Immortal Beloved

by C. E. Murphy

  He’d finally had a chance to put his clothes away this morning, but the suitcase was still half full. He unzipped it, grinning faintly at the contents. Always be prepared. I wonder if I should confess to Duncan that even I have my moments of being a Boy Scout? He draped the wetsuit over the bed, pulling a loosely packed backpack out after it. Then again, why ruin his illusions?

  The only real trick would be getting up to the submarine dock without anyone noticing he was walking around in a wetsuit. Methos had to count on the party for that, though his isolated cabin made a longer trek through the ship’s halls than he’d like. He stripped down to pull the wetsuit on, chuckling. I should have invited Amanda along on this caper. She’s much better at sneaking than I am. Oh well. Not even a Boy Scout can think of everything.

  It was fully dark by the time he finished dressing. Methos slung the backpack on, checking the hall, and scurried up to the deck. The party going on really did provide the privacy he needed, and he saw no one as he crossed the upper deck and climbed down into the submarine tank. With a few swift kicks, he swam down several yards under the ship. Drifting there, Methos expelled as much of the air from his lungs as he could, bubbles bursting upwards. He pulled the backpack off to drag flippers, goggles, and a headlamp out of it. The latter he would really only need for navigating around Atlantis, but there was something slightly more comforting about diving to the bottom of the sea with a light source instead of blind. He was still too close to the surface to use it, though. Flippers and goggles on, he strapped the light around his head, pulling the backpack back on, and began kicking downward.

  At its deepest, the Mediterranean is about forty-five hundred feet deep. A foot for every century, Methos thought, except Dan said Atlantis was on a shelf, about three thousand feet deep.

  This is not going to be comfortable. On the other hand, he thought sourly, it won’t kill me. Ghean survived it without pulverized bones or ruptured organs for centuries. Immortals are astonishing creatures. He glanced at the faintly glowing watch on his wrist. Two hundred meters. He remembered wondering who on earth would need a watch that worked down to fifteen hundred meters pressure when he bought it, and laughed silently, switching it to a compass reading. Three thousand feet. Less than a mile. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so, unless the pressure kills me on the way down. Methos switched the headlamp on, and began the swim into the depths.

  Inevitably, it took longer than he expected. The currents pulled him off course, and he spent more time swimming laterally than he’d anticipated. From almost the surface, he had to clear his ears every few feet, hearing the faint internal squeal as tubes tried to adjust to the rising pressure. Eventually his eardrums burst, leaving him in a convulsive ball in the water, clutching his head at the pain. Blood tinged the water around him very faintly, swept away in seconds.

  Please, God, I hope the pressure is too much for them to heal. I don’t want to have to deal with that every few minutes. Methos unballed himself, shuddering, and began swimming down again. His eardrums burst twice more before the pressure overcame his Immortal body’s ability to heal itself, leaving him blessedly free of pain.

  He could feel his body adjusting to the pressure in other ways, what little gaseous oxygen he had left forcing its way out to equalize the pressures within and without. He grew lightheaded as the fine attunements were made, and slowed his descent. Whatever element of his Immortal body allowed him to pull oxygen from the water, it required time to condition him to the lack, just as if he were traveling high in the mountains. The lightheadedness passed as he slowed, and he maintained the new swimming pace, no new bouts of dizziness hampering him.

  Once the internal adaptations were made, the water’s pressure became an uncomfortable inconvienence, weighing his movements. It stopped just shy of pain, a pervading discomfort that was the price accountable for daring the dive. Methos focused on the task of reaching the sea floor, aware that too much acknowledgement of the water’s pressure would only make it worse.

  Eventually the seabed came into the range of his headlamp. Situating himself to find the city and locate recognizeable sections took more time, and navigating his way towards the ancient temple took longer still.

  Disconcerting as exploring sunken Alantis had been from within the submarine, the sensations were measureably more disturbing without the protective metal walls separating Methos from the sea. Anne was entirely correct. Atlantis had ghosts, and too many of them had faded faces and voices in Methos’ memory. He kicked up a side alley, broken walls on either side of him sullen reminders of the past. Ahead and to his left was an open area, city floor broken up but largely intact. The layout suggested the area had never been walled.

  Methos hesitated there, swimming towards a wall shattered at half its height at the back of the empty stretch. Grime coated the wall, and Methos reached out to brush some of it away, leaving streaked lines against the stone. A few more swipes cleared away much of the sediment, exposing the lower half of a carving in the wall.

  Memory, rather than intuition, completed the image. A bull’s head, though not encompassed in the circle of the Houses. Methos turned in the undisturbed water, looking across the floor again. The outer perimeter of his headlamp brushed the back corner of the Bull’s Head Tavern, the pub Ertros’ mother had owned. A tabletop, broken in two, lay on the ground in the corner, wooden legs long since rotted away.

  For an instant, the activity of the pub the last time he’d seen it passed over him: voices, raised in general pleasantry; close-pressed bodies manuevering around each other. Minyah, just outside the tavern, tricking someone into apologizing for something she had done, and sour-faced Aroz, reluctant to greet him. Karem, calculating how best to use him, and most vividly, Ghean, laughing in delight to see him, her brown eyes bright and excited as she leapt up to hug him. Methos clamped his eyes shut, shaking his head to dislodge the images, and shoved violently off the floor, swimming again. From here he could find the temple, if he could let memory guide him without overwhelming him.

  It was easier than he thought it might be. Beyond the strangeness of swimming over streets he’d walked, he could almost make himself imagine that it was the quiet, moonlit night that he’d spoken to Karem in the temple. Keeping the illusion in mind helped keep other memories at bay, until he found the temple, and crouched on top of it, just above the hole Ghean had chopped in her escape.

  It was impossibly small. Methos placed his hands on opposite sides of it, far less than his own shoulder width apart. She couldn’t have been more than skin and bones, he thought with a shiver, and hair. He took the backpack off again, opening it to pull out a small hammer and chisel. They weren’t the most elegant tools, but they wouldn’t break apart the temple roof so much that it collapsed in on itself, either. Methos considered the backpack, then pulled it on again, more to keep it out of the way than anything else, then began diligently breaking away a larger hole in the stone. It was fast work, made easier by not having to worry about making room to pull equipment through. A glance at his watch told Methos that he’d been in the water for nearly four hours, much longer than he’d hoped. He estimated he had only another four to return to the surface, if he wanted to be sure to get back on the Retribution before daylight.

  Going up won’t take as long as coming down did, right? He didn’t believe it, but it was a little late to abort now. A few minutes later he kicked down into the temple, struggling against the memory of Ghean’s story as it came back to him. It took all his willpower to not swim back out of the temple and away from Atlantis. He hovered in the water for a moment, staring around the smoothed temple walls, and with a kind of sick fascination, he reached up and turned the headlamp off.

  The blackness was absolute. Even knowing the escape route, Methos flinched violently back from the darkness, as if it had come alive. More than four thousand years, he thought, horrified. In this silence, in this blackness. Gods up above. It’s a wonder Ghean isn’t stark raving mad. Swallowing a scream, anyt
hing that would at least break the utter silence and darkness, Methos switched the headlight back on, unspeakably relieved when light flooded the temple again. He remained where he was, trying to regain his equalibrium before he was able to circle the temple.

  The altar had once been a little more than three feet high, in the center of the temple. There was no suggestion it had ever existed at all. The floor was perfectly smooth, other than the small stones that had fallen away as Ghean chipped her way loose. Looking around once more, Methos again quelled the desire to retreat, then knelt, sliding out of the backpack a final time. Chisel and hammer still in hand, he cracked a wedge out of the floor, then abandoned the tools for the backpack.

  Two dozen shaped explosives lay in the bottom of the pack, waterproofed and set off by an electrical charge. Not at all certain how much of a hole it would blow under the conditions, Methos set the first into the wedge he’d dug out, collecting the backpack and swimming towards the opening in the ceiling. As he reached it, a thought struck him, and he turned, watching the floor shimmer as light ran over it. The texture changed twice, two strips near each other, where stone turned to metal slag. Methos stared down at the legacy of the swordfight, and shook his head. I told you it was holy ground. Then he kicked through the ceiling to the comparative safety of the Mediterranean, and set off the charge.

  Sediment-filled water roiled out behind him in a rather satisfying manner. Methos waited for it to settle before going in to inspect the damage he’d done. An opening perhaps two and a half feet wide and a foot or so deep was gouged in the temple floor. Methos cleared the rubble out of it, set another charge, and tamped it with some of the excess stone from the first explosion before swimming outside again. Logic dictates it can’t be more than twelve feet down, because that’s all the explosives I have.

  It’s a shame the world doesn’t actually work that way. The next charge ripped a hole a little deeper and a little less wide, and Methos cleared wreckage away to repeat the sequence another nine times. Wash, rinse, repeat, he thought as the explosives tore holes in the temple floor. This isn’t exactly the most delicate archaelogical excavation. Then again, I don’t really have time for subtlety. His shoulders brushed the ragged edges of the tunnel he was creating, but there was enough room for passage.

  After the thirteenth blast, there was no rubble to be cleared away. Methos kicked down through the hole slowly, catching himself on the rough walls he’d made to look around the room below the temple.

  It was water-filled, but the walls were whole. The water was probably fresh, having rushed in as the charge blew away the last of the room’s ceiling. Rock scattered around the table directly below Methos supported the theory. Methos kicked down into the room, righting himself.

  Aside from the hole in the ceiling, it looked very much as it had the last time he’d seen it, more than four and a half thousand years ago. The table and chairs were undamaged, save for a handful of scars on the table, which loked new. Stone and the sudden onslaught of water had almost certainly caused them. With a quick, satisfied grin, Methos sat on the center of the table, closing his eyes to reconstruct the scene from the past.

  Ragar had crossed the room from the door, to the left of the table. The door that I wouldn’t be able to see if it were closed. He opened his eyes, inspecting the walls. Forty-five centuries ago, Ragar had been right, but the stresses of the earthquake and sinking had changed the dynamics of the room a little. There was a barely visible line in the wall where the door sat. Had he not known it was there, Methos suspected he wouldn’t have seen it for days, perhaps weeks. He closed his eyes again, trying to remember the angle Ragar had passed the table at.

  Standing, he echoed the movement as best he could, coming to a stop at a point a third of the way around the room from the door. The release had been at waist height on the Atlantean scholar, hip-height on the much taller Immortal. Eyes closed once more, Methos began exploring the chisels in the wall with his fingertips. Patience, he thought. This is the part that will require patience.

  More than two hours passed, unheeded, before a soft double-click, felt rather than heard, signaled that he had found the right catch. As smoothly as it had thousands of years earlier, a slab of stone slid out from the wall. Methos opened his eyes slowly, hardly believing that the gamble had paid off.

  Stone in stone, the Book’s heavy protective case sat within the extended rock. With measured awe, Methos lifted the stone box out. Cradling it protectively against his chest, he brought it back to the table and his backpack, emptying the remaining charges out of the latter. He packed the Book carefully into the backpack, leaving the charges on the table. He wouldn’t need them again, and they would perplex Ghean for a few seconds before she realized what he’d done.

  Methos looked around the room once more, then pushed up through the tunnel, and the temple, to leave Atlantis with his buried treasure on his back.

  Chapter 29

  A few hundred feet below the surface, Methos abandoned the flippers, headlight and goggles. The last was an unspeakable relief. He rubbed his eyes, feeling circulation restore as pressure from the goggles was eased. He let the flippers go, watching them rotate heel-down in the water and sink into darkness. He wrapped the goggles around the headlamp, letting them go as well, and realized he could feel pressure against his eardrums again, indicating they’d healed sometime in the journey back to the air.

  He struck out towards the surface tiredly, through water greying with the coming dawn. The escapade down to Atlantis had taken far longer than he’d hoped, and he wasn’t entirely sure where the ship was in relation to himself.

  He broke the surface with a relieved gasp, pulling air back into his lungs. Much of an advantage as not needing to breathe underwater is, I still much prefer inhaling and exhaling. Shocked at his own exhaustion, Methos lay on the surface of the water, fatigue sending trembles through his body. The sky grew marginally lighter, and he groaned, turning in the water to search for the ship.

  It took a few minutes to pick it out of the still-dull light, grey of the ocean blending with the distant clouds meeting the horizon. The Retribution was nearly a half mile away. Methos sighed, and sank underwater again, swimming a few yards beneath the surface. It wouldn’t do to have someone notice him swimming up to the ship at this point. It had been an incredibly long night, and all he wanted was a few hours sleep.

  At least I’ve got the Book. Methos grinned suddenly into the water, weariness leaking away in a moment of triumph. He hoped it hadn’t been damaged by the earthquake or the sudden wash of water into the secret room, but it didn’t really matter. It was in his possession now, no longer part of a random equation. If it was damaged, so be it. At least it wasn’t an unknown factor any longer.

  Methos dove under the Retribution, turning on his back to look for the submarine dock. He broke the surface silently when he found it, and pulled himself up the ladder. Hidden behind the sub, he peeked out of the dock, watching for feet and listening for voices. After several seconds of silence, he hurried across the deck, glancing west to the horizon. The sky was beginning to color, scarlet and gold with the rising sun. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning, Methos thought, slipping through the door that lead eventually to his cabin. As it closed, he let out a soft breath. Almost home free.

  With the thought came the gut-wrenching warning of an approaching Immortal.

  Oh, no. Only a few yards down the hall, Methos looked over his shoulder to see Ghean open the door he’d just come through. For an instant, neither of them moved, as Ghean took in Methos’ wetsuit and the backpack slung over his shoulders. Then her eyes widened as she deduced the meaning of the costume. Outrage filled her face, and she started forward.

  Methos ran.

  He had the advantage of longer legs, a short headstart, and the fact that he was running for his life, while Ghean was only running for his head. He didn’t bother with the first set of stairs at all. A long, low leap sent him to the foot of the steps, wet feet s
lipping in a hard landing. He scrambled forward before he’d truly regained his balance, tearing down the hall to barge into his cabin before Ghean reached the foot of the stairs.

  So close! So damned close! I am not fighting in a wetsuit, dammit! With one hand Methos slammed the door shut and the lock closed on it, flinging the soaking backpack onto the bed with the other. And God didn’t intend man to get in or out of a wetsuit in a hurry. Methos cursed, yanking the zipper down and jerking the rubbery outfit off, leaving his arms clammy. He hopped up and down on one foot, pulling the suit down while trying to reach for his sword at the same time. After two futile attempts, he fell sideways on the bed, kicked the wetsuit off, and struggled into the jeans he’d left on the floor the night before.

  He heard Ghean try the door, and opted for his sword instead of his shirt. A sharp crack fragmented the doorframe around the lock. Ghean kicked it open a fraction of a second later, just as Methos flung the sheath from his sword and brought the sword up to a defensive position. Ghean entered with her rapier at the fore, eyes black with anger.

  “Witnesses,” Methos said desperately. “We can’t fight here, dammit.” More to the point, I can’t fight here. The room’s to her advantage, both for her size and blade. Damn!

  “We most certainly can,” Ghean said icily. “Everyone’s asleep. What a pity. I’d been going to come down here and seduce you before I took your head, poor little lovesick Methos.”

  Without taking his eyes off her, Methos reached for the backpack. “I’ll destroy it,” he said flatly.