The Captive Soul

by Josepha Sherman

  Both Immortals came starkly alert, glancing swiftly about, MacLeod on his feet, hand near the hilt of his sword.

  But in the next moment, that sharp warning of a nearby Immortal had gone, leaving the two of them staring at each other. MacLeod did a quick prowl of the area, but saw and felt nothing unlikely. At last, reluctantly, he gave up the hunt and returned to the bench, where Methos was sitting like a statue named “Tension.”

  “Nothing, I take it,” Methos said.

  “Nothing.” As MacLeod sat back down, he suggested, “In a city this size, there are certainly going to be other Immortals.” Come to think of it, he had already come across two in separate incidents, one a harried-looking businessman not at all interested in meeting him, the other a young woman who’d given him one worried glance and hastily disappeared onto a subway train. “It… could have been another one of us,” MacLeod continued, “some totally innocent soul with no intention of getting involved in the Game today.”

  “It could,” Methos agreed.

  A pause. Then MacLeod continued, “And neither of us is buying that for a moment.”

  “No.” Methos stretched out his legs, crossing them in deceptive laziness at the ankle. “Our brief visitor could only have been Khyan, although he didn’t stay around long enough for any positive ID. I doubt that we’ve frightened him off for good, though.”

  The teen who’d been plastering up the notices about Elektrik Kows, working his way south, had been watching the sudden flurry of action with great interest. At MacLeod’s cold stare, the boy shrugged as if to say, “It’s cool,” and returned to his papering job.

  “Besides,” Methos continued, indicating the teen with a dip of the head, “we can hardly get into any, shall we say, encounters here and now, not with inconvenient witnesses likely to stop by and watch the show. Not that it matters, though, since what we actually need is to lure Khyan away from here.”

  “Precisely. And,” MacLeod added, glancing thoughtfully at the busy teen again, “I think I know how we can do it.”

  He stood in the shadow of a monument somewhere farther north in the park, without any knowledge of which it was or how he’d gotten here.

  The shock of it! The sudden awareness of That Other, the one whose name… he had forgotten the name just now. But it didn’t matter. That had been he, That One who had also been touched by a god… not Set, but some enemy deity who clearly still watched over him—yes. How else could That Other have survived and have come here, here of all places—

  The sword! That Other, too, must seek the sword!

  He will not have it. I shall stop him, slay him, cut off his head, and carve out his entrails. He stiffened as though stabbed through the heart. That is it!

  The full glory of realization tore through him, making him throw back his head and laugh with wild joy, heedless of the small minds who gawked at him.

  That is what Set wishes me to do! That is why he brought me here! Tonight, yes, yes, I shall find That Other somewhere here—

  Tonight shall I kill him!

  “First,” MacLeod said, “to set the trap.”

  He’d led Methos to one of the many copy stores to be found all over the city, this one, conveniently enough, located right on Seventy-second Street. Methos stood at a counter, staring at a blank sheet of paper, chewing absently on the end of the marker.

  As though he held a quill pen, or maybe even an older world’s stylus, MacLeod mused, and, at the thought of Methos, clay tablets, and a morass of ancient memories asked, “Hello? Are you still here?”

  That got him a sharp sideways glare. “What do you expect? I haven’t used the language in almost three thousand years! It’s not easy to remember… not that a madman’s in any condition to care if my grammar’s correct, but I have to get the message clear enough for him to read…. Yes.”

  With that, Methos bent over the page, slowly and carefully drawing the message in what looked to MacLeod like rather shakily drawn Egyptian hieroglyphs. “There. I think that’s right. Now…”

  He added a second message in what MacLeod had to assume was equally shaky but reasonably accurate Hyksos.

  “That should do it. Ah, yes, miss. I’m ready. We’d like… oh, I’d say five hundred copies of this ought to do the job. Right?” he added to MacLeod.

  “Right.” If we can’t do the job with five hundred, then five thousand wouldn’t make a difference.

  Five hundred copies run off on a high-speed copier took very little time. As MacLeod paid the young woman, Methos took the package with a wry, “The wonders of modern technology.”

  Back they went to Riverside Park, armed with a staple gun and several rolls of tape. What followed was an intensive two-man papering campaign, putting up the makeshift posters all over the park area.

  “Most of those,” MacLeod said, seeing how many of the Elektrik Kows signs had already vanished, “are going to disappear in a short time, torn down by vandals or maybe just the wind. But with any luck, enough will remain just long enough.”

  “And if they do,” Methos added, “and if Khyan returns to this area…”

  “We’ve baited our trap with something only he can read!”

  For the hieroglyphs, Egyptian and Hyksos both, said point-blank:

  “The sword in which a king’s soul lies captive can be found atop the Branson Collection. There, a dark ritual will be performed this very night. There shall a king’s soul be cast into eternal torment!”

  Methos glanced at MacLeod, face its usual emotionless mask. “Assuming that he really is insane enough to believe that nonsense, and not so insane that he can no longer read the hieroglyphs, it’s now just a matter of waiting.”

  “Not quite,” MacLeod said. “Now we have a museum to rob!”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Egypt, Thebes: Reign of Pharaoh Kamose, Circa

  1573–1570 B.C.

  An exhausted Methos on an exhausted horse reached Thebes after a frantic few days of gallop, walk, trot, gallop—the varying gaits the only way to keep a horse on an endurance run such as this from collapsing under its rider—only to be greeted just outside the city walls by an escort of guards armed with the new Hyksos-styled weapons and quite startled to see someone approach from overland.

  “Yes, it’s me, Methos, truly it is, not some desert demon!” Methos snapped impatiently, his throat so dry he could hardly get the words out. “Has Prince Khyan’s ship arrived yet? No? Excellent! I must speak with Pharaoh Kamose or Prince Ahmose as swiftly as possible—but out here. Yes! I said out here! The fewer folks who see me, the safer for everyone. Hurry, damn you! Prince Khyan’s ship can’t be far from Thebes.”

  The minutes seemed to creep by, painfully slowly, but at last Prince Ahmose appeared, looking harried and as wary as it was possible for so young a prince to look.

  “Methos! What is this nonsense?”

  “Prince Khyan will be here very shortly,” Methos told him, with only the most perfunctory of salutes, “with demands for your royal brother. Don’t try to argue with him. Don’t try reason at all: The man is totally insane, utterly unpredictable, and potentially deadly. Just agree to whatever terms the Hyksos demand and get him out of Thebes as quickly as possible.”

  “Lie, you mean.”

  Methos was too weary for patience. “Oh, you aren’t going to go utterly honorable now, are you? Your nation’s safety is at stake!”

  Anger glinted in Ahmose’s eyes at the brusque tone. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be hiding out in the desert.” Beyond the range of an Immortal’s senses. “Prince Khyan and the others must not find me here, for all our sakes.”

  “He must also, I assume,” Prince Ahmose added, “not know you’re still alive.”

  Thank you for being so quick-witted! “That would make our lives far less complicated, yes. I don’t suppose you could arrange…?”

  “Some false evidence? Oh, yes.” The prince hesitated a moment, then burst out, “Of course! It’s so simple. You see, m
y brother had a murderer executed just yesterday. And while the criminal didn’t look very much like you, a severed head that has been rather… chewed up by the desert vermin won’t be so easily identifiable.” The prince smiled thinly. “I think we can safely offer up a dead ‘Methos’ to King Apophis!”

  “Prince Ahmose, I salute you, one survivor to another. And now, so that I may go right on surviving…”

  “Ah, yes. You, and you, go with him,” he ordered the nearby guards. “The Red Cliff Oasis. That,” he added to Methos, “should be far and obscure enough for safety, and you shall find enough there to keep you entertained while waiting. We shall talk after the Hyksos prince is gone.”

  “We shall, indeed. Till later, Prince Ahmose!”

  To Methos’s fierce delight, the Red Cliff Oasis—which lived up to its name by being a desert plain touched with green from a spring and ringed round by stark red cliffs—turned out to be a secret military training ground. Nodding approval, he watched men practicing with newly forged Hyksos-design swords and axes and powerful compound bows, most of them wearing Egyptian improvisations of the Hyksos bronze scale tunics. These newly fledged warriors were still a good way from being an organized, efficient military force, but in the short time since he’d been gone, they had come a long way, indeed.

  Patriotism is a marvelous motivating factor. And—oh, Apophis, but you are in for a very nasty surprise!

  Methos, armed with a wider knowledge of warfare than was possible for these relatively nonmilitaristic folk, went among the new warriors, helping this man with an improved grip on an ax, showing that man how to handle the extra pull a compound bow demanded. He worked himself as fiercely as any of the Egyptians, and welcomed the work. Military training was as useful to an Immortal as to a mortal.

  Besides, his state of almost constant exhaustion left no room for… memories.

  “You were right,” Pharaoh Kamose snapped.

  Late that night, word had come to the Red Cliff Oasis that it was finally safe for Methos to return to Thebes. This morning, he sat with the royal brothers about a pretty little blue-tiled table set with an ewer and cups containing cool drinks, there in the shady courtyard garden of the water lilies.

  No skulls in these trees, Methos thought gratefully, and asked, “Your Majesty?”

  “Prince Khyan was utterly, unbelievably insane, raving about—gods, I don’t know what. That he was the chosen of Set, that he could not die—yes, that you had even tried to kill him!”

  “That much,” Methos said dryly, “is true. I did. Unfortunately, I failed. But King Apophis’s terms…?”

  “Oh, we swore to them,” Prince Ahmose cut in. “Swore to be good, docile, harmless vassals of our kind overlord. And all the while,” he added with a fierce grin, “our warriors continued their training out there in the desert.”

  “Thank you, incidentally,” Kamose added, “for your assistance on that front.”

  “Pharaoh Kamose,” Methos said in utter honesty, “I wish to see the Hyksos destroyed every bit as strongly as do you.”

  Kamose accepted that at face value: Why would any reasonable man not wish to see invaders repelled?

  But Ahmose, being Ahmose, eyed Methos with wary speculation, wondering, no doubt, just what might have happened during that stay in Avaris.

  Sorry, youngster. You may be clever, but I am very much your senior. In all things.

  He met the prince’s gaze levelly and gave absolutely nothing away. And after a moment, it was Ahmose who looked away, saying, “We’re wasting precious time.”

  “We are, indeed,” Methos agreed. “If you will but bring us maps, I’ll show you what I’ve learned—and how I believe you may defeat the Hyksos.”

  “Maps,” Kamose commanded a servant. “Now.”

  “‘Man sent by the gods,’” Ahmose murmured without a trace of emotion, and Methos eyed him, wondering, Jealousy? Or mere cynicism?

  “Perhaps,” he said, just as neutrally. Then, in relief, “Ah, but here are the maps.”

  Kamose cleared a space for them with a regal sweep of a hand that sent the cups and ewer flying. “Now,” he said, unrolling a map and glancing at Methos, “speak.”

  Methos studied the stylized designs for a moment. “We are here.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And the nearest town with ties to the Hyksos is…” he traced a route down the Nile, north, “here, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Nefrusy,” Kamose all but spat. “Yes. Nefrusy, ruled over by Teti, son of Pepi, who betrayed his own blood and turned his town into a true nest of Hyksos.”

  “Nefrusy,” Methos commented, “with no real walls, no real fortifications.”

  “Yes,” Ahmose added thoughtfully. “And it lies so conveniently near to the oasis roads leading on to Bahariya. That,” he said to Methos, “is an oasis town which is also a Hyksos communications post. Indeed,” the prince added thoughtfully, “I think it’s the only post between Nefrusy and Avaris.”

  “Tsk,” Methos said, “The Hyksos have grown careless.” “Haven’t they? We should be able to do something with that fact.”

  Methos grinned at him, “We should, indeed. Particularly if,” he added, tracing the route on the map with a fingertip, “while Bahariya is attacked by land, the royal fleet is also headed on down the Nile to retake Memphis.”

  “Possible,” Kamose snapped. “Probable, in fact.”

  “And as the fleet sails,” Methos added, “it will be gathering supplies and, one assumes, volunteers along the way—and then continue on to Avaris.”

  “Avaris,” Kamose cut in, “which, thanks to that lax Hyksos communications system, will not have advance word of our coming!”

  “Or at least not credible word.”

  “You have a plan worked out,” Ahmose said to Methos, almost accusingly.

  “Assuming that your royal court agrees with this—”

  “They will obey me.” Kamose’s voice was flat. “That is not a choice.”

  “I thought not. Now here,” Methos continued, pointing to the map, “is what I propose….”

  The hour was very late when the three had completed their plotting to their mutual satisfaction, and Methos was very glad to be headed back to his room and his first night’s sleep in a bed in quite some time.

  He froze in the doorway at the sight of a graceful, dimly seen figure, his heart crying for an anguished instant, Nebet! even as his mind knew that it was impossible. “Tiaa.”

  She stepped out of the shadows, smiling, her lovely body bare of all ornament save a single jeweled strand about her hips. “I missed you.” Her voice was charmingly throaty. “I missed our little games so very, very much. But I just might forgive you for leaving, if you brought me back something pretty. Have you brought me anything?”

  “Isn’t it enough that I brought myself back?”

  She pouted deliciously. “Of course, but… I would have liked a little something. Just a trinket to show that you cared…. You do care, don’t you?”

  She was lovely, desirable, there for the taking. And Methos felt nothing but despair.

  Too soon. It is far too soon after Nebet’s death.

  “Forgive me, Tiaa,” he said. “This night I am too weary for more than sleep. Alone.”

  Her eyes widened with disbelief. “Oh,” she said after a moment. “Well. So be it. There are others who will more properly appreciate what you reject.”

  With an insulted switch of her rounded hips, Tiaa snatched up her pleated linen robe and left.

  Lovely. But so very shallow. “Have you brought me anything?” Nebet would never have…

  No. He would not brood on what was and was no more. And he really was every bit as weary as he’d told Tiaa. Methos fell into bed and, mercifully, did not dream.

  He woke to a summons from Dowager Queen Teti-sheri. Freshly dressed and groomed, Methos found her sitting quite regally in her garden, her handmaidens, pretty young things in flowing linen and strings of glittering beads, chattering
like so many chirping birds, gathered around her.

  “Leave us,” the queen said to them, not unkindly. “Do stop fussing, Bebi! Leave us. I will not harm this young man’s honor.”

  In a flurry of giggles and sly glances at Methos, the girls scurried off.

  “Silly things,” Teti-sheri said fondly. “I never did bear a gentle daughter, just Ahhotep, fierce as her late husband and showing more of our Minoan ancestry than do I. Though she did give me two lovely grandsons. And I do admit that she is more sensible than her husband, my hotheaded stepson I never could quite love.”

  Sensible, indeed: Methos knew that what Ahhotep was doing in southern Egypt wasn’t merely tending estates: She was as good as any war leader holding the south safe for her sons.

  And in the process, avoiding conflict with her equally strong-willed mother. She probably finds it easier to fight with the Nubians!

  “Though I did love his father,” the queen continued, “he who is now a god among gods and, no doubt, still quarreling with his son.”

  She looked up at Methos with, he thought, the studied innocence of a cat asking, What cream? “Do I shock you, Methos?”

  He bowed. “Your Majesty, nothing you could say could shock me.”

  “Such a gallant liar. I knew you would return,” she added sedately. “Did I not tell you that you would be protected?”

  At his involuntary flinch, his thought of Nebet, who had not been protected, the queen nodded, her eyes suddenly very gentle. “Why do you think I hesitated when you asked if you would return safely from Avaris?”

  “There is other than physical harm.”

  “My dear, do you think I don’t know that? I, who have lost a husband, a stepson, and a11 too soon will lose a grandson as well?”

  Oh, these fragile, fragile mortals!

  But fragility was just not the word to apply to Teti-sheri. Looking deeply into his eyes with her wise, ancient gaze, she said, as calmly as though commenting on the weather, “Of course you miss her. But she is safe.”

  Guessing at the true reason for his grief? Or speaking through the forced honesty of her Gift? Methos knew he would get no answer if he asked. And he did not wish to ask.