Chapter Nine: Destiny

"He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned."
- 14th century French proverb

Rain and fog caught up to them outside Alta as Duncan drove north on the E6 highway. Visibility extended no further than a hundred feet in front of the Volkswagen they'd borrowed from a man Sigrid knew from the university. The trip from Tromso to Alta had taken five hours. He and Sigrid had spent it mostly in silence, each locked in their own private world. They still had another three hours to go, plus a ferry ride, and then the final short distance to Nordkapp. He only hoped the weather would hold long enough for them to reach the tip of Norway before dark.

Every few minutes the idea would come that he should leave Sigrid in some town for her own safety and well-being. After all, she didn't want to see him kill himself. She might even interfere. At the same time the last shreds of honor he possessed insisted he somehow take care of her and protect her from the Immortal he'd left behind alive in her neighborhood. He had vague thoughts of sending her to New York to see Connor, and maybe his kinsman could arrange something for her. On the other hand, he had no idea if she owned a passport or had money to get to America. Maybe he could write out a telegram for her to send, and Connor would respond.

The thought of disappointing Connor by killing himself bothered Duncan, but that tiny nagging guilt wasn't enough to dissuade him. Something else gnawed at him, though, something a friend had once said about his future, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't put the words out of his head.

"Aren't you cold?" Sigrid asked, an hour after they'd left Alta. The heater that had coughed and wheezed for most of the morning seemed to have died and gone to mechanical heaven. Sigrid sat in the passenger seat burrowed into her coat.

"No," Duncan answered truthfully.

"Ernst has to have some blankets in here somewhere," she said, and undid her seatbelt in order to lean over into the back. If he braked hard enough, she would go sailing through the windshield. The thought disturbed him and he turned his gaze back to the highway.

"Found them!" she said, pulling two thick green quilts from under a box on the floor. "No self-respecting Norwegian travels without blankets. Or so they say. I'm not Norwegian enough to know."

Duncan had only been half-listening. "What?"

"My mother was British. My father came from Oslo. They met on an environmental research project sponsored by the University of Glasgow just outside Maillog. You're Scottish, aren't you? I recognize the accent. I was born there, but we moved to Tromso when I was little."

He nodded absently. His friend's prediction ran in his head, over and over, and he gripped the steering wheel tighter in his hands. Sigrid fell silent, watching the rain and increasingly bleak countryside. Duncan wished she would talk and distract him from the voices in his head, but at the same time he was glad for the quiet and chance to think. As they got further north he felt his brain beginning to creep out of the numb place in which it had hidden for weeks. He felt as though he was waking up, shaking off a bad dream. He supposed the clarity came from being so close to his goal, so close to the end, but the clearness brought a distinct discomfort, the itchy sensation that he'd forgotten something important.

He thought about the mysteries of prophecies. His name had been in Landry's book as the savior who had to fight the demon. Did that mean his destiny had protected him all through the centuries? He could never have lost his head, no matter what, because of his destiny? He found the idea hard to believe and not very comforting. He preferred to think his survival had been a matter of hard work and talent, not the outcome of hieroglyphics written in an ancient tomb.

Jason Landry. His appearance by the Seine that night had launched Duncan into a terrifying vortex of visions, illusions and mistakes. His death, along with the memories of the old hermit in the cave who'd been Duncan's first Quickening and the appearances of Horton and Kronos, had all fed back into Cassandra's predictions about a Highland child born on the winter solstice. But hers was not the prophecy running in his head on the drive to Nordkapp.

No, the words belong to Jim Coltec. His friend the Hayoka, who had taken evil into himself for the good of the world before succumbing to it himself in a Dark Quickening. That same accumulated evil had afflicted Duncan, too, before Methos helped rid him of it.

He wondered, idly, if a door forced open could ever fully be closed again.

"Are you hungry?" Sigrid asked, again fishing in the back for the small sack of snacks she'd bought in Alta. "You didn't eat much at that rest stop."

He could snap her neck very easily. Leave her by the side of the road. No one would catch up to him until it was too late. Duncan sucked in a sharp breath. What the hell kind of monster was he, to be thinking such horrible thoughts? These murderous impulses had not plagued him until he met her, when some dangerous part of his mind must have woken, demanding to be heard.

He'd said to Jim, "You became what you fought."

And Jim had answered, "As we all will become, in time."

Duncan cast his mind back to the racetrack in Paris. He'd taken Richie's Quickening. He could never forget that. But at what point exactly had he given up any hope of avenging his student's death? Not against himself, but against the forces that had driven him to it?

Sigrid flopped down in her seat, pushing her blonde hair from her face. "There's cheese back there if you want some," she said. "Tuna, too. And some dried beef jerky."

"No thanks," he said, and managed to sound as sane as anyone else in the car.

When had he lost his will to live? And how the hell did he hope to build a guillotine in the middle of the tundra and send himself falling into the ocean? If his destiny really was immutable, then he wouldn't succeed no matter how hard he tried.

If Jim's prophecy was true, he'd become the evil that he'd fought.

He'd become the demon himself.

He turned the idea over and over in his head, expecting to feel some sort of horror, but long past that point already. He didn't know if evil could be spread person to person, but maybe Landry had passed it to him that night on the Seine. Maybe Duncan had passed some of it to Allison, enough that she died because of it. With the Dark Quickening he'd been submerged by evil, overwhelmed with abhorrent impulses. After Landry he'd found himself the target of apparitions that hadn't stopped until he'd killed Richie and launched himself on this road north.

Slit her throat, part of him said. Take her, rip her legs apart, spear her with yourself, and slit her throat.

"Do you have a pen?" he asked.

"I'm sure there's one here somewhere." Sigrid rummaged in the glove compartment, tossing aside maps and coffee-stained napkins, and fished out a cheap plastic pen to hand over.

"Thanks," he said. "You're right, I am a little hungry. Can you get me some of that beef jerky?"

She climbed over the back. When he was sure she wasn't looking, he drove the pen into his left knee, hard enough that red agony bolted down his shin and made his toes curl up. He stifled a grunt of pain. When Sigrid turned back around she gave him a strip of jerky, and he bit down on it so hard his teeth rang.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Fine," he replied tersely.

The pain gave him a focal point. Something to concentrate on to distract him from images of killing his passenger. Half of him muttered murderous impulses while the other half resisted. He didn't know how long he could hold on against himself. Which was the surer bet - tossing her out into the tundra and leaving her stranded dozens of miles from the nearest settlement, or trusting that he wouldn't hurt her before they reached Nordkapp? Something important lay in wait there, something his inner half wanted. Something so valuable it didn't want Sigrid to come and had killed Richie to keep the younger Immortal from accompanying him . . .

Was that it? Was that why Richie had died?

Nordkapp. The answer waited for him there. All he had to do was get them there alive.

***

Sigrid grew increasingly nervous with each passing kilometer. Accompanying Duncan to Nordkapp did not seem like such a good idea after all. She should have been warned by the way he'd raised that sword over the stranger's head back in her neighborhood, ready to cut off his head. She'd known since their first meeting on the bridge that he was in pain, and pain drove people to extremes. In Alta she thought about leaving him, but Duncan looked so lost, so forlorn, that she didn't have the heart for it. Besides, she told herself, she was the Good Samaritan. And in ways she didn't completely understand, Duncan badly needed whatever help she could give him.

After lunch, though, the handsome man had changed. The lost look had shifted into a tense irritation. His knuckles shone white as he clenched the steering wheel, and when he spoke the words came out clipped, clear, almost angry. She didn't think she'd done anything to make him mad, but mad he seemed. Sigrid concentrated on the landscape and tried not to provoke him further. The weather cleared somewhat outside Kistrand. She caught sight of reindeer and their Sami herders. She had never been so far north before. Her breath fogged up the passenger side window and she traced designs in the moisture.

"What's a guillotine?" she asked.

He glanced her way. "What?"

"Guillotine. You said that word last night, but I don't know what it means."

He stayed silent for a full moment before replying, "It's a machine. It cuts things. Don't ask any more."

In Kafjord they barely made it onto the day's last ferry to Honningsvag. The trip would take about an hour. Glad to be out of the confines of the car, Sigrid bought herself a large cup of coffee and went to the glass-enclosed lounge to watch the bay slip by beneath the ship's hull. Duncan had disappeared. Concerned, she finally went looking for him and found him in a small snack room doing an odd series of bends, stretches and lunges.

"Kata," he said when he was done. His cheeks looked flushed and sweat gleamed on his face. "I'm out of practice."

"You hurt yourself," she observed, eyeing blood on his left knee.

"No," he said. "Just a scratch. It's nothing."

"Something's bothering you. Tell me what it is and I can try to help you."

"I can't," he said. He scooped up his jacket from a plastic chair and went outside to the open deck After a moment she followed. The cold and salty breeze stung her face and eyes, and the stink of burning diesel fuel filled her nose. Honningsvag lay a few miles ahead, a cluster of fifty or so buildings around a small bay. Duncan stood at the railing, gazing at the village. Sigrid gingerly touched his arm.

"What's in Nordkapp?" she asked. "Do you know?"

Slowly he shook his head.

Sigrid took a deep breath. She supposed he was crazy, and had been since collapsing beneath the bridge. "Are you going there to kill yourself?"

He turned to her.

"It's a French word, isn't it? The guillotine. For chopping off heads. I finally remembered." When he didn't answer she said, "Whatever you did, it's not worth killing yourself over."

"I'm not going to kill myself," he said. "I thought I was, but I'm not."

"I'm glad."

"It's not safe," he blurted out. "To be with me or near me. A friend of mine already died because of it. Go back while you can."

"No," she said.

"Why?"

Sigrid turned her face to the bitter wind. "Because it's not safe to be with me, either, sometimes. I figure we're meant for each other that way. Wherever you're going, I have to go there too. Don't ask me to explain it. I don't understand myself. But I have to go."

"I don't know what's going to happen when we get there," he admitted, fear in his voice.

"I don't know either." She held out her hand. After a moment he took it, her soft skin against his calluses, her small fingers entwined in his large ones. Without any more words they stood at the railing as the ferry docked. The stretch from Honningsvag to Nordkapp ran only thirty kilometers, and they made good time in the falling dusk. Sigrid found nothing but treeless tundra and sparse dwarf plants to look at outside, and concentrated instead on Duncan.

He began to frighten her again. His left leg tapped incessantly on the floorboard near the brake pedal and a muscle over his right eye twitched with tension. He wouldn't look at her or answer her questions. He sped through the gloom like a man possessed, his driving fast and confident. She gripped her door handle and tried not to panic.

"You should slow down," she offered.

"Shut up."

She pulled herself closer to her side of the car.

Nine hours after they'd left Tromso they reached Norway's official northernmost point, and not a moment too soon as far as Sigrid was concerned. Duncan pulled the car into the parking lot of the North Cape Hall, which had been blasted and built in the interior of the plateau. Sigrid could see warm yellow lights spilling from the windows of the panoramic restaurant. She reached for her door handle, intent on at least getting out of the car, but Duncan reached over and slapped her hand away.

"Don't leave yet," he said, his face inches from hers, his breath hot on her cheeks. "We haven't even started having fun yet."

His mouth came down to press against hers. His tongue forced its way into her mouth, bruising her lips. She bit down hard on it, and he jerked back. He slapped her with his open hand. Her head rocked backward with the blow and blood filled her nose.

"Bitch," he gasped. "You'll pay for that. I'll make you beg and scream and pray for mercy. But it won't come. Do you hear me? It won't come!"

She tried for the door again, but he pushed himself down on her. Sigrid's right hand groped for the tilt control of the chair and pulled the lever. They dropped backwards so that his weight pressed down even heavier, but the flattened position gave her access to the bag on the back seat floorboards. She had bought bottled root beer back in Alta and a bottle opener as well. As Duncan pawed at her breasts and sucked on her neck her left hand groped for the bag. Cheese. Tuna. Beef jerky. Glass bottles.

And there, at the bottom, the smooth metal of the opener.

She had no hopes of stabbing him in the back with it - the sharp edge couldn't go very far. But he had a softer, more vulnerable point where the base of his skull met his spine. Sobbing for breath, fighting not to panic, she brought the opener around with all the force she could muster in her arm and plunged it into that one spot.

Duncan screamed and arched against her. She pushed his weight off and scrambled for the door. She fell out hard, scraping her knees on the asphalt of the parking lot.

"Come back!" Duncan cried out. "Come back, baby-killer!"

The words blasted as deep into Sigrid as bullets would have. Nevertheless she found enough strength to get past the agony and climb to her feet. She started running for the restaurant. She could hear Duncan lurching after her. His fingers grazed the back of her sweater and she screamed. A figure reared up in front of her in the darkness, a tall woman with long dark hair.

"Help me!" Sigrid pleaded. "He's crazy!"

"He won't hurt you," the woman said, and pulled a sword from her long coat. "My name is Cassandra. I'm the one he's after."

Chapter Ten: The Actors

"Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a part as it may please the master to assign you, for a long time or for a little as he may choose." - Epictetus (c. 55- c.135 B.C.)

Dusk settled over the island like a canopy of blue and gold. Methos and Joe had been provided a sparsely furnished room on the second floor. An open window looked down to the temple courtyard, and the evening breeze wafting through it smelled of salt and pine. Christine had brought them a rather unappetizing dinner of cold lentil soup and hard bread. The remains sat on the tray by the door. Joe had refused herbal medicine for his headache but agreed to lie down for a little while. Methos sat on his own bed, absently whittling at a broken twig he'd found earlier on their way from the beach.

"I can't help thinking about Richie," Joe said.

"Joe, his eyes couldn't have possibly opened."

"Not that. I don't expect you to believe me about that, though it's true. I keep thinking about him lying there like a statue, all preserved. How can that be? Did they embalm him?"

"I don't know."

"Even embalmed bodies don't look like he does. It's unnatural."

"Sometimes I think this whole island is unnatural," Methos admitted. He didn't like the idea of Richie's corpse caught in some kind of bizarre stasis, either. Immortals buried alive or otherwise entombed entered into such a state, but Richie had been decapitated. No Quickening remained in his body for healing or preservation. Maud and her women must have done something to him, but Methos couldn't imagine what or why.

He told Joe about Maud's theory of an unclaimed Quickening on Holy Ground. Joe saw through the hole in that theory immediately.

"If Cassandra had killed another Immortal on Holy Ground, she would have taken the Quickening."

"Assuming."

"Assuming what?"

"That she was Immortal when she did it. What if she was mortal?"

Joe scratched his chin. "Why would she have taken an Immortal's head?"

Methos didn't answer immediately. He didn't like thinking about Cassandra. He didn't like thinking about the man he'd been when he'd captured her, raped her, enslaved her. Each time he ventured into his own dark past he trod as lightly as possible, fearful of waking his ancient bloodlust and hatred. Columba had assured him that it wouldn't happen, that he had cleansed and absolved himself, but what did she know? She'd rowed away on a boat and given herself to the Mother Goddess, or so they said.

"Methos?" Joe asked suspiciously. "Are you hoarding information again?"

"What do you know about Cassandra's past?"

"Only what she or MacLeod told me. Her database entry is mostly empty. She was a foundling like the rest of you, adopted by a nomadic tribe, grew up helping the tribe's healer. Your average Bronze Age gal until you and your buddies showed up."

"She didn't tell you how, bored with the nomadic life, she left her tribe for a few years and went to live in the ancient city of Kuzhizar?"

"No."

"She didn't tell you how, poor and starving, she fell in with a band of notorious robbers and cutthroats, the scourge of the kingdom?"

"No," Joe said.

"Selective memory, I suppose. We all suffer from it."

"So what happened?"

"She left them, eventually. I'm not sure why or under what circumstances. She returned repentantly to her tribe and they agreed to take her back."

"So she wasn't actually an innocent little village girl when you carried her off?"

"Hardly." He didn't need to detail Cassandra's sexual history, and it certainly didn't matter, but she'd been far from innocent that first night in his bed. He'd taken her by brute strength. She'd whimpered and cried, playing for sympathy. When that got her nowhere she revealed herself as rather skilled in the art of pleasuring a man with hands, mouth and other openings. It wasn't the first time she'd traded sex for survival, and he suspected she still did it.

After working through her initial shock of being held prisoner, Cassandra had vied quite adeptly for the silent, unspoken and competitive job as his personal slave. Other women fought for the privilege of serving him, hoping perhaps that he would shelter them from the more obvious cruelties bestowed by his comrades. Foolish girls. They never stood a chance with him or Cassandra, although he enjoyed setting them up against each other. He remembered sitting in his tent one day, laughing so hard tears came as Cassandra viciously beat a girl who'd been impertinent enough to offer Methos wine after a hard ride. The slaves had their own pecking order, their own petty hierarchy and rivalries, and Cassandra had clawed her way right into Methos' tent and defended the spot for more than a year.

He'd grown too accustomed to her. Too complacent. Somehow, he must have fallen into her trap himself, although he couldn't remember how or why. He did shelter her, did protect her, at least in a limited fashion. Until one day Kronos had been too persistent to dissuade, too suspicious to placate. Losing her to him brought a genuine regret, as if he'd lost his favorite horse. He'd watched her escape that night with mixed emotions. She wouldn't last long in the Game, but perhaps she'd earned the opportunity to die free. Or as free as possible for any woman in those ages.

Joe asked, "The place where Landry uncovered that tomb - is it built on the remains of Kuzhizar?"

"I believe so."

"So you think Cassandra might have killed an Immortal there, without knowing who or what he was, and that's what Landry let loose?"

"I think it's what Maud believes," Methos replied.

"That would explain why it hates her. Imagine being a disembodied Quickening stuck in a tomb for a few thousand years."

"You're assuming the Quickening retains the knowledge and willpower of the person who lost it."

Joe propped himself up on one elbow. "You're the expert, why don't you tell me?"

Expert. Methos nearly laughed. He'd taken thousands of Quickenings, but each was distinct and different. Some brought shifting kaleidoscope images of his opponent's life. Others brought floods of hatred and terror, love and lust. He didn't consciously remember anyone else's life. But he couldn't swear that those thousands of men and women incorporated into his body had left him unswayed or unchanged. He knew more about physics than he knew about Quickenings, and physics had always been his very worst subject.

Joe's voice broke into his thoughts. "Of course, there's always the easier explanation - that big old nasty Zoroastrian demon."

The words marked Joe's first attempt at humor in weeks, and Methos appreciated the effort.

"There's always that," he agreed, and they let the subject drop for the time being.

***

Sigrid scrambled backward, away from Cassandra and her glittering weapon. One sword that morning, another now at night. When exactly had the world turned into a place where people carried deadly medieval weapons under their coats? Guns she could understand, but not swords. Cassandra advanced warily on the open passenger door of the Citroen. Duncan groped for the bottle opener jutting from his neck and yanked it loose with a curse.

"Get out of the car," Cassandra ordered.

"Or you'll do what?" he demanded with a bitter laugh. "Are you going to kill me? Cut off my head right here?"

"You came here to take *my* head, didn't you, Duncan? Or should I say Fashid? The High Priestess of Illas Cies told me you were coming."

Sigrid climbed to her feet. The smartest thing for her to do would be run to the restaurant, find someone to help. Someone who didn't talk about cutting off heads. A nice Sami tour guide, perhaps, or the restaurant manager. But her feet wouldn't move, and she could only stand by helplessly watching the drama unfold before her.

Duncan's eyes narrowed as he staggered out of the car and steadied his balance. He spread his hands in a placating way, but his voice lost none of its mockery. "I'm Duncan MacLeod, remember? Your Highland child of the winter solstice."

Cassandra kept a wary distance between them. "I know who you are and what you are. An abomination."

Duncan stepped forward. Cassandra edged back. Sigrid didn't take that as a positive sign.

"I'm what you made me," he said. "Cowardly girl. You killed me in the tomb and brought my head to the emperor's men for a reward. For a little silver."

"I didn't know you were Immortal," she said. "I didn't know that I would be Immortal one day too. I had no idea what happened when one of our kind lost his head on Holy Ground and no one took the Quickening. I don't expect you to believe that, but it's the truth."

"Truth?" he asked, smirking. "I don't care about the truth. I'm Ahriman, spirit of the lie."

"So you made Jason Landry believe. So you tried to make Duncan believe."

"Ah, yes. Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod." He stepped forward again, and again Cassandra retreated. "Can you believe the ego of the man? He truly believed it was possible that he, of all the people on the earth, could be the one chosen savior of mankind."

"It wasn't ego," Cassandra said sharply. "It was what you made him believe."

Sigrid didn't understand. Why were the two of them discussing Duncan in the third person?

Duncan laughed. "Not hard to do, and in fact quite entertaining. I made him believe his first Quickening came from a crazy hermit in a cave. Used your prophecy to plant more doubts. Tricked him into getting rid of his own student, that meddlesome little boy, and used that guilt to drive him here toward you."

"Why Duncan?"

"Because he was vulnerable. Because I could get in. Landry was a useless old conveyance for me. MacLeod is a different matter altogether. In the language of contemporary transportation, a . . . thoroughbred? A . . . Mercedes Benz? That he knew of you - and had your current address - was an unexpected and quite pleasurable bonus."

He stepped forward again.

Cassandra stepped back.

"So," he said, "do you think I've explained enough? Because now you're coming with me. We have a destiny to keep. You have debts to repay. I'll only make you suffer for a few thousand years, I promise. A few thousand years of pain and isolation, like the ones you inflicted on me."

He opened his coat and pulled free his own sword. Sigrid recognized it as the one he'd taken from the man in Tromsdalen that morning. He must have circled back to get it while she grabbed a coat and some food from her house. She didn't know anything about swordfighting but he was bigger than Cassandra, more finely muscled, and probably could beat her easily.

Which probably explained why the dark-haired woman pulled a gun from her pocket and shot Duncan five times in the chest. The muted sounds brought blossoms of blood to Duncan's chest and an expression of hatred to his face. He staggered back against the car and slid down to the ground with blood and foam at his mouth, then gave a shuddered jerk and died.

Cassandra stood in place for a full sixty seconds, the gun with its silencer hanging at her side.

"Help me get him into the car," she finally said. "Before it's too late and he returns to life."

Sigrid had never seen anyone killed before. She still didn't understand what had just happened, and the other woman frightened her. But mindful of the gun in Cassandra's hand she helped shove Duncan's body into the backseat. Cassandra crouched over the still form, touched Duncan's face gently and started shaking. Only then did Sigrid realize how frightened she was, and how well she'd been hiding it.

Sigrid put her hand on Cassandra's shoulder and patted it. "You did what you had to," she said awkwardly. "He would have killed you."

Cassandra straightened and wiped her eyes clear of tears. "I don't expect you to understand any of this, and I'm sorry you're involved. You mustn't tell anyone what you saw. You have to go."

Sigrid said, "Tell me first about the prophecy."

"What?"

"The prophecy he spoke of - the Highland child, the winter solstice - what was that about?"

Cassandra looked to Duncan. "It doesn't concern you."

"Please. It might be important."

The dark-haired woman looked too tired to argue. "An evil one will come, to vanquish all before him," she said, her voice flat and spiritless. "Only a Highland child born on the winter solstice who has seen both darkness and light can stop him."

"But that's me," Sigrid said.

Chapter Eleven: On His Knees

"And Satan trembles when he sees, The weakest saint upon his knees." - William Cowper, 1731-1800

In his dream, Joe stood on the beach of Illas Cies in the bright light of day. The heat beat down on his shoulders and face. His flesh- and-blood toes curled into the wet sand as an incoming wave washed up around his legs, salty and cool. Trees bowed in the wind toward him, and a wild black stallion pawed the sand not ten feet away.

"Have her bring them to me," a woman said from behind him.

Joe turned. On his own two legs. Without the need for a cane or plastic limbs.

"What?" he asked.

The woman standing before him had long white hair flowing down past her shoulder blades. His own age or perhaps a little older, she wore a long golden gown and a wreath of roses on her head. Lines of somberness crossed her face. "Have her bring the children of the winter solstice to me."

"But who are you?" Joe asked.

"Trust her, Joe," a familiar voice said. He turned again and saw that the black horse had transformed into Richie. The kid looked alive and well, with a trace of a smile on his face. "It's the only chance."

"Richie?" Joe asked, stepping forward, but the sun grew too bright for him to see. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the beach, the woman and Richie had all disappeared, taking his legs with them.

***

Antone appeared at dawn the next morning. Methos had woken earlier by some faint sound and had spent the last several minutes standing at the window and gazing at the forest when he saw the other Immortal cross the courtyard. Antone walked swiftly and purposefully toward Maud's Hall. Joe lay snoring in his bed, one hand hanging down by the prostheses lined up neatly on the floor. Methos slipped on his shoes and made it downstairs in time to catch the last of the other male Immortal's words.

"She said she'd be bringing the girl with them."

"Which girl?" Methos asked.

Antone turned around. Maud remained sitting on her throne, her hands tightly gripping the worn wood. Her dark hair hung loose and uncombed and her nightgown had wrinkles. She must have just risen. She looked very young and naive, frozen at the end of childhood.

"Cassandra killed Duncan last night. She's bringing his body here, along with the girl who'd been his companion," she said.

"Killed?" Methos asked, a lump in his throat.

"Not permanently."

"Why kill him at all? And why bring them here?"

"He's possessed, apparently. By the unclaimed Quickening that Jason Landry set loose from that tomb. As for bringing them here - well, where else in the world? No place is safe. We must contain the evil as best possible and defeat it."

The lump in Methos' throat eased only to be replaced by a cold feeling in his gut. He'd seen Duncan possessed by the Dark Quickening. Sean Burns had lost his head in that affair, and numerous mortals had been hurt. Only a climactic confrontation in an ancient holy spring had cleansed Duncan, and last time Methos checked, the spring had gone dry.

"Do you know how to defeat it? How to set Duncan free?" Methos asked.

Her shoulders dipped in defeat as she shook her head.

"Taking his head is not an option, either. That unclaimed Quickening could take over his next host as well. It wouldn't be safe for any of us to try."

"I must discuss this with the others," Maud announced. She rose unsteadily. "When will they arrive?"

Antone said it might take a day or two, depending on how fast and discreetly Cassandra could travel. Methos understood. In the old days, lugging a dead body across most of the European continent would hardly have raised an eyebrow. In the modern world, Cassandra would have to circumvent borders and customs agents. Charter planes were scarce at the northern tip of Norway, but she might be able to book something in Oslo for the trip to Spain.

Maud left. Antone departed as well, probably bound for the beach and his blasted rowboat. Methos went back to his room and found Joe stirring in bed.

"Joe? Are you awake?"

"I dreamed of a woman," Joe blurted out. He looked up groggily from his pillow. "A woman with white hair on the beach where we first landed. Richie was there, too."

Methos supposed many women in the world had white hair, but only one had ever ruled the island. As far as he knew, no portraits or statues of Columba dotted the temple grounds, and he hadn't described her to his mortal friend. He remembered how Joe had claimed to have dreamed about the temple before ever seeing it.

He sat down on the other side of the room and asked, casually, "What did they say?"

"She said to bring her the children of the winter solstice, and Richie said to trust her."

Methos' eyebrows raised. "Which children?"

"I don't know."

"Cassandra's prophecy spoke of only one child," Methos reminded him. "MacLeod fit the description."

"I don't know," Joe repeated. He leveraged himself up and abruptly stopped short, his face going pale.

"What's the matter?"

Joe's voice came out hoarse with equal parts awe and surprise. "There's sand in my bed."

Sure enough, a handful of grains marked the white sheets beneath Joe's stumps.

"I don't understand," Joe said.

Methos had no explanations for him. No plausible theories about how sand could have gotten in his bed. So instead he changed the subject. "There's been some news," he said, and explained about Cassandra and Duncan.

"Let me get this straight. You can't behead him, and you don't know how to cure him. What's the alternative? Lock him up for a couple hundred years, like they did to you?"

Methos shook his head. "Whatever my sins were, I was rational and sane when Columba imprisoned me."

"I don't know about that. I don't know if man who killed thousands of people and enjoyed it could be called sane."

Methos glanced at him sharply. Joe's face remained composed and serious. "Fine," he said coldly. "Not sane. But not "possessed." I'm not sure you can talk much sense into what's taken over MacLeod."

"What if we do what the woman in my dream said? She specifically said to 'have her bring' the children. Which 'her'? Maud?"

Methos didn't like the idea of planning by visions. But he agreed that at least Joe should tell Maud about his dreams. Let her decide whether or not to discount them. After scrounging up a breakfast for themselves, the two men went in search of the priestesses. They found no one anywhere on the grounds. The entire place echoed with emptiness. Methos set off on a search around the island. Joe knew he'd only slow down the ancient Immortal and decided to stay behind.

After Methos left, Joe remembered he wasn't really alone and went to visit Richie. The cold and dark hall with its solitary shaft of sunlight hadn't changed. The young Immortal's body looked exactly as Joe had last seen it, suspended in some mysterious state. Although the very act made him squirm with discomfort, he lifted the garland and made sure again. Richie's head still lay separated from his neck.

Joe sighed.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know what's going on. I don't know what part I play in all this. All I ever wanted to do was be a good Watcher. Then I wanted to be a good friend, to Mac and to you. Did I go wrong someplace and not even know it?"

Richie didn't answer. He would never answer again.

"You asked me once to borrow money for a sword. I said I couldn't get involved. How stupid was that? I've been involved in your life since I first saw you break into the MacLeod's store. Pretty slick little thief, weren't you? But you picked the wrong place that night."

He managed to smile at the memory of the kid climbing in the window wearing a bandanna on his head, dressed in that awful green vinyl jacket Tessa had finally managed to lose at the cleaner's.

"It wasn't the wrong place," he decided aloud. "It was the right place for you. Whatever happened later, you meant the world to MacLeod. And I know he and Tessa meant just as much to you."

The one thing that had comforted him the previous few weeks had been the image of Richie hanging out in heaven with Tessa. His Quickening had gone to MacLeod, but what about his actual soul? Maybe Immortals received only the afterimages of their victim's life, like old sepia photographs, carried on that blast of energy. The case of the unclaimed Quickening might be different because no other Immortal had been there to receive it - the energy and memories had poured out and been contained, and taken on a life of their own.

Over beers one night in the bar, Richie had confessed to Joe one of his deepest fears - that when he finally lost his head, his personality would be trapped in his opponent's head. And when that opponent lost his or her head, they'd roll over into the next victor. And so on, and so on, until he was one of thousands of crowded personalities in the same body.

"That would really suck," Richie had said.

Neither Methos or Duncan had been able to reassure him. No one knew. So until Joe found evidence otherwise, he would believe that Richie was in fact in heaven, with Tessa at his side, maybe watching videos and eating popcorn at that very minute.

Then why was Richie making guest appearances in his dreams? Why did his body look simultaneously alive and dead? And why had the priestesses of Illas Cies brought him here?

"I never had a son," Joe said, putting his hand on Richie's arm. "At least, not to my knowledge. But if I had, I would have wanted him to be like you."

He considered that thought for a moment.

"Well, maybe not as impetuous," Joe added. "And damn it, I would have taught him how to duck faster."

Shit. There he was, tearing up again like some pathetic old man. Maybe he wasn't crying for Richie, but for himself. For his own mortality. For his own inability to make things right. A hand came to rest on his arm, and he blinked at the blurry image of Christine Lord.

Bitterness twisted up through his chest. "Why did you bring him here?"

"Six months ago, Maud started dreaming of a great evil among us. The goddesses came to her and told her to blind herself so that she could see better. Over and over she envisioned a horrific fire claiming a young woman's life. Over and over she saw Richie's death, even though she didn't know who he was at the time. She put all of our orders on alert and told them to report any suspicious activities.

"Last month, one of our teachers in a Marion convent and girls' school in Paris was killed in a fire. The Mother Superior saw you, Methos and Richie at the teacher's building the next morning. She recognized Richie as the young man Maud had dreamed about. She followed you to the barge, saw the very end of the Quickening, and stole Richie's body for us to be delivered here."

Joe's hand tightened on his cane. "Allison Landry was a teacher at one of your convents?"

"She taught math and science."

"And her Mother Superior just happened to know what a Quickening was?"

"We have agents in all of our orders," Christine said. "They help keep an eye out for foundlings and new Immortals who need guidance in the Game. I was a nun in an order in Chicago during the Prohibition when I died in the crossfire of fighting gangs. My Mother Superior knew exactly what to do with me."

Joe suddenly had a vivid, unwelcome memory of his own childhood education. The nuns had rapped his small fingers with hard rulers to improve his handwriting, and threatened him with Hell if he didn't stop talking in the lunchroom. The idea of nuns across America acting as Watchers made him feel slightly territorial.

"But what does Richie have to do with this?" Joe demanded. "He just got in the way, didn't he? He doesn't deserve to be put on display and decorated like some kind of Thanksgiving turkey."

Christine gently put her hand on Richie's curly hair. Joe resisted the urge to remove it. She said, "He has more to do with this than either of us can imagine. The goddesses have picked him for something special. Do you know when his birthday is?"

Joe frowned. "He has two birthdays, actually. He thought it was September 20th. But when he caught a glimpse of his orphanage records, it turned out someone had transcribed an error. His real birthday is September 29th."

"Michaelmas," she said.

"What?"

"September 29th is the traditional feast of Saint Michael the Archangel. He's the leader of the heavenly armies against the forces of darkness and the prince of guardian angels. His feast coincides with the harvest in Western Europe, which itself is linked to cycles of birth and death and re-birth."

"Pure coincidence," Joe said bitterly. "It doesn't mean anything. Why can't you leave Richie to rest in peace?"

She lifted her hand. "He is resting. But not at peace. He can't rest until this evil is vanquished."

Joe palmed his eyes. "I don't understand."

"Do you want to help him?"

"Do I *what*? Lady, I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to help him or MacLeod!"

"Then it's time for you to make a decision, Joe."

The graveness of her tone sent prickly hairs up the back of his neck. "Decide what?"

"Is vanquishing this evil force worth your life? Is raising the dead and protecting the living?"

Joe's gaze shifted from her face to Richie's lax features and back again.

"Will you die for your friends, Joe?" she asked.

Chapter Twelve: Joe's Sacrifice

"He who never sacrificed a present to a future good or a personal to a general one can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors." - Olympia Brown, U.S. minister and suffragist (1835-1900)

Methos found no one on his trip around the island. Just trees and birds, the wild horses and patches of poison ivy. The bay glittered like an ocean of liquid blue diamonds. The sun beat down out of a clear sky, burning his face for a few minutes at a time before Immortal healing reasserted itself. He had the sneaky suspicion the priestesses had conspired to distract him from something. Or someone. Tired and thirsty, he returned to the temple to find Joe had already had an audience with Maud and her priestesses.

"I told her my dream. She said nothing. Then they kicked me out," Joe said.

Methos detected a strained note in his friend's voice. Had something else transpired, something about which Joe didn't want to speak? He shrugged off his paranoia and instead attributed the tone to Duncan and Cassandra's impending arrival. He felt distinctly uneasy himself. He hadn't seen Cassandra since the day she'd spared his life. Too many unresolved issues still raged between them, wounds that had festered in her for millennia.

As the day dragged on, Joe disappeared with Christine Lord. Methos didn't like the idea of Joe spending too much time with her. She was one of Maud's women, and for that reason alone could not be trusted. Besides, her vow to the church probably ruled out any true or lasting relationship, and Methos didn't want to see Joe get hurt. Maud stayed behind closed doors, conferring with her priestesses. He would have thought she'd want his advice or consultation - despite everything, he *was* the world's longest living Immortal, even if he was a man - but no one came to ask him for his opinion. He wound up spending most of the day wandering around the temple, matching his memories with the present-day reality and avoiding the one place that still remained the most vivid in his head.

Twice he found himself at the foot of the stairs to the cell that had been his. Twice he turned away. He had nothing to see there, no reason whatsoever to visit. During his two hundred years of imprisonment he'd measured every distance possible and memorized even the tiniest cracks in the stones. He'd paced around and around his pallet for thousands of miles. He'd dug at the mortar with his own fingers, literally wearing them down to the bone every day, only to find the iron bars apparently went clear down to the foundation of the building. He'd grappled with the bars themselves, shouting obscenities. They had never broken beneath his anger. Neither had Columba.

"I hate you," he told her, again and again.

"You hate yourself."

"I hate you *more.*"

"Perhaps," she conceded.

The third time he found himself at the bottom of the stairs, he took a deep breath and told himself to stop being silly. He would not allow a mere place to influence his actions or feelings. Purposefully he climbed upward. The wooden door at the top hung open a few inches. When he pulled it open the handle nearly broke off in his hand. Inside lay a short hall of ten paces, and then the place he'd been forced to call home.

The hall hadn't changed. He had stared at it from his side of the bars for years, tormented by the path to freedom. The back of the door remained the same as well - weathered oak with iron bands. The wooden rafters looked older and riddled with dry rot, but they still held up the stone ceiling. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, undisturbed by any footprints.

But the cell was gone.

No bars blocked off the end of the passage. He couldn't even see the holes where the bars had once been. Someone must have removed them and filled in the empty spaces with mortar. His pallet and stone table had disappeared. The window stood in the same exact place, but he didn't go near it out of an irrational fear that stepping into the confines of the old cell would somehow magically transport him back there.

The tiny scratch marks he'd chalked along the wall at floor-level to mark each passing day had faded.

All seventy three thousand of them.

He'd spent seventy three thousand days imprisoned in this space and transformed himself from a warrior barbarian to a repentant scholar. Not by choice, not at first, but he had changed. Cassandra's enemy was the man who had been taken to the cell. Joe and Duncan's friend was the man who had left it. Cassandra didn't see the difference, perhaps because then she would have to acknowledge the dichotomy within herself as well.

Cassandra didn't matter, but Duncan and whatever he carried inside him did. So did burying Richie Ryan and getting off Illas Cies.

He left the cell with no questions answered, no restlessness eased.

He couldn't shake the feeling that plans were being built around him, conspiracies of which he had no part. His suspicions were confirmed when one of the priestesses brought only one tray of dinner to the room and Joe failed to appear. He pressed her ruthlessly, but she would only say Joe was sitting a vigil with Christine and praying for guidance. Methos had an easier time imagining Joe getting drunk with a bottle of Jack Daniels than sitting any kind of prayer vigil. He asked to see Maud, but she was not available.

"I can find her if I want to," Methos warned the priestess, whose name he did not know. "We all know that."

"She said to be patient. It will all be over soon."

Not a very reassuring thought, that. Methos finally fell asleep only to be plagued by nightmares. Blood and pain rode crimson horses into his dreams, and he saw Columba fall beneath Kronos' blows. Cassandra donned a black robe and pronounced herself the goddess of death. Duncan slew a thousand men, laughing and swinging his sword until blood drenched his clothes, his skin, his hair. Quickenings illuminated the sky like the lightning of an apocalyptic storm. The Horsemen's tents fell and became the temple, and Maud offered Joe up to the goddesses by methodically dissecting him, limb from limb.

He bolted upright from that last image, drenched in sweat, and found himself in Maud's arms.

"Sssh," she soothed. "You were having a nightmare."

She sat on the edge of his bed, illuminated by the moonlight, dressed in a gown of purest white, the stones blank and smooth above her cheeks.

"They're here," she said.

"Who?" Methos asked, shuddering in her embrace. She smelled of roses and pine, and her hands traced gentle circles on his back as he fought to regain some semblance of control.

"Cassandra. Duncan MacLeod. And a mortal young lady named Sigrid Hamsun, born on the winter solstice in 1972, in Maillog, Scotland. In the Highlands."

The children of the winter solstice. Duncan and Sigrid. The dream of the Highlander slaying all those men returned to Methos, making him cold from toe to scalp.

Maud held him for a moment longer before pulling back. "They're all on the beach, waiting for us. Will you come? Will you walk with me as my husband?"

He searched her young face for any signs of ridicule.

"You can't possibly still consider me your husband," he said.

Maud kissed him chastely on the lips. "You swore a vow," she reminded him somberly. She stood and offered her hand. He accepted the help and stood beside her.

"Do you know what will happen?" he asked.

"I know only what the goddesses allow me," she answered. "Right now, I see nothing."

Hand in hand they left the temple and walked down the hill toward the beach. He never liked to think of himself as a romantic, but sensations swept over him with a mysterious and warming glow. Stars glittered in the eastern sky, just beginning to fade beneath a faint glow working up from the horizon. Trees bowed and swayed, rustling assurances. A black stallion on the path before them stared at Methos before snorting and galloping off into the brush.

"Where will we take him?" Methos asked.

"To Columba," she said, and her hand tightened in his, a barrier against any further questions.

Methos heard Duncan long before he caught sight of the bonfire at the shoreline. The Highlander lay in the sand, wrapped with chains, his body shaking with fury as he fought the iron embrace and swore oaths in several different languages. Froth speckled his lips and the veins in his neck bulged like thick ropes.

"Be careful," Maud warned. "I think it can jump from one person to the other if it wants to, if it can find the proper door."

A door. Like Jason Landry's fascination with all things demonic, and Duncan's lingering damage after the Dark Quickening.

But it wasn't the sight of Duncan in the sand that brought Methos to a screeching halt. Nor the sight of Cassandra beside a mortal blonde woman. On one side of the bonfire a wooden platform held the corpse of Richie Ryan, still decorated with garland and rose petals, bizarre but acceptable. A different tableau altogether on the other side of the bonfire slammed into his awareness.

"No!" he said, and lunged forward.

Maud blocked his way. "He agreed. The goddesses demand payment if you want their help."

"I did agree," Joe said.

The mortal stood in the sand, tied spread-eagle to a massive wooden X. The position would have been stressful on anyone, but the strain had to be especially hard for Joe with his weight bearing down so awkwardly on his stumps and prostheses. He looked tired and in pain, as if he'd been in place for hours, and his clothes had been replaced by a white gown that clung to sweaty patches on his shoulders and ribs.

Christine Lord stood beside him, murmuring prayers over a large dagger in her hands.

"Absolutely not!" Methos said vehemently. "I won't let this happen."

"Not your choice, my friend," Joe quipped, with a fond glint in his eye. He made an obvious effort to sound upbeat. "The goddesses demand a sacrifice for their help. I've never been a sacrifice before. It probably won't be much fun, but I hope the end result is worth it."

"Don't be a fool, Joe," Duncan growled from the sand. "You don't think a little human sacrifice will deter me, do you? I had *fun* burning that young lady to ashes. Your sacrifice means nothing. Goddesses don't exist. Only I exist."

Cassandra pulled a dagger from her cloak and plunged it into Duncan's chest. He slumped into death, his body twitching for several seconds longer than it should have.

She said, "Whatever you plan on doing, we'd better do it soon."

Methos could not bear to see Joe tied up as he was, so obviously delusional if he thought his death would save anyone. No matter what the priestesses of Illas Cies claimed, the chances of true goddesses existing was no more or less than those of Zoroastrian demons. Beatific visions and dreams were one thing, human sacrifice quite another.

He took Maud by the shoulders and shook her. "Let him go! He's not part of this."

"The decision has been made," Maud said, breaking from his grip. "Will you deny him the freedom of choice?"

"Yes," Methos snarled.

"Methos," Joe said. "Don't worry about me. Take care of Mac and Richie, okay?"

"Don't do this," Methos said to Maud. "I'm begging you."

She didn't answer. He gazed at each of the others in turn and found the same implacable expression on the faces of the priestesses and Cassandra. Sigrid Hamsun stood with her hand pressed against her mouth, but he knew she could do little to stop this horrifying night from unfolding. He considering killing them all to save Joe, but what good would that do? Joe would never forgive him and Duncan would still be possessed. Assuming he could defeat over a dozen Immortal women at once, Cassandra among them.

"Joseph," Methos said, one last plea. He had so much left to tell Joe. About the Watchers, about himself, even about the early days of the blues. All the information he'd been hoarding out of habit, not malice.

"Go with them," Joe said. "Get out of here. You all have a job to do."

Methos watched numbly as Antone brought two long rowboats in from the black water of the ocean to the sand. Maud, Sigrid and Antone climbed into one. The priestesses dumped Duncan into the other. Maud directed Methos to get into the boat with the Highlander in it. For a moment he held back, stubbornly resistant, but in the end he climbed in. Cassandra climbed in a moment later, her face tight with tension, hatred pouring out of her.

Methos ignored her expression and started rowing. He followed Antone as they turned a course west, away from the rising sun, away from the women on the beach and Joe Dawson stretched wide on the hard wood. With every single stroke he had to fight the urge to turn back, to free Joe from this insane scheme, to fight against the fate that had come this morning for them all.

He looked back only once, but couldn't even raise a hand in farewell.

Joe didn't watch the boats go. His arms and stumps ached fiercely from the suspension of his own weight. A dull headache pounded behind his eyes, and he felt hollow and dry with thirst and hunger. The muscles in his back spasmed, not for the first time, and he felt Christine's soothing hand on his brow.

"Not much longer, now," she promised.

"I don't remember anything about blood sacrifices in the Bible," he said.

"Not in the New Testament, at least."

A joke. Well, it was good to know someone could joke at a time like this, even though Joe had no humor left in his own body. "Well, can't you just hurry up and get it done with now?"

"Timing is everything," she said. "This is the path you chose, Joseph Michael Dawson. Do you want to change your mind?"

He gazed after the boats, then to Richie's body on the wooden altar.

"No," he said. "This is what I choose. Are you the one who's going to kill me?"

"No. But I'll be with you when it happens," she promised.

All he could do was wait for his own death.

***

Sigrid knew she was off the coast of Spain. She knew it was close to dawn, and only about thirty six hours had passed since she'd met the troll hiding beneath the bridge near her house. No, not the troll. Duncan. And whatever he carried around inside him. Many facts and details had blurred in her head, the result of fatigue and shock, but she knew two important things. Number one, she met the qualifications of the prophecy the woman Cassandra had quoted.

And number two, the boat carrying her west was bringing her to her baby.

How she knew that second item, she couldn't say. But her breasts felt heavy and about to leak milk at any second. She'd been smelling Hanne ever since they left Norway, her nose full of the same sweet powdery aroma of infants that had lingered in her daughter's forgotten sock. And she could hear her baby's giggles beneath the stroke of oars, beneath the murmur of the ocean as the boat slipped through it.

"Sigrid," said the teenaged girl on the bench behind her.

"Yes?" she asked, turning around.

"My name is Maud. I dreamed of you."

Sigrid looked away from the horrible sight of stones stuck in the girl's eye sockets. Who had done that to her? The thought of being in Maud's dreams unnerved her. "You don't even know me."

"The goddesses showed you to me. They said you lost something. What did you lose?"

The girl was blind. It couldn't be rude to turn one's back on a blind person, could it? Because that was exactly what Sigrid wanted to do - turn her back and pretend the question had never been asked. The girl looked too young to understand pain. To understand tragedy and loss.

"Sigrid, what did you lose?"

"My baby," she said, hanging her head.

"How?"

"I . . . put her down for her nap . . . for just a little nap . . . " Sigrid stopped, unwilling to go on. She couldn't say it. The boat bobbed up and down, and she felt tears begin to swell in her eyes. Maud reached out, groped for her hand and squeezed tight.

"Tell me," she said.

"She didn't wake up," Sigrid said.

Maud said nothing. The eastern sky grew golden behind her.

"They said I did it. That I put a pillow over her face to make her stop crying because of . . . postpartum depression. They put me in the hospital and while I was there, my husband filed for divorce and sold our house. I lost everything I ever had, but the only thing that matters is my baby."

"Did you do it, Sigrid?" Maud asked gently. "Did you put the pillow over her face?"

Sigrid covered her eyes with her hands. "It was a mistake," she said, as something hard and clenched in her chest released its awful pressure.

I know," Maud soothed. "We all make mistakes."

"But I . . . killed my own child."

"You're not the only one."

Maud looked over in the direction of the other boat. Sigrid didn't know how she could pinpoint it in her darkness, but she did. Sigrid followed her blind gaze to see Cassandra and Methos and the tip of Duncan's head.

"Did Duncan kill someone too?" she asked, wiping the tears from her face.

"Yes."

"Who? His son?"

Maud didn't answer. Instead she cocked her head, as if listening to something. Her hand tightened on Sigrid's.

"Antone, stop the boat. Do you two hear that? I hear music. I hear flutes."

The man immediately pulled his oars from the water. The boat continued to glide on the calm ocean and slowed to stop. Sigrid stopped crying. She listened but heard only the lap of water against the boat's wooden hull and gentle whoosh of low waves. The rim of the sun broke the horizon, a line of golden fire that slipped higher and higher. Sigrid saw awe dawn on Maud's face and listened harder, listened with all her heart. Nothing.

"I don't - " she started to whisper, afraid to break some magic spell, but then she heard something other than flutes.

From beneath the waves, the singing of angels.

Chapter Thirteen: Toward the Abyss

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Methos rowed west under Cassandra's hateful glare. Since Maud had mentioned doors, he hadn't been able to get them out of his mind. He remembered the doors of the Alexandria library and how they'd gleamed golden at dawn each morning as he waited on the steps for the esteemed librarians to arrive. The doors of the Globe Theatre, great wooden slabs that had burned down along with the rest of the place. The doors to the dojo and to Joe's place, to Alexa's house and Duncan's barge. Doors of many sizes, shapes, colors, textures, materials. Some open, some closed. Some easily breached, others virtually impenetrable.

Duncan remained dead at the bottom of the boat, chained and laying in an inch or so of accumulated water. Cassandra sat on her bench glaring at Methos with hostility that emanated out of her like comic book death rays, impossible to ignore or defuse.

"Say it," Methos ordered.

"Say what?" she returned, her voice icy-cold.

"Whatever's so obviously on your mind."

"I should have killed you in Bordeaux. I should never have listened to Duncan and spared your life."

"Then you'd be rowing yourself right now."

Her tone became even more ominous.. "You think it's funny?"

"No." Methos lifted the oars from the water and met her gaze directly. "What happened between us was never funny."

"You thought so at the time. You rarely laughed, but you always manage to look amused at my . . . situation."

Methos didn't deny it.

"You were a monster, do you know that?"

"Yes."

"You still are. Monsters don't change."

"Then I suppose there's no hope for MacLeod," he said, more sharply than he'd intended, and started rowing again.

Cassandra's gaze dropped to Duncan's body. "None of this is his fault."

"Whose fault is it?"

"Fashid."

"Is that his name?"

"It was," she said.

"And you killed him on Holy Ground."

"I didn't know the rules at the time. I wasn't even Immortal."

"Did you know he would be coming for you?"

"I don't have to answer your questions."

"True," Methos agreed.

After a moment's consideration she said, "When Maud found out Allison Landry's grandfather had opened that tomb in Iraq, she had the confessionals researched and found the connection to me."

Methos should have guessed that. Cassandra had spent some years on the island sometime in the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome. Not many years, perhaps not even enough. She must have renounced her crimes to the priestesses just as he had. It had taken several decades for Methos to recall and record the details for Columba. He had slaughtered so many that he couldn't remember them all. He'd raped mothers, then burned their children alive and used their infants for target practice in front of them. To be truthful, he should have been tortured and killed as he had done to others, in as heinous ways as imaginable.

But that was not his punishment. His punishment had started with seventy three thousand days in jail and the burden of living with his crimes for the rest of his life.

He wondered exactly why she had killed Fashid, but it didn't really matter. "Do you think MacLeod can be saved?" he asked instead.

Cassandra looked away to where the horizon met the ocean. "I trust Maud."

More than he could say, actually. "And you're willing to let them slaughter Joe Dawson because of that trust?"

"Joe made his own choice."

"Choice!" he snapped. "They've probably brainwashed him into thinking somehow his sacrifice will save MacLeod, or bring back the dead - "

Methos stopped himself. He'd seen the words "The dead shall rise!" written more than once in Landry's journals.

Nonsense. The dead did not rise.

"Joe is doing what he believes will help. Aren't we all?" Cassandra asked.

The other boat, a hundred or so feet in front of them, glided to a stop on the smooth ocean. Methos lifted the oars again. He saw no reason to have stopped out here, in the middle of nowhere, but perhaps that was to be expected. Maud had said they were going to Columba. Had she lost her head here? Not to the goddesses, as Maud and the others believed, but to a more conventional opponent? Personally, he'd always suspected Antone. Columba must have grown weary of life and arranged for him to relieve her of her head. She could have faked her death, he supposed, but she carried no sword and would fight no other Immortals in the Game, and someone's Quickening had been visible back on the Illas Cies.

"Do you hear that?" Cassandra asked, cocking her head. "I hear drums. The drums of my tribe."

Methos listened. He heard no drums. Instead he heard a faint ringing, like the bells that had called Plato's students together each morning. The water lapping at the boat's wood quickened and seemed to rush away. He peered over the side, amazed to see the ocean level dropping. Something scraped at the bottom of the hull and he imagined for a moment that they'd hit a sandbank. The vessel rocked to the side as it lifted higher and higher. He could see the other boat doing the same, and a stretch of ocean floor building a path between them as the water drained away.

An island rose beneath them, glittering with stranded starfish and wet sand, dotted by ancient Celtic pillars and decorated in delicate strands of seaweed.

***

"Nice trick," Methos called out to Maud as he climbed out of his boat. "Last time I saw it used, Moses separated the Red Sea."

He was being facetious, of course. He had no other weapon but deprecation to use against an island that had risen so unexpectedly and improbably from the ocean. A blue and white fish flopped in distress at his feet, and he tossed it back into the water a dozen feet behind him. The island's elevation was just a few inches or so above sea level, and it stretched east and north for no more than a hundred feet in either direction. A little island, then. Improbable all the same.

Maud walked to the center of the land, her robe billowing in the breeze, no uncertainty in her step despite her blindness. A dark carpet of sand, pebbles and wilting ocean fauna ran beneath her bare feet. She stopped beside a coppery green statue of a woman with one hand lifted to the sky. The woman's face looked west, toward the horizon, wearing an expression of subtle longing.

"What is this place?" Cassandra asked, stepping from the boat.

"This is one of the oldest Holy Grounds in the world, an ancient and sacred site," Maud said solemnly. "It's a place for endings and beginnings."

"Can't we just dispense with the cryptic answers?" Methos sighed.

"Silence!" she ordered. "Bring the Highlander to me."

Methos quieted, unwilling to risk antagonizing her at this crucial juncture. Antone came to his side and they lifted Duncan from the rowboat. Between them they carried the large man to Maud and deposited him on the ground before the statue.

Maud said, "Secure him to the statue. Make sure he can't escape."

Cassandra brought forward the key to Duncan's shackles. After just a few minutes of work he sat chained to the base, still dead, his body wrapped tight. Cassandra and Antone stepped back from their work. Moved perhaps by her own instincts and compassion, Sigrid knelt by the trussed form and cupped Duncan's face.

"He's so cold," she murmured.

"Listen to me carefully," Maud said. "The presence inside him is nothing more than an extra Quickening, taking up residence where it doesn't belong. It's hateful and strong, but not invincible. When it's free it can create illusions and cause changes to the material world. It's not free now, not while it's still in Duncan MacLeod, but it can move into any of us, if it can find a way in. You must guard yourself. You mustn't accept anything it shows you or says to you as true."

Methos had an image of round-robin possession - first MacLeod, then maybe him, on to Maud and Cassandra and Antone, an endless loop of body-jumping.

"How do we kill it?" he asked.

Maud's chin lifted. "We don't."

"It needs to be destroyed!"

"Your detractors once said the same thing about you," Maud reminded him. "We must beg the goddesses for their intervention and mercy. Now, take the dagger out of his chest."

Methos hesitated. First he wondered how she knew, in her blindness, what Cassandra had driven into Duncan and where. And then he wondered if she had even the slightest bit of common sense in her. If the demon lay trapped in Duncan's body, then maybe just letting Duncan stay dead was the best possible solution. It certainly didn't sound as if she had a more concrete plan other than putting their fate in the hands of unseen, unproven deities.

He thought of Joe, ready to sacrifice himself on the basis of faith and trust. He tried to find it within himself to believe this girl he'd once met, wooed and bedded in a roadside tavern in old Galicia. How could she possibly know what she was doing?

He'd told Joe that he couldn't believe in Zoroastrian demons because the religion itself was only half his age. Had pride blinded him to any particles of wisdom carried by the young - not necessarily in the case of petty, two-bit demon millennial myths, but in other areas instead?

Reluctantly he moved to remove the weapon but Sigrid did it first, carefully gripping the handle with both hands and withdrawing it with a tiny grunt of effort. She placed it in Maud's outstretched hands. Maud turned and murmured a prayer in ancient Greek before thrusting the weapon and Duncan's Immortal blood up into the statue. The knife slid into the statue as if it were made of butter. Methos took an involuntary step backward as a dull red glow suffused the figure from head to toe. A shaft of blood-red light burst from the statue's head, shooting up into the dawn sky like a beacon to heaven.

"What the - " he stared to say, but no further words would come.

Five miles east, on the shores of Illas Cies, Joe Dawson saw a column of red rise into the sky. All but two of the priestesses fell to their knees. One of the youngest-looking women approached, took the dagger from Christine and kissed its handle. Christine's fingers found Joe's right hand and gripped it tightly as she moved to stand almost directly in front of him. Her eyes brimmed with wetness.

"Do you offer yourself up?" she asked. "Do you trust me?"

He didn't look at Richie's body, or the red light, or even the priestess about to stab him. He looked only at Christine. His sore and aching body pulsed with the need for release, for abandon, for an end to the long and arduous wait. He would go with that red light, he knew. He would ride it to heaven or wherever goddesses resided.

"What the hell," Joe muttered. He took a deep breath. "Yes. I offer myself up."

The knife slid into him, a sharp but not unbearable pain, and he died almost instantly.

***

The Highlander gave a gasp as life returned to his body. He struggled against his chains for a moment before sagging back to gaze at Methos with a confused, wounded expression. Raggedly he asked, "Methos? What's happening? Where are we?"

He looked like the warrior Methos had grown to like and even respect, although he'd been careful about revealing the latter to the man. He looked as though he'd fought an exhausting battle in the recent past and had yet to fully recover. He looked harmless, although Methos certainly didn't believe that.

"It's a long story," he said. "And it's not over yet."

The column of red light continued to pour upward. Far to the east, another column appeared, this one blue. Methos' breath caught in his chest. If the blue came from Illas Cies, it might be.. . . he savagely forced that thought out of his head. He could not grieve for Joe just yet. The time for pain, recrimination and guilt would come later, another deep-seated regret to add to his repertoire.

The columns of red and blue began to bend toward each other. Beneath their arcs the ocean churned in a wild, beautiful frenzy. Dolphins flung themselves out of the water, jabbering in excitement. The bells of Plato's temple rang louder for Methos and joined with the bells of Rome at the birth of emperors, of Paris at the end of the Great War, of London on quiet Sunday mornings -

"The singing," Sigrid said, her voice an awed whisper. "It's so beautiful."

"There's no singing," Antone said, the first words Methos had heard from him all morning. "I hear the horns of the palace."

The blue and red reached each other, forming a shimmering rainbow of light that stretched across the sky like an untraveled road.

"The other . . . " Duncan managed from where he sat. "It's not ..."

"Not what?" Maud asked sharply, and Methos turned to see alarm written across her face.

"In me anymore," Duncan finished

Cassandra's sword arced toward Methos faster than he could escape. Too late he realized her door had been open all these years, waiting for madness to come knocking.

Metal bit into him sharply and he doubled over in agony.

Chapter Fourteen: The End of Pain

"There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes." - Milan Kundera (b. 1929), "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

Duncan remembered fighting with Cassandra in Norway. He hadn't been in control of his actions. He hadn't been able to stop himself. The other, whatever it was, had assumed full possession. Cassandra had shot him, and he'd awoken next on the dark shores of some island. The other still had him in its icy grip and had spoken hatefully with his voice before a dagger ended breath, energy, life. But one image remained with Duncan in the darkness that followed, a vision on which to focus.

Joe. In danger.

They hadn't always enjoyed the best of relationships. The needs that occasionally brought them together to battle evil Immortals couldn't always overcome mutual suspicion or wariness. Duncan hated the idea of strangers following Immortals around and recording the details of their lives and deaths. Joe found Immortals mysterious, powerful and dangerous, sometimes impossible to understand. Conflicts of ideas and beliefs led to friction, estrangements, reconciliations. But no matter what, Duncan had never wanted to put Joe in danger. To risk his very mortal life as a side note in the Game.

Richie had been Immortal. He'd understood the rules and risks, even if he had yet to discipline himself to them. Joe was an entirely different matter, and seeing him bound on that beach like some primitive sacrifice gave Duncan a reason to fight.

In the dark limbo of death, he pushed and pushed and pushed at the thing in his mind, shoving it toward an imaginary door.

It didn't belong in him. He could remember, now, the minute it had tried to move in - by the Seine, with Jason Landry spilling frantic words of demons and prophecies. Some instinctive part of Duncan had resisted, and the thing hovering around Landry moved on. It tried to move in again at the morgue and the barge, but didn't succeed until . . .

Until. . .

Until it had tricked him into taking Richie's head. In the shattering moments of the Quickening the *thing* had slipped into Duncan's head along with Richie's memory and energy. It had filled him completely, a power surge like no other, and because of it some of Richie's Quickening had fed back into the young man's body, leaving the transfer incomplete.

The other had driven him north, toward Norway. Toward Cassandra. He understood it now, saw its twisted shape, felt its icy presence.

He shoved and shoved, forcing it from his mind. Memory and illusion mixed, confusing him - had Allison and Richie really died? His first Quickening had not really been in a cave with a hermit, had it? He forced aside the images and concentrated only on the cold, alien sensation of another presence. Something shifted in his chest and he opened his eyes to a bright blue sky, a stretch of wet land, Methos staring down at him.

The cold fled, vanishing as if it had never truly been.

Columns of light arched across the sky, the most beautiful sight Duncan had ever seen, and distracted him from the sight of Cassandra unsheathing her sword and swinging it toward Methos' middle. She could have gone for his head quite easily, and successfully taken it off in a split-second, but his Quickening was not her goal. Not yet. Blood blossomed on the ancient Immortal's clothes as her blade nearly cleaved him in two beneath his ribs. He folded to the ground, intestines bursting from his gut, twitching in horrible agony but not dead.

"Back!" Cassandra shouted, her sword coming to rest at Methos' neck as Antone moved forward. He stopped. Methos groaned horribly, blood bubbling out of his mouth. Trapped in chains at the base of the statue, Duncan could physically do nothing to stop her.

"Cassandra!" he shouted. "Stop it!"

She laughed. "Not twice, Duncan. You can't beg for intervention twice. His head is mine, as it always should have been."

"Yours or Fashid's?" Maud asked, her voice shaking. "With whom are we speaking?"

"Who do you think?" Cassandra returned mockingly. "I'm here, with her. I can feel her squirming in this head. I can hear her screaming for your help. But she invited me in, you know, without ever even knowing it. All that hatred she never put down about what Methos and others had done to her. How long can one person hate without becoming what they loathe?"

Duncan knew Cassandra had never forgiven Methos. He had worried about her those nights they'd shared a bed in Bucharest and Bordeaux, because she allowed ancient crimes and trespasses to dominate her present-day emotions and actions. She had never been able to let go of what had happened to her at the hands of the Horsemen. Perhaps she hadn't even truly tried. Methos' cries on the ground distracted him terribly, but he forced his attention to her face and some semblance of strength into his voice.

"She won't let you stay forever," Duncan said. "She'll find a way to push you out, like I did."

"Then I'll find another," Cassandra taunted. "There will always be others. So many Immortals caught in hatred and greed, in the Game no one understands. They'll let me in, and I'll use them as I used you. How will you stop me?"

"You'll stop yourself," Sigrid said, in a voice that was not her own.

Duncan's head whipped around to look at the mortal woman. She stood a few feet from Maud, her hair streaming down her back, her skin luminous and golden-white. Her eyes glowed green. She wore an expression of radiant warmth, and Duncan thought she looked like an angel.

"Tricks," Cassandra sneered. "I can do tricks too."

"No tricks," Sigrid said serenely. "Only what you so desire."

Cassandra tossed back her dark hair. "Blood?" she asked, mocking her with a bright note of hope. "Anguish? Torment and death?"

Sigrid spread her hands wide. "So much pain already. So many years, locked in darkness. No one understands, do they? No one knows what it was like to be trapped underground for a million days. No light, no people, no warmth. Only the dead for company. Only cold to accompany each eternal minute."

"Who are you?" Cassandra demanded.

"Those who were called," Sigrid answered. Behind her, the rainbow glittered and shimmered in the air. A blue and gray whale breached the surface of the ocean with a joyous keening cry and slammed back down in a massive displacement of water and wave. Methos stopped making noise and fell still. Maud went to her knees and bowed her head. Duncan tried to pull free of his chains, but the iron links remained locked solid.

"I have no need for you," Cassandra said, and this time Duncan swore he heard an element of fear in her voice.

"I came to offer relief," Sigrid replied. "An end to the suffering. You'll never find it here. Not in a thousand unwilling or willing hosts. Not in a world locked in battle with itself. Give up your hatred and embrace forgiveness."

"I don't need forgiveness!" Cassandra shouted.

"You need to give it and receive it both." Sigrid moved forward. Cassandra pivoted, the sword still at Methos' neck, but made no move to take his head. Sigrid went to her, hands spread wide, utterly peaceful.

"Let us help you," she said. "Let us free you. The process won't be easy. But it will be far easier than the method you're using now."

Was she talking to Fashid or Cassandra? Both? The idea of being free from pain appealed to Duncan himself. No more guilt over Richie, over Tessa, over a hundred deaths he might have been able to prevent if he'd been faster, stronger, smarter. No late nights of self recrimination as he mentally leafed through the bitter pages of his life. No more flashes of self loathing over what he'd done under the Dark Quickening. Just peace of mind, relief from burden, his heart and soul able to rest easy for the first time in a long, long time.

"Will you come?" Sigrid asked softly, cupping Cassandra's face, and luminescence spread from her hands into the other woman's head.

Cassandra's grip on the sword loosened. Her gaze became softer, her eyes more vulnerable. "No more pain?" she asked hoarsely.

"None," Sigrid promised.

A moment hung between heartbeats. Duncan saw the subtle shift in Cassandra's stance and cold flooded through him like an icy river.

"No!" he shouted.

Too late. Cassandra's sword thrust up into Sigrid as malicious joy reclaimed her features.

"I *like* pain," she hissed. "I won't go with you."

Sigrid sagged to her knees, hands clutching her fatal wound. Despair filled Duncan. They had lost. Inexorably, irrevocably lost. The pain would continue now, grow far and wide, spread across the land like a blight, and none of them would be able to stop it. Jason Landry's terror had been justified. Landry, Allison and Richie had all died for nothing.

Tears of bitter defeat filled his eyes.

Sigrid lifted her head and spoke, a thousand voices issuing from her mouth.

"If you won't come voluntarily," she said. "We'll make you."

The sky turned black.

***

Methos knelt in his old cell, staring at the floor where the bars had been. He couldn't tell where the mortar had been filled in. He couldn't uncover one single shred of evidence that the bars had ever existed. Blood stained the floor between his knees but he could spare no time to find his wound or staunch the flow. He had to know the answer.

"Were they real?" he asked, lifting his head. "Did they ever exist?"

Columba put her hand on his head. "We make our own prisons," she said. She looked vibrantly alive to him, with pink cheeks and bright eyes. Her white hair hung in soft curls. He'd never seen it that way.

"Are you dead?" he asked.

"We never die," she answered. "Go back to your friends. They need you. You need them."

He opened his eyes and found himself on the island in the midst of a hurricane. Rain whipped down out of a black sky. Wind tore at his clothes, his hair, his skin. A great howl filled his ears, the sound of nature unleashing itself, and in horror he realized the ocean had come up to reclaim its lost land. He staggered to his feet with water already at his ankles, and in the few seconds it took to orient himself by flashes of lightning the sea rose to his shins.

"Grab the boats!" Maud yelled above the storm.

One had already drifted away on the rising water. Methos lunged for the second and caught the wood with his fingernails. He dragged it back against the immense push and pull of current and helped Maud climb in. Antone jumped in beside her. Cassandra and Sigrid were nowhere to be seen. Methos looked for Duncan and saw the struggling Highlander still chained to the statue in imminent danger of drowning. He fought his way to the Highlander's side. He didn't have the key to the manacles, but he had his sword. Three solid thwacks split the primary chain at a weak link and likewise broke his sword. He tossed the useless halves aside and wrenched Duncan free from the tangle of iron. Duncan coughed and sputtered and clung to him for support.

The water at their chests now, Methos pulled Duncan toward the boat. Antone tried rowing toward them, but the current spun the vessel away. Methos felt very tired, so tired he could just give himself up to the waves and cold, but in some tiny part of his brain he could hear Columba urging him to fight and survive. Waves crashed over his head and choked their way down his throat. Blindly he felt something hard graze his fingertips. He caught the tip of Antone's offered oar and let himself be pulled closer. Hands reached down for him and someone lifted him to safety. Duncan landed beside him a minute later, and the two men lay huddled and drained at the bow as the storm raged around them.

The boat lifted up and crashed down on the high waves, so fast and hard Methos couldn't understand how the hull could possibly hold together. Water broke over the sides, gallons and gallons of it, and Methos and Duncan set to work trying to bail it out with their hands. A useless, futile endeavor. A great sheet of lightning lit up the sky from horizon to horizon, a hot blue-white illumination of pure power, and out of the sea not far away exploded a blue-red Quickening that set Methos' hair standing on end. The Quickening arched up and curved back to earth, toward Illas Cies.

Before he could see what happened next, the boat broke apart. Wood snapped with sounds like thunder. Planks slammed into him and water flooded his mouth, nose, chest, lungs. He plunged down into a watery abyss, giving himself up gratefully to the cold and dark -

"Methos? Methos, wake up. It's time to get up now, all of you."

He knew that voice. Joe. Had the priestesses spared his life after all? He felt almost but not quite curious enough to open his eyes. He much preferred to lay quietly in the warm sand, sun hot on his face, the sound of the surf washing in and out with calming regularity.

"Maybe we should just let them all sleep," another voice suggested.

*That* voice, and the promise it held, made Methos snap his eyes open and bolt upright.

"Whoa!" Joe said, catching him by the shoulders. "It's okay. Calm down."

Methos squinted against the sun in disbelief. The rowboat sat a few feet away, intact and whole, half on the sand and half in the water. Maud, Antone and Duncan lay nearby, stretched out on the sand, as peaceful as if sleeping. The sky couldn't have been clearer, and he saw absolutely no evidence the storm had ever existed.

"Methos? You okay?" Joe asked.

Methos looked past Joe's concerned face and focused on the owner of the second voice. The very live owner, a young man with blue eyes and shot blond hair who no longer carried about him the aura of Immortality. He had borrowed someone's robe for clothing and a white scar that would never fade marked his throat.

"Richie?" he asked, his voice betraying his disbelief.

The young man shrugged and smiled uneasily. "Don't ask me to explain anything. Last thing I remember, I was following Mac to a racetrack in Paris. It seems like I've missed a few things."

Methos chuckled. "A few," he admitted, relief making him nearly dizzy. He sagged back into the sand with a sigh. So it had worked. They had lost Cassandra and that mortal woman, but all in all whatever magic the priestesses and their goddesses had wrought had indeed been successful. He supposed he was going to have to re-adjust his entire way of thinking. Not at the moment, perhaps - he still felt tired, and could do with a hearty meal - but in the near future, no doubt.

The future came much quicker than he expected when Joe grinned and said, "There's something else you should know."

The Watcher stood up.

On his own two legs.

Chapter Fifteen: The Singing of Angels

"The Angels were all singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, Or curb a runaway young star or two." - Lord Byron, 1788-1824

Three days later

Duncan sat on a beach dune in the afternoon sun, smiling at the two figures dashing up and down the beach not far away. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined a day when he would see Joe Dawson and Richie Ryan playing tag football on an island off the coast of Spain. That he would see Joe able to run and Richie alive again. The ocean glittered and rolled beyond the white sand, with a band of seagulls whirling over the surf, and for the first time in a long time he felt a measure of peace within himself.

"You look like a man who's made a decision," Methos said. He stood at the edge of the forest, hands in his pockets, his white shirt fluttering in the breeze. Dirt covered his bare toes.

"I have," Duncan answered, shielding his eyes against the sun to squint at his friend.

Methos came and sat next to him in the sand. "You're staying," he guessed.

"Yes. For awhile. I think it will be good for me."

"Worked for me."

Duncan's smile faded. "It didn't work for Cassandra, did it? She spent years here, and still walked away full of hatred."

Methos shrugged. "There's a difference between people who can't give up hatred and those who choose not to. There are extremely few of the former, and far too many of the latter. You're not full of hatred. You just need . . . someone to talk to, perhaps."

Duncan would not be deterred. "That unclaimed Quickening . . . . . it didn't do anything worse than you did in your heyday, did it?"

Methos glanced at Duncan. The Highlander looked troubled. "No," the world's oldest Immortal confirmed. "Compared to me, it did very little. But it made you kill Richie. It killed Allison and her grandfather. Given enough time, who knows what it could have accomplished?"

Duncan didn't answer right away. Richie grabbed the coconut and ran toward Joe's goal. The older man tackled him and they went down to the ground in a tumble of limbs. Duncan winced.

"They're going to hurt themselves," he said.

Methos smiled. "Doubtful. They're too tough."

"You really think so?"

"Don't you? One's been brought back from the dead and the other . . . ."

"Can't ever leave," Duncan finished.

Methos fell silent. He remembered Joe's explanation of the events that had transpired on Illas Cies. The Watcher had died. He was sure of it. Blackness and emptiness had taken him, only to be interrupted by a blast of red and blue light and the vision of a woman who he swore was the Virgin Mary. She'd told him the offer of his life was enough payment for her intervention, and that he could have it back. Along with a gift for his sacrifice, a choice all his for the taking. He could have his flesh and blood legs, but he could never leave the island.

Or his life and no legs, free to roam the world.

Methos could not say which path he would have chosen. Which prison - the island or prostheses. Joe had made his decision. "Hell," he'd said, "Who knows how long I have left? How long any of us do? There's work that needs to be done here. And I can do it."

Work such as helping the dwindling number of priestesses keep up the temple, grounds and gardens. Such as painting the small church on the hillside for a certain Immortal nun. Methos still wondered where Joe expected that particular relationship to go, but he looked forward to hearing news every now and then. As for Maud and the other priestesses, they had been only grudgingly accepting of Joe's vision. They didn't seem happy to hear they'd have a mortal man in their midst for the forseeable future, and Joe would have his work cut out making a home for himself.

Methos himself had no inclination to stay on Illas Cies, although Maud had hinted that he would be welcome for a short time. She'd removed the stones from her sockets and let her blue-green eyes grow back. They gave her pleasingly plump face an even younger look which only strengthened his resolve to leave. The sight of her, sixteen years old forever, reminded him too much of who he'd been when he drunkenly, jokingly married her in that roadside pub and bedded her in the hay. A mercenary full of hatred, still a Horsemen in every way but name. He suspected Maud knew as much and was grateful she didn't push the issue.

But Joe would be staying. Had to. His choice. And Duncan too. Which left the question of where Richie would go. The young man would never need to raise a sword again. He'd cut himself experimentally, a tiny slice with a knife, and the wound hadn't healed. He didn't even give off a pre-Immortal hum. He was free to lead a normal life, or as normal a life as any young adult who'd spent the previous four years killing, running, hiding and training.

Richie's death had left him remarkably unchanged. He hadn't returned with any stunning insight into the human condition, or miraculous visions, or anything other than his normal good nature and wisecracks. He claimed not to remember anything about the racetrack. He accepted the fact he'd been dead, but refused to believe Duncan had been his killer even when Methos and Joe confirmed the story.

"No way," he insisted. "It would never happen. I've learned the hard way not to walk up to you when you're not yourself."

"Maybe you thought you were seeing something else," Joe suggested.

"I don't believe it."

Duncan himself would never forget that shocking second when his katana had cut through Richie's neck. Or the moment when he'd woken on the beach and found Richie sitting beside him, shaking his arm.

"You're not real," Duncan had whispered, his voice hoarse with disbelief, his eyes stinging.

"Of course I am," Richie answered with a wide grin. "Could a hallucination tickle you like this?"

Richie's fingers dug into the side of Duncan's ribs and began a fiendish dance. Still disoriented by memories of trickery and deceit, Duncan yelped in alarm. He threw himself at the evil force that so dared to mock him with Richie's image and Methos and Joe scrambled to pull him free. They sat on his back and legs for at least ten minutes, explaining Richie was in fact real, while the young man in question scowled and rubbed at his throat.

"So this is how you show how much you missed me, huh?" Richie grumbled.

New guilt and giddy relief had made Duncan weep. Right there on the beach, surrounded by his best friends. Methos and Joe released him and Richie wrapped him in tight hug, making circles on his back and rocking him slightly. "It's okay," Richie had said, at least a dozen times in a row. "It's all over now."

Even now, three days later, Duncan had trouble believing that. So many weeks of horror, gone as if they'd never existed. Except for Jason and Allison Landry, Sigrid Hamsun and Cassandra, the whole affair could have been one long and frightful hallucination.

"Why did they bring him back?" he asked Methos now.

"Richie?"

"Yes."

Methos' gaze tracked the young man running up and down the beach. "I'm not sure they did. His body was caught in some kind of stasis when his Quickening couldn't complete. That's what you said. Maybe when Cassandra's Quickening was loosed, along with that unclaimed one . . . I don't know. Maybe enough power fed back into him to bring him back to life, but not enough to keep him Immortal."

"Nice theory, but we would have received the Quickenings first. We were closer."

"Perhaps. I'll tell you one thing, though. If the goddesses brought him back, it won't be without a price. They always demand a price. Someday, somewhere, they'll call upon him to pay up."

"That's not a pleasant thought, Methos."

"It's not meant to be. Did you ask him about Ann Arbor?"

"No. Not yet."

"The offer's still open," Methos said. "Anyway, I'm going off to find some lunch. Are you hungry?"

"No thanks."

Methos headed for the path back to the temple. The tag football game had ended on the beach with both Richie and Joe in depleted heaps, relaxing in the sand and sunshine. Duncan walked their way and caught the tail end of a murmured conversation.

"You'd feel bad if I had a heart attack," Joe threatened.

"You'd feel bad if I broke my neck."

"Smart ass kid. Just remember, now you don't pull the magic healing act."

"Yeah," Richie shot back. "But at least in a few years I won't get carded in bars anymore." The young man shifted as Duncan's shadow fell over him. "Hey, Mac. Did you see me crush him, five to one?"

"In your dreams," Joe muttered.

"From where I sat, the game was a tie," Duncan said. He offered Richie a hand and helped him up.

Joe got himself to his feet and brushed sand from his shorts and knees. He said, "You know, I don't remember my legs being so hairy. Or skinny."

"Complaining already?" Duncan teased.

"Never!" Joe said instantly. "Just wondering, that's all. Come on, let's go swimming."

"The water's too cold," Richie complained.

"Wimp," Joe snickered. He peeled off his shirt, tossed it to the sand and headed for the surf. He looked more energetic, more alive, than Duncan had ever seen him - as if the weight of decades had disappeared along with his plastic limbs. He flung himself into the oncoming waves, ducked underwater, surfaced with a laugh.

Up on the beach, Richie shook his head. "It's like he's eighteen years old," he said fondly. "I can't believe he's going to stay here the rest of his life."

"His choice," Duncan said.

"What's yours?" Blue eyes turned to him quizzically.

"I'd like to stay. Not for the rest of my life, but for awhile."

Richie nodded, his expression somber and a little sad. "That's probably a good idea. You need the rest, Mac. It's been a hard couple of years for you, hasn't it? Ever since Tessa died."

"There have been ups and downs," Duncan confessed. "But you were always an 'up,' Rich. You're the one person I've needed most to keep me going."

Richie looked pleased at the thought. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Duncan answered. He impulsively put his hand across Richie's shoulders and squeezed his protege to his side. Richie turned and embraced him, quick and hard, and then ducked away with a flush to his cheeks.

"I'm glad I'm not dead," he said. "It would really suck, wouldn't it?"

"It already did." Memories of grief threatened to choke Duncan's throat. He turned his attention back to Joe, who swam and frolicked in the waves like a dolphin. "Have you given any thought as to what you want to do, where you want to go?"

Richie dug into the sand with the toes of his right foot. "Umm . . . no. Not really. Long term planning has never been one of my priorities, you know?"

"Methos would like for you to go with him. He turned down an invitation to join the staff of the philosophy department at the University of Michigan earlier this year. He thinks he can get the job back. You could kick back and relax or maybe even enroll in some classes."

Richie rolled his eyes. "I don't need an Immortal babysitter anymore, Mac. Or . . . do I? Is there something you're not telling me?"

Duncan heard doubt and vulnerability in Richie's voice. "No," he said quickly, soothingly. Whatever Methos' suspicions were about the goddesses later demanding payment, Richie didn't need to be burdened with them. "Everything's fine."

"So I don't even have to practice kata anymore if I don't want to, right?"

"I thought you liked kata."

"I like kick-boxing better."

Duncan smiled. "Methos isn't volunteering to be your babysitter. Just your friend."

"I don't know if I'm ready for college, Mac."

"Sure you are. Think of the parties. Think of the women."

Richie perked up. "Well, that's true. Do I have to decide right this minute?"

"Of course not."

"Mac! Richie!" Joe yelled exuberantly. "Come on in! It's great!"

He did a hand-stand in the ocean and wagged his feet at them. Duncan and Richie laughed and ambled down to the waterline to watch him play in the waves. The ocean broke over their bare feet, cold and salty and swirling with light. Out of the corner of his eye Duncan saw two woman watching them, and turned expecting to see Maud and Christine.

Instead he saw Sigrid, standing in the sun beside a woman with long white hair. The older woman seemed vaguely familiar to Duncan, although he couldn't say how he knew her. Her calm, serene expression reminded him in some ways of Maud. Sigrid smiled widely and turned so he could see the beautiful baby sleeping soundly in her arms.

"My daughter!" she cried, her voice like chimes on the wind.

Water drenched Duncan and he whirled, sputtering, to find Joe splashing him with both hands. "Come on in, Mac," Joe urged, a devilish glint in his eyes, and he and Richie tossed the Highlander into the ocean fully-clothed.

Duncan surfaced a few seconds later, spitting out a mouthful of seawater. "You're going to regret that," he warned ominously. "Both of you."

"We're scared," Joe said, mocking him.

Duncan wiped his eyes clear and glanced toward the beach. Sigrid, her baby and the white-haired woman had disappeared. Perhaps they'd never even been there in the first place.

"Get him, Richie," Joe ordered, and two bodies tackled him. Duncan easily squirmed out from under them. He dragged Joe underwater and rubbed seaweed into his hair, then caught Richie before he could swim away and did the same. He burst back to the surface laughing. The cold, refreshing water held him and healed him, and he felt more buoyant and alive than he had in years.

"We're outclassed," Richie announced when he came up for air.

"Always were," Joe agreed with a grin.

The three friends kicked back on the rolling waves, content to float in peace under the deep blue sky and let the ocean carry them back to shore.

THE END