Immortal Beloved

by C. E. Murphy

  Minyah laughed. “As you wish.” She glanced towards the clear skies. “Truly, rain would be better. The drought has gone on a long time. Queen Ino has sent to the Oracle at Delphi for advice on how to end it.”

  “It’ll rain eventually, no mater what Ino does. I don’t suppose I could go tell her that?”

  Minyah chuckled. “No, Methos. She is the Queen. Friends of the nanny do not tell the Queen that the weather is beyond her control.”

  “Friends of the nanny,” Methos replied, “have a bad feeling about this, Minyah. Take your twins away from here and out of Ino’s grasp before the messanger returns from Delphi.”

  “Their father would never allow it,” Minyah said, “and Ino would not dare.”

  “You underestimate the hatred in the human heart, Minyah.”

  A handful of days later he stood on a clifftop above the waters, watching the scene below unfold in silence. Sacrifice the children, the Oracle had proclaimed, and the gods will be pleased and rain will come again. Hand in hand, Helle walked with her brother Phrixos to face the sacrificial priest, her fear leeched away by Phrixos’ quiet confidence. Always the quieter of the twins, Helle had let Phrixos make the choice to agree to be sacrificed.

  Around a curve on the beach, sand flew underhoof. A chariot, well-crafted and sure, was driven by dark-haired Minyah, her golden cloak snapping behind her in the wind. Helle stepped forward. Methos’ muscles tensed, watching the priest’s knife drive downward, blood suddenly staining the girl’s limp body.

  Behind the priest, chaos broke loose.

  Minyah’s sword cut down two guards in an instant, the momentum of the chariot bringing strength to her blows. Methos had never known her to carry a weapon, much less known that she knew how to use one. For a moment, he regretted his decision to not join her on the rescue.

  “No,” he’d said, flatly, and touched her face. “No, Minyah. They’re mortal. They’d die anyway. I won’t risk my head for them. The reward for disrupting a sacrifice is to become one yourself, and I don’t want to find out if I can survive having my heart cut out. Walk away from it, Minyah. They’re not worth your life.”

  She’d regarded him cooly. “Perhaps they are not worth yours, Methos. My life is my own to dictate, and I choose this risk.”

  “Minyah, they’ll take the cloak from you, and the ring. You’ll have no protection. Under this,” he said, fingering the edge of the cloak, “you’re mortal. You won’t stand up again from a killing blow.”

  “If that happens,” Minyah said evenly, “you will take the artifacts and hide them somewhere safe.” She hesitated, hand over her breast, and then she lifted her Aries necklace off for the first time since Methos had known her. “Take this,” she said quietly. “You know where my papers are, the Watcher records. There is a box among them, one of the stone boxes the artists used to make in Atlantis. There are letters there, for Ghean.” She lifted a hand to ward off his protests. “I know she is dead. They were written by a fanciful mother, when I was very young, long before I knew I would survive down the centuries. Put these with them, and seal the box again. Leave it in the archives, somewhere hidden, if I do not come back. Keep them safe for me. Keep them safe for Ghean.”

  Methos folded his hand over the necklace, slowly. “I don’t want to lose you too,” he said distantly.

  Minyah smiled. “We all die, Methos. If it goes badly, perhaps I will see you again in the mountaintops of Atlantis.”

  Methos’ fingers closed tightly around the necklace, the silver imprinting a mark on his palm. Phrixos was in the chariot now, bodily hauled there by the first Watcher. Settled crookedly over his shoulders was the Fleece, and a blade shattered against it as someone scrambled into the chariot. An arrow, fired from only a few feet away, split its tip against the cloak as another one embedded itself in Minyah’s upper arm. Even at the distance, Methos could see the horror on the priest’s face as the cloak warded off injury. A faint shout sent men running after the chariot as it sped away through the surf.

  Ten hours later, Phrixos returned to the palace room Methos shared with Minyah. Silent, the boy held out his hand, curled around something. Methos extended his own hand, and the golden ring of House Leo fell into his palm.

  “She asked me to give you this,” Phrixos said quietly.

  “She’s dead.” Methos couldn’t make the words into a question.

  “To end the drought,” Phrixos replied. “A sacrifice was needed. She offered herself, and I did as the priests wished.”

  Methos looked behind himself, out the windows. Rain had begun to fall, a few hours since. “She raised you,” he said. “Helle was already dead. They both had to die?”

  “The priests would never have allowed Minyah to live.”

  Methos looked back at the boy. “You know so little,” he said, tired pity filling his voice. “Go away, Phrixos. Go live your little life, and remember that you chose death for the two women who were your family.” He brushed by Phrixos, then stopped. “Where is the cloak?”

  “The Fleece? Gone away on a ship to be hidden beyond the edge of the world. It has a dark god’s magic in it.”

  “You know so little,” Methos whispered again, and walked away from the palace by the sea.

  -o-O-o-

  “It was almost a century, before I heard the myth of the Golden Fleece. I barely recognized it. She chose her death, Ghean. I’ll never understand why.” For the first time since he’d begun his dialogue, Methos opened his eyes, looking over templed fingers at the tiny Atlantean woman.

  Ghean returned his regard, steadily. “You hid the box in the archives in the Paris offices. For her. For me.”

  Methos shrugged a shoulder. “The things we do for old lovers,” he repeated the words he’d written over a century ago. “I was sure you were dead, but I put them there for you in case. Because your mother asked me to. They were in Atlantean. I never imagined anyone would translate them. I certainly never thought you’d be alive to find them.”

  “I’m full of surprises,” Ghean murmured, then stood. “Gentlemen, much as I have enjoyed your company, it is a quarter to four in the morning, and I have a plane to catch in seven hours. Perhaps our paths will cross again someday.”

  “Oh, I imagine so,” Methos answered, standing. “Ghean, it has been positively fascinating to see you again.” He bent to brush a kiss against the diminutive woman’s cheek. “We’ll have to do it again.”

  “Perhaps a little sooner than four and a half thousand years,” Ghean suggested, and smiled as she accepted handshakes from Joe and Duncan. “Goodnight, my friends.” She escorted them to the door, leaning in the frame as they went down the steps. “Goodnight, Methos.”

  Chapter 20

  Methos stopped at the foot of the stairs and tilted his face back into the rain. “So, Mac,” he said after a moment. “How would you like to go to Greece?”

  Duncan stared at Methos through the downpour. “Greece?”

  “Sure.” The ancient Immortal stuffed his hands in his pockets, shrugging. “It’s nice this time of year. Besides, it’s a convienent hopping-off place on the way to Atlantis. Sure. Why not?”

  “What do you want to go to Atlantis for? Weren’t you the one telling me it was better left drowned?”

  “That was before Ghean was alive,” Methos said steadily. Joe stepped between the two men.

  “Some of us,” he said, “come down with colds if we stand around in the rain all night. Could we hail a cab and discuss this back in the hotel room?”

  Methos frowned up at Ghean’s apartment. “Nice of her to call one for us, yes. All right, Joe.” The slender Immortal walked down the street, towards the main thoroughfare. Duncan hurried to catch up, then paused a moment, waiting on Joe’s slower gait.

  “What bloody difference does it make if Ghean’s alive or not? I’d think you’d be glad to see her.”

  Methos clicked his tongue. “There you go again, Highlander. Thinking.” Shoulders hunched against the rain, he stopped on the
street corner, rocking back on his heels as he waited for a cab to appear. “Atlantean was an obscure tongue, Duncan.”

  “I’m sure you have a point,” Joe said.

  “Patience, Joe. Don’t I always get to the point?”

  Joe and Duncan exchanged glances. “No,” Duncan said.

  “Actually,” Joe added, “you seem to take great pleasure in being cryptic and avoiding the point entirely.”

  “It’s part of my charm,” Methos explained. “But my point is, until Ghean turned up alive, I was the only one who could translate any Atlantean texts.”

  The rain bounced off the pavement, tiny circles like ballerina’s skirts rippling out from puddles. For a few moments, the steady patter was the only sound, and then Duncan asked, “And this is important how?”

  “Well,” Methos said reasonably, “no one knows I can read it.” His grin was disguised by the darkness.

  Joe ran a hand backwards through wet hair. “Methos,” he said dangerously.

  Headlights flashed in the distance, and Methos squinted down the road. “I think it’s a cab,” he announced. “The real point, Joe, is that Atlantis — it is a cab.” He stepped down off the curb to hail the oncoming vehicle.

  “Lousy night for it,” the cabbie said cheerfully as they climbed in. “What’re you doing out in the rain?”

  “Getting wet,” Methos offered, and remained stubbornly silent for the entire trip to the hotel. Once there, Duncan paid, as Methos protested, wide-eyed, “What? You think I have money?”

  “I can’t afford to keep you, Methos,” Duncan said as they entered the hotel. “You’re going to have to go mooch off someone else soon.”

  “Just as soon as I get myself killed,” Methos promised.

  Duncan groaned. “You’re not still on about that, are you?”

  “If you don’t get to the point about Atlantis soon,” Joe threatened, “I’ll shoot you myself, and I won’t doctor the records.”

  Methos turned an alarmed look on Joe. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me.”

  Methos held up his hands in defeat as Duncan opened the room door. “The point is … okay, who gets his own bed?” he demanded, staring in dismay at the two double beds. “I forgot about that when we dropped off the luggage.” He glared impotently at the room.

  Longer than it was wide, the decor was identical to virtually every other hotel in America. Neutral brown carpet hid both dirt and wear from foot traffic well, and the walls were painted a non-descript rust. Heavy grey and brown curtains cut the sound of rain at the far end of the room, and a small round table with an overbright lamp was settled between two chairs just in front of the window. Paintings of wildflowers, stiff colors looking like paint-by-number canvases, hung over each of the beds, reflecting in the mirror that hung by the television. The luggage was piled neatly on the counter beneath the mirror.

  “Joe does,” Duncan said firmly, lifting a finger to point at Methos. “After all, we’re having a night out with Dad. He deserves to not have to sleep with squirming youngsters.”

  Methos squinted. “I’m older than you. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to respect your elders?”

  “‘Out of frustration, I shot Adam,’” Joe dictated dreamily. “‘It might have been a little much, but I’d known for years that he was actually Methos, the oldest Immortal, and I was really tired of him not getting to the point. The record has now been set straight.’ They’ll probably run me out for not telling the truth in the first place, but hell. Nobody ever actually asked me.”

  “The Book,” Methos finally burst out, impatiently, at Joe. “That book was two thirds full of information I couldn’t even begin to comprehend forty-five hundred years ago. Information that science is just now catching up to, Joe. Cloning, gene therapy, God alone knows what else. It was so completely unfathomable to me that I didn’t even know where to start. Today, they’ll know where to start, and I shudder to think what could be done with it.”

  Joe sat on the edge of one of the beds, staring at Methos in genuine disbelief. “The Book? Methos, Atlantis sank nearly five thousand years ago. What makes you think it still exists?”

  “Ghean exists,” Methos said darkly, flinging his greatcoat over the back of a chair. “I would have said that was impossible. Right at this very moment, I’m highly reluctant to discount anything at all as impossible.”

  Duncan came out of the bathroom with an armful of towels, tossing them to the other two and keeping one for himself, rubbing his hair dry as he spoke. “Why are you so angry that she’s alive, old man?”

  Methos caught his towel, wiping his face dry. “I don’t like surprises, Mac. Surprises can be dangerous.”

  The Highlander pulled his towel over his shoulders, hanging on to both ends of it in front of his chest. “Is that it?”

  Methos closed his eyes. “Why don’t you spit it out, Mac?”

  “He’s touchy, for someone who dances around the point all the time,” Duncan observed to Joe, then looked back at Methos. “She was trapped for four and a half millennia, Methos. You sure it’s not guilt that’s making you angry?”

  Methos opened his eyes, regarding Duncan. “Yes.” As Duncan lifted his eyebrows dubiously, Methos scowled. “They were fighting on holy ground, MacLeod. I had no idea what was going to happen, but I was dead certain no one at ground zero was going to survive. I was sure she was dead as soon as Karem cut her down.”

  “She was Immortal,” Joe said quietly. “But you left her body.”

  “Do you think,” Methos demanded, “that I haven’t thought of that a hundred times in the last few hours? A thousand times in the last forty-five hundred years? Do you think I haven’t what-iffed the situation to death?” He threw the towel down over his coat with a snap. “The goddamned world looked like it was ending, Joe, and I made a judgement call. Karem and Aroz were fighting between me and her body, and she’d been damned near cut in half. I didn’t think I had time to pick up the pices and run. The world is a very simple place, Joe. If it comes down to me or the other guy, I’m always going to choose me. Always. You’re thousands of years too late to make me feel guilty for choosing my life over hers.”

  “And yet you saved Minyah.” Duncan’s voice was soft, the words almost a question. Methos sighed, anger draining away.

  “She was mobile. She was in front of me. I had to get her out of the way so I could move, and no, I am not pretending that my own best interests were what motivated me. I am not a heartless monster, Mac, and I was not a heartles monster then.” A smile drifted across Methos’ face, without humour, without touching his eyes. “That came immediately after.” He dropped into a chair, on top of his coat and the towel, silent a few seconds.

  “I would have saved Ghean, if I’d thought I could, and still gotten out of there alive. Now, knowing what happened to her, knowing she survived all those centuries in that prison,” Methos shrugged. “I would do the exact same thing.”

  “Is it really that easy for you, Methos?” Duncan asked, voice tinged with a sort of faint, horrified admiration.

  “After five thousand years? Yes. It really is. Death before dishonor, come home with your shield or on it: those are concepts that don’t belong in my world, Duncan. I can live with dishonor. I can’t live without my head.”

  Duncan quirked a curious smile. “Does dishonor mean anything to you at all?”

  Methos shook his head. “No. Someone else might percieve my actions as dishonorable, but someone else would be dead. My own judgement is the only one I’ll accept. I’m the only one who has to live with what I am and what I’ve done.” He raked a hand through his hair, sending water droplets to the floor. “There are a few people whose opinion is important enough that I’ll alter or reconsider my first impulse for them, but ultimately, I’m the only one who gets to judge me.”

  Duncan’s smile turned half amused. “You’ve risked your head for me and Joe both.”

  “So you’re two of the ones whose opinions matter. Can we stop this
line of conversation before anyone gets embarrassed by the gushing sentimentality?”

  Duncan chuckled. “It might be worth pursuing, someday. The oldest man’s perspective on what makes a worthy human being.”

  Methos snorted. “You should have tried that back in Atlantis, Duncan. I was a lot more introspective in those days.”

  “I wasn’t there,” Duncan pointed out.

  “I guess you missed your chance, then.”

  “Not to change the subject,” Joe said mildly, “but how do you know what’s in the Book is stuff that shouldn’t be messed with today? You said yourself it was over your head, when you read it. It might prove incredibly useful for today’s scientists.”

  “Sure,” Methos said, “and the Horsemen might have advanced civilization by a thousand years by uniting everyone in fear against them. But it didn’t happen. Whatever’s in that Book, Joe, we’re just now beginning to understand it. I’m not at all enthusiastic about handing over the secrets of eternal life to the masses, not anymore now than I was then.”

  “But you went after the Methuselah stone for Alexa,” Duncan said. Methos gave him a sharp look.

  “No one ever said I was consistent, Highlander. If I could pick and choose everyone who got Immortality, without ever risking my head, yes, I’d do it. But I can’t, and what I said then still stands: people with Immortality at their fingertips are eventually going to notice us. Whether it’s because we survived a mortal blow while not wearing one of their precious artifacts, or if it’s because somebody realizes we’re not filling ourselves with the cocktail of drugs that keeps everyone supple and youthful, eventually the top’s going to be blown off the whole Game. I want no part in furthering that. It’ll happen sooner or later. It doesn’t need my help, or the Book of Aquarius’ help.”

  “What if it had a cure for cancer somewhere in there?” Joe asked. Methos turned the dark look on him.

  “Alexa’s dead,” he said flatly. “Nothing changes that, Joe. Everyone dies. It just comes sooner for some people than others.”