Immortal Beloved

by C. E. Murphy

  Ghean erupted out of her seat, an explosion of movement startling and effective despite her diminutive size. Methos slammed the urge to react equally, to surge to his feet, down, not in the least because he’d crack his head on the low ceiling if he did. Muscles tense, he held his place, looking up at Ghean. “My mother, Methos! She was my mother! You were about to be my husband! ‘You were at a difficult place’, don’t try that, you son of a bitch. She was my mother. You slept with my mother!”

  Methos closed his eyes, hard. “Dammit, Ghean. That relationship, Minyah being your mother, was a thousand years dead. She was a friend when I needed one. Old friends become lovers — ”

  “Oh, clearly. ‘The things we do for old lovers.’ You didn’t do any of that for me, the notes, the papers — you did it for her! You bastard! You did it all for her!”

  Methos pulled in a breath to defend himself. Ghean’s jaw set, eyes flashing rage. “Don’t. Don’t even try. Old friends become lovers. What do old lovers become, Methos? Yesterday’s news? You slept with my mother and you haven’t even got a second glance for me?”

  Methos stared at her. Is that all it takes? “When have I had time?” he demanded. “I was angry and confused when you showed up again, Ghean, and I said all the wrong things on Saturday! Do you think you’re not still beautiful? Do you think I don’t want you? Gods above, Ghean, I loved you. I mourned for a thousand years. I became someone else entirely, to walk away from the pain. It took a thousand years, Ghean, a thousand years, to put away the grief. And then you show up out of the deep blue sea,” Methos flinched mentally at the unfortunately accurate phrase, “and I find out that loving you didn’t go away with the pain. What do you think I’m doing here?”

  Ghean’s eyes and mouth vied for a winning position in roundness. Methos didn’t dare look at the rest of the sub’s crew to see their expressions. The absolute silence was more than enough to suggest what was on their faces.

  “The … Book … .” Ghean faltered. Methos let weariness settle into his face.

  “What was I supposed to say?” he asked. “Especially after the story you told us about your captivity. Forgive me if I couldn’t come up with a delicate way to say, ‘I still love you, give me another chance’. A book isn’t worth seven … ” His knowledge of Atlantean deserted him. If he’d ever know the Atlantean word for million, he’d forgotten it, and he floundered, searching for the right word. After several seconds he let out an explosive sigh. “That much money,” he tried again. “No book is worth that much money, Ghean. I thought if we spent time together … .”

  Ghean dropped back into her seat, still staring at Methos. “You said … on Saturday. You weren’t sorry.”

  Methos spread his hands, helplessly. “I’m not sorry I survived. I can’t be sorry for the choices I’ve made, Ghean. They’re what make me who I am. I can regret the consequences of those choices.” A sad smile played over his features, and fell away. “You’re the only Immortal woman I ever wanted to marry, Ghean.”

  “Oh,” Ghean said faintly, and turned away abruptly to resume watching the water outside the porthole. Methos let out a long, slow breath, eyes closing. When he opened them again a moment later, it was to find the four other crew members gaping at him.

  “What,” Michael, the first to regain his voice, said, “the hell was that?”

  “A language we made up as children,” Methos picked randomly, addressing the question he thought most needed answering first, “and a lover’s quarrel. I apologize for subjecting you to that.” He closed his eyes again, against audibly restrained silence. After several seconds, he heard Dan turn his chair back around to begin piloting again. A few minutes later, conversation resumed, giving Methos the privacy he needed to sort through what he’d said.

  How much of it did she buy? More to the point, how much of it was true? Enough of it, he decided reluctantly. Enough of it for the rest to sound true. At the least, that his relationship with Minyah had grown out of friendship, and that he had indeed become someone else for a thousand years after Ghean’s death was true. Riding with the Horsemen hadn’t been a time for healing, though. The pain of Ghean’s death had faded in time, as it always did, but being Death had been about bloodlust and power, not mourning loss. Only the first choice, to join Kronos, had been spurred by bitterness at death — and, Methos reminded himself, by keeping his head. Don’t flatter yourself, old man.

  Still, it made a good dramatic statement, a thousand years of mourning, and Ghean seemed to have been taken by it. It was unlikely that mere seduction would be enough to calm her fury, but it had obviously been a step in the right direction.

  It wasn’t entirely untrue, Methos temporized. There were still strong feelings for the Atlantean woman in him. It had taken a few days after the initial shock of her reapparance to sort out what he did feel. Love was a part of it, an abiding love for the young woman he’d known four and a half millennia ago. Knowing that time had changed her didn’t tarnish the memory, but it made it easier to remember he wasn’t sure he could trust the emotions he still felt. Her re-emergence in his life inevitably sparked a curiousity about a potential relationship, but that had nothing to do with his decision to bribe the University into allowing him passage on the ship to Atlantis. Never-the-less, the idea apparently could be used to appeal to Ghean’s more romantic nature.

  Ghean’s a romantic. Methos’ eyes popped open suddenly, and he caught Anne staring across the sub at him. Caught, she blushed and looked away. You’re judging Ghean by your own standards, dammit, and she’s not as old as your memory tells you she has to be, Methos reminded himself forcefully. She’s been the princess locked in the tower for eoons, and she didn’t escape into the world until very recently. She’s certainly still young enough, as far as experience is concerned, to be a romantic. Maybe that kind of hope is the only way to deal with eternal captivity.

  I would make a lousy princess in a tower, Methos concluded wryly.

  Ghean had, in fact, been the only Immortal woman Methos had ever wanted to marry. The disaster surrounding that experience was more than enough to put him off the idea permenantly. He noticed he was holding his breath, and let it out in a long exhalation. The goal, ultimately, was possession of the Book, preferably to hide it away as inaccessably as it had been hidden the last five millennia. If romance was the easiest way to reach that goal, so be it. Methos half smiled. I’ve had more unpleasant tasks. Just as long as I don’t get carried away.

  -o-O-o-

  Ghean scowled at the blackness beyond the porthole, barely hearing Methos as he explained the outburst to the other crew members. His words were still ringing in her ears.

  It is possible, the patient one said, very cautiously, that we misjudged his motives. We shouldn’t believe him too readily.

  I want to, she answered. He was so careful, describing his relationship with Minyah. If I hadn’t used the same expression to characterize my relationship with him, I wouldn’t have hit on it at all. He needs to be in control, but he couldn’t have anticipated that I’d use the same phrase, that I’d figure it out. I think he was trying to avoid hurting me.

  Maybe, the patient one said, still testing the possibility warily. He argued in Atlantean. We still think in it, but he wouldn’t have spoken it for thousands of years. It would be harder to lie in a language you haven’t spoken in millennia. That lends credence to his words.

  He forgot words, the frightened one whispered.

  Ghean seized on that, nodding fractionally. He did. If he’d prepared lies like that in advance he’d have remembered all the words he needed.

  He may still be in love with us, the patient one admitted grudgingly. How do we feel about him?

  Ghean reached up to tap her thumb against her lips, trying to examine her feelings towards Methos. Betrayal, she thought tentatively.

  Betrayal! the frightened one shrieked. Betrayal, he’ll betray us again, down below the sea in the darkness where we’re going!

  Shut up, the patient one
said. Betrayal, made worse by his tryst with Minyah.

  But it makes sense, Ghean said. Minyah was the only access he had to me, after all the years. Being with her wasn’t so much seeking comfort in the arms of an old friend, but looking for what he’d lost. Looking for me, in my mother. Ghean shivered. Using Mother that way was reprehensible, she thought severely.

  And pathetic, the patient one agreed.

  I could almost feel sorry for him.

  We may pity him, as long as it doesn’t make us weak. Anger is better, and we have more anger than we do pity, the patient one said.

  Anger and betrayal, the frightened one whispered. Betray him, leave him under the ocean forever and ever.

  Not yet, Ghean answered. He’s still attractive, and he obviously still loves me.

  We’ll let him in our bed, the patient one said, if that’s what he wants. That way we’ll have physical pleasure, at least, and in the end taking his head will be that much more satisfying.

  Ghean glanced over her shoulder quickly, to smile at Methos. His eyes were closed, a small smile on his own lips. Imagining us together, Ghean guessed, and her smile turned to a grin. The elaborate plans of revenge she’d built over the years to occupy herself were crumbling beneath the vastly more gratifying reality that was playing out. I hadn’t imagined I’d still have so much power over him. With one hand I’ll give him the world, and with the other take his head when he least expects it.

  Everything will be ours, the patient one crowed. His power, our revenge, and the memories that he made over thousands of years. Years that should have been ours to live. Everything will finally be ours.

  And then we’ll go home to Atlantis, Ghean promised the frightened voice, and closed her eyes, sleeping as the submarine continued its way to the ocean bottom.

  Chapter 25

  The sea changed colors in a sudden flood of light. “Water’s nice and clear down here, long as there haven’t been any quakes,” Dan said. “We’re about fifty meters from the bottom. Take a peek, Adam. You’ll be able to see the city any minute now.”

  Methos twisted around to gaze out the porthole, a queer thrill of anticipation running through him. “How deep are we?” Forty-five hundred years ago his first look at Atlantis had been from above, looking down the mountain slope to the brilliant white metropolis. For the moment, water still hid the view, but Methos rebuilt the image in his mind.

  “’bout fifteen hundred meters,” Dan answered. “Crush you to a pulp if you went out there.”

  Methos glanced at Ghean. You’d be surprised, Dan, he thought, and shook his head. “I’ll remember not to open the hatch.” He glanced out the window again, waiting for the city to come into view. It won’t be the same, he reminded himself. Nothing’s ever the same. It’s not that you can’t go home again. It’s that the changes that always happened are suddenly visible when you come back. Methos had long since learned to notice the changes that took place around him, a talent more difficult for mortals to develop.

  He closed his eyes, rebuilding the city mentally. He was surprised there was anything left to find. In the last minutes while he and Minyah ran from the epicenter at the temple, he’d seen buildings crumble and be swallowed whole into the crust. The ancient city must have been even more well built than he’d realized, for anything at all to have survived.

  “There we go,” Michael breathed. “Atlantis.”

  Methos opened his eyes to look through light-stained water. “Jesus,” he said inadvertantly, and clamped his teeth together to prevent further commentary.

  Even in the light’s rapidly fading radius, it was obvious far more of the city had survived than Methos had imagined. Streets were still visible, only a few feet beneath the submarine. Shattered buildings lined the streest, walls crumpled in, leaving enough foundation to made vivid separations of boulevards and buildings. Loose sediment stirred in the wake of the sub’s engines, rising up and floating gently back down to settle in the streets.

  Methos leaned forward, looking as far to both sides as he could. They were too far from the city’s center for the temple to be visible. From the width of the street below, he guessed they were on one of the narrower cross-streets that sliced through the major roads.

  His memory hadn’t mislead him. As the submarine drifted forward, light played on stretches of earth left entirely smoothed by the devestating earthquake of four and a half millennia past. Buildings broke in half, the remainders eaten by jagged ocean floor.

  “There isn’t a lot of crusting on the buildings,” he wondered aloud.

  Michael, across the sub, nodded. “We’re not sure why. The seabed is pretty active. We’ve been trying to figure out if there was some sort of protective layer over the city that’s been knocked loose recently, maybe a slick residue or a heavy layer of dirt that settled after the city sank. Something that corrosion couldn’t quite get a grip on.”

  “Favored of the gods,” Methos said softly, looking back out the window. “Maybe they protected it.” Until all its children had left it, he finished silently.

  Michael chuckled. “Maybe. The amount of buildup is what we’d normally see on something that’d been underwater a century or so, maybe a little less. Their gods must be favoring us. More than they did the people who lived here, at any rate.”

  Sediment rode in the water, highlighted by the submarine’s bright lamps, the water’s motion enforcing the absolute stillness of the city itself. Methos closed his eyes, the static image of Atlantis at forceable odds with the city’s last panicked minutes.

  Memories of voices echoed in his ears, terrorized screams and calls for help. The sound was unending, rock shrieking as it tore itself apart and slammed together again without rhythm, lightning’s crack and the roar of thunder filling his ears, grinding out the hopeless shouting. Water boiled, drinking the city down into the ocean, a constant shrill of noise. Methos shuddered, trying to shake the memory off.

  It wouldn’t let him go, his pulse rising to the frantic rate it had been those thousands of years ago. The sheer, stark stab of hope that had jolted through him in the moment of silence before the temple battle ended ripped him through him again, making his heart lurch with a sickening double-beat. Devastation replaced that hope a breath later, as it had then, and he placed a hand against the submarine’s side, steadying himself against the unrelenting rush of memory. Fear and horror shot through him, the shaking of the sub from rumbling engines following muscle memory to the redoubling of the quake that sent Atlantis into the sea. He felt again the stretch as he reached for Ragar’s hand, an instant too late, and memory jarred his feet with the falls from one broken piece of road to another.

  There was a hand on his shoulder. Methos jerked back, eyes flinching open to see Ghean leaning towards him. “I actually think it’s taking you harder than it did me,” she said in quiet astonishment.

  Methos pushed the heel of his hand against his forehead, wiping away beaded sweat. “I’m all right,” he said roughly. I was there. You were dead.

  Michael gave him a sympathetic smile, across the sub. “It’s hit us all pretty hard,” he said. “Can you imagine how terrifying it must have been?”

  Through a dry throat, Methos answered, “I think I was.” He inhaled sharply, feeling the lack of air in his lungs.

  “There are ghosts here,” Anne said, in all apparent seriousness. “I’ve driven a lot of waldos through a lot of wrecks, but I’ve never seen anything like Atlantis. Something happened here, something that shouldn’t have.”

  Methos and Ghean locked eyes, neither willing to look away. “You’re right,” Methos agreed softly, to Anne, then shook himself, willing himself towards steadiness. “You’re sure this is Atlantis?” The question was meant for Michael; Ghean knew, and Methos had never doubted her.

  “The carbon dating completely fails to match any of the legends,” Michael said slowly. “At least, what we’ve found doesn’t. We’ve found artifacts dating back about six thousand years. From the stories out of Egyp
t, they should either be twice that, or only about four thousand years old.”

  “Thera,” Methos guessed.

  Michael nodded. “It blew up in 1627 BCE, thirty-six centuries ago. It drowned Crete. I have to admit that I was a believer, not that long ago — that Crete had been Atlantis, I mean. When Mary pinpointed this as the location of the city Atlantis, I assumed anything we found here would date back to then, too; that the quakes set off by Thera’s eruption had perhaps sunk another town, too.” He shook his head. “The youngest material we’ve found is forty-six or seven centuries old. Whatever sank this place, it wasn’t Thera. Not the eruption that drowned Crete.”

  The round doctor looked out the porthole, shaking his head again. “This is Atlantis,” he said. “I can feel it in my gut.” He glanced back at Methos with a self-deprecating grin. “Nicely scientific, eh?”

  “Careers have been made on less,” Methos said, returning his gaze to the city they drifted through.

  Beneath the crust of sea grime that roughened the once clean lines of the city, the stone was still white, untarnished by its centuries beneath the ocean. Under the sub’s floodlights, it glowed an unnerving pale blue, the color of moon shadows on snow. Dan changed directions, turning down a wider street; within seconds, Methos saw it as one of the main avenues. There was no way to determine if they were heading in to town or out, and he frowned out the window in frustration.

  Ghean reached over the back of the ledge in front of him, tapping the terminal window at his elbow. “It’s mapping,” she reminded him. “Figure out where we are.”

  Methos blinked down at the screen, nodding. “Jerry? Can I make it tell me what’s been mapped previously?”

  The self-proclaimed geek nodded. “Sure. Here.” He came over, tapping out a quick sequence on a small keyboard. A smaller window opened lower in the screen, covering a quarter of the original image. “Navigate with the arrow keys,” Jerry instructed, returning to his seat.