor had been killed thirty years previous. He'd been living in Toronto, trying to escape the notice of SIDI, when he started having a recurring dream of a jungle and someone calling to him.
"I could never see who it was," Luc said, "but I felt drawn, all the same. I felt - pulled, somehow. I finally left Toronto and headed south. The dreams grew more frequent, more strong. I saw a young man, with reddish-blond hair, standing and shooting an arrow into a cave - "
Methos stiffened, almost imperceptibly, but Ceirdwyn had known her husband too long to not notice the effect of Luc's words.
Luc vehemently denied working for SIDI. He claimed utter ignorance as to why Immortals would be in this forest, so far from so-called civilization. Methos interrogated him ruthlessly, bringing a flush to the man's cheeks, but Luc stuck to his story no matter what angle Methos attacked it from.
When Duncan and Richie came over the rise, following Naseem, Luc fixed on Richie with a wide stare.
"So what do we have here?" Duncan asked.
"Mac - " Richie started faintly, then sagged against the older Immortal. Startled, Duncan caught him and eased him to the ground. Richie sat, leaning against him, his face unnaturally pale, his eyes fixed on the stranger.
"Luc," he said.
"You know him?" Ceirdwyn demanded.
Wordlessly, Richie shook his head.
Duncan could feel Richie's heart hammering, the cold sweat broken out on his back. "Just take it easy."
"You're the one," Luc said, his voice full of awe.
And Methos thought, There Can Be Only One.
***
That was how Luc came to stay with them. It was either accept him or behead him. He couldn't be allowed to return to the outside world knowing what he did. If caught and tortured, he would tell the SIDI what little he knew - which was far too much.
It would have been different if Methos thought, in any way whatsoever, that Luc might be lying. But Richie's reaction in the clearing and the details of Luc's story swayed him into belief. Richie's presence had drawn other Immortals in Switzerland. That no one had come into the forest in forty years proved only that they had isolated themselves well, or that Richie's power had been dormant since the night of Amanda and Connor's death, or that the stars in the sky hadn't been properly aligned in the zodiac.
Tsaganis sipped at his lemonade from where he sat in Methos' courtyard. "You don't mean that last part."
"We're dealing with the unknown here," Methos said, staring at the overhead trees. He couldn't help thinking about Xan, the telepathic Immortal whose Quickening had gone to Richie in a darkened mansion of horror, hundreds of years before. Xan had drawn younger Immortals to him from hundreds of miles away. He'd controlled them like puppets, bending them to his will with a crowbar of mental agony.
Xan was the most powerful Immortal Methos had ever met, telepathically speaking.
And Richie had his power.
He remembered, centuries ago, laying on a sofabed in a darkened loft with Richie beside him, as they discussed Xan's power. They'd both been aware, in a fashion, of the danger that particular Quickening might bring. It had been too much, he supposed, to hope they would never have to deal with this problem.
He wondered, unhappily, if he was going to have to kill Richie someday.
"What?" he asked, suddenly aware he'd been ignoring Tsaganis.
"I said, how's Richie now?"
"Fine." After the initial shock of seeing Luc in the clearing - a feeling Richie reluctantly described as having a lighthouse beam turned back on his own mind - Richie had been fine. Or so Duncan claimed. Methos wasn't sure he could trust Duncan to tell him everything that went on regarding Richie. The bond between the two went back too far and was too strong for either Richie or Duncan to be completely objective about one another.
Joe Dawson appeared at the water fountain. "Holland's at the front door," he said. "Wants to talk to you, Methos. Is now a bad time?"
"I'll excuse myself," Tsaganis said, carefully climbing to his feet and orienting himself in the courtyard. He used his walking stick to maneuver around the lounge chairs. For all the computer sensing equipment available to him, the blind Immortal preferred a good old-fashioned stick - one of the reasons Methos loved him.
Methos had been expecting Holland for some weeks now. He wished Ceirdwyn was around, but she'd gone off camping in the woods for a few days. They needed space apart from each other every once in awhile. She'd been cranky lately, something he ascribed to Luc's arrival and tales of the outside world. In his earlier, less sensitive days he would have blamed her mood on PMS, but Immortal woman didn't menstruate.
Holland came into the garden dressed in workpants and a cropped T-shirt, the dirt of her garden staining her knees and elbows. She'd let her hair grow out to a soft silkiness pinned back by a gold pin. Her gaze was unflinching.
"I'm leaving," she said.
Methos didn't move from where he sat. "Would you like some lemonade first?"
Holland gave him a sour look. "I won't be dissuaded."
"I won't dissuade you," Methos returned. He poured some lemonade for himself from the pitcher set on the low table at his right hand. "What does Duncan say?"
"He's vehemently opposed to the idea."
"Do you blame him? He saw what they did to Richie and Felicia."
"So did you."
Methos sipped at his drink. He would never forget what he'd seen in that Versailles dungeon. It was no wonder that Richie had adopted another identity for four years rather than deal with those shattering memories. "Shall I describe it to you?" he asked softly.
Holland folded her arms. "Why do you both assume that I'll get caught? Why can't you give me any credit for being strong enough, brave enough, or clever enough to escape SIDI's notice?"
"Felicia was brave, and strong, and clever. Look what it got her."
Holland paled, but didn't flinch. "That's unfair."
"She died in pieces," Methos said.
Holland looked away. She shook her head very faintly. "I want it brought up before the bylaw."
He'd expected that too.
The next evening, in the Friendship Hall at sunset, they arranged themselves on benches and chairs to hear Holland's petition. Since the very beginning of the settlement they'd come together this way, based on the customs Methos remembered from his favorite 13th century English village, to decide on issues that affected them all. Bylaw was the name of the body as well as the rules that arose from it. Methos remembered how the villagers would gather to decide on issues concerning the reaping and gleaning of the harvest, the digging and filling of ditches, the repair of fences, and other everyday issues.
The first item on the evening's agenda was to pick a place, set a time, and make arrangements to build Luc a house. Duncan was in charge of building and constructing all homes, with work parties assigned or volunteered, but he showed absolutely no interest in the proceedings. He sat on one bench with Richie beside him. Holland sat as far away as possible with her hands clenched in her lap.
The plans for Luc's house were quickly decided. Jenir, acting this decade as the steward, duly recorded the plans. Her red hair curled softly against the pale ivory of her thoughtful face as she called on Holland to present herself.
She stood up in the torchlight, her face grave and beautiful. "We have no true secrets here," she said. "How can we, living this close to one another for so long? You know that I want to become a mother. It's a choice many Immortal parents have made over the millennium. But because of where we are, the age we live in, I can't adopt a child without going to the outside world to find one."
Methos looked at Duncan. The Highlander was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, intently studying the floor.
"When we first came here, forty years ago, we agreed that no one should leave before it was safe outside. It's not. Luc can tell us what the computer reports already have. The ozone shield is so damaged they're moving entire cities underground. The glaciers are melting faster than anyone expected. Famine is killing billions. And the SIDI are still out there. If they catch me, they'll do everything they can to break me. And if they find out where this place is, they'll come for you all."
Holland paused for breath. No one spoke. The faces of the other Immortals ranged from no expression to skepticism to regret to concern. "I have no intention of being caught by SIDI," she said. "I have no wish to put this community in danger. How could I? I love you all like brothers and sisters. But I want to be a mother. I need to, in a way I don't even understand myself. All I can say is that I promise not to get caught. I promise to take my own head, somehow, if they come for me."
Jenir motioned for her to sit down. Richie raised his hand, then stood. Methos found himself holding his breath - incredibly proud of the courage the younger Immortal had, and afraid of what terrible memories he would dredge up.
"I believe everything Holland says," Richie said. He gazed at her and her alone. "I believe she has as good a chance as any of us if she goes out there. Maybe SIDI will find her, maybe not. If they do find her, though, they won't let her take her own head. They won't let her get away. They'll take her, and torture her, and she'll tell them everything she can because she won't have any other option.
He took a deep breath and shifted his gaze to all of them. "Some of you know what happened in Versailles. Whatever you've heard, whatever nightmarish gossip or rumors you picked up from one another, understand that only three Immortals could know exactly what happened there. Felicia and Jason are dead, so that leaves me. All I'll tell you is that by the time they were through with me, I would have betrayed each and every one of you to stop the pain. I would have killed you myself. Because they do that to you. They strip away everything you love, everything you hold dear, every value and moral you ever learned, until you're nothing but a broken, helpless, shattered heap. If she goes, and they get her, we're all dead."
He sat. Duncan squeezed his arm. Richie didn't respond, but stared off at a memory too painful to share.
"We could all leave," Paulo suggested. He and Alan sat together, holding hands. "If we move on... "
"We've worked too hard for forty years to establish this home," Ceirdwyn said sharply.
Tsaganis added, "Besides, we lose the computer and all our equipment. There's no way we can move it now."
"Holland, why now?" Naseem asked. "Why can't you wait? The world will be safe one day for us all."
"When?" Holland asked. "Ten years? A hundred? A thousand? How long do we hide here?"
"The issue is not about hiding," Methos said. "The issue is whether or not you jeopardize all of us because of some stray maternal urge."
She hadn't expected that, he saw. But the quick hurt that flashed across her face disappeared beneath her next words.
"When did Sanctuary become a prison?" she asked. "When did we agree to surrender our freedom, our free will, our ability to choose?"
"You would choose death for the rest of us," Gustaf said from the corner. The heavy Norwegian stroked his beard. Beside him, Huang sat with her normal silence. Gustaf continued, "You would choose your rights over ours."
Holland frowned. "Who wouldn't? Who here is so self-sacrificing that she or he puts everyone else before themselves?"
The silence in the hall was deafening. Duncan lifted his eyes from the floor and fixed them on his wife. His voice came out hollow and haunted.
"Who here wants to die?" he asked.
Jenir cleared her throat. "I think we have enough to come to a consensus," she said. "Holland, if you'll please excuse us... "
Holland looked as if she wanted to say more, but instead nodded and left. Once the call for a consensus had been made, no more arguments could be put forth. Methos remembered once, in his village, how one particularly irate blacksmith had tried to argue too long. Some of the hardier men had taken him outside and dunked him in a trough. Later that year the same blacksmith died beneath the forelegs of a spooked horse. His face had been smashed beyond recognition.
Someone sucked in a sharp breath. Methos turned to see Richie staring at him. "Excuse me," Richie said, rising from the bench. "I need some air. You know what I think."
The consensus took several minutes. It wasn't a vote, but only a general agreement they could all live with. They called Holland back in. Jenir told her she couldn't leave. For all of their safety, for all of their security, she had to stay.
Holland took the news calmly. Then said, in a steady voice, hands clasped behind her back, "I leave tomorrow at noon. It's up to you to decide how you're going to stop me."
She left without looking at Duncan at all.
- 3 -
Richie swung his sword in a deadly arc, parrying an invisible enemy in the backyard of his home. It was very late and very dark, and he'd been dueling with the past ever since leaving the Friendship Hall. He'd lost track of the hours. Every muscle in his body ached with fatigue, every breath in his chest burned like fire. The symphony of insects and night animals disappeared beneath the harsh grating of his lungs, and sweat blinded his vision.
He hadn't known what he was going to say until he stood up, their eyes on him, and laid bare as much of his soul as he dared. Even as he said the words he knew he would later feel the old depression that had marked his years since, the familiar fall into grief. What he hadn't expected was the sweeping rage that drove him to swing his sword, again and again, in the dead of night.
Rage against SIDI. Rage against Felicia, for dying. Rage against himself, for surviving. Irrational rage, pouring out of wounds he thought he'd healed, acid rivers of pain that burned his skin.
Exhaustion drove him to his knees, and brought him a harsh, vivid detail from the Friendship Hall that he wanted to forget. He'd been sitting, caught in a memory, barely listening to Jenir asking Holland to leave, when he caught from Methos an image as swift and solid as one of Duncan's right hooks.
A head, crushed in on itself. Jagged bone and torn flesh. The red, pink and white mash of a someone's face.
His stomach threatened to reject remains of dinner. Richie lurched to his feet, mumbled an excuse, and went outside to the fresh air. It wasn't the first time he'd picked up on stray visions from the other Immortals. In the past five years alone, he could recall perhaps a dozen specific incidents. The visions were brief and usually innocuous memories - Ceirdwyn dancing by a bonfire, Huang drunk over the side of a Chinese junk, Duncan sprawled on the fine carpets of what might have been a Middle Eastern palace. Once, though, he'd caught a distinct wave of sexual desire from Michel about Jenir, not his wife Naseem, and that seemed more of a real- time emotion than anything else.
And once, from across the settlement, he'd picked up on Tsaganis remembering the agony of having his eyes plucked out. That horror had been enough to drive Richie shaking and frightened to bed for three days. Duncan had come looking for him, hauled him to a hot shower and food, and then shaken out of him the story of the visions.
Duncan said that whatever they were, Richie shouldn't be afraid of them.
Easy for Duncan to say.
Methos had been thinking about someone's face, crushed in. It might have been a memory. It might have been a desire concerning Holland. Methos had worked too long and too hard to establish Sanctuary for all of them to let her jeopardize it for the sake of motherhood.
And she was jeopardizing it. She was risking each and every one of them.
Richie would die before he let SIDI take him again.
Kneeling now, feeling his heart and lungs slow, Richie let his rapier fall from his fingers and concentrated on the returning sense of belonging to this world, not the hall of mirrors and memories that was his mind. Occasionally he could stretch out and sense the others from a distance usually beyond his abilities. Sometimes he'd tried to provoke a vision, and received only a mild headache for his efforts. Even more rarely, he could feel the onset of a vision, like the low rumble of thunder on the horizon before a storm rushed in.
He could hear the thunder now. Something was coming to him. He tried not to brace himself, because tensing seemed to diminish the effect, but it was hard. He didn't want to see the bloody remains of someone's face. He didn't want to feel, as the mortal Tsaganis had felt, the severing of his eyes from his head.
Instead of those horrors, though, a different vision came. One that seemed to be as real-time, in the darkness of the forest, and completely unexpected.
Richie didn't understand it. He dismissed it. He went inside, gave himself a sponge-bath, and went to bed on the futon he unrolled from a closet. For years he'd slept on the bare floor, but the futon had been a present from Alan and Paulo one year for Christmas. They'd made it themselves. It seemed a shame to waste it.
He lay in the darkness, the vision persisting behind his eyelids.
Hours later, in the dead of night, he rose from the bed and went to go find Jenir.
***
Duncan had no more words to say, because there came a point when words didn't matter. Holland wouldn't listen to him. She wouldn't listen to any of them. What she wanted - a child - was something he didn't. It had been enough to drive a long, steady wedge between them for years. That was personal, between the two of them, and he could deal with it. But now she was taking an action that threatened them all, and he didn't know what to do about it.
Ceirdwyn apparently knew. She'd come to the village center this morning with her sword strapped to her back.
Duncan's hands were cold. His heart, ripped. He couldn't let Ceirdwyn kill Holland. But he also couldn't let Holland leave the Sanctuary. He'd seen the grisly remains of Felicia Martins. He'd cradled Richie's battered, broken body on the cold floor of the Versailles dungeon.
She had to be stopped. He just didn't know how.
Richie had disappeared in a hurry last night, after saying his part. He hadn't shown up yet, and it was almost noon. Duncan wondered if the triggered memories had been too much for him to face. He should go look for him. But Holland was coming now, her gear strapped to her back, her sword in its sheath, her face set and brave and determined.
They met her. He and Ceirdwyn, Methos, Michel, Naseem, Paulo, Alan, Gustaf, Tsaganis, and Huang. Joe Dawson watched silently from a doorway. Peripherally, Duncan realized Jenir was missing, too, and he wondered if she was with Richie. His mouth was too dry, however, his insides too jittery, to focus on anything but Holland.
"Who do I have to fight?" she asked.
Methos edged forward. "You don't have to fight anyone. You can turn back and wait. There will come a time when it's safe for all of us out there."
Holland gazed at Ceirdwyn. The two women had been best friends for forty years. "Will you raise your sword to me?" she asked.
"If you make me," Ceirdwyn said, but there was a flicker of honest doubt in her voice that even Duncan heard.
Holland said, "Alan, Paulo, you've thought about leaving. Does it comfort you to know that if you try, Methos the dictator will have your head chopped off?"
Alan stirred uncomfortably. Paulo said, "It's not like that."
"Luc, when you came, did you know there would never be any turning back?"
"We came to a consensus last night," Ceirdwyn said, before Luc could answer. "We agreed, in accordance with the bylaws and beliefs we've had for forty years, that you should not leave. You are bound to go by that consensus, Holland. We all promised to, forty years ago."
"I changed my mind," Holland said softly.
She moved to pass, but Ceirdwyn blocked the path. Duncan watched helplessly. He loved her. But he loved living, as well. He would die for her, but could he sacrifice Richie and Methos and all the others, as well?
"Change it back," Duncan begged. "Please."
Holland shook her head slowly and deliberately. Then she put down her pack, leaving her sword in the dirt, and went to her knees before Ceirdwyn. Her pale throat lay open and exposed.
"Take it, if you have to. I won't fight you." Holland's voice had its own edge of steel now. "Just remember that if you kill me, to save yourselves, you'll never be free. If you take my head, to protect your own, you're no different than the people we're hiding from."
Ceirdwyn hesitated and looked to Methos.
His face was impassive. His eyes, cold.
"No," Duncan said. He pushed forward, and felt Alan and Paulo restrain him. "Methos, no!"
Holland bowed her head.
A piercing whistle, one of Ceirdwyn's signals, cut through the air. Jenir burst out of the forest a moment later, her face bright with sweat and exertion, her clothes ripped and torn, bloody and dirty, from a long and dangerous hike. Her red hair was wild around her face.
"Come quickly! We found something!" she yelled.
For a moment Duncan wondered if it wasn't some wild scheme cooked up by Richie and Jenir to save Holland, but then Richie came out of the forest. No one dared to speak. He walked to them in obvious exhaustion, his face raw and open with wonder, and said, "He's suffering from dehydration and exposure, but I think he's going to be fine. Holland, will this do for now?"
Holland was already crying.
Because wrapped in Richie's arms was a tiny little baby boy.
***
Ceirdwyn didn't like it.
She and Methos, Duncan and Tsaganis sat secluded underground in the vast warren of laboratories and equipment rooms beneath the settlement. The others were above ground, taking care of daily business or fawning over the baby Holland had already named Peter, after her father.
"You're telling me that a newborn baby can just appear in the middle of the forest, just sprout overnight as it were, and we can't do a thing to figure out where it came from?" she demanded.
"He," Duncan reminded her. "Not 'it.'"
Ceirdwyn frowned deeper.
"We've reviewed all the sensor and alarm logs," Tsaganis said. "There's nothing there. No one breached the perimeter, no one crossed the safety zone. We just spent two days going over every inch of the sector where he was found, with no results. Which means that someone must have known exactly where our alarms were, to get there and leave without leaving a trail."
"Or else the stork really did just drop him," Duncan offered.
Methos offered with a grin, "Or extraterrestrials from outer space."
Ceirdwyn shook her head. "You're not taking this seriously. I don't like the idea that someone could breach our defenses so easily. And I don't believe for a second that Richie and Jenir just happened to be out in the forest, hiking in the middle of the night, and found him."
"They weren't," Duncan said, speaking for the first time. "Richie saw the baby. In a vision."
Methos swung on him. "How long has he been having visions?"
Duncan stiffened. Both he and Richie knew it would come down to this, but he didn't appreciate Methos' tone. "You'll have to ask him."
Ceirdwyn turned to Tsaganis. "What about the lab tests?"
"As far as the computer can tell, he's a normal male infant," Tsaganis said. "He was left outside for maybe twenty four, thirty hours. No permanent damage. Healthy set of lungs, judging from the cries I heard all night long."
Duncan grimaced. "It's what babies do, isn't it?"
Ceirdwyn pressed with, "What about a paternity test? Match his DNA with ours."
Tsaganis frowned. "I don't have the equipment to match DNA samples. I'd need that, to identify gene markers from the mother and father both."
"What a minute," Methos warned. "Who said anyone here is the mother or father? Have you forgotten we're all sterile? Or are you somehow presuming that one of the women gave birth without ever being pregnant and then abandoned that baby to the forest?"
The Immortals considered the likelihood. Methos held his breath. As a matter of fact, that was exactly what had happened. He'd known for over a thousand years that it was the way Immortals procreated. He strongly suspected Peter was his and Ceirdwyn's son, but neither felt nor desired a bond. He especially didn't want Tsaganis matching DNA samples, for fear that too many secret relationships - especially between Duncan and Richie - would be revealed.
The Watcher records he'd studied when he was part of their organization clearly documented a one-night stand between Rebecca and Duncan in New York, in September 1974, and Rebecca's disappearance shortly thereafter.
Richie Ryan had been born that same month, that same year.
"I guess it does sound ridiculous," Duncan admitted.
Methos said, carefully, "Whoever the parents are, our concern must be what to do with that child."
"I think that's pretty much decided," Duncan said sourly. "Unless you intend to put him back in the forest and let him die."
Methos was silent. Duncan shook her head. "No, you don't. I may not be happy about the situation, but it's bad enough what we were thinking of doing to Holland. That child is here, for whatever reason, through whatever miracle, and Holland can take care of him. Do you have any doubt whatsoever that's how the consensus will go?"
Methos had no doubt whatsoever. Whatever doom or danger that baby represented, whatever unknown force was at work in the forest, it was agreed at the bylaw the next day that Peter would stay in Holland's care, with twelve Immortal aunts and uncles.
But no father.
Because Duncan moved out the day Peter was found, and went to live with Richie until he could build a house of his own.
- 4 -
Etros of Sumer plunged into the river gorge.
He did it because he could and because it terrified him. When he revived and hauled his cold, sodden body to the narrow shoreline of the canyon it took a few minutes for him to remember he was no longer Etros the wanderer, Etros the scholar, who had roamed the known world three thousand years before the birth of the Catholic Son of God. Now he was Methos, and it was the twenty-fifth century, and it was Midsummer.
He climbed back to his favorite rock. The grass he'd lain in every year for sixty years had burned away under the blistering sun. The jungle was suffering from the increased radiation through the depleted ozone layer. From the biochemical hazards dumped into the sky during the last North American conflict. From the stupid mistakes and greed of humanity, bent on destroying the planet while he waited in the forest, hid
ing, with a fractious community of Immortals.
Maybe coming to Sanctuary hadn't been such a good idea after all.
Methos ate his lunch and pulled on his dry clothes. He was about to take another dive into the gorge when he heard a man's scream reverberate down the canyon. Scooping out a pair of field glasses from his backpack, he scanned the canyon walls near Connor Falls. He saw a flash of yellow and refocused. Jenir hung on the rockface. She and Richie had been doing a lot of climbing lately, using only their fingers and toes, no safety harnesses, no gear, no ropes. He saw no sign of Richie, but Jenir's attention was on something far below her, shouting out something, and she was starting down.
Methos shook his head at the sheer folly of the young and charted a steep course down the hillside to reach the base of the falls. He reached it twenty minutes later, and found Jenir calling Richie's name down through a narrow gap between jagged boulders piled by the river at some ancient time. The falls churned and rushed nearby, filling the air with a sheer curtain of moisture. Methos had to shout to be heard over the falling water.
"What happened?" he asked.
Jenir threw up her hands. "He must be dead. I can't sense him at all. We were climbing, he slipped, and landed down in there somewhere."
"You didn't bring ropes?" Methos asked, peering down into the darkness.
"We didn't bring any equipment," she said. "We never do."
Methos refrained from chastising her, but just barely. He unslung his backpack and pulled out a flashlight and a small coil of rope. "Wait here while I go down."
"Why don't you stay here and I'll go down?" Jenir asked, hands on her hips.
"Because it's my rope," Methos said tartly, before he could censor himself. Bringing Jenir into their circle sixty years ago had been Michel's idea, not his. He could have happily done without the red- haired Cuban, although she seemed to make Richie happy. Even if she did get him into foolish predicaments like this one.
He knotted one end of the rope around a boulder, the other around his waist, and slipped down between the rocks. The darkness and coldness enveloped him immediately. The flashlight revealed a small cavern, maybe twenty feet across and thirty feet deep, and Richie's body smashed into the craggy rocks below. His rope wasn't long enough to reach the bottom. He cursed, unfastened himself, and dropped to a spot just inches from Richie's broken skull. His left ankle twisted beneath him, wedged into a crack, and he cursed again.
Richie couldn't have been more dead. He was laying on his back, blood pooled in his mouth and ears and nose, spine shattered. Most of his ribs had caved in. Methos grimaced in distaste, then shouted up to Jenir, "This is going to take awhile. And we'll need more rope. Go back to the village, find Duncan, and drag him back to help."
"Why don't you go back to the village and I'll stay with Richie?" Jenir yelled down, her face barely discernible against the bright daylight.
"Because you got him into this in the first place!" Methos yelled. Why did everyone have to question him all the time? He was Methos. He was Etros of Sumer. He was Geoffrey deBruchet, crossing with his friend William of Normandy across the gray English channel on their way to the conquest of England. He was Baro of Thira, running frantically with Arete past streets of lava as his island disappeared beneath the fury of a volcano -
Methos caught himself. He couldn't afford to lose himself in memories now. He watched Jenir retreat, and then tried to arrange Richie in as comfortable a position as could be managed. Taking the flashlight in hand, he explored the cavern more and found a small natural tunnel in the far corner that led down deeper into larger caverns. He followed them around, careful not to get lost, and discovered an underground river ten feet wide and of unfathomable depth. Only when he felt another Immortal did he return to his starting place and blind a startled, confused Richie with the beam of his flashlight.
"Who's there?" Richie demanded.
"Rescue 911," Methos responded, shining the beam on his own face and then wedging it so that it illuminated them both.
Richie didn't appear comforted. His breath was harsh and shallow, his body obviously still in pain, and his gaze darted like a frightened animal's. "There's a body here," he announced. He staggered upright. "Someone's here."
Methos caught him before he could stumble and do himself more damage. "No one's here!" he said firmly. "Just us."
Richie's head shook frantically. "In the underground river," he forced out. "A man."
Methos forced him to sit. To breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth. When Richie was calmer, Methos asked him about the man in the underground river. "Was it a dream?" he asked. "Or a memory?"
Richie closed his eyes in concentration. Dried blood streaked his face. "I don't remember," he said eventually. "I think... it was a nightmare."
No other Immortals dreamed while they were dead. Then again, Richie wasn't an average Immortal. Methos had accepted that long ago. They sat in the cold, pressing darkness for a few more hours before Duncan, Michel and Jenir arrived to pull them out. By then the sky was streaked with rosy hues of sunset, and both Methos and Richie were shivering uncontrollably. Their rescuers wrapped them with blankets and poured coffee down their throats. Richie had obviously forgotten about his nightmare, and Methos didn't mention it either.
In the next several months Methos returned again and again, but never found a body in the river.
***
At Cheating Poker Night, two nights later, Michel leveled a hostile glare at Richie. "You're cheating," he said.
"That's the point," Richie grinned, and counted his chips.
"Really cheating," Michel protested. "ESP cheating."
Richie's grin grew more crooked. "Yeah, I'm getting visions of exactly what cards you need."
"That's not funny," Duncan growled from the top of his cards.
"I think it is," Richie said.
"I think it explains why we're all broke," Methos agreed, throwing in his hand. He disliked even joking about Richie's visions, however, and steered the conversation to, "How's the house going for the Zimmermans?"
"Should be done by the end of the week," Duncan yawned, and tossed down his cards as well.
"And for Tom Costa?"
"Peter's got a crew pouring foundation tomorrow. We're almost out of materials, you know. It would be helpful, Richie, if you could subconsciously tell all these minions of yours to bring concrete and plastisteel with them when they come."
"That's really not funny," Richie said, grin disappearing. He disliked in whenever anyone spoke of the Immortals drawn to him as disciples, or minions, or worshippers. He wasn't a deity, and he wasn't a savior. He didn't know why seventeen Immortals with five mortal children in their company had followed visions of him across the jungle. He wished, often, that they'd never come.
At night, sometimes, as they lay in each other's arms after making love, Jenir would twirl the fine blond hairs on his chest and tell him that he was special, no matter how hard he wanted to deny it. Special because she loved him, and special because he could see things no one else could see.
He didn't want to see. He didn't want to know, in an embarrassing flash, what Paulo and Alan were doing in their house in the middle of the day with mischief in their eyes. He didn't want to feel, through Duncan, the painful memories of Dari that Peter occasionally inspired. He didn't want to feel the bitterness that sometimes tortured Tsaganis, as he walked the village in blindness.
He didn't want to see the future that was coming to him, in fragments of dread, with each passing year.
Visions of the future felt different than memories, in the same way a sunrise differed from a sunset. He'd known two days in advance before the Zimmermans arrived. He'd known a week ahead of time that Huang would burn her arm cooking breakfast. Minor visions, not especially troubling. But then a flash would come to him like it had in the subterranean cavern - a disturbing image wrapped in tragedy. A man would one day be entombed in that underground river, trapped forever, but he couldn't tell who.
He thought it might be himself, and claustrophobia would seize him by his throat.
Only one image disturbed him more than that one. Only one vision drove him into a cold sweat, his fingers suddenly numb.
He and Duncan, on a barren, blistered plain, at the end of time, swords raised.
The end of the Game.
"Hey," Duncan said, interrupting his thoughts. "You going to deal, or daydream?"
Richie looked down at the cards. "I have to get going," he said. "I promised Jenir I'd be home early."
Michel almost said something, but a look from Methos silenced him. They'd grown accustomed to Richie's occasional bouts of melancholy. Duncan went with him, and in companionable silence they left Methos' house to walk down through the village. The night air hung heavy with the thick perfume of wild orchids, and they clearly heard the methodical clash of swords. They stopped in the doorway of the dojo to watch Peter and Luc parry back and forth in the torchlight.
"Peter's pretty good," Richie said.
Duncan nodded. "He should be, after all these years of practice."
Peter had grown from a scrawny, abandoned infant into a strapping young man with dark hair and handsome features. Twenty years old, he appeared older than Richie now. The man he'd become had been shaped mostly by Holland, who'd raised him as a single mother. Duncan didn't dislike him, but he had been careful not to grow too attached, either.
"Do you ever wonder why he's here?" Richie asked suddenly.
Duncan took his time answering. "You mean as far as fate, or destiny, or something like that?"
Richie nodded. His eyes were dark and unreadable in the flickering light.
Duncan said, "How many nights have we all sat around, debating it all? Fate and destiny, the Game, the Prize, the Gathering. Good and evil. Murder and self-defense. Remember what Methos says?"
"That philosophy is a trap," Richie murmured.
"Talking just leads us in circles," Duncan agreed.
"And actions speak louder than words," Richie said. "Whatever powers may be, we're responsible for our own decisions." He shivered suddenly, and wrapped his arms around his chest. He turned to the older Immortal. "Mac, you know that I would never raise my sword to you."
"I know," Duncan said immediately. He didn't like the fear in Richie's eyes. "What is it? Did you see something?"
Richie shook his head. "I have to go."
"You're lying," Duncan said, catching him by the arm. "Don't. You don't have to."
Richie shook off Duncan's grip. "You don't want to know," he said. "Trust me, okay?"
Duncan followed him to the village well. "You don't have to carry it alone."
"What do you want me to say, Mac?" Richie asked, holding his hands out helplessly. "That I see things I don't understand? That I don't want to see? That nobody should know?"
"You can't help it," Duncan said stubbornly. "And you can't stop it. So why torture yourself over it?"
"I should never have done it, you know that? Never should have taken Xan's Quickening. I should have left him to Methos. I should have left him to you."
"As I recall," Duncan said slowly, "you didn't have much of a choice. I wasn't going to be of any help, and Methos was too far away. Besides, what makes you think Methos or I would have been able to handle it any better than you are? Whatever happened, happened for a reason."
"You believe that?" Richie asked, his voice taking on an odd tone. "You really believe that?"
"Yes."
"Everything happens for a reason?"
Duncan hesitated, sensing a trap.
"I thought so," Richie sighed, as his anger disappeared. He banged his head lightly against the well and then slid to sit in the dirt. "Oh, Mac. It was so much easier before. You and me and Tessa, and the store, and all those evil Immortals coming after us. How come those guys always had names starting with a K?"
"I don't know," Duncan admitted, sitting beside him. He managed a smile. "Another mystery of Immortality." He slid a glance sideways to the younger man. "We haven't talked about Tessa for a long time."
"I miss her. How come? Nearly five hundred years, and I still miss her."
"She loved you, you know."
Richie smiled. "She loved you more."
"Different kinds of love," Duncan allowed. Impulsively he reached out and ruffled Richie's hair. Richie laughed and pushed his hand away.
"Quit it," he warned.
"Or what, tough guy?" Duncan teased.
A sharp cry from the dojo cut off Richie's reply. Both Immortals scrambled to find Peter sprawled on the floor, blood spurting from a severed artery in his neck, Luc ashen-faced and stuttering an apology.
"I didn't mean it!" he gasped. "We just - we just went too far."
"Go get Jill Zimmerman," Richie ordered, falling to his knees. He applied direct pressure on the wound. Peter's face was stark-white, his body shuddering, his eyes rolled up. Jill Zimmerman, newly arrived, had been a practicing doctor in the New Republic of Europe.
"Richie, stop," Duncan said, trying to pry his fingers away. "It's no good."
Richie refused to budge. "She can save him!"
"His collarbone is broken as well," Duncan said. "If he lives, he'll be crippled. Let it happen."
"Shit," Richie said, and leaned back. His hand was soaked with Peter's blood. "He's too young."
"Older than you were," Duncan reminded him.
Peter gave a last convulsive shudder and died. The jungle seemed to grow still and quiet outside. Duncan and Richie waited patiently, a new awareness growing in their minds, the sense of the world poised at a new discovery, and then Peter heaved in a breath and opened his eyes.
"Welcome back," Duncan said, although there was not a great deal of welcome in his voice.
Richie patted the man's shoulder in comfort. "You're all right, Peter. You're one of us now.
- 5 -
He woke up with a dark-haired, naked woman leaning over him in a room lit by candles. She stroked his forehead with her slim, cool fingers. "You were dreaming," she said.
"Who are you?" he asked. Memories spun around him, a shifting kaleidoscope of women and bedrooms, of night, of dreams.
Her mouth curved slightly. "Your wife. Who else?"
"Melishika?" he asked.
Her expression soured. "That's not funny, Methos," she said, and swung off the bed to pad into the bathroom.
Methos. So he was Methos. He stared up at the ceiling, coming back into this place and time, as if drawing back from an emerald ocean onto a solid stretch of white, sandy shoreline. Melishika was dead, her bones mixed with the ancient dirt of Babylon. Arete was dead, buried beneath the lava of the Mediterranean floor. Alexa was dead, buried in a forgotten cemetery. All the women he had loved were dead, gone to dust.
"I'm sorry," he called out across the room.
"What's going on with you?" she asked when she came out. "You seem so lost in the past lately. You look at me sometimes like you're someone else."
"I've been many people," he offered, rolling over on the bed and punching the pillow beneath his head. Ceirdwyn sat beside him and stroked the back of his bare legs.
"But you're not now," she said. "Stay with me. Don't go wandering into the past."
He let himself luxuriate beneath her soothing touch. He *had* been lost too much in the past lately. Sometimes events from thousands of years earlier seemed more real than memories of the previous week. Children dead for centuries were more in his mind than the Zimmerman kids, who danced up and down the village in with boundless energy. He would smell food and think of Mesopotamia in its glory, drink wine and remember the fall of Rome.
And lately he'd been remembering one specific image that shook him to his core: two men, poised on a blistered and barren plain, swords raised, a promise made.
He'd always claimed that he couldn't remember his earliest days. That had been true, for many millennia. But he knew now that he first walked the earth under the name of Etros of Sumer. He knew now that he had a made a promise, although he couldn't remember exactly what the promise had been.
"Who was Melishika?" Ceirdwyn asked.
He sighed. He'd never understand the need women had to compare themselves against earlier lovers. But he told her, in careful words, as her hands slid up and down the muscles of his back and buttocks and legs.
He slept again, and woke with sunlight streaming into the room. Ceirdwyn was in the kitchen making coffee. They ate a simple breakfast of figs, mangoes and other native fruits by the fountain. Methos had planned a day trip out in the jungle, ostensibly just for fun, in reality to check on his preparations at Connor Falls, and set out shortly thereafter.
He was at base of Connor Falls before he realized he'd been very carefully followed.
"All right," he called out to the trees and plants. "Whoever it is, you can come out now."
Duncan emerged grinning.
Methos put on a frown. "What are you doing, sneaking out after me?"
Duncan said, "Coming to see what it is you've been up to out here."
"What makes you think I've been up to anything?"
"Because you've coming out here for months, ever since Richie's accident. And despite Tsaganis' best efforts to cover your tracks, some of the plastisteel's missing. I figure you're building yourself a bomb shelter. Metaphorically speaking. Is that right?"
Methos considered his options silently, then offered, "Why didn't you ask me?"
"I *am* asking you." The friendliness in the Highlander's face was accompanied by a hard gleam in his eyes.
"You could have done a better job following me."
"I wanted you to know I was here."
Methos pursed his lips but didn't say anything. He let Duncan follow him down through the rocks into the cavern where Richie had died, and then down to the underground river. The air was as cold and damp as Duncan remembered. The missing plastisteel had been molded into a long rectangular container, resting on the edge of the water.
"Planning on becoming a vampire?" Duncan asked.
Methos gazed at the object solemnly. "It's not for a person. It's for the Methos chronicles and other valuables."
"You think you'll need it?"
"Just as a back-up. In case all else fails."
"The Methos I know doesn't talk so easily about failure."
"Maybe I'm not the Methos you know," the ancient Immortal said. "Maybe none of us who we think we are. What do you think Richie is, with his visions and premonitions?"
Duncan asked warily, "What are you worried about Richie for?"
"He's changed, Duncan. Every year since we've come here. I think we've all changed, but we're so immune to the effect we don't even notice it anymore."
"And change is...what? Bad?"
Methos let his hands slide along the smoothness of the container. "Richie's been preoccupied lately. Does he know something he's not telling the rest of us?"
"You'll have to ask him."
"Has he seen into the future?"
Duncan picked up some rocks and scraped them against each other. "Maybe." Then, visibly fighting with his own conscience, he admitted, "He said something about a showdown. Two men on a plain. But he won't tell me who."
Over five thousand years of schooling had taught Methos to keep surprise from his face. He asked, with studied indifference, "Is that all?"
"That's enough," Duncan said.
Methos said, "The world outside is declining rapidly, MacLeod. You know it and I know it. The bloodshed, the war, the bombs, the environmental damage - it's all coming together. Major civilizations are about to topple into dust. It happened before and it happened again. And I can't help but think that we made a mistake, sixty years ago. We shouldn't have come here."
Duncan's eyes widened. "You really think that?"
"We could have stayed out there, tried to make a difference in their disasters. Tried to make a positive change. But we ran."
Duncan came to him in the darkness, the beam of his flashlight bouncing off to the rocky walls. "Staying would have only got us killed. Like Connor. Like Amanda. How many reports have we downloaded about Immortals imprisoned and executed? How many millions have died under mortal tyranny?"
Methos didn't answer.
"You always told us we were biding our time," Duncan said. "That the world would one day be safe again. Why don't you believe that anymore?"
"I don't know," Methos admitted. "I really don't know. But I have a feeling of... I don't know. Impending doom, if you like. Things are going to change."
"Now you sound like Richie," Duncan said lightly.
On the way back to the village they sensed other Immortals, and crossed paths with Holland, Ceirdwyn and Luc. "An alarm tripped in the east sector," Ceirdwyn said. "It looks like we have visitors again."
Thirty minutes east they found the intruders - three Immortals and two pre-Immortal teenagers. They'd had a rough time of it. Their clothes were torn and dirty, and they'd lost their provisions. But it was the sight of the tallest woman, a dark-haired beauty with bright green eyes, that stopped Duncan in his tracks.
"Debra?" he asked.
She looked up, fixed on him, and then flung herself into his arms.
"Dad!" she cried.
***
"You always knew Rachel and I raised children," Duncan said to Holland later, in an attempt to mollify her. They were in Holland's garden, and she was ripping out weeds with a vehemence that surprised no one who knew her when she was angry. She'd been pulling weeds for the better part of a half hour, and was soon going to have to start pulling flowers.
"I didn't know any of them were still alive," Holland said. "The way you talked about them, I thought they were all dead."
"I thought they were. I haven't heard from Debra in over a hundred years."
Holland sat back and gazed at him solemnly. Dirt smudged her nose and cheeks. "Is she the reason you didn't want to raise Peter?"
"No," he said. "I didn't want to raise Peter because I didn't want to be a father again."
Half-truths. Sometimes they were the only things he allowed himself, when it came to Rachel and the children.
Duncan moved to kneel beside her. He took her dirty hands in his. "Holland, when we first met, Tessa had been dead for over two years. Anne had been put in jeopardy by her association with me. Every mortal I got close to seemed to suffer for it. I swore I would never get close to a mortal woman again. But a long talk I'd had once with Ceirdwyn kept playing over and over in my head, and I fell in love with Rachel MacLeod, of the same clan, hundreds of years removed.
"Rachel fiercely wanted to have children. I resisted. I couldn't see anything good coming out of it. But she persisted, and we finally began adopting pre-Immortal children from orphanages across Europe. We raised six children to young adulthood before Debra, then Debra and Connor, and then finally Darien.
"Darien was the brightest and most unpredictable of all our children. He'd been in and out of foster homes, a lot like Richie when he was a kid. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't persuade Dari that he was a part of our family, loved and valued. For a lot of years we struggled to make it with him. Then he fell into drugs and crime, and moved out.
"About three years after we'd last seen him, Dari came home. I was out. Rachel was there. She was almost seventy by then, fairly old in those days, and not in the best health. They must have argued. I came home sensing that Dari had already become an Immortal, and found him bending over Rachel's body at the bottom of the stairs. He swore it was an accident, but I couldn't listen to him in my grief. I drove him away. I never saw him again."
Holland touched the sides of his face. "And for that you blame yourself?"
"Not blame," Duncan admitted. "Deep regret. A wish that it had ended some other way. I vowed, never again with a mortal woman. Never again, children. The only other woman I allowed myself to fall in love with was you."
"Oh, Duncan."
"It's how I've chosen to live my life," the Highlander said. "I can't turn back time, and I wouldn't if I could."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I always meant to. I never could. Knowing wouldn't have changed anything. It wouldn't have changed how I feel about Peter. You did a good job raising him. The best."
"Thank you," she said. Then she leaned forward and kissed him. "Are you tired?"
"Why?" he asked, confused by her change of mood.
"I want to go to bed."
The Highlander wrapped a hand in her hair and bore down on her with kisses and caresses until they lay spread in the flowers.
"Who needs a bed?" he asked.
- 6 -
Debra MacLeod glared at Joe Dawson and let loose with her sharp brogue. "You stand out of my way, you computer generated delusion of grandeur, or I'll just walk right through you."
Joe folded his arms. "You can try, missy, but you won't get past the lock on the door, which *I* control. No one disturbs Richie when he's meditating. No one but MacLeod."
"I *am* a MacLeod," Debra retorted sharply, "and I'm not going to disturb him. I'm here to say hello to an old friend."
"Say hello later," Joe said firmly.
"He may be a computer, but he's a stubborn computer," a female voice said behind Debra. She'd felt the other Immortal's approach, but had been too intent on arguing to turn around. The woman was a buxom redhead in a green shirt. "You must be one of the new ones."
"Debra MacLeod of the clan MacLeod," Debra said.
"Jenir Densales," the redhead said. "You know Richie?"
"For over four hundred years."
"I've only known him for sixty."
They appraised each other calmly. Joe Dawson blinked away for a moment, then reappeared. "I told Richie you were here, Ms. MacLeod. He'll see you now."
"Oh, will he?" Debra asked tartly. "Well, if his Majesty allows..."
"I'll be back," Jenir said, and offered a cool smile. "I'll let you two catch up."
Debra followed Joe Dawson into the house. She frowned when she saw he hadn't even furnished it. When they met, in the kitchen, she shook her head in wonder and fondness.
"Uncle Richie," she said.
"Hello, Debra," he grinned. "It's good to see you."
She hadn't died her mortal death until she was in her early forties. He still had the body of the nineteen-year-old friend of her father's who would stop by the MacLeod homes in Scotland. But his eyes had grown older and wiser, more cynical, and she said the first thing that she needed to say.
"I heard about Versailles," she offered. "I'm so sorry."
He shrugged. He'd put most of Versailles behind him. "So was I," he said, and gave her a long, hard hug. "How are you doing?"
"Long trip," Debra admitted. "Longer because I didn't even know why I was coming. But I heard you calling. From continents away. How is that possible?"
"I can't explain it," Richie said, discomfort flitting across his face. "Come on, sit down. Are you hungry?"
"Why don't you have any furniture?" Debra asked, sitting down on a pillow.
"I lived for awhile in a monastery. They didn't have much in the way of furniture, or material possessions. It kind of rubbed off on me."
He put a plate of tomatoes, carrots and green peppers on the table and sat. Debra laughed at the distance between them and edged her cushion closer. She put her hand on his arm.
"That girl, Jenir," Debra said. "You don't love her, do you?"
Richie ducked his head in the embarrassed way she'd remembered from so many centuries past. "Why do you say that?"
"The look in her eyes. She loves you. But you don't love her."
"We have an... understanding. No lies. No false promises. Just an understanding."
Debra smiled. It was the sly, conniving smile that had undone many a boy in Glenfinnan. "You and I had an understanding once," she murmured.
"And your dad nearly took my head," Richie reminded her.
"He wasn't serious," Debra said, and leaned forward. Her mouth pressed sweetly on his right cheek. Then his left. Then his forehead. And then down to his mouth, as her hands came up to pull his head in tight.
"Debra, wait," Richie said, breaking away. A flush had come into his face. "What are you doing?"
"I've waited a long time for this," Debra said breathlessly. Her hand slid up his thigh. "Richie, haven't you missed me?"
"Yes," he said. "Very much."
Their lips met again, in a moment of electric anticipation, before he pulled back and scrambled to his feet. "Debra, I've missed you a lot. But I still have an agreement with Jenir. And I respect her too much to do what you want to."
Debra didn't say anything for a moment. Then she stood gracefully and walked out of the kitchen. Richie spent several minutes trying to figure out what had just happened, and then went over to Duncan's house. Twilight had darkened the jungle and brought out moths with gossamer wings. He found Duncan doing kata, his hard body loose with the repetition of punches, blocks and kicks.
"Have you seen Debra?" Duncan asked without breaking his concentration.
"Yes," Richie said, but decided on discretion. Duncan was, after all, still her father. He wandered around Duncan's private dojo, took a katana down from the wall and turned it over and over in his hands.
"Nervous about tonight?"
"Maybe."
"You don't have to. Maybe it's not the best timing."
Richie grimaced. "I can't back away from it. I have to know. We all have to know. But... can I ask a favor first?"
"What's that?"
"Can we fight first? And pretend... "
Duncan stopped his kata. He gazed affectionately at the younger Immortal. "Pretend what?"
Richie offered a shy half-smile. "Pretend that it's just us, and the old days? My old days, not necessarily yours. You know. Pretend...it's Seacouver, and the dojo, and you're teaching me all over again?"
"You don't need any more teaching, Rich."
He shrugged. "Maybe I just need to pretend."
"Maybe sometimes we all need that," Duncan replied, and for a short time, at least, the world with all its worries fell away.
***
Methos and Michel were in Michel's kitchen, scraping together dinner. Naseem had gone out to make temporary living arrangements for the five newcomers. Ceirdwyn, exhausted after a day of interrogating the strangers, had pled a headache and gone to bed.
Methos was in the middle of cutting a sandwich in half when he felt something he'd hoped to never experience again.
An earthquake.
The low, distinct rumbling centered in the back of his mind and sent a cold chill down his spine. It had been the same way in a bloody prison cell deep in the bowels of Versailles, when they'd rescued Richie from SIDI. And it had been that way in Seacouver, when Xan had bent the will of young Immortals to his intentions.
Anger flared in the oldest living Immortal.
"Just what I needed," he growled. He pushed the sandwich aside. "I have to go. I'll talk to you later."
He stopped by his house, first, to get his sword. Then he followed the thunder through the night. The world seemed sharper in his eyes, the humid air even more damp. He slid as quietly as he could through the mangroves until he sensed another of his kind, and found Peter climbing a hundred-foot palm tree with spiked boots and metal grips in his hands.
It wouldn't have been remarkable except that Peter had a deathly phobia of heights, but was scaling the smooth bark with the agility and confidence of a monkey.
Somewhere near the top, the details lost in darkness, Peter slipped and fell with a hoarse cry. He slammed into the ground near Methos, his spine cracking instantly. Methos examined the body and found blood trailing from Peter's left ear. The blood might have come from a brain hemorrhage, but he suspected an entirely different source.
Without waiting for Peter to revive he went straight to MacLeod's house. Joe Dawson was standing watch at the door. The irony of having his own computer set up against him didn't escape Methos' attention. He strode through the hologram, kicked in the door, and found Duncan and Richie in the living room.
Richie was meditating.
Three inches off the floor.
"Stop him," Methos warned, his sword coming up.
Duncan gazed calmly at him. "Why?"
"Because it will come to no good," Methos said. "However benevolent his intentions, no matter how well he thinks he can control it, it will come to no good. Peter's already dead."
"How dead?" Duncan asked.
"Temporarily dead," Richie said, opening his eyes. He eased down to the hardwood floor and let out a deep breath. "I felt him go."
"You sent him up that tree in the first place," Methos accused. "How? By using the same agony Xan inflicted on you?"
"It doesn't have to be pain," Richie said. "And Peter agreed to it. He's the youngest Immortal here, Methos, it had to be him."
Methos paced angrily up and down the room. "You can't meddle with this power, Richie. You can't take the chance. Do you want to end up the way Xan did? Do you want to be like he was?"
Richie stood up. "I already am. Whether you like it or not, whether you want to believe it or not. You've seen it. You've been here, year after year, watching me."
Methos exclaimed, "It's a power beyond your control!"
"Not anymore," Richie said softly.
They glared at each other until Duncan said, in a reasonable tone of voice, "Whether we like it or not, Methos, Richie has Xan's abilities. We can either help him learn to control it or we can outcast him for it. Which do you chose?"
"Plan C," Methos shot back.
"Which is?"
"I don't know yet." He stormed from Duncan's house, so angry he could barely see, and nearly collided with Michel on the path.
"What are you doing here?" Methos demanded, unable to keep anxiety and frustration out of his voice.
"I followed you," Michel said. "I had to."
"Why?"
"It's my job," came the words, soft as the breeze in the trees.
Something sharp drove up through Methos' ribs, and a liquid fire filled his lungs. He looked down in astonishment at the knife hilt buried in his body, and sagged into Michel's arms.
The last words he heard were, "You'll never know how sorry I am."
- 7 -
Luc woke Duncan at dawn. The younger Immortal looked exhausted, disheveled, and somewhat embarrassed.
"It's Debra," he said.
Duncan sat upright. "What about her?"
"I just met her yesterday," he said, "and I know she's your daughter and all, so this is kind of awkward to say. But I think she's acting weird."
"Weird how?" Duncan rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "What did she do?"
"She kind of... well, seduced me."
The Highlander blinked. He hadn't worried about Debra's sexuality since she was an eighteen year old mortal under his curfew. "And?" he asked.
"Then she took off into the jungle. In the middle of the night, with no flashlight, no equipment, no food. Wouldn't say where she was going. Didn't even look like she heard me."
Duncan stifled a yawn and then reached out for a clean shirt. "I'll check into it. Which way did she go?"
"Towards the east slope of Mount Amanda, I think."
Duncan took a backpack of fresh fruit and survival gear with him as he set out through the mangroves and across the village stream towards Mount Amanda. He didn't have any serious concerns about his daughter, but it didn't hurt to check out the situation. The day started bright and humid, but after several hours the wind kicked up and sun clouded over with the promise of rain.
Something yellow caught his attention, and he found Debra's clothes discarded in the brush.
He yelled her name. No answer came but the ever-present birds and insects, the living jungle.
And then, from far ahead, he saw something he'd never seen before.
The Quickening of an Immortal woman giving birth.
***
Richie woke late that morning with a headache. He expected it, after the strain of manipulating Peter up the tree and the fight with Methos. The sky was dark above the trees, and a wind kicked leaves and plants back and forth. He stood in the doorway of his home and listened to the odd disquiet inside himself. Part of the unease came from Methos' anger, his cutting words. Duncan had said that Methos would reconsider the issue once he calmed down. Richie couldn't help but feel that Methos just didn't trust him, and hadn't for hundreds of years.
Joe Dawson flickered into existence beside him.
"Hey, Richie," the computer image said. "Have you seen Methos?"
"Not since last night. Why?"
"He didn't come home last night," Joe said. "Ceirdwyn is looking for him. She's a little annoyed. And a little worried."
Richie frowned. "He left here about - "
The vision hit him like a battering ram to the stomach. Richie gasped and groped blindly for the door frame for support. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't feel his own body anymore. Everything was gone but the smoke, fire, blood, Quickenings, the invaders from the sky, the death of all his friends and loved ones -
"Richie?" Joe's voice came to him, over and over. The Immortal mentally clawed his way back towards reality. The gray-haired, friendly image of the dead mortal bent towards him. "Richie, what is it?"
Then Joe flickered, slid into vertical stripes, recovered, and lifted his eyebrows in surprise.
"Someone's messing with my hardware," he said. He flickered away, and then came back with the barely audible words of, "No ...more...music."
Joe Dawson died a second time.
Richie grabbed his rapier and broke into a run towards the village. For the first time ever, he regretted living so far from the others. He reached the community dojo just as a howling filled the air and two massive airpods slid down from the sky. From the jungle, a dozen strange Immortals broke out with swords and blood-thirst in their eyes. No SIDI uniforms adorned them; this was a private army, trained and merciless.
Jill Zimmerman died first, her head neatly lopped off from her body. Luc fell under a grinning swordsman nearly twice his size. Their Quickenings poured into the sky like liquid fire. From across the square Richie saw Ceirdwyn in a desperate battle to defend herself against a tall man with long red hair, and her eyes caught his for the barest split-second of anguish.
"No!" Richie screamed. He realized with a quick and deep stab of horror that he couldn't save them. His visions had been useless. The settlement was dead, everyone was dead, and agonizing grief moved like a freezing stream through his bloodstream to his bowels, to his numb fingers and toes, to every inch of his icy skin.
But he was fighting. His sword was cutting, again and again, into his enemies. They parted before him in a way he didn't understand. Then his blows were blocked by a taller, sturdier man whose face was achingly familiar. Recognition made him pause for a single fatal second as screams and blood and smoke swung dizzily around him.
"Darien," he gasped.
Trained to take advantage of an opponent's tiniest error, Darien MacLeod seized Uncle Richie's pause and drove his katana into the older Immortal's chest before knocking him to his knees.
Blood filled Richie's mouth. The hot, wet, metallic taste of it almost made him gag. He saw Darien's sword coming around but his arms were useless, unable to raise the rapier in defense, and death was beckoning.
He saw not Felicia, not Amanda, not Tessa, nor anything he expected to see. Instead he felt himself hoisted up into the light, soaring into the air, people and activity just inches beyond his perception, and a kindly old man whose name he'd long forgotten said sorrowfully, "Well, lad, what are they going to do with you?"
Darkness.
***
Duncan was speechless.
Finding Debra laying naked in a small clearing, surrounding by the wild flowers of the jungle, a newborn child in her arms, was by far one of the most surprising things to ever happen to him. Debra stirred beneath his gaze, her arms tightening around the quiet infant that suckled at her breast.
"Dad," she murmured. "You shouldn't be here."
"Where did . .. " he started, but then stopped. It was fairly obvious where the baby had come from. He covered Debra with her own clothes as protection against the slight sprinkling of rain. "My God," he breathed.
"Another MacLeod," Debra whispered. Tears slid from her eyes. "I won't remember."
"What do you mean?" Duncan asked.
"It happens every time," Debra said. "When it happens... the baby comes... in a little while I won't even remember she's mine."
Debra hadn't been pregnant yesterday. He would have sworn it. He remembered Luc's words, and the odd look in Richie's eyes when they'd talked about Debra the previous evening.
"Who's the father?" he asked.
"Luc," she supplied. "He'll never know. I won't remember her. Even if you put her in my arms tomorrow... I won't know her as my own."
Duncan sat back, thinking about the implications. All at once he understood why Immortals were foundlings. He understood how Peter could have been abandoned in the jungle. He remembered, in a stray and abstract way, that long ago Amanda had unexpectedly seduced Richie in a one-night stand and then disappeared from town for a day.
The rain fell harder, cool and refreshing, against his neck. Debra offered him the infant and he took her, in awe, careful of her fragility, and she yawned with her perfect, tiny mouth.
"Do me a favor," Debra said. "When I can't remember her anymore, make sure she keeps her name."
"What's her name?"
"Rachel," she said. "After mom."
Duncan's eyes misted. "I'll remember," he said huskily. He nestled the infant against his chest and then turned his face to the falling rain. When he could speak again, he said, "Are you all right? We should head back before this gets too bad."
Debra sat up carefully and pulled her clothes on. "What are you going to tell the others?"
"I don't know," Duncan admitted. He kissed his daughter's forehead. "But I'll think of something."
Halfway back to the village, they saw the smoke of burning buildings pushed up into the rain.
At the village edge, he found crushed foliage where the airpods had come down, and two decapitated corpses laying in the mud.
"What's happened?" Debra asked. "Dad?"
"Stay here," he said. He handed her the infant he'd carried back. "Hold her."
"Where did she come from?"
"I'll explain it later," Duncan promised, although part of him knew already that there was no later. There was only the now, sharp in all his senses yet somehow surreal. The now, which made every inch of his skin crawl with dread. The now, which seemed destined again to break his heart.
They were all dead.
He found them slaughtered in their homes. Alan and Paulo, their bodies entwined on the bed in a mock parody of desire. Headless. Naseem, slumped over the table in her dining room, her hands thrown up in surrender. Decapitated. Gustaf, twisted in his garden, the large body limp and defenseless. No head in sight.
Most of the others had died in the village square and been piled into a heap before being set on fire. Their heads were also gone, but he easily recognized the remains of Luc's woven brown shirt, the Celtic cross around Ceirdwyn's neck, the jade bracelets Huang had worn around her wrists.
The wedding ring on Holland's finger.
Duncan sat in the mud. The rain had not abated. It fell in a steady, comforting rhythm against the corpses, the roof of the dojo, the walls of the Friendship Hall. He expected to feel the same overwhelming grief that had swamped him when Connor had died. He only remembered fragments of his thoughts then, but they'd centered on getting Connor's head back on his neck so that he could heal again.
Holland's head was missing. Her hair, which she'd bleached and darkened, curled and straightened, in an endless battle to tame it over the centuries. Her sweet, expressive eyes, in which he'd found himself and happiness both. The stubborn set of her jaw, when she got an idea into her head that just wouldn't quit.
He should have helped her raise Peter. It hadn't been such a large thing to ask, in retrospect. He could have made a concession, for the sake of their love.
No grief came. He was thinking very clearly, and saw his path extremely well. But for awhile he couldn't move, could only sit beside the smoldering, headless corpses. He didn't even notice the smell of burning flesh soaking into his own clothes.
"Dad?" Debra finally found him and bent near to him. When had it grown so dark? He could barely see her. "Dad, are they all dead? Are you sure?"
Duncan didn't answer. He couldn't find any hope within him that any of them had escaped. He staggered to his feet, surprised at the weakness in his legs, and kissed her forehead.
"Where are you going?" Debra asked. Her voice followed him as he made his way past the Friendship Hall. "Dad, where is there to go?"
Only one place. He stopped when his boots nudged something out of the mud. He bent and retrieved Richie's rapier from where it had fallen. He'd given him that weapon centuries ago, after his first run- in with another Immortal. So long ago, so far away.
Duncan took the rapier with him.
He went into the jungle, moving with the darkness and the rain, body knowing exactly where it was going, mind blessedly blank. He left behind his home of so many years and went west, towards Connor Falls. He stumbled many times in the darkness, ripping his clothes and staining his skin with blood, but the injuries felt like tiny scratches and barely registered in his brain.
He found himself humming. Old Scottish tunes. Bawdy tavern songs. Rock'n'roll. La Marseillaise, for Tessa. The blues, for Joe. Even the soundtrack for Camelot, although he'd hated the New York production.
His voice broke regularly, but he didn't notice that either.
At last he came to Connor Falls, and resisted the temptation to throw himself into the thundering tons of water to the jagged rocks below. He might very well survive, and find himself in the same predicament as in his first few months as an Immortal in the Scottish Highlands; willing but unable to die.
He climbed down through a hole in jagged rocks to a dark cavern. Crawled, on hands and knees, through the darkness to Methos' underground river. Methos, at least, had possessed the foresight to stash away a lantern. By its dim yellow light Duncan examined the long plastisteel container. It would be a tight fit, but comfort wasn't an issue. The sliding top could only be opened from the outside, which suited his purposes just fine.
He pushed it into the river.
It sank, filling with water, until it rested eight feet below the waterline.
Hands came to rest on his shoulder.
"Duncan, don't," Tessa whispered. Her white dress shimmered in the darkness. Her face was wet with tears. He hadn't seen her in sixty years, since the night of Connor and Amanda's death. She wasn't real, no matter how hard he wished she was.
"I have to," he said.
"It's not all lost," she said.
"It is for me."
Duncan extinguished the lantern. Tessa vanished. The Highlander took both his katana and Richie's rapier with him as he submerged into the cold stream and kicked downward until he could wedge himself inside the coffin. He was running out of breath, and working in the dark wasn't easy. But he got himself inside, got the two swords at his side, and slid the top along until it latched and sealed him in a dark and watery tomb.
He couldn't breathe. He opened his mouth and inhaled water. He tried to detach himself from his own drowning but not even the greatest self-control could blot out the panic, the horror, as his lungs shuddered convulsively in his chest.
Consciousness faded. No visions, no dreams, no memories.
Duncan MacLeod rested in peace.
Author's Notes : This one wasn't any easier to write than its predecessor, emotionally or mechanically. Trying to condense sixty plus years and a dozen Immortals into a story that doesn't span a zillion (technical term, that) parts was my major problem. Thank you very much to Rachel Shelton for proofreading - great job, Rachel! - and for trying to persuade me to do away with *some* of the commas. :-) Thank you to Janine Shahinian for her continuing support - I appreciate it! Thanks to anyone who ever writes - I love feedback! And thanks to those who offered tech support about DNA. *** This was going to be called The Heat of the Sun, but I found a song by the Cowboy Junkies called A Common Disaster that I liked better and I never did get around to working in the storyline about the environmental disasters going on outside Sanctuary.***And there IS an epilogue, although it may take me another day to get it up... it's not deliberate torture, it's just part of my continuing saga of 129 boxes and a thousand things... how would you end this part?(oh, that's rhetorical) :-)
- 8 - Epilogue -
Methos dragged himself across the filthy brown carpet to the shattered windows that looked across the dark blue bay. Above him, the broken shell of the Sydney Opera House roof let in patches of perfectly blue sky. Birds flapped in the beams - mean, ratty birds who mocked him from their perches. To the east, the Harbour Bridge stood half-collapsed into the water. The manacle and twelve-foot chain that fixed his right ankle to a lobby post didn't stretch far enough for him to see all the city of Sydney behind him, but he knew it was abandoned. No one would hear him if he shouted. He shouted anyway, to hear his own voice, to break the quiet of waves and wind and cruel birds, and then sank in dejection by the broken windows.
Rats had come during the night, scurrying across his body when he tried to sleep. He'd come back to life sometime the previous day, but had no watch to tell time. He had no water and no food. He had no idea what might have happened in Sanctuary. His healed body bore no trace of Michel's killing wound, but his mind burned with the betrayal.
The sun slipped further down the sky. Methos wrapped his arms around his body, fighting off the growing chill. He didn't like the idea of being the only one in this dead city. He didn't like the ghosts. An airborne ebola virus had killed most of the city's population eighty years earlier, and forced the extermination of the survivors. Methos wasn't completely sure that the virus had died out, and wondered how many billion molecules might be lurking in the soggy, damaged carpet beneath him.
Hemorrhaging from every organ in his body wasn't an appealing idea. But he'd die a dozen of those deaths, if he only knew what had happened to his friends and loved ones.
Darkness came. The birds sounded like bats, and he thought if he looked up he'd see them peering down at him with glowing red eyes. Methos chided himself for such foolishness, but didn't look up.
He was curled against the lobby post, hungry and cold and miserable, when the sense of another Immortal dragged him from half-sleep. He lurched to his feet, the chain dragging at his ankle, and then raised a hand to shield his eyes as a blinding spotlight hit him from above.
A silhouette blocked the light.
"Hello, Etros," a voice said.
Methos squinted painfully. "Who are you?"
"We've never met," the man said. He moved forward, so that the light fell on chiseled features and a thatch of unruly brown hair. The man had been in his late twenties when he first died, in peak physical condition, and was probably irresistible to women. His eyes were the color of the ocean in winter.
"My name is Valery Constantine," he said. "I took Connor MacLeod's head."
Methos stiffened.
"I loved Australia in its prime," Valery said. His voice held the faint accent of the Italian highlands. "A raw, wild country. The settlers of Botany Bay, struggling to tame the wilderness. Brave men and women - "
"Spare me the stereotypes," Methos said coldly. "Why are we here? If you truly did take Connor MacLeod's Quickening, you can take mine."
"With one hand tied behind my back," Valery said. That truth sat in the space between them, irrefutable and terrible. Something flapped high above their heads. The wind, from the bay, shook the fractured windows.
"You made a promise," Valery said. "I brought you here to remind you."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Possibly," Valery admitted. "But you remember Labarna, don't you?"
Labarna. A name from a very long time ago. A rumor among the Immortals of the Hittite empire more than a thousand years before Christ. They'd spoken of one of their own who could control minds. Idle gossip that Methos had never believed. But he'd told Octavia, and in search of Labarna she'd found Xan.
"Labarna was a rumor."
"Labarna was living in Tibet," Valery said. "Until fifty years ago, when I took his head."
Implications of that sank in.
Valery spread his hands. "I don't have all the powers of your young friend, Richie Ryan, but I'm working on it. Labarna was much more powerful than your Xan. Should I tell you that I remember a barren, blistered plain? Two men and a sword. You were one of the men, Methos."
Methos said, "Where is Richie?"
"You promised," Valery said. "I remember. You'll be there, at the end, to judge. As you were judged."
Something flicked through the air, and Methos caught the thin metal file that Valery tossed him.
"You'll free yourself eventually," Valery said. He allowed himself a smile and started to move away. "I'll see you, Etros. Methos. Whatever you want to call yourself. Although I have to admit, Methos is a clever pun."
"Wait!" Methos ordered, the snap of command in his voice. Valery turned reluctantly. The oldest living Immortal said, "Michel. Was he a spy from the very beginning?"
"He was one of my students," Valery admitted. "One of my most insightful. Sent out into the world to battle other Immortals. I hadn't heard from him in several hundred years. He waited until Richie's powers came into full bloom before he contacted me."
That made the pain worse. Michel had been his friend for two hundred years and Methos had trusted him with everything Sanctuary was. But he'd failed to make any lasting impression at all. After everything they'd done and shared, Michel had chosen to return to his teacher.
"Where is Michel?" Methos asked.
Valery's faint smile disappeared. "I killed him. He obviously can't be trusted."
"And Richie?"
"Being molded. Being shaped. He doesn't know it, of course, but I intend to make him my finest agent. I plan to strip away every moral, every value, every strength he thinks he has. I'm going to make him destroy himself. He'll break before my blade when it comes to the final Gathering."
Methos shook his head. "You'll never win the Prize."
The other Immortal shrugged. "I guess that will be decided at the end of time. See you there. After all, Etros... you promised."
***
Angels. Angels and clouds, and saints, and broken bits of gold. Richie wondered if he was in Immortal heaven. The sound of badly-played church music on a piano woefully out of tune convinced him otherwise. He dragged himself upright. He was freezing cold. Above him stretched the dome of an ancient, partially destroyed cathedral. Blood and garbage and ashes littered the aisles. The sharp winds of winter cut through broken stained glass, and snow drifted in with the late afternoon light.
He turned to see Darien MacLeod hunched over the piano. For a moment he couldn't fathom why Darien was there.
Then he remembered what had happened to everyone he loved.
"I should have played the bagpipes," Darien said without turning around. "Don't you think? Mom made me take piano all those years. What a stupid, deluded woman."
Richie examined himself. He was wearing thick, uncomfortable winter clothes that did little to protect him from the cold. His rapier was gone, but an unfamiliar sword lay just a few feet away. He hefted it experimentally.
"If you're as good as my father always said," Darien said, "you can defeat me with a toothpick." He still hadn't turned around. "I didn't see much skill back in the jungle. But I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt based on the fact we'd just slaughtered your whole pathetic group of whiners."
Richie stood. He was stiff, but entirely healed. His eyes scanned the Cathedral. He knew it. Darius had taken great care to show him every nook and cranny, trying to impress history and culture and the Almighty on a rowdy American teenager.
Notre Dame. Which meant they were in the Paris demilitarized zone. Not so very far from Versailles.
Holy Ground.
"What happened to everyone else?" he demanded.
"Dead. What do you think?"
He filed that information for later use. He would use it as a stone on which he could sharpen his rage, his bitterness, his sorrow. He imagined that when he allowed himself to feel the pain, it would be very immense indeed.
"Why not me?"
"My master has plans for you," Darien said. He turned and rose in a swift fluid motion, a sword in hand. "I have others."
Richie said, "We're on Holy Ground."
"You idiot. There's no such thing anymore as Holy Ground."
Richie had killed before on Holy Ground. He'd vowed to never do it again. But that had been in a world far removed from this one in time and horror both. He raised his sword, then shook his head and dropped it.
"If you wanted me dead, you'd have already killed me," he said.
Darien smiled coldly. "I do want you dead. My master wants you alive. He thinks you're important. I think you're going to lose your head in a few minutes."
"I won't fight you."
"Then you'll die."
"So be it," Richie shrugged.
"If it's your choice... although, I suppose, it's fair to say those children were counting on you."
"Which children?"
Darien circled him carefully. "The Zimmerman kids. Pre- immortals. Valery took them to his camp in Oregon. He'll make sure they're broken in properly. Raw material for his molding. He took that redhead girl, too, to help persuade them. What was her name? Jenir? He'll rename her, you know. He renames all his whores."
Richie's gaze narrowed. "You said they were all dead."
"I lied," Darien grinned. "Or maybe I'm lying now. Maybe they aren't dead. The only way you'll ever find out is to get out of this Cathedral. And the only way out is to fight me."
Richie said nothing. The Darien he'd once bounced on his knee was nothing but an old memory. This man, this abomination, deserved to be destroyed.
Holy Ground. He'd made a vow.
"Maybe Duncan's alive," Darien added. "Maybe imprisoned. Maybe suffering. You know, if you cut off an Immortal's hands or legs, they don't grow back."
Richie poised at the edge of decision. Snow drifted through the broken stained glass and slushed gently down on him. It was very cold, and growing dark. The Paris demilitarized zone was full of scavengers who came out at night. Scavengers who would try to hurt him, kill him, if he should escape from Darien.
"If you pluck out their eyes," Darien said softly, "they don't grow back. If you let me live, I'll make sure they pluck out his eyes."
Richie knew then that he was going to break his vow. He knew that very shortly he was going to give up an essential part of what he'd made himself after Versailles. He knew there would be no turning back.
He didn't care.
"Answer me one thing," he said, raising his sword. "Did you kill your mother? Did you kill Rachel?"
"Does it matter?" Darien asked, his eyes gleaming.
"It might. It might influence how much I make you suffer before you die, Darien."
"Then yes, Uncle Richie." The younger Immortal's smile mocked him. "I killed her."
The two sons of Duncan MacLeod met in battle.
THE END
|
|
|
English version
Download
Write to the author
Version française
Print