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Lay down your sword
Sandra McDonald
Author's Notes:
Not my everything. You know that. This is part of a loose series of stories I talked about in "Epicenter." Background info is in "Epicenter," "Choices After Evil" and "Epilogue: Studies in Light" but it's not necessary. Now, I didn't make up this "There can be only one" stuff, but I'm bound to stick to it. Remember, it's not over until it's over. Comments, criticisms, goofs, typos, all to me please!
- 1 -
London
European Community, United Kingdom Division 2435 A.D.
Amanda stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of the hotel room, gazing at the dirty Thames flowing below. She remembered once, maybe eight or nine hundred years before, when the winter had been so cold that the river had frozen nearly solid. She remembered the winter fair on the ice, the tents and sports and frivolity. She remembered what winter had been, before the earth's climate changed and made London a year-round hothouse. From where she stood she could see thousands of pedestrians moving slowly through the normal crowds, umbrellas protecting them from the torrential rain. When they looked up, she knew, they wouldn't see her. MacLeod had picked a hotel with a fashionable new invisibility shield that came off and on during the day, delighting spectators.
"Let me get this straight," she said to the people behind her, without turning around. "You want me to break into a monastery to seduce some young Immortal so he'll run away to Sanctuary with us."
Duncan MacLeod glanced uneasily towards Tsaganis, but the blind Immortal in the corner showed no sign of alarm. Or of anything else, for that matter. His normally inscrutable expression beneath locks of blond hair hadn't changed. The sensor scan and damper in his palm, then, were doing their job and keeping this particular conversation from the prying ears of SIDI.
"Yes," MacLeod said. Holland Greer, beside him, tightened her grip on his hand but said nothing, her eyes wide and solemn on Amanda.
Amanda's eyes focused on a small demonstration going on below in Charring Cross Memorial Park. She could see the bright green and yellow flags of Free Wave protesters, and then the inevitable crush of police to stop them. The park, built on the site of the Underground station that had been destroyed during one of the food riots and massacres of the unbearably hot summer of 2189, was a favorite Free Wave spot.
She turned from the window, unable to watch. Almost sixteen hundred years old, she still projected a vitality and vigor that attracted MacLeod like a magnet. The death of her mortal husband Tristan, gone to dust just eighteen months now, had marked her with a graveness that only heightened her beauty. MacLeod had loved her for centuries - sometimes intimately, now as a dear friend - but he'd never before needed her as much as he did now.
"I have many charms," she said now, with a wry smile, "and I'm not beyond the challenge of a monk. But what's so important about this Jason Sanger? We're not putting classified ads in the newspaper for every Immortal, are we? How many people can Methos fit in his sanctuary anyway?"
Tsaganis, who'd been born too late to personally experience newspapers or classified ads, answered crisply before MacLeod or Holland could. "He's not a monk, and the sanctuary can hold enough."
Amanda didn't like Tsaganis, and once again considered the enjoyable fantasy of separating him from his young, condescending head.
"Jason was a friend of Richie and Felicia," Holland said.
On the other hand, Amanda did like Holland, despite the fact the other woman seemed to have won MacLeod's undying love and devotion. There was no missing the soft regret in Holland's voice as she said her mentor's name. Felicia Martins had trained Holland since her very first day. Amanda sobered at the memory of Richie and Felicia. That tragedy, four years past, was a faded but enduring injustice behind her still-fresh sorrow over Tristan. They shouldn't have died the way they did.
MacLeod looked away, his jaw tightening at thoughts of Richie.
"Still," Amanda persisted, "is he worth it? Switzerland's been good so far, but I hear the borders are becoming impossible."
"You don't have to," MacLeod said. "We can try some other way."
"That's not the point." Amanda threw herself into a body-molding chair and flicked her gaze to the silent wall screen, where the morning's international reports were scrawling by in silence. "I just want to make sure we've explored every option besides the one where I lose my head to SIDI."
MacLeod's face became even more grave. "Jason was badly injured during the Versailles problem. He saw what they did to Richie and Felicia. He doesn't trust any of us. He blames me... for being too late. But I owe him this. I owe it to him for Richie's sake."
Amanda nodded very slightly. "So, what you're really saying is that this is a personal favor to you."
"Yes," he said, firmly and clearly. "Do you want me to beg?"
The hotel room nearly shifted out from under Amanda. MacLeod had never begged her for anything. He'd cajoled, once or twice, he'd threatened and bribed, he'd good-naturedly tricked her or made a good faith bargain - he'd once wanted her to steal him a cross, and she had. For Duncan. And now he was willing to beg.
The world was surely coming to end, as the doomsday prophets were constantly proclaiming.
"All right," Amanda said solemnly. "I'll get you your monk."
"He's not a monk," Tsaganis corrected.
Amanda ignored him.
For two more hours they worked the time-tables and travels arrangements, the schematics and security, the contingency plans and failsafes. Holland and MacLeod would stay in the town of New Stans, below the mountainous perch of the monastery. If she didn't meet them in four days, they would know she'd failed. If she didn't reach Bangkok in ten days, with or without Jason Sanger, they'd go on to Sanctuary without her.
Tsaganis was going ahead to be with Methos and Ceirdwyn and the others, as they made their final preparations to withdraw from the beautiful, terrible, heartbreaking chaos the world had become.
In the elevator, Amanda wondered more about Jason Sanger. He was thirty years old, four years Immortal, all four spent hiding in a monastery of the order of Cistercians of the Strict Obedience. Somehow he'd managed to survive the atrocities Richie and Felicia had not, in a blood-soaked prison cell in Versailles palace. She was sure there was more about him than Duncan was revealing, but that was just another part of the challenge.
From the window, MacLeod watched Amanda exit the hotel and slip away into the sea of faces below. Over one billion people lived in the chaos of metropolitan London, grown from the first tribes of hunter-gatherers going back ten thousand years. The world now had too many people. Thirty billion sweating, breathing, fighting, waste-producing people. The Ozone Wars, the famines, the riots, the plagues, the severe birth control policies - nothing had stopped the mortals from reproducing themselves to the point of world collapse.
But it wasn't the world's overpopulation crisis that made his heart feel heavy and tired in his chest. It wasn't the global warming catastrophes that had turned Miami, Hong Kong, and most of the Caribbean into scuba diving attractions. Instead, it was the intensely more personal heartache of Versailles pulsing back at him, the unending sorrow and injustice that hadn't faded a single fraction in four years.
Down in the crowd, he caught sight of a woman whose features sent him into a momentary lift of recognition. She turned her face up to him, although the hotel was currently invisbile and she couldn't have been aware of his scrutiny. Then she was gone, and he remembered that Tessa Noel had been dead for over four hundred and forty years. A trick of genetic heritage had probably bestowed some distant descendent with her loveliness, or a trick of his own imagination had made it seem so.
Holland came up behind him and encircled her arms around his waist. MacLeod leaned back carefully against her, and allowed himself the rare luxury of a sigh.
"How many lies did we tell Amanda?" he asked softly.
"As many as we had to," Holland answered, kissing the back of his neck, and tightening her hold on him with a sorrow all her own.
***
On the platform of the Ultrabullet train to Zurich she saw two SIDI agents working their way throughout the crowd. Amanda had no cause to believe they were after her, but no desire to find out, either. She could take a later bullet train, but it would go through France, and France was too dangerous to risk. Amanda edged her way out of sight, focused on a pale looking businessman, and struck up a conversation that got her onto the train, into his compartment, and from London to Zurich in just under 2 hours.
In Zurich she rented a pod with credits under someone else's name, and told it her district destination. The computerized transit authority matched her with two other people going that way, and they shared the swift, efficient, machine-controlled mind in polite silence. At the district station she had to rent a private pod for the trip to New Stans, but it gave her a luxurious privacy for the last part of the trip that she thoroughly enjoyed.
It had been so much easier in the age of horses. Even automobiles, with their terrible exhaust systems that had poisoned the planet, had offered more independence than pods and trains. Well, Amanda thought dismally, at least she didn't have to worry about it past New Stans. No automated transport existed up to the monastery, and the only outside deliveries they accepted came infrequently, via airpod. She would have to go in on foot.
Still, a horse would have been nice.
She remembered the time when there had been horses in the world, and dolphins, and whales, and white rhinoceroses. A time before the glaciers melted, sending water to destroy the coasts and cities and edges of continents. A time when there had been room to breathe.
Amanda gazed out the pod window and wished, for literally what had to be the thousandth time, that she wasn't a sentimental person. She usually tried to hide it behind witty repartee, or smart defiance, but Tristan had seen through it the first time they'd met and undone her for sixty years of marriage.
Tristan. Oh, love.
The town of New Stans lay halfway up the slope of the mountain Stanserhorn. The old town lay submerged under the risen waters of Lake Lucerne, along with Altdorf, Gersau, Weggis, Stansstad, Buochs, and a dozen other doomed cities. Lucerne itself had held out the longest, but the floods of melting water down the Alps had finally wrested its gates and barriers to ruins also.
Amanda checked into one of the town's small hotels. Switzerland was a Free Wave bastion, and instead of scanning her retinal print the clerk gave her an old fashioned key, heavy and solid in the palm of her hand. The hotel wasn't as prehistoric as to not have I-mail, and a message was already waiting in her room queue.
"Good luck with your writing!" it read. "May the timeless beauty of the Alps aid your creativity. Love, Paul and Millie."
Duncan and Holland. They were in town, and everything was still on track.
Amanda flopped down on her bed and reviewed her plans. She went out only once, for dinner. On the way back she retrieved the sword Duncan had left for her under a park bench. Traveling without her sword always made her extremely nervous, but there'd been no way to get it past the security sensors at the transit stations. The next morning, shortly after daybreak, she checked out of the hotel and hiked up the mountain with only a small backpack for provisions.
The mild February weather hovered with temperatures in the mid- fifties on the ancient Fahrenheit scale as she climbed, and her exertions soon had her sweating beneath the dark nylette of her jacket and trousers. The little-used path went back and forth through dying forests, past jagged boulders and sheer inclines, up, up, up, three thousand feet, and she cursed whoever's bright medieval idea it had been to build the Gethsemani monastery at the very top of the mountain. The ground beneath her boots was soggy with water that drowned the grass, the trees, the other natural growth. The mud was treacherous, and after breaking her right ankle in a nasty fall she took the opportunity while it healed to down some nutrition pills and gaze at the splendid valley below. By mid-afternoon she was safely ensconced in a reasonably thick copse of trees four hundred yards beneath Gethsemani's north wall, and she settled in a high vantage point in an old oak to wait for nightfall.
Through her binoculars she carefully observed the monastery. It had been built at the very top of the mountain, and rose seamlessly from the sheer incline around it. A low gated wall, gray and ancient but sturdy, ran around its sizable compound. A five story medieval fortress rose behind the wall with slits as windows that looked blankly down the slopes. It would never win any awards for aesthetics, and looked like it would be unbearable in whatever winter was left here. From somewhere behind the main building came woodsmoke, and she knew from MacLeod's maps that the kitchens, stables, and gardens were also within the wall. Gethsemani was capable of cutting off all contact with the world, although it hadn't. She wondered if Methos had ever considered it as a home for his Sanctuary.
The sound of men singing in Latin rose through the peaceful afternoon air, and Amanda checked her watch. The Trappists believed in choir offices seven times a day. Two o'clock meant this service would be None. Amanda's Latin was fairly rusty, but she could pick out a few words. Men singing about God, high on the rooftop of the world, their voices surprisingly good. Maybe Jason was with them, unaware of the plans and plots to save him from himself.
She hated waiting, but there was nothing else to do. Vespers came at 5:30 p.m.. A short time after it ended she saw three of the monks come out the main gate in their white habits and sandals. They walked peacefully, silently, although Amanda knew the Trappist vows of silence had been greatly reduced through the centuries. The monks seemed deep in thought as they walked and watched the spectacular sunset edging the western sky towards thick ribbons of pink, purple, and gold. She wondered again why men would choose to lock themselves away from the rest of the world, and decided it must be because the world had hurt them very badly.
Visions of herself as a nun were quickly squelched. Amanda enjoyed the world too much. She enjoyed being part of it, even if it brought terrible sadness like Tristan's death. And she didn't believe in a God for Immortals, who were destined to hack and chop at each other in an eternal quest for heads and Quickenings.
The monks returned from their walk without ever having come near her position. The last choir office of the day was Compline, at 7:30 p.m., by which time the sky was completely dark and the temperature had dropped considerably. Amanda knew most of the monks would soon be fast asleep in bed. They had little other choice - the singing, praying and whatever else they did would begin again at 3:00 a.m., surely an ungodly time if ever there was any.
She planned to be in Jason Sanger's bed by that time, persuading him to leave with her.
Shortly after nine p.m. she scaled the monastery's low wall and dropped soundlessly into the darkened compound. The canopy of stars overhead provided the only light, but it was more than enough for her eyes. In the compound behind Gethsemani's main building she found everything she expected, including a smaller, rectangular structure that was home to the novices and infrequent guests. Breaking into the novice house was a little harder, because it had been locked from the inside with a deadbolt. She resorted to climbing up the side of the building with micro-grips in her gloves and boots, prying open the roof trap door, dropping down through a cleared-out attic, and making her way along the closed wooden doors of the second floor passage until she found the room MacLeod had said was Jason's, and felt through the door the unmistakable buzz of another Immortal.
The door was unlocked. Amanda rapped ever so softly, then eased it open into the small cell. A man's silhouette in bed sat up, his features and details too dark to see.
"Jason?" she asked.
Something dropped from above, whacking her soundly on the back of the head. Amanda staggered and then collapsed to her knees, the world spinning out beneath her with sickly flashes of red across her vision and bile rising to the back of her throat. She tried to pull out her sword but her fingers were lifeless, and the first horrible thought to clear her muddy mind was that SIDI had found her. Or their sadistic predecessors, the Hunters, but the Hunters had been extinct for nearly three hundred years.
She felt a second Immortal, then a third, but saw them only as blurry figures coming up the passage behind her with swiftness and silence that seemed inhuman. They dragged her upright, one with his hand firmly clasped over her mouth to keep her from screaming. The second - a woman, Amanda realized in surprise - took her sword. Amanda's head was already healing, her strength returning, but she didn't fight them. She focused instead on the man in the bed, who reached over and lit a small kerosene lamp on the bench beside his narrow bed.
Amanda recognized him instantly. If this was Jason Sanger, than Duncan certainly had a great deal of explaining to do.
"Hello, Amanda," Connor MacLeod said grimly.
- 2 -
"I love being a writer, it's the paperwork I can't stand" – Unknown
Valery Constantine's only ambition in life, his only passion, his only concern, was a paradox even in his own mind. He wanted it, but he didn't know what it was. He'd killed for it, stood to be killed in turn, but couldn't be sure it was worth the price of a single life lost. He didn't know where it was, where to find it, what color it was, what shape it came in, what he would be able to do with it when he found it. But he wanted it, and that clear acknowledgment made everything possible and everything worthwhile.
He wanted the Prize.
The mysterious, awesome, undefinable Prize. Like Tao, the Prize that could be defined was not the Prize at all. For the first few centuries of his three thousand years he'd made it a habit to ask his victims what they thought the Prize was. The answers were usually so inane and desperate, so obviously ignorant, that he'd finally stopped asking.
Of course, he rarely took heads anymore. His occupation made it nearly impossible, and he had his champions for the dirty work, anyway. His own trained Immortals, hand picked, forged of steel and pride, who did the killing for him and whittled down the field to the few true challengers. He gave them decades of training and education and money, and sent them off into the world to battle their fellow Immortals. Only one had ever tried to turn on him, and Valery had easily defeated the man. Instead of beheading him, however, he'd nailed the traitor to the stockade wall of their training camp in Africa and left him impaled, naked, burning in the sun, howling in agony, until someone defied Valery's direct order and cut off his head.
The Immortal who'd defied Valery was named Goran Riswanathan, and he'd been a lawyer from Madras, India when he first achieved Immortality five hundred years before. Ris, now his most trusted and brilliant champion, who stood across from him in their hotel suite in New Lucerne, Switzerland with a glass of wine in his large, smooth hand.
Their well-decorated suite came with only the finest furnishings - a rich blue carpet that seemed like an ocean, magnificent marble sculptures from the hands of geniuses, furniture almost too beautiful to sit on. Real flowers in crystal vases that caught the sunlight with prisms and rainbows. The cleverly disguised wall screens doubled as windows with stunning views of the valley and the Alps above. None of it mattered. They could have been in a filthy underground cell, blood and waste to their knees, oily torches flickering with light, and had the same focused attention on the only issues that mattered.
Methos. Valery's arch-enemy. His plans to take a select handful of Immortals to Sanctuary. Ceirdwynn, Methos' lover, a woman who'd once spurned Valery by firelight in a muddy Celtic camp. Duncan MacLeod, that meddling Highlander who should have been dead centuries ago but who always bested Valery's champions. Connor MacLeod, who'd barely escaped Ris' sword a few months back and was probably hiding up in the Gethsemani monastery, along with Methos' most prized asset, Jason Sanger.
A Prize in and of himself, although Valery couldn't define why.
"A woman matching Amanda's description was seen in Zurich yesterday," Ris said now. "She's probably on her way up the mountain even as we speak."
Valery knew all about Amanda. He'd made it a habit to always keep himself informed about other Immortals. Ris could beat her easily, probably with one hand tied.
"She'll try to persuade Jason to leave," Ris said.
Valery shook his head. "He won't go."
"He might. He's said to be... changing his mind."
Valery moved to the view of the valley, and raised his eyes towards the top of the Stanserhorn. The monastery truly was too small to be seen by normal eyes, but sometimes he thought he could distinguish its tiny silhouette against the limitless sky.
"If he leaves with her, all the better," Valery said. "You take him from her. You bring him to me. Head intact."
Ris smiled. He was a striking man with straight white teeth and luminous eyes, and had been born with a natural charm that won over almost everyone. "And MacLeod? If he's here too?"
Valery paused in thought. Duncan MacLeod had always been a meddling annoyance. He'd taken Slan Quince, one of Valery's favorites, back at the end of the twentieth century. He'd killed another favorite three hundred years back, during the Ozone Wars. He was an excellent swordsman, and stood almost as good a shot at the Prize as his clansman Connor, who Valery hated with a vengeance.
"Duncan MacLeod is all yours," Valery said. Quite unconsciously, his fingers twitched in search of his sword. "Connor MacLeod is all mine."
***
The same night Amanda was getting her head clubbed in up at the monastery, Duncan MacLeod and Holland Greer made love as if it were their first time, all over again. Charged by a passion that seemed like a sensual Quickening of its own, bodies coming for each other with fire and hunger and bottomless need, they merged on the bed into one charged mass, hands and lips and legs in constant motion, few words, small laughter, sounds of passion.
Then they merged on the carpet.
Then in the shower.
The bed again.
Exhausted finally beyond anything more than sweet kisses, MacLeod rested in her arms and watched Holland sleep only inches away. Centuries ago he'd realized there were no words to describe his love for her, only that it was the deepest, truest, most meaningful love he had ever known. He didn't believe in astrology, but it seemed as if all the stars and planets and constellations had finally aligned into perfection, and delivered Holland to him as a miracle.
Not that they or their love were perfect. Not that they didn't disagree, or miscommunicate, or have bad days. Not that they hadn't had to work through several layers of trust and intimacy to reach the point they had. Not that other loves had mattered, or counted, or weren't still cherished in their separate hearts.
He loved her so much he knew that he couldn't live without her.
Holland said she felt the same way.
Which was probably why it had been a hideous mistake to come to New Stans together, because the potential for tragedy was limitless. Even Methos had seen fit to warn them. But being separated held no greater appeal, and MacLeod had one last duty to hold true to before he followed Methos to whatever corner of the world the Sanctuary was in.
He remembered Versailles with a shudder that woke Holland.
"What is it?" she asked softly.
"Richie and Felicia," he said. "Why them?"
"Methos told you why," Holland answered.
MacLeod allowed himself a bitter laugh. "Methos said, 'Why not them?'"
"He's a practical man."
"Too practical," MacLeod said.
They lay in silence together, wondering how Amanda was doing.
***
The other female Immortal, Minette, still had Amanda's sword. She wanted it back. But Connor said no, for now. "You won't need it here," Connor reminded her. "The whole place is holy ground."
Amanda didn't answer. The cell was bare and small, maybe ten feet by ten feet. With the bed, the bench, a small desk, and a wooden clothes cabinet, there was barely enough room for the four of them. Connor sat on the edge of the bed, Amanda stood in the corner, Minette guarded the door, and the fourth Immortal, Gregor, stood by Connor.
"Why did Methos send you?" Connor asked.
Amanda eyed them suspiciously. "He's late with his Christmas presents and wanted me to make a special delivery. Sorry, but I left them on the roof."
"He knows Jason doesn't want to leave," Connor said, ignoring her sarcasm.
Amanda paused. "So where is this Jason?"
Connor was staring at the floor, as if answers could be found in the smooth stone. "What were you going to do? Seduce him?"
"The thought had crossed my mind," Amanda admitted.
The look Minette shot her, of unbridled hostility, warned her that the small, lithe blonde claimed Jason Sanger for herself.
Amanda moved to kneel by Connor's side and took his hands in hers. She turned on her best charm. "Are you mad at me, Connor? Did I do something wrong? Because all I wanted to do, really, is to convey a message to Jason."
"What message?" Gregor asked.
Connor didn't seem inclined to comment, so Amanda turned her attention to Gregor. He'd died in his late twenties or early thirties, had dark hair and eyes, an intensity that spoke of passion and intelligence. Unlike Connor or Minette, he wore the Trappist habit. He was a brother of the order.
"It's not for anyone else to hear," Amanda said firmly.
"Then you'll leave with it undelivered," Connor said, fixing his gaze on her. "Because he won't see you."
Amanda was taken aback by the conviction in his eyes. Whatever Connor, Minette and Gregor were doing here - and she wasn't unconvinced that Duncan hadn't known they'd be here, the bastard - they clearly thought they were protecting Jason.
Protecting him from what? What did he need protection from, here on holy ground, that he warranted his own cadre of bodyguards?
"Ask him," Amanda said.
"He won't," Connor repeated. "Duncan or Methos could have come up here themselves, but they knew it would be useless."
"So they sent me?" Amanda asked, arching her eyebrows. "Thinking I'd be useless? You know I'm far from useless, Connor."
She still had his hands. Connor managed a quirk of a smile and pulled them free.
"Minette will show you to a room," he said. "Go with her. Don't cause trouble. Stay in your room until I consult with Dom Stephan and the others. Someone will bring you breakfast. You understand, Amanda?"
"I understand," Amanda said dutifully. She looked as if she might want to say more, but instead followed Minette from the room.
Connor sighed. Gregor patted his back in sympathy, and then sat down on the bed beside the older Immortal.
"Quite a woman," Gregor said, stifling a yawn.
"That's one way to put it," Connor agreed. "I see what Duncan and Methos are doing. If there's anyone who can tempt him, Amanda just might be the person to do it."
"So what are we going to do?"
"She's right. We can ask. And he'll say no, just like he said no when Duncan came, when Holland came, when Methos came, when Ceirdwynn came. This spot has become a regular pilgrimage, you know that?"
"I know," Gregor said with a smile. "It's what brought you here, isn't it? And Minette? No one told you. You just came."
Connor didn't answer. He often spent most of the choir offices singing with the brothers, and praying for guidance that rarely came. He couldn't define the vague, persistent draw that had brought him to the Stanserhorn and kept him, away from the world, away from the Gathering.
"Get some sleep," Gregor advised, standing. "I'll see you at three."
"Next time, I'm picking a place that lets you sleep in," Connor grumbled, turning down the lantern.
Gregor went to the rectory and prayed for some time, then went upstairs to the fifth floor and the room where they'd moved Jason just a few days earlier. The younger Immortal was asleep, his face relaxed, his hands smooth on the blanket. His sword hung on the wall, and in the starlight Gregor could see that Jason had cleaned it again. He cleaned it every day, but would never raise it in practice. If he remembered how to heft it, how to thrust and parry and defend his life, he never showed it.
Gregor said a prayer over the bed and went to sleep on the floor, an old habit he fell into whenever he or his charge were troubled. For the first eight months of his stay Jason hadn't been able to sleep alone, and Gregor had spent sleepless nights soothing him, listening to nightmares and inarticulate cries that had to hurt God as much as they hurt the Immortal tormented by them.
In the bed above Jason stirred from the sleep he'd feigned for Gregor's sake, and stared at the gleaming sword on the wall until he could no longer keep his eyes open.
***
Brother Gustaf was one of the oldest of the monks, but unfailing in his dedication to rise a half hour earlier than his brothers every day to make the ten gallons of hot coffee that were needed before Vigils. A man like that, Connor had long ago decided, was surely destined for sainthood. He made it to the refectory with bleary eyes, filled up a mug, and gulped down the hotness as much for warmth as for caffeine. The world might be warming up, but Switzerland nights still had a way to go.
The order had over sixty monks, and the brothers filled up on coffee with a few sleepy words and yawns. Connor knew he could never live this way forever - every other sane person in Switzerland was just rolling over for the second half of their night's sleep - but there was something to be said about the quiet and stillness of the hour, the peacefulness of both the interior and exterior world.
In the chapel, Connor automatically took his place in the tribune with Minette. They were still visitors, after all, although Dom Stephan allowed them most of the same activities as the monks. Minette's presence was not disturbing per se to the order - Trappistine nuns from other orders often came for extended periods of time - but aside from Amanda, she was the only woman currently at Gethsemani. And no one else but Gregor knew about Amanda, who Connor hoped had stuck to his admonition to stay in her room.
But Amanda was unpredictable. The sooner Connor warned Dom Stephan, the better.
The monks glided to their stalls, their white habits reflecting the slimmest of candlelight. Some knelt on the cold stone floor, others lowered themselves gently into the folding seats, others remained standing. The stalls were full long before the monastery bells began ringing. Connor's heart lurched as he realized Jason was late. He caught Gregor's gaze from across the gallery, and Gregor's alarm mirrored his own. If Amanda had gone to him - but, no. Jason was coming in now, only a few seconds late.
As he came in, Connor felt a same ripple of confusion and awe that distinguished Jason's presence and set him outside of time and mere humanity. It wasn't just the song of his Immortality, which only other Immortals could sense. Something else emanated from him, touching almost every other monk at some point or another, a quiet shine that Dom Stephan had said marked him as touched by the grace of God.
Gregor said the same thing. That Jason had been graced.
Connor wasn't sure what exactly SIDI had done to him in the torture, agony and bloodbath at Versailles, but bestowing grace probably hadn't been part of the plan.
Jason took his place beside Minette. They bowed their heads as Dom Stephan knocked sharply, and after the reading of the psalms the first voice lifted up in sung prayer. It was Brother Frederick, a sour-looking man whose heart was more full of love than any Connor had ever known.
As visitors, they weren't required to sing. But Connor did anyway, and Minette followed in a softer version. Jason remained silent this morning, his attention turned inward.
After Vigils the monks scattered to early morning tasks and the making of breakfast. Connor saw Gregor go to Dom Stephan and say a few words. Dom Stephan glanced up, his thick face furrowed in thought, and then nailed Connor with a gaze that clearly indicated the need for privacy.
Dom Stephan's office was smaller than most of the monks' cells. The abbot himself, a tall man with thick arms and heavy shock of pure white hair, settled into his chair with coffee and crossed his long legs. His feet were too large for his sandals.
"This woman, Amanda," he said. "I take it she's one of you?"
"Yes," Connor said.
"And would you say her intentions are honorable?"
Gregor made a small sound but kept quiet. Connor studied the abbot in the light from his lantern. Gethsemani owned an electrical generator, but it hadn't worked in decades. Dom Stephan was a fair man, very intelligent, very wise. He'd been the one who allowed Jason to stay all these years. But he was a man who had to look after the safety of his order as well.
"I believe her when she says she merely came to try and persuade him to leave," Connor admitted. "I believe our friends in the outside world are genuinely concerned about his well being. They want to convince him rationally, not drag him out kicking and screaming."
"Others might," Gregor put in, his eyes darkening.
"Do you intend to give this Amanda her opportunity, then?" Dom Stephan asked.
"That's up to Jason," Connor answered.
Dom Stephan nodded. "Talk to him, then. Did you know he's fasting?"
"No," Connor said.
"If he were of the order, I would not mention it to you," Dom Stephan said. "And if he were, he would have had to seek my permission first. But he's not, no matter how warmly we'd welcome him. So I feel free in voicing my concerns."
Connor knew through Gregor and through observation that the Trappists followed limited but not strict diets. They were vegetarians - well, who in the world wasn't, now, since it cost too much land to raise animals to feed thirty billion people? - and fasting was an accepted part of their life, although only for the highest purposes. Dom Stephan, himself, was known to always leave one food on his plate as part of his prayers. Gregor had once been sturdier than he now was. Jason had been on the thin side since they brought him in, and never regained lost weight.
"How long?" Connor asked.
"Since dinner yesterday," Dom Stephan said.
Dinner in the monastery came at noon. Connor couldn't be sure, but that might have been about the time Amanda scaled the mountain top.
After Lauds came breakfast, and Connor watched Jason as he sipped only from a tankard of hot water. The monks ate breakfast in traditional silence. Although they all had private mailboxes in the monastery's main office, it was not unheard of to leave notes under plates. Jason retrieved the note Gregor had left for him, but didn't read it.
Connor went in search of Amanda. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, obviously impatient, her breakfast tray untouched. The morning sunrise outside her window held no interest for her.
"You better eat that," he warned. "There's no snacking between meals here."
Amanda picked up a pancake with her fingers and leveled him with a long, steady gaze. "I need to see Jason."
"So you said before." Connor took the chair from her desk, turned it, straddled it. "Why is it so important to you?"
"Maybe I should be asking the questions," Amanda said, "since you seemed to have had the upper hand since clubbing me in the head last night."
"I still have the upper hand," he said.
Her gaze narrowed. "Why the trap?"
"Because you're not the first one to try and see Jason against his will."
"Who else?"
"Another Immortal came three weeks ago. He wasn't from the Swiss Welcome Wagon. We kicked him off the mountain."
"Why did he come?"
"The same reason Minette came," Connor said. "The same reason I did. Because he draws you. You haven't felt anything since you arrived?"
"Like what?" Amanda asked blithely.
But he'd seen the look in her eyes.
"Methos didn't tell you everything, did he?" Connor asked, without reproach. "Or was it Duncan who sent you?"
"I know enough."
"You're gong to Sanctuary with Methos, aren't you?"
Amanda finished off her pancake. "Maybe."
"It won't work. It's the wrong decision. I know that Methos is only trying to keep safe, but withdrawing from the world doesn't help."
"This, from a man whose locked himself up in a monastery."
"The world is here," Connor said. "The world is what we carry with us and do to each other. People don't come here to hide from it."
"You could have fooled me. Isn't that what Jason's doing?"
"He's not hiding, he's healing."
Amanda's eyes were bright. "Must have been a serious wound, to take four years to heal."
Connor pushed back the chair and made for the door. Amanda caught him halfway to it.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean it."
Connor didn't answer.
"Look, I don't know this kid, but I know he means a lot to Duncan and that's why I'm here. Whatever happened in Versailles... whatever they did to him, and to Richie Ryan and Felicia Martins... I'm sorry. But all I'm supposed to do is convince him to leave. To join us."
"In hiding from the world."
"You've been out there, Connor, it's not the world we knew."
"But it's the world we helped shape," Connor said.
"Thirty million mortals, and how many of us?" Amanda snapped. "Hunting us, dissecting us, taking our Quickenings. You know what SIDI does. But all we need is time. They'll collapse, as all civilizations eventually do. And when it's safe, we'll be back."
"And in the meantime, the mortals can fend for themselves?" Connor asked.
"When has it been any other way?" Amanda asked. "Come on, Connor. Much more of this and I'll think you're a card-carrying, flag-waving member of Free Wave."
Connor removed her hand from his arm. "Gregor went to tell Jason about your request," he said coldly. "If Jason will listen to me, I'm going to tell him not to meet with you."
She cocked her head curiously. "Why?"
"Because the world needs him here," Connor said angrily, without exactly knowing why. But as abruptly as the anger came it left, and he remembered what he'd been sent to do. "Come on," he said. "The abbot wants to see you."
- 3 -
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to the change the things I can, and the weaponry to make a difference." - coda from Immortals Anonymous
Holland left the hotel after breakfast to go to the transit station. Duncan could have made the trip, but he was too easy to pick out of a crowd even with his gorgeous hair cut short these days. She blended much better. At the station she checked for I-Mail to a false account she'd set up two days before. Methos was supposed to use the account to warn them of any last minute changes. It was empty, and she relaxed ever so slightly.
On the way back to the hotel she felt another Immortal's presence, and immediately detoured from a side street into a more crowded marketplace. The streets were shiny with remembered rain, the market stalls bustling with activity, the crowd of unfamiliar faces pressing close against her coat and hidden sword. Public places, Felicia had taught her a rule number one, were the best place to be to avoid a fight, but they made Holland feel claustrophobic.
Holland used other tricks Felicia had taught her to try and spy her follower, but he or she evaded him deftly.
Until she turned and saw a man only a few feet behind her, a man with perfectly straight white teeth and strong Indian features, a man who had knelt to talk to a young girl and her brother.
He glanced her way and with a smile, in English, said, "Meet me on the other side of the square. Or I kill them now."
Holland felt herself pale. English was a rare public language these days, since the fall of the United States, but his words would have chilled her even in Esperanto.
"I'll be there," she said in a steady voice.
Across the square lay a warren of side streets and alleys, all neat and orderly in the early morning sunshine. The Swiss houses, built of plastisteel, mimicked the bright colors and wonderful variety of the old town of Stans under the lake. A cleaning robot on a balcony methodically beat out rugs of dust. Another, across the street, wiped clean a window. Holland waited for the stranger. He bowed like a gentleman, and escorted her up the street.
She knew who he was. She knew from Duncan's description of the man who'd nearly bested Connor a few months ago in a private courtyard of olive vines and fountains in Cairo.
He introduced himself anyway, so she would be absolutely certain of who had killed her.
"Goran Riswanathan," he offered as he shrugged out of his raincoat. "Ris for short."
She hefted her sword. "Holland Greer. You're not going to live long enough for us to be on first name terms."
He laughed in sincere delight. "An honor, dear lady," he said. "Don't be like the others. Don't try and charm me, don't smile winsomely, don't wiggle your hips. You'll be easy to beat, but at least you won't beg."
"You talk too much," Holland offered. Felicia had warned her never to worry about the talking. It was the eyes to watch, to prepare for that first blow.
Obligingly he struck out with that first blow.
And nearly knocked her immediately to the ground with the force of it.
Holland had taken more than a dozen heads in her four hundred years, although she wasn't proud of it. She understand the rules of the Game. She knew what she was, and why total strangers desired to slaughter her. If she preferred to avoid a fight than wage one, it made her no more or less successful than other Immortals her age. She'd had excellent teachers, including Felicia and Duncan, and felt confident going into almost any situation.
She also knew that lesson Duncan had hammered into her for a hundred years - that she didn't have to lose because she was less strong than a man. She had speed and agility on her side.
With Ris' first blow she knew speed and agility would not be enough.
She was going to die.
She blocked, retreated, and managed a blow of her own that he parried as if her blade were a gadfly. Their swords clanged with sparks, and she retreated further down the street as he increased the tempo.
"Thirty seconds more," Ris promised, "and I'll take your head for you."
She wasted no breath on witty replies. Holland faked a thrust, came up underneath, scored a scratch on his arm. Ris' smile merely grew wider. He wasn't even breathing heavy, the bastard, and looked as if he were exerting as much energy as a leisurely park stroll required.
Her back was already running with sweat, and she couldn't breathe enough oxygen into her lungs.
Ris slashed downward suddenly, catching her leg. Holland felt the flesh and muscle rip with a searing intensity. She fell but rolled, and came up on her good leg with a blow that he deflected at the last possible second.
He'd nearly beaten Connor, she remembered. How could she ever have stood a chance against him?
"Time," Ris said, and caught her with a blow that sent her staggering into an alley wall.
The buzz of another Immortal swam through her dazed senses.
Duncan, she thought.
But he would be too late, too late, too late -
Or not.
A flash of lightning, the clang of her future. Duncan's sword saved her neck.
"Try taking on someone your own size," Duncan MacLeod hissed, his eyes smoldering with an inner fire, his voice laced with rage.
Holland thrust her sword up into Ris, driving it through his diaphragm and out through the back of his white silk shirt.
Ris gaped at them both, blood spilling from his mouth, and collapsed to the pavement. He clawed at the ground, mouth desperately working to suck in air, eyes bulging. Then he collapsed lifelessly, his body sliding into death.
It reminded Holland vividly of her own death, on an airport hangar floor so many centuries ago. She felt MacLeod raise her up and hold her until her legs steadied. His face worked in rage, but he couldn't say anything. And neither could she. She pressed herself up against his chest until she could breathe regularly again, until the tears that threatened to blind her vision cleared and focused on Ris' corpse.
MacLeod gently released her.
Went to Ris.
Lifted his sword.
Holland watched him silently, with a new kind of dawning horror. She knew what he knew. That killing him now was a violation of the rules. Intentionally or not, it had been two against one at the very last second.
No one else need ever know.
Just the two of them. The world would be rid of Ris, and others would be safe.
"Duncan," she breathed, her voice raw in her throat, "you can't."
But he wanted to. She could see it in his shoulders, his intense stare, his grip on his katana.
She wanted it too.
MacLeod lowered his sword. Across his features played the awful combination of confusion and pain that Holland knew cut deep, a wound of its own. He was one of the best Immortals on the planet, but he was just a man. He could only live by his code of honor.
Holland took him by the hand and away from Ris' body. Only then did she realize the robots above were screeching out alarms, and that the sirens of approaching police pods were cutting through the air.
They had no choice but to flee up the mountain.
***
Gregor prayed long and hard for guidance before he went up to Jason's room.
There was no denying that he had initially come to the monastery centuries ago on the advice of his Immortal doctor, Sean Burns, who'd felt that a retreat from the pain of the world might be a healing balm. Sean had never intended him to stay more than a few weeks, under the care of an old Trappist infirmarian Sean knew from his army days. Instead, Gregor had ended up spending thirty years in Gethsemani before leaving. His leaving had only been to avoid more speculation on why he, of all the monks, was not aging.
He'd gone back to the world outside, forging new lives for himself, but his heart had always stayed with the Trappists. He spent a third of each successive century living among them all over the world, then would leave to protect his Immortality.
Now he was back in Gethsemani. And the Lord that Gregor had once shunned had seen fit to send him Jason, who was more than he appeared to be. The graced one.
Gregor could remember very clearly the pain and misery he'd been in before reaching Sean. The awfulness of living forever, feeling nothing, watching tragedies play out over and over again, feeling nothing, having everyone he loved die, feeling nothing. Because he'd made himself forget how. The pain had been too intense, too agonizing, to be felt.
Blocking it only hurt worse. Duncan MacLeod had taught him that, on the roof of a hospital.
But try as hard as he could, Gregor hadn't been able to teach Jason that.
Gregor tightened his hands together in praise of the Lord, although his thoughts were racing him along paths he had no control over. Amanda's presence in the monastery had brought him to an unexpected crises. Connor had relayed Methos' plan to take Immortals to Sanctuary until the world was ready for them again. It was an amazingly tantalizing offer, living in a community of only Immortals. Despite his closeness to his fellow monks, Gregor had only managed to find three or four in the past four hundred years who could be trusted with the enormous secret of Immortality. Dom Stephan was one of them. Leaving the old abbot behind, along with the life Gregor had forged in this abbey, was a very painful idea.
He'd finally dismissed the idea.
Now Amanda was here, to bring Jason away. Connor was here, when he should have left weeks ago. Minette was here, drawn by some undefined force she said called to her across the mountains.
God worked in mysterious ways, but sometimes a clue or two would be helpful.
Gregor climbed to stiff knees and went upstairs. Jason was in his room, meditating on his bed lotus-style.
"You're troubled," Jason said.
Gregor pulled up the chair. "May I?"
Jason opened his eyes. "If you have to ask, then I know we're in trouble."
Gregor sat. He took a deep breath. "Someone's come to see you."
Jason nodded very slightly. He relaxed his legs and swung them over the side of the bed. "I heard something last night. Who is it?"
"Her name is Amanda." Gregor watched closely for a reaction, but there was none. He went on with the risky part. "She's come to make you an offer to leave."
"Maybe I don't want to leave," Jason said.
A shiver ran down Gregor's spine to the very bottoms of his feet. Never before had Jason even entertained the thought aloud. When MacLeod and Methos confronted him on it, he'd pulled back into near catatonia. That was the least of the reactions Gregor expected, but certainly not this calm assuredness.
"No one's going to make you," Gregor nearly stammered.
"I know," Jason said confidently. "You and Connor would stop them."
Them. Not just Amanda. Methos and MacLeod, and anyone else. Gregor had never been sure that Jason understood the depth of his devotion to the younger Immortal, or realized that Connor had fallen somehow under that spell as well.
"Jason," Gregor asked, "why are you fasting?"
Jason's gaze took on a far away introspection. "Because I have a decision to make."
"To stay or to leave?"
"I don't know." Jason's attention returned from wherever it had gone. He gave Gregor a small, helpless smile. "I don't really know."
Gregor wasn't really surprised. Jason had been graced. He displayed, on occasion, startling insights that must have gone from God's mouth to his ears. ESP, divine intervention, astrology - whatever. Jason knew things, sometimes, that he shouldn't have.
The look Jason was giving him now, however, spoke of other things. In that moment, Gregor would have sworn Jason saw right through him, to very heart of him, to the secret places he didn't dare share with the younger Immortal. That Jason saw everything, and that there was no condemnation. That, like God, Jason saw only the goodness and absolved him of the rest.
The thought was too unsettling to hold for very long. Gregor asked, "Do you want to talk to her?"
Now a shadow did cross Jason's eyes. His gaze went to his sword on the wall. "Amanda," he said, as if testing the name. "No. I don't want to see her."
Abruptly he rose. "But I do want to get to the carpentry shop. I promised Brother Hans I'd make him a new bench."
Gregor stood as well, shaken and disturbed by forces he didn't understand, and accompanied Jason out of the room.
***
Amanda instantly liked Dom Stephan. She'd been prepared to instantly dislike him, only because he was the abbot of all these men who'd fled from the world, but she found instead that he put her instantly at ease with a handshake and a deep voice that rumbled, "Call me Steve."
Connor raised his eyebrows. No one ever called Dom Stephan "Steve." He excused himself, however, because this was a discussion that clearly Dom Stephan wanted to conduct in private, despite the fact they were out behind the courtyard. Dom Stephan was splitting firewood with an ax that looked as old as Connor felt this morning.
"I hear you're extremely long-lived," Dom Stephan said, swinging down his ax.
Amanda took a seat on a nearby tree stump. She found it interesting this monk wanted to talk to her with an ax in his hands. Hopefully, he appreciated the dangers. "You could say that," she admitted.
"You don't look a day over five hundred," Dom Stephan joked.
Amanda smiled, "I hope I don't look a day over thirty."
Dom Stephan grinned. He split another log with a neat, powerful blow that sent it sailing apart in two equal halves. "You've come to take Jason away."
"I've come to ask him. There's a difference."
"And what would you like to ask me?"
"Who says I want to ask you anything at all?"
"The look in your lovely eyes."
"I didn't think monks were supposed to notice things like that."
"Monks notice everything. That's why they're monks." Dom Stephan piled his split logs, then placed another beneath the edge of his ax. He split six more before Amanda caved in.
"Why do you lock yourselves away up here?"
"You view us as limiting ourselves."
"Yes."
"What if I tell you we're freeing ourselves? That by abandoning the priorities of your world - careers, possessions, ambitions, riches - we bring ourselves closer to what God wants of us. In solitude and solidarity, we find out what's truly important."
Amanda studied him in the weak winter sunlight. Clouds were moving in from the east, and she expected bad weather by noon. She pulled her sweater tighter. "Did Connor tell you I was once a thief?"
"Connor has told me very little about you."
"I stole things. Lots of things. I was very good at it. If God didn't stop me, he must have wanted me to have those possessions."
"You confuse what God wants with what you want. God's power, versus your own free will."
"God's not omnipotent?"
"He could choose to be," Dom Stephan admitted. "But he doesn't. He took a risk on making you, Amanda. He could have just as easily made a tree. But he made you, and gave you free will, and suffers the consequences of your actions along with you."
Amanda concentrated on the fall of the ax. She doubted very much that God mourned Tristan the way she did. Anger over Tristan's death tried to work its way up from the place in her chest where she'd locked it away. "That's all very well," she said tightly, "but it doesn't concern why I've come to see Jason Sanger."
"Maybe. Maybe not." Dom Stephan paused to rest. She reminded herself that he was not young - sixty five, at least, with wrinkles to prove it. Outstanding health aside, he didn't have the energy of younger men. Of herself, aged sixteen hundred.
"Jason is God's child as much or more as any of us," the abbot said quietly. His words carried softly on the cooling breeze. "He was brought her for a reason. We've sheltered him, and helped him heal himself. He has the free will to leave or stay. You won't make that decision for him."
"I know," she said.
"You don't know as much as you need to," the abbot said, somewhat sharply, and then took in a deep breath to calm himself. "I'm sorry. I don't know as much as I need to, either. But I get by."
"Can I talk to Jason?"
"That's up to him," the abbot said. "Gregor's asking him."
The shivery sense of Immortals approaching brought Amanda to her feet. She turned and saw two figures across the courtyard stop mid-stride. They'd been on their way to what must have been the carpenter's shop, but now, as one, they turned to face her. One wore the habit of the order, and was obviously Gregor. The other, beside him, was less obviously Jason Sanger.
She felt Connor's return and heard him mutter an oath to himself. She hadn't been meant to see Gregor or Jason, not like this.
From Jason she felt the same odd song that went beyond
Immortality to something deeper, clearer, cleaner. An awareness of something ancient and powerful that called to her all during the night, with a presence she hadn't understood.
Actually seeing him put things in no clearer perspective. Because although she knew now why Duncan had been willing to beg for this favor, she didn't understand yet why deceptions had been necessary.
Still, the shock of recognition was enough to keep her feelings from being instantly hurt. Her mind seemed flushed with numbness, and only one word escaped her.
"Richie," she whispered.
- 4 -
"We had to make 6 of them. There were just so many unanswered questions." Bobcat Goldthwaite to Jay Leno, finally revealing why so many Police Academy movies were inflicted on the public.
Amanda crossed the courtyard. She no longer felt the breeze, or the sunlight, or the impending sense of the weather changing. She wasn't even sure those were her own legs, carrying her across the mud. The world ended and began with the blue eyes of Richie Ryan.
"Richie," she said again, because all other words had left her.
Beside him, Gregor gazed anxiously at the younger Immortal's face, not even breathing.
"I'm sorry," Jason said clearly. "I don't know who that is."
He spun away and left them standing in the mud.
"But - " Amanda started, and moved as if to follow him. Gregor stopped her with a firm grasp on her arm. Connor caught up to them both, and watched Jason go into the shop without a look backwards.
"I don't understand," Amanda said.
"Actually," Connor said, "that went better than I expected."
Inside the carpentry shop, Jason took out a bin and the pieces of plank that he'd already measured to build Brother Hans' bench. His hands were trembling, but he ignored them. He took out some sandpaper and began smoothing down the wood.
Someone's silhouette fell across the doorway. He didn't even look up.
"I'd like to be alone," he said simply.
The silhouette, whether it was Connor or Gregor, went away.
Jason's knees began to give way and his head swam. He couldn't have said if the weakness came from his fasting or from the woman's words outside, but he reached blindly for a stool and sat before he fell. He put his head down between his knees and took ragged breaths. He felt very cold, and very vulnerable, and very alone.
The dots before his eyes vanished. He lifted his head and waited for the queasiness in his stomach to abate.
Richie.
The same name that the men had used when they came to see him. One had been slight and mild and mature, with eyes that spoke of eternity. The other had been taller, younger and stronger, a handsome man with a very faint accent and a face that seemed strangely familiar.
Richie Ryan, they'd called him.
Jason had never heard of him before in his entire life.
Although, truth be told, it was just recently that he'd begun to realize he had no entire life. Nothing that dated previous to living at this monastery, specifically. Although in the mirror he guessed he was maybe nineteen or twenty years old, no childhood memories came to his mind no matter how hard he concentrated. He must have had a mother and father, maybe sisters and brothers, but they refused to show themselves. He must have grown up somewhere, but no images of homes came to him.
He'd thought about asking Gregor or Connor, but then he would catch them staring at him with an odd intensity that warned him that maybe he didn't want to know the answers.
Jason tried standing. He did well. He went to his bench and looked down at the wood for Hans' bench. For a moment he was staring instead at a workbench full of metal shapes and power tools, in a workshop filled with sunlight and glass, and the presence of a woman at his shoulder sent the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up.
"Richie," she said.
He turned but he was alone, in a monastery carpentry shop, and Tessa was gone.
Tessa. A name. His mother? Jason clung to the sense of her being with him, but couldn't envision her face or shape. The only sense that lingered was the aura of someone who loved him.
Jason squeezed his eyes shut. They were wet, for some reason. He picked up the sandpaper and started rubbing. When his fingers started bleeding he stopped, and realized he'd lost track of what he was doing.
Who was Richie Ryan?
He went to the doorway of the shop. Brother Gustaf had taken Dom Stephan's place at the woodpile, and the sound of his ax splitting wood cracked like thunder. The woman Amanda had gone. Gregor and Connor were nowhere to be seen. Jason was as alone as he'd asked to be, and the solitude crashed down on him like an tidal wave.
Everything at Gethsemani, he'd noted, swung between a balance of solidarity and solitude. The solidarity of men come to journey on unique paths in a community forged of common vision. The solitude of silence and a daily routine of choirs and prayers that drove him personally crazy with boredom. Except for his occasional and disturbing visitors, Jason found life at the monastery excruciatingly dull. In that dullness he'd been forced to turn inward, into contemplation of the world and God, but he'd always resisted examination of his own mind.
He didn't know if he could bear to remember what his mind so desperately wanted to keep hidden from him.
But they were there, the memories, held back behind a dam that was leaking dangerously around the edges. A dam threatening to crash inwards with what he knew would be tragic results.
Terrified, Jason fled to the chapel. He knelt on the stone floor and clasped his hands together and prayed like he'd never prayed before. Not for memory. Not for solace. For strength, because he desperately needed some about now.
A hand on his shoulder startled him from grayness.
"Are you all right?" Minette asked, her young face framed with concern. "Jason?"
He stared at her. Of all the people in the monastery, she was the one who so obviously loved him. She'd proven it to him, night after night, giving and loving and touching but never pushing him, never taking anything he didn't offer. But in the same frightening way that he could sometimes see into other people's minds, Jason knew that Minette represented some terrible danger.
"Dom Stephan," he gasped. "I need Dom Stephan."
Minette fled to fetch the abbot. When he came in a few minutes later, he knelt on the floor beside Jason and took his icy hands into his warm ones. Dom Stephan knew a personal crisis when he saw one. Sometimes brothers suffered collapses that called for more professional expertise than the order could provide, and had to be taken to the mental hospital in New Lucerne.
Something about the look in Jason's eyes, the imploding grief, sent Dom Stephan's heart clubbing in his chest.
"What is it?" he asked, trying to sound reassuring. "What is it, Jason?"
"Why does God do it?" Jason demanded. "Why does he let it hurt?"
"He hurts with you. He's here for you, if you let him be."
Jason struggled away. He retreated, nearly tipping himself over the stalls. "He wasn't there!" he yelled at the abbot. He didn't know why he was yelling. His emotions and body and mind seemed beyond his rational control, flooding through with anger and grief that cut like dozens of swords into his flesh. "He didn't come!"
Dom Stephan stood in alarm. "Jason, you must calm down."
Jason pointed a shaking finger. "I was there, and you weren't. God wasn't. What they did to her - "
Her who?
Memories of a dark haired woman with eyes full of laughter, a woman he'd shared his bed and heart with, a woman he'd watch be dismembered as he screamed -
Jason whirled, the sense of Connor and Gregor crashing in on him as they appeared in the doorway. Truths kept flooding into his mind, visions, memories, the woman, the name, the chaos. He backed instinctively away from the two Immortals who meant to help him, but could only inflict more and more harm. He tried to talk, but the words caught in his throat.
Gregor said grimly to Connor, "I thought this might happen."
"Jason," Connor said, taking a cautious step forward, "it's all right. We want to help."
But he wasn't Jason. Didn't they know that? Couldn't they see? Jason had never been, and could never be again. He sucked in a ragged breath and shook his head as Connor tried to get closer.
"It hurts too much," he whimpered. "Make it stop."
"What hurts?" Connor asked.
How could he explain to them the equivalent of a Quickening ripping open his mind, again and again? How is it that he even remembered what a Quickening was? The dark-haired woman's energy and light had taken him as their tormentors watched, ripped him into a thousand shreds of sorrow -
Somewhere a bell rang. He whirled to face the pulpit, where a shaft of sudden sunlight cut through the narrow windows to illuminate the cross. But he wasn't in the monastery anymore, and what he saw came completely from inside. He saw Felicia Martins' face, and Tessa Noel's face, and Duncan MacLeod's face, and Darius' face. He saw the skylines of Paris and Seacouver and London and Rome, slicing into him like knives. He saw Angie, Sargeant Powell, Kristin Gilles, Kamir, Benny Carbassa, Joe Dawson, Anne Lindsey, Hugh Fitzcairn, Maurice. He spun out on racetrack into a tragic motorbike accident and fiery death, took bullets into his chest meant for Joe, beheaded Mako. He pulled Mark Roszka, Tessa's killer, from a vengeful death. He lopped off the heads of dozens of enemies. He lay with Felicia, her hand soft against his chest. He stood on the deck of barge in the middle of the Seine, on a beautiful spring day, and Amanda was smiling at him and calling him Richard.
And the last thing he thought before the world blacked away was that he didn't want to be Richard Ryan.
***
The temperature dropped twenty degrees in three hours, the sky sent down torrents of rain flecked with hail, visibility went down to a dozen feet. They hadn't gone back to their hotel room for fear of discovery, and weren't wearing proper hiking boots or clothes for a three thousand foot hike up the Alps.
Cold and storms wouldn't kill them. But it made the journey a whole lot harder.
MacLeod felt the mud start to slip out beneath his shoes. He groped for a hold on the sheer rockface beside the path, and then Holland's hand grabbed him and steady him. Stupid. She could have just as easily been sent tumbling down the slope with him, and then where would they be? But he bit down on his reproach, and swallowed past the lump of fear in his throat.
He'd come so close to losing her.
A few seconds later and he would have found Ris taking her Quickening. As it was, only a vague and persistent nagging doubt had persuaded him to follow Holland without her knowledge or awareness to the transit station. He had no reason to fear they'd been discovered by the SIDI, but he'd followed her just the same.
For a few seconds he'd lost her in the maze of alleys, even though he could hear the clash of her steel and Ris' blade. As he turned frantically, trying to trace the sound, he'd caught sight of motion in the shadows and focused for the briefest second on the woman who stood there, dressed in white, her blond hair framing a face whose loveliness he'd never forgotten.
Tessa.
In the shadows, watching him.
Then he'd blinked, or the sun had shifted, or the awareness of Holland's need had intruded, and there was nothing in the shadows but the shadows themselves.
He raced towards them because in that direction lay Holland, and he'd been barely in time to keep Ris from severing her head.
He should have killed Ris forever, damn the rules.
On the mountain, Duncan MacLeod was sure that he should have killed Ris.
But now was too late. Ris would have revived and gone on his merry way, slaughtering other Immortals with the same casual indolence. He'd nearly beaten Connor a few months ago. Holland had never stood a chance.
She turned him now in the rain, her hair plastered to her head, her body fighting off shivers.
"We're lost!" she told him over the wind and freezing rain.
"Just keep going up," MacLeod told her. He grasped her for a tight embrace for a few seconds, trying to transfer his body heat to her. Immortals might not die from hypothermia, but they could be slowed by it. They might not die from frostbite, but they could suffer from it.
"You know, MacLeod," she said awhile later, as the rain blinded them to the path ahead, "a girl really gets around the world with you."
They stopped periodically for rest and to wait for the storm to lessen. The rest came fitfully, and the storm raged without any consideration whatsoever. The changing world climate which had sent massive hurricanes and typhoons across the planet worked its influence everywhere, MacLeod knew. The storm could last for days, and they'd be stuck right in the middle of it. Or it could end and clear into sunny blue skies within minutes, which would have made him very happy.
For every step forward, wind and mud drove them back two. For every foothold gained, another washed away and nearly plummeted one or both of them into the sharp ravines below.
Finally MacLeod pulled her into the half-shelter of an outcropping. Darkness was falling fast with the end of the day, and he had no idea how close they were to the top. Holland huddled against him, and clumsily rubbed his bare hands between hers. MacLeod could barely feel them.
Water poured down on their heads but the rock cut down the whipping wind, and for that MacLeod was glad.
He clenched Holland tightly against him. "If it doesn't clear," he said, "we'll have to go back down."
"How?" she asked. "We can't see a thing."
"It's easy," he said, with a confidence he didn't feel. "Just drop and die. Drop and die. We'll get down eventually."
But he didn't like the plan. He didn't like the thought they could be separated by ravines or chasms, or the very nasty idea of accidental decapitation by a particularly sharp boulder.
Holland buried her head in his shoulder. Then she twisted up and kissed him. "Thanks again," she said. "For saving my life."
"All part of the service," he said wearily. The vision of Ris standing over her had burned its way like acid into his brain. "Will you marry me?"
"What did you say?"
MacLeod caught his breath. He hadn't meant to say the words. He didn't know why they'd picked this moment to slip out, after nearly fifty years of living together.
"I said," he repeated cautiously, "will you marry me?"
Holland laughed. "In the middle of a storm, on the side of a mountain, with who knows what ahead of us, a killer probably behind us, and you decide to propose?"
"Does that mean 'no'?" he asked.
She kissed him on the mouth. Hard. Her tongue met his. After several minutes, she broke away.
"It means, ask me at the top," she said, and he imagined she was grinning.
MacLeod had some choice words to say about that, but the sense of another Immortal approaching cut the sound off in his throat. It was pitch black outside, and he couldn't see anything. But he could feel someone. Vis, probably, following them.
"Stay here," he whispered.
"Duncan, how can you fight if you can't see?" she demanded.
"If I can't see, he can't see," MacLeod said, disengaging himself from her and the rocks. He was lying and he knew it. Vis might be equipped with night vision goggles. He might have a robot aid. He might even have an old-fashioned flashlight.
MacLeod stood in the wind and rain and darkness, his sword ready to slice out on instinct, if need be.
"Who's there?" he called.
The storm answered, with more water, more rain, and hail that felt like whirling glass. The wind howled like a banshee. MacLeod stood poised at the center of all the natural power of the world - battered and soaked by it, but part of it, part of the world taking a Quickening of its own. Far away, too faint to be real, he thought he heard a scream that arched across the roof of the world.
"I'm Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod!" he shouted to the elements. "Who are you?"
Abruptly a voice spoke at his shoulder.
"Some clan, different vintage," Connor said. "Really, Duncan, there's no need to shout."
***
The bells of Vespers woke him. He was lying in bed in his own room, under thick and warming coverlet. The sky had turned to furious rain. In a short time it would be dusk. Gregor was praying at the foot of the bed, although there really was no need for that.
"How do you feel?" Gregor asked.
"Fine," he answered, although he didn't really know how he felt. They'd taken his shoes but left his clothes on, and he bent to remedy the situation.
Gregor asked, "Where are you going?"
"I have to leave," he said. He felt empty and tired, but knew his duty. Something was calling to him, and although he couldn't be sure if it came from outside his head or inside his chest, it was a true summons all the same.
Gregor moved to stop him from leaving the room. "Jason, you can't."
So it wasn't obvious. He took Gregor's hand in his own, and squeezed it reassuringly.
"I have to. Trust me, Gregor Powers. I can't be free if you keep me imprisoned here."
Gregor's eyes filled with tears. Maybe he sensed the truth from the use of his full name, or from the look in the younger Immortal's eyes. Whatever it was, he crossed himself and stood aside.
He went downstairs. The brothers were still at choir. Their voices, rising in Latin, felt like gentle caresses against his chest. He'd never learned Latin, although Darius had once tried to instruct him the basics. He'd been too impatient to learn. He'd been young, in France, in love with everything new and exciting, and Tessa and Duncan were teaching him about the world through their love for it and for each other.
The world he was now prepared to abandon.
Out of the building, out through the courtyard, out past the gate he went. The wind and rain immediately ripped into his clothing, but he didn't feel it. The summons was the only thing that mattered, and if the time ever came for discomfort it would come later, after he'd reckoned with the memories that seemed too vibrant and too large and too painful to ever be kept in the confines of one mind.
Richie Ryan, who'd once been Jason Sanger, went out into the storm to make his decision.
- 5 -
Evil Boss: "Maybe, when this is all done with, they'll even name a continent after you."
Julia Heller: "Yeah. They can call it Hell." - Earth 2
Earth 2 convention April 19-21, New Mexico! But I'd rather go to SydniCon.
Connor MacLeod sat in the cleared attic of the novice house, cleaning his sword. He'd discovered the large space shortly after retreating to the monastery, and fashioned it into an exercise room where he could practice the art of death without disturbing the monks. For hours he would duel against the memories of his most vile enemies, until his muscles betrayed him with exhaustion. He would rest, renew his strength, and then duel again. He had to stay in shape, if he were to ever leave Gethsemani.
Leaving. An interesting concept. He didn't even know why he was still here, four months after Ris had nearly taken his head in Cairo.
Surely it wasn't fear.
He sat by the small window set in the far end of the attic, cleaning his sword by the afternoon light. A storm had come down on the mountain, but it was still bright enough for him to do his work. As the rain and wind rattled the tiny pane he thought about the vista that usually greeted him from his perch - a stunning view of the Alps and the green valley below that poignantly reminded him, for some reason, of home.
Only in this place had he found the same wonderful isolation amidst wilderness that the Highlands had. The clean air, the closeness to the sun. Of course, Switzerland was taller, but he could live with that. At their fundamental cores, both places shared a focus on ancient power and the natural cycle of the earth's seasons, not on the crazy, mixed-up, misplaced priorities of thirty billion arguing mortals.
Fear of Ris was not what kept him here.
Instead, maybe it was just a weariness of the world.
He'd been thinking a great deal of the Highlands lately, and of Heather. Time had blurred many details of his eight hundred years, but could never erase her face. She'd grown old in his arms. She'd been his life. And she'd gone, as they all went, into the ground, leaving him cold and grieving by the graveside.
He'd loved others. But never as he'd loved her.
Connor cleaned his sword methodically, thinking of Heather, thinking of Ramirez. Why, after eight hundred years and thousands of friends, did they stick in his mind so completely? Because he'd been young then, and new to it all, and had all the time in the world.
He still had forever, but forever didn't seem as long as it once did.
Amanda came up into the attic. "Well, well, well," she said, surveying the space. "Why is it the MacLeod men claim all the territory they can, wherever they go?"
"Territorial is not the first adjective I'd use to describe myself," Connor replied steadily.
She rest her hand on an overhead beam and gave him an appraising look. "How about humorless?"
"I'm not humorless."
"You're not exactly a laugh riot, Connor," Amanda said, and moved to sit across from him with her knees drawn to her chest. She rested her head on her knees and gazed out his window. "The weather's getting worse."
"With over two thousand years of life between us," he said, "you have to pick the weather as a conversation starter?"
"Are we enemies?" she asked, without looking at him.
Connor paused for thought. "Not exactly."
"I've had warmer receptions from glaciers."
"You complicate things."
"I take pride in complicating things."
"You heard what happened to Jason in the chapel."
She nodded solemnly. "Minette came to me, distraught. She said he suffered some kind of collapse. You blame me?"
"Maybe the sight of you precipitated it."
"I've been known to inspire a lot of reactions in men, but never nervous breakdowns."
"That's not funny, Amanda."
"I didn't mean it to be." And from the solemn expression on her face, the lack of beguilement in her eyes, he knew she was telling the truth. Amanda drew herself tighter against the breeze that came from the cracks around the poorly insulated window. "Why does he call himself Jason?"
"He really believes he is Jason Sanger."
"And Jason Sanger was who?"
Bells began ringing from the chapel, calling the monks to Vespers. Connor waited for them to fade before saying, "Jason was a mortal friend of Richie's at the Sorbonne. He was killed the night SIDI raided Felicia's flat and dragged Richie and Felicia to Versailles. By the time Duncan, Methos and Ceirdwynn could come to the rescue, Felicia lay in small severed parts and Richie was mentally shattered. They brought him here. He recovered physically, but with nearly complete traumatic amnesia. He insisted his name was Jason Sanger, and would withdraw into catatonia or hysterics whenever he saw Duncan or Methos."
Amanda took a deep breath. "Duncan's been lying all these years, saying Richie was dead."
"Not exactly lying. For all intents and purposes, Richie is dead. Jason remembers nothing of his life before this place. Whatever Richie was has been wiped away."
"I refuse to believe that," Amanda said. "He's still Richie, no matter what protective devices his mind has set up to shield him from whatever happened in Versailles. If Duncan didn't believe that, he wouldn't have sent me here."
Connor sheathed his sword and shrugged. "I'm not a psychiatrist. I couldn't say."
Amanda drew her legs in tighter. "That girl, Minette. She really loves Richie. Or Jason, whichever. She's just a baby."
"She's seventy five years old, Amanda. Hardly a baby."
"Not by my standards," Amanda said wryly. Then her small smile faded. "Oh, Connor. I didn't mean to cause Richie pain or distress."
"You didn't know."
"When this storm clears, I'm leaving. There's nothing for me to do here. He's in your hands and Gregor's hands, and I can't think of a safer place for him to be."
"You assume I'm staying here."
"You're coming to Sanctuary?"
"There are other places to go. The whole world." But he didn't believe the words even as he said them. And because she had opened to him, because his code of honor was telling him to do it, he said, "Amanda, I'm sorry about your husband. I never told you that."
"All the miracles of modern medicine," she said softly, "couldn't save him from his own aging heart."
He thought of Heather, how she'd begged him to leave her before her youth fled. Mortals had died younger then. There'd been no medical miracles, no faith-healers of science.
Amanda unfolded herself and climbed to her feet. "You know what, Connor? We're not Immortals. We're just charter members of the Dead Spouses Club. I don't know about you, but I'm starved. Let's go raid the kitchen while everyone's at choir."
But everyone wasn't at choir. Gregor was sitting in the rectory, alone in the dark, his hands flat and square against his knees, his head bowed. For him to miss choir offices meant something terrible, Connor knew.
"What happened?" he asked immediately.
Gregor's voice was barely audible. "He left."
An alarm shrilled in the back of Connor's mind. "Who left?"
"Jason," Gregor said. "He left. He said he had a decision to make. And he walked right out the door."
"And you let him?" Minette demanded, appearing in the doorway. "How could you? He's confused, disoriented, he hasn't had anything to eat in almost two days - "
Amanda couldn't help but feel for the young woman, her obvious concern for the man she loved. Or thought she loved. How could she love a man who didn't even know his own history, tragedy, accomplishments? Connor's face darkened, although he made no immediate comment.
"You let him go out into this storm?" Minette continued to hammer at Gregor. "What if he falls into a ravine and can't get out? What if he gets trapped by falling rocks or mudslides?"
Gregor lifted haunted eyes to them. "What else was I supposed to do?"
Minette's face turned bright pink. "You were supposed to stop him!"
Amanda said to Connor, "She's right. He's in no condition to be out in this."
Gregor shook his head. "You don't understand. He wants this. He needs this."
"A few hours ago," Connor said tightly, "he was nearly hysterical in the chapter. He could barely speak to us. And now you're saying he told you calmly and rationally that he needed to take a walk?"
Gregor held Connor's scathing gaze. "Yes. Leave him be."
Connor shared a look at Amanda. Whatever their differences were, they now had a common goal.
"No," Connor said. "Grab your coats, ladies. We're going to look for him."
***
Richie walked for what felt like a long time in the freezing rain and hail, his thin body buffeted by the whipping winds, his clothes soaked and useless as protection after the first few feet. He couldn't see in the darkness, but some deep-rooted confidence kept his feet moving beneath him without misstep. He didn't know where he was going, and he didn't suppose it mattered. God, or Fate, or Destiny, or the Game, would take him to where he needed to be.
Alone, afraid, he stumbled on the mountain and sought guidance from the turmoil in the skies and in his heart.
To be Richie Ryan again he had to accept everything - all of the memories, the joyous as well as the horrific. The feel of Felicia as she took him inside her. The agony on her face as SIDI agents tortured her. The first time Tessa ever came to his room and soothed him, a seventeen year old who'd never really had a mother, from the nightmares that plagued his youth. Mark Roszka's bullet, ripping into her chest and shattering her life. The day Duncan took him to the park and taught him how to wield a sword so he could face Annie Devlin. The cold afternoon Duncan had shut him out of his life for killing Mako. Their reconciliation, months later, in Paris. And then the night he couldn't imagine ever forgetting, the night Duncan lifted his blade to complete an arc that would have sliced Richie's head neatly away from his body.
Four hundred years of memories had broken through the barriers in his brain, filling his mind with the triumphs and tragedies he forged in his life as an Immortal, and they cut like twin swords of good and evil through his middle. Every breath felt like fire, and every remembered face brought wetness to his eyes.
In a way, it would be so much easier to just admit defeat and become Jason again, whose memory would be a blank wall but who would be safe from the horror. Richie wasn't sure, but he felt deep within a seed of enormous power that could be used to transform himself back into dumb, naive Jason, if he used it right.
He realized he was no longer walking. That he was poised on the brink of a greater darkness than that which surrounded him. Richie looked down, trying to focus, but the weakness in his empty stomach and shaky knees made him regret the idea. It came to him, by degrees, that he was standing on the precipice of a deep ravine.
He resisted with all his might the urge to fling himself into the nothingness.
It wouldn't accomplish anything. He was Immortal. Doomed to walk the face of the earth while beloved mortals died, while murderers took away his friends and lovers, while the whole world order fell to chaos and mayhem.
The wind seemed to be lessening. He raised his arms to the sky, beseeching whoever might be watching, and felt power rip through him from the ground to the churning, boiling clouds.
Immortal.
He couldn't change that.
If he was very lucky, he could fling himself down into the ravine and land in such a way on a sharp boulder or rock that he'd cut his own head off. He could go back to the carpentry shop and rig a guillotine that would do the job more neatly. He could ask Gregor as a final favor to sever his head for him, rather than let it fall into the malicious hands of SIDI. He could walk off the mountain and find the first nasty Immortal wandering around Switzerland, let him do the job for fun or practice.
Or he could block it all out again. He could destroy himself with the power he held within, and in doing so destroy whatever Duncan and Tessa and Felicia and his mortal wives and his octogenarian adopted children and the rest of the world had loved.
He could choose not to be.
He lifted his arms up higher, and let out a scream that seemed to shake the very earth.
***
Connor went out looking for Richie, but found Duncan and Holland instead. He brought them back to the monastery and fixed them up with dry clothes and hot coffee in the rectory. Amanda and Minette returned a short time later, their faces written with frustration. Gregor had disappeared, but at the recognition of more Immortals he returned with a prayer book firmly in his hands.
"It's good to see you," MacLeod said, grasping Gregor's shoulders and pulling him into a hug.
"And you, my friend," Gregor said, holding him warmly. "You're looking well. If just a little wet."
MacLeod introduced him and Minette to Holland. She was still too cold and storm shocked to make much conversation, but listened with wide eyes in MacLeod's reassuring arms as Connor recounted the events of the day.
"What decision do you think he has to make?" Duncan asked Gregor.
"I'm not sure," Gregor admitted. "But it's his, and his alone."
A shadow at the doorway made them turn. Brother Hans, one of the oldest of the order, shuffled in with a vague look on his face. Gregor immediately rose from his bench and went to the old monk.
"It's late, brother," he said. "You should be in bed."
The old man muttered in German about looking for some cheese.
Connor slapped Duncan on the back. "Come, let's find you someplace to lay your weary head. The day starts very early around here."
"How early?" Duncan asked warily.
"Three a.m. early," Amanda said as they left the rectory.
Gregor went off to see Brother Hans to his room, and came back to find Minette clearing the coffee cups from the long tables and rinsing them in the old cast-iron sink. Gregor helped her, working in silence, aware of her feelings for Jason. She no longer seemed mad at him, just withdrawn and afraid.
"He'll do what he has to do," Gregor said finally. "It's his life and decision to make. You must trust in God."
Minette sank slowly to a bench. "I don't. I never have. I'm sorry to say that to you."
Gregor sat beside her and admitted. "There was a time I didn't either."
"Do you think... " she started, then reworded her question. "Does God really forgive people every wrong they do?"
"If they seek forgiveness, he gives it," Gregor answered.
"What about to those people who are so awfully evil? Like the ones at Versailles. Like the one who nearly killed Holland in New Stans. How can God forgive them?"
"I think God only sees the goodness in people. You could be a terrible person, done terrible things, but that's all invisible to God as long as there's one flicker of something good in your heart."
Then, because he sensed a need, he asked, "Minette, is there something you want to confess?"
Her face lit up with a small smile. "No, Gregor. There's nothing I want to confess. It's just that being around all of you makes me feel very young, and very ignorant. I haven't lived as long as you all have. I don't know that I ever will."
Gregor patted her hands. "Trust God."
Minette kissed his cheek and left the rectory.
Alone, in her room, she sat on the edge of the bed and stared out at the howling storm. Jason, Richie, whoever - he was out there, alone and defenseless.
Exactly as she needed.
Minette activated her I-mail transceiver and sent a message down to Ris and Valery, waiting ever so patiently below.
- 6 -
"I'm on planet X looking for a dweeb who wears this jacket and glasses and clucks like a chicken." Kurt Russell, about James Spader's character, in Stargate
The Gethsemani monastery, whose foundations and oldest structures dated back a thousand years, had endured harsher winter storms than the one which descended that February of 2435. The sixty four Trappist monks and their handful of unique visitors dealt with the foul weather, drafty halls, and freezing rooms with general stoicism. One Immortal, however, was quite vocal with her opinion.
"You can't even get a hot bath around here!" Amanda fumed in the second floor hall of the novice house.
Connor watched her with crossed arms. It was just past Sext, almost twelve-thirty in the afternoon. They'd come back from another fruitless search for Jason and their dripping coats hung on wooden pegs downstairs.
"Sure you can," Connor said reasonably. "Go cut down enough firewood for your own fire, haul in ten or twenty gallons of water from the well, heat the water, dump it into a tub, and throw yourself in. After all, Amanda, you were born in the ninth century. You remember life before indoor plumbing."
Amanda fixed him with an unflinching gaze and crossed to stand just inches away. He became acutely aware of the smell of her, the fine lines around her eyes, the silky look of her hair. Her chest rose and fell with breath very close to his own.
"You need to learn respect for your elders, MacLeod," she said.
Connor didn't move an inch, for fear she'd misinterpret his slightest gesture. At the same time, a slow and delightful awareness spread through the pit of his stomach.
"And what are you going to teach me?" he asked.
Amanda seriously considered the question. Connor MacLeod simultaneously reminded her of everything she loved and hated about Duncan. But he was his own man, older than Duncan if just by a few decades, with a wildness of the highlands that had never been tamed, and a look in his eye that matched what she felt in her suddenly increased pulse.
A smile spread across her face. "I'm not sure where to start."
Connor leaned forward. "Let me show you," he suggested.
Their lips brushed with the faintest electrical tingle.
They both imagined certain possibilities.
Then someone slammed the door downstairs, and Gregor came up.
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