“No,” Methos agreed flatly, “it is not. Now, shall we finish our research?”
Devious as the wind. And as hard to snare. “We shall,” MacLeod said, just as flatly.
Thanks to the library’s new passion for electronics, those newspapers with earlier dates had already been translated into electronic format. Moving to adjoining carrels, MacLeod and Methos entered into an undeclared race for data. A bemused MacLeod saw, out of the corner of his eyes, Methos’s fingers flying over the keyboard with an ease that could only have come with that ten years of researcher practice.
Ah yes, Methos, the Five-Thousand-Year-Old Techie.
And despite his continued edginess, MacLeod had a quick, almost whimsical image of them in the next century or so. Methos would, no doubt, be an expert on some phenomenal new interstellar technology. (And did someone over five thousand years old still anticipate the future? Could he? Or did he just “enjoy the ride”? Who could tell what went on in that mind?)
“Got it,” Methos said suddenly, and MacLeod gladly abandoned speculation.
A brief call to the Branson Collection verified the exact date of the Hyksos sword’s arrival: April sixteenth.
“And the first ritual slaying,” Methos noted, “was April twenty-second.”
“Less than a week afterward.”
“It could be, if you’ll pardon the word, coincidence. But I don’t think either of us is going to buy that.”
“Khyan,” MacLeod said.
Methos shrugged. “The evidence is mounting up, isn’t it?”
“And there have been four… no, five other murders.” Checking the records, MacLeod read the dates aloud. “April twenty-ninth, May fifth, May tenth, and May fourteenth.” He glanced up. “And last night, of course, was May sixteenth. A shorter and shorter interval between the killings. As though your Khyan were growing desperate.”
“He is hardly my Khyan. And I don’t doubt that he’s growing desperate. If he’s fallen all the way back to the old Hyksos ways, I suspect that he’s lost track of time and place as well. If that’s the case, then all that’s truly real to him is the sword.”
But then Methos paused, studying MacLeod. “Don’t waste pity on the man. Trust me: He doesn’t deserve it.”
There was absolutely nothing to be read from his face. After an awkward second, both Immortals returned almost with relief to the records and the locations of the killings.
“Seventy-second Street and Riverside Park,” MacLeod read. Eleventh Avenue and West Fifteenth Street… Fifty-sixth.” He glanced up. “Out on a dock, that one; daring of Khyan.”
“Probably picked a night when no ships were berthed nearby.”
“Probably. Twelfth Avenue and West Fifty-first,” MacLeod continued, “Washington and Canal Streets, in the warehouse area. And the latest: Seventy-eighth Street and Riverside Park.” He looked up again. “The media got one fact right: All of the killings were at least near the Hudson River.”
“Odd, that. Why there?”
“That’s what I asked you!”
“No, what I mean is that he knows the sword is here in the city. How he knows is something else again: some bizarre instinct, maybe, or some more prosaic news report he’s too crazed to remember hearing. I say that because he’s also clearly too crazed to zero in on the Branson Collection. But… why so specifically the West Side?”
MacLeod shook his head. “You’re the Hyksos expert, not me.”
“Oh, thank you so much. But what would Khyan be attempting? Why, of all the places in this enormous city, the river?” Methos stopped short. “The river—the Nile! Of course, that’s it: It’s not the park or the West Side he wants, it’s the river!”
“I’m not following you. You said that he’d be too insane to locate the sword easily, but—”
“The comparison. The Hudson, broad and powerful as it is, yes, and even tidal like the Nile, is as close as Khyan can get to the Nile. Yes again, and Manhattan Island is as close as Khyan can get to the formation of land on which Avaris once stood—he must be blessing Set for the similarity!”
“I almost hate to bring this up,” MacLeod cut in, “but even if it is Khyan out there, that’s a good eight miles of riverfront. The police are going to be on the lookout for the West Side Slayer, particularly with the mayor and the media after them, but they can’t patrol all that expanse all the time.”
“Neither,” Methos pointed out, “for the same reason, can we.” He paused thoughtfully. “There has to be some clue, though… something I can remember about him.”
But after a time of silence, Methos shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing useful, at any rate. Ah well, I think we’ve learned all we can here.”
MacLeod glanced up at the time. “We’ll make copies of the pertinent pages, then go get some lunch.”
“Good idea. Maybe coffee will give my brain a proper jolt.”
There were at least a dozen coffee shops nearby, crowded with office workers grabbing the usual quick lunches. Over sandwiches and coffee, his words nearly drowned out by the chatter and bustle around them, MacLeod asked Methos a wary, “Well?”
“Well what? I can tell you pretty much what Avaris looked like, why you didn’t go swimming in the Nile—crocodiles—and what the ladies were wearing, or not wearing, more precisely, in Egypt’s Sixteenth Dynasty. What more do you want?”
“Can’t you remember anything about Khyan? Any quirks we could use, any weird little habits or weaknesses?”
“MacLeod, I’m not a computer!”
“Yes, but you were there—All right, let’s try to be logical about this. Why does he want the sword?”
Methos shook his head. “Two possibilities. I’d guess he either wants to free the captured soul or else keep it with him forever.”
“What would that mean? What sort of ritual?”
“I don’t know! I wasn’t exactly a student of the occult.” A shrug. “Something bloody, probably.”
“Something worse than we’ve got now? Are we talking about a massacre?”
“I don’t know!”
“Don’t keep saying that!”
“And can you really recall everything about everyone you ever met?” Methos countered. “Try living five thousand years, and see how sharp your memories stay!”
MacLeod suspected that, for all his denials, Methos’s memories were sharp enough. Getting to his feet, he said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Eh?”
“In Riverside Park.”
“The sight of the Hudson just may be jogging loose some Nile memories?” Methos shrugged. “It’s worth a try. Right now I haven’t got any better ideas.”
“Now there’s a first.” That earned him a wry glance from Methos. “Who knows?” MacLeod continued. “We might even be lucky enough to surprise Khyan in the act.”
“Oh, I doubt that!”
“Life not being so, ah, coincidental, right? Well then, at the very least, my skeptical friend, we’ll still accomplish one thing.”
“And that being…?”
MacLeod forced a grin. “We’11 get us some exercise.”
Chapter Sixteen
Egypt, Avaris: Reign of King Apophis, 1573 B.C.
Methos lay awake, Nebet a warm weight against his chest, his arm around her and her unbraided hair spread sleekly across them both. The first faint light of early morning filtered down from the high windows near the ceiling, smoothing her scars, making her face truly young again, young and innocent. Smiling faintly, Methos raised a hand to stroke her hair.
Oh no, he warned himself, lowering that hand again. You are not going to start this. Just because she is a wounded dove, or whatever metaphor they’re using here these days, you are not going to start playing healer. Or anything more sentimental.
He carefully disentangled himself from her, went in search of the terse Hyksos equivalent of sanitary facilities, then returned to begin his morning exercises (even though an unruly part of his mind was clamoring for more pleasant exertion).
Methos was engrossed in the pattern of the sword, cut up, cut left, right, defend, lunge, when he suddenly realized that Nebet was awake and watching him from the bed. He said nothing, intent on bringing the pattern to its proper conclusion. Only then did he turn to her.
“Beautiful,” she murmured.
He shrugged. “I am, among other things, a warrior. The sword demands daily practice, and I agree, the proper moves probably do look like a dance or—”
“I wasn’t referring to the sword,” Nebet cut in, then gave the softest, most delicious of laughs. “Why, my lord, I didn’t know you could blush!”
“Huh.” Sheathing the blade, Methos put it aside. “Nebet, much as I would love to stay and, ah, discuss standards of beauty with you, I’m afraid that I have less aesthetic matters to attend.”
“Never fear, my lord. I will be here when you return.”
The thought sent a little shock of delight through him.
Gods, what a fool you are. After all these years, what a sentimental fool!
Without another word, he dressed and left to explore what he could of the fortress.
It wasn’t as much as he would have liked. Too many areas were blocked by guards who said, “Forbidden.” As for getting out into the town beyond the fortress walls: “Forbidden.”
Damnation.
Those sections of the fortress through which he was allowed to wander looked more and more impregnable every time he studied them: thick walls everywhere, and no way to undermine them without being cut down by the guards always present in those cursed watchtowers.
What of the court? Methos wondered, and set his mind to them.
In the next few days, he walked warily, insinuating himself so delicately into conversations that no one objected to his presence, saying almost nothing, staying so still that courtiers grew careless and spoke freely.
And even so, maddeningly, they gave away nothing much.
I really don’t care that Salitis spread rumors about Ketys and his mistress, or that Yakobaan and Sheshi may be more than, nudge, wink, good friends. You get that type of backbiting and spite in any royal court.
The point was that, for all the discontent, even that aimed at the king, there seemed to be little anti-Apophis unity. Methos overheard Salitis, the rumormonger, a lean, wiry fellow who looked like one of those Egyptian hunting hounds, a saluki, and Sheshi, who just might be more than friends with Yakobaan but looked more like a bull than, as the rumor put it so delicately, a cow.
“Yes,” Sheshi snapped, “but he wastes too much time on that half-brother.”
“Exactly! Our king should be taking more wives, getting us an heir.”
Mortals, Methos mused dryly, just didn’t always get the idea of what “sterility” meant, or even that a king might be so unfortunately afflicted.
“An heir,” Sheshi snorted. “Right now all we have is that lunatic.”
“If King Apophis dies, which Set prevent,” Salitis added, both men making a quick warding-off-evil sign, “how long do you think Prince Khyan’s going to reign?”
“Or,” Sheshi added softly, “live?”
Methos carefully insinuated himself into the conversation. “There is a saying,” he commented to no one in particular, “that the barrenness of the king may cause the barrenness of the land. Odd, isn’t it?”
Sheshi snorted. “Who cares about this land?”
Then the subject changed to generic warfare, and boasting about killings and conquests, and Methos wandered on. With the next group, he commented, “There is an odd belief in this land: The barrenness of the land reflects itself on the king.”
“An Egyptian belief!”
“Why should we believe anything a conquered people claim?”
Again, Methos wandered on. There had been a good many exchanges along these lines from other courtiers. While that “sterility of king equals sterility of land” and its corollary might have worked elsewhere, the Hyksos weren’t particularly interested in the well-being of a land they had merely conquered, and failed to believe that land could ever prove a threat.
Foolish of them, since they survive off what the land they so scorn produces. By the time they managed to import sufficient food from Palestine, and assured never-ending quantities, they’d all have starved to death.
It wasn’t the first time he’d come across such a short-sighted view. Such a mortal view.
And as for King Apophis, unfortunately for rebellion, he was such a strong, vigorous man that no one was accepting that, as the saying went, his quiver might be empty.
A stifled scream cut into his thoughts. Methos saw a young man, a slave, huddled on the floor, hands over his face, blood seeping through his fingers. Sheshi stood over him, calmly wiping a dagger clean on the slave’s hair.
“My lord Sheshi,” Methos began, thinking, Foiled assassination. “What happened?”
With a bored gesture, Sheshi indicated the shattered pieces of jar. “He was clumsy. Ugly and clumsy,” he added, bending to catch the slave’s hair in his hand and drag back his head. “I’ve just improved his looks. No, slave, don’t hide your face, lower your hands. Let the lord see.”
“I see,” Methos said flatly. Beneath the mask of still-flowing blood, it was clear that the slave’s nose had been slit open. “Of course now the slave has been rendered useless until he has healed.”
Sheshi shrugged. “There are always others.”
Nebet.
No, don’t think of her. She is safe enough: No one will harm Khyan’s royal gift.
With a curt bow, Methos went on before he said or did something reckless. There were all too many of these casual cruelties in a court filled with bored warrior nobles. Just the other day, he’d seen Salitis slowly, lovingly flogging a female slave merely to, as he’d put it, test out a new whip.
Gods, I despise these people! And, curse them, it’s growing more and more difficult to hide that fact.
It was all the more difficult since Methos by now was often a part of court proceedings, advising the king—along with, of course, a good many Hyksos advisors. He was always scrupulously honest at such times; it was too risky to the image of utter usefulness he was crafting to be otherwise.
But being honest meant guarding one’s tongue against too much honesty! After so many years of existence, no Immortal could be squeamish or particularly finicky. It was only common sense and good politics to kill an enemy, a rebel, or would be regicide, even, yes, to torture him to death.
We all have some darkness within us. But a civilized people have boundaries!
As these folk, bored and vicious, did not.
Yet what could one man, even one Immortal, do about it? Granted, there was a certain challenge here. But there was a more important challenge—namely, that of keeping his head!
Methos was still pondering the problem early the next morning, idly toying with a lock of Nebet’s hair, she a warm, sleepy softness at his side.
So now, he mused, thinking of the court. Time to retreat and regroup. I’m not going to foment rebellion with that lot, or corrupt Apophis, as it were, to the ways of niceness.
But there was another course, Methos knew: He could make friends, if he could stomach it, with Prince Khyan. It would be as perilous a course as it was unpleasant. With someone walking as fine a line between sanity and chaos as the prince, there was always the danger of saying or doing something wrong. One mistake, and Methos knew he could very well spark Khyan’s madness and smoldering sadism against him.
But such a friendship would be my key into the forbidden corners of Avaris. Then, with any luck, I can find the fortress’s flaw and get out of here.
Persuade them to let me out of here, he corrected.
Persuade them, he corrected yet again, to let me and Nebet out of here.
“Nebet,” Methos said softly, and then more forcefully, “Nebet!”
She stirred, eyes opening. “My lord.” It was a purr. “Morning, Nebet. Time to rise.”
A
chuckle. “Yes, my lord.”
And her hand stole smoothly down his chest, down his flat stomach, aiming for…
Methos’s laugh came out as a gasp. “Just what I needed: a double meaning.”
“Just a literal mind. Your wish is my law, my lord,” she said, then gave a little shriek of a laugh as he rolled over, pinning her to the bed, her slim golden body, strong from years of slave labor, writhing deliciously beneath him.
A corner of Methos’s mind noted that when he’d first bedded her, only the few short nights ago, she would never have tolerated being caught like this. She had so quickly come to trust him. Odd thought, disturbing thought, and to banish it, he kissed her eyelids, her nose, her mouth….
Maybe they didn’t have to get up just yet after all.
The sudden blaze warning of another Immortal shot through him, even as a voice outside the room yelped, “Methos! Hey in there, Methos!”
Methos groaned and rolled back over onto his back. “I am going to kill him. Prince or no, I really am going to kill him.”
Nebet stared at him in horror. “No, my lord! They would kill you!”
“Mmm. I don’t die that easily. It was a jest, Nebet,” he added, running a finger down the line of her cheek. “Just a jest.”
She drew back. “You mustn’t joke, not of that. My lord, there is no escape from Avaris, not unless you are granted passage. Don’t you think I know that? I have seen what they do to slaves who make the attempt. Believe me, my lord, I have considered the only other escape, dying by my own hand, letting the gods judge me. But I… lack the courage.”
“For which, my dear, I am truly grateful.”
“You don’t understand! Without a pass, the only other way out of Avaris is through death. And I… I have seen how they punish those who kill—”
“No one. I am killing no one, Nebet.”
“Methos!” came the shout from outside.
Methos wearily got to his feet, stretching. “Yes, Prince Khyan. I’ll be with you shortly.”
Another day, another chance for knowledge.
Another hope of getting out of here.
Methos turned back to Nebet, who was pulling on her single gown. “When I leave,” he said, “you will go with me.”
The Captive Soul Page 12