by C. E. Murphy
Ghean's shriek of delight pulled Lorhen's attention from Aroz, though not before he saw the frown the other Timeless wore, or the black expression in his gaze that promised a reckoning later. Ghean's broad smile, though, wiped most of that away, and Lorhen laughed as she clapped her hands together. "She did! Oh, I knew she would!" She grabbed his hand and tugged him toward a nearby booth. "Come on, let's get betrothal bracelets now, Lorhen!"
The merchant behind the counter Ghean dragged Lorhen toward looked up with sharp interest. "Betrothal tokens!" he agreed loudly. "For the outlanders, a special price, mmm? Let me show you." He lifted a pair of glittering bracelets, gold and delicately jeweled, turning them to catch the evening sunlight.
Lorhen took one, looked at it without seeing, and handed it back. "Very nice," he said politely. "Ghean, later, for the bracelets, all right? We need to talk about some things."
"Like what?" She sighed, patting one of the bracelets. "Later," she promised the merchant. "What's wrong, Lorhen? Did Mother say something awful?"
He laughed again, in spite of himself. "No," he said, "but she did make me think. Come back to my tent. We need some privacy."
Ghean's smile curved slowly across her face. "That sounds promising," she purred, an entirely different voice than the concerned one of a moment earlier.
Lorhen laughed a third time and curled her into his arms for a kiss before releasing her. She made him laugh: if there was anything more appealing in a woman, he hadn't found it in a thousand years. "That was not what I had in mind."
Ghean tsked, sliding her arm through Lorhen's as they walked. "I'm doing something wrong, then. What did you want to talk about?"
"The future," Lorhen said, not for the first time, and as he often did, couldn't help but tie it to the past. "Do you remember the first time I saw you, arguing with that poor old man over structural integrity?"
"Well, he was wrong," Ghean said with a sniff. "The Anapa designs were too thin at the neck. It never would have held the weight of his head, and can you imagine the Pharaoh's rage if his portal guardian's head fell off?"
Lorhen lifted his free hand equitably. "I can. You probably not only saved Anapa's head, but the lives of every unfortunate soul who worked on the thing. I was expecting someone much older to turn around, when you finally won."
Ghean wrinkled her nose dismissively. "Anyone with the slightest background in structural engineering could have seen that the design would fail, and I started studying architecture when I was practically a baby. My father designed several of the new House centers in Atlantis, and the new temple, so I grew up with it. I always wanted to build things. Mother still hopes I'll change my mind. Building is so physical," she said in an excellent mimicry of her mother's precise tones.
"She won't mind it when you design the greatest House on Atlantis for her." Lorhen stopped as they reached his tent, pushing the tent flap aside for Ghean. She ducked out of habit, though there was more than two feet of head space for her inside Lorhen's tent. There was nearly a foot of clearance for Lorhen himself, unlike any of the other tents in the traveling city. The extra yards of fabric had cost him, but it was worth the relief from the sense that the roof was balanced precariously on his head.
The single room was otherwise unimpressive. Sleeping mats lay piled to one side, over the thin carpets that kept the floor from being desert sand. A desk, not nearly so well crafted as Minyah's, but foldable and more portable than hers, took up a significant portion of the wall opposite the sleeping mats. It, in turn, was littered with sheets of papyrus, again not nearly as fine as Minyah's, but serviceable. A stool sat crookedly behind the desk. Inches from it, a short, fat blade leaned on the far side of the desk, nearly invisible when the tent was entered. Another stool, shorter but with a padded cushion, was piled with thick papyrus sheets. Lorhen removed them, and offered the seat to Ghean.
She remained standing, looking at the sheets as Lorhen stacked them neatly on his desk. "You're not as poor as you pretend to be, are you, Lorhen? I never thought about it, but papyrus isn't cheap, not even in Atlantis, and you've got a lot of it."
"I make it myself. It's not hard, just time consuming," which was true, but led away from the point. "You're right, though. Ghean, please, I have some things to tell you." He pulled the stool around the desk, began to sit, and then reconsidered, moving to shorter one.
Ghean, puzzled, took the bigger stool, then straightened with a look of amusement. "I'm taller than you." She folded one leg in front of herself, arms wrapped around it. "All right, Lorhen. What is it?"
Lorhen steepled his fingers, then dropped his head against them with a wry smile. Years of silence made an effective barrier on their own, even if that barrier had just been breached in the discussion with Minyah. "I'm not sure where to start. Ghean…"
She reached out to fold a small hand around his templed fingers. "It's all right. Tell me."
Lorhen lifted his head. "I'm going to tell you something that will sound utterly absurd. Bear with me, all right? Give me a chance to finish."
Her eyebrows crinkled. "All right."
Lorhen took a breath. "You asked me when I learned to read. I don't remember exactly, but it was around five hundred years ago, maybe a little more. My first memories are from about five hundred years before that, although I don't remember when or where I was born. It might have been around a thousand years ago. It could have been much longer. I don't know a great deal about my people," he went on more softly, watching Ghean's face. She hardly changed expression at all, little more than a trace of amusement in her features. "Where we come from, why we're so different…" He shrugged. "I do know that we don't die of old age. I know it's very hard to kill us. I know we don't have children, Ghean."
She stared another moment, then gave a short laugh. "For a moment, I almost believed you. Come on, Lorhen. What is it? You don't have to make up stories. Nothing can be as bad as you're making it."
"You should believe me," he said softly. "It's true. I'm immortal, Ghean. I'll heal from almost any wound. You have to believe me before we can seriously consider marriage."
What little humor she had drained away into a shiver. "Stop it, Lorhen. You're scaring me."
"I can't stop," he said, still softly. "I know how it sounds, love, and I wish—" A rough chuckle escaped him. "Most of the time I'm just as glad it is so unbelievable. Most of the time it's far better to rely on it being unbelievable than to make any attempt at explaining my reality. It's too alien, too frightening. But you do have to believe me, Ghean. In this case, you do, and the only way anybody ever really believes is if they see it. I'm going to have to show you. Please don't scream." He slid his belt knife from its sheathe and laid his palm open with one swift movement.
Ghean pulled in air sharply, not quite a scream. "Lorhen! What are you—you'll need a physician!"
"Watch," he said. "I am not like you. I heal from any wound in moments. Watch."
He spread his hand, fingers splayed back, to display the cut. Tendons lay bared, crimson flowing back between his fingers to drip on the sandy floor. Dispassionately, he watched as both ends of the injury began to heal, eating inward to the deepest part of the cut. The newly released blood discolored and dried as the healing slowed, the severed tendons visibly knitting together, then the muscle reconstituting. The skin reformed in a smooth swirl, and Lorhen closed his hand into a fist. Looking up at Ghean, he opened his hand again, rust-colored flakes drifting down to the carpets.
Her eyes were locked on his hand, shock writing itself over her delicate features. "How did you do that?" she demanded, voice tinged with fear. "I saw the cut. It was deep." Her eyes snapped up to meet his.
"We call ourselves Timeless," Lorhen murmured. "That kind of injury is easiest to demonstrate with. I can do something more drastic, if you need me to."
"No!" Her voice rose. "It's not possible. It's some kind of trick. No one heals that fast. You've tricked me somehow. Why are you doing this, Lorhen? Why? It's not funny. Why are you do
ing this?" She scooted back on the stool, cringing away from him.
Lorhen took a deep breath. "Because you deserve to know who it is you might marry. What I am."
Ghean's eyes dropped to his palm, still extended, unscarred. "Are you a god? Have you come from the heavens to—" Her imagination failed her, and she broke off, fear setting itself more deeply in her face.
"No, not a god, Ghean. Just a man. Just a little different than most. There are others like me. Please, Ghean. I don't mean to frighten you, but you had to know before we married." Carefully, he reached out to touch her shoulder.
She bolted back in a flurry of fabrics, knocking the stool over as she scrambled to her feet. Lorhen, startled, surged to his feet as well, his hand still open to her.
"No! Don't touch me! Don't—!" She ran for the door, all but stumbling over her robes as she rushed out.
Lorhen dropped to his knees, his hand falling, palm open, to smack quietly against the carpets as he gazed after his fleeing betrothed. "Well. That went well."
Across the town, Minyah straightened, reading over the words she had written.
I myself have met two of these Timeless, that I know of. One is Aroz, my bodyguard, who has given his life to save mine more than once. The other calls himself Lorhen, and claims to be a thousand years old.
Lorhen told me more, in a few unguarded moments, than Aroz has in the many years I have known him. It is a trust I think he does not often share; I wonder at his sharing it with me. The bonds between us are slim: my daughter, Ghean, and the scholarship we both follow. It seems little, but is apparently enough.
He calls the power that keeps the Timeless alive a kind of magic. A few mortals have it within them, this magic, but it can only be released through violent or untimely death. He tells me my daughter has this magic in her, and then he beseeches me to not interfere, to not tell her.
Lorhen and Aroz both spoke of a compulsion to battle other Timeless, that ends only when one Timeless takes the other's head. If I tell Ghean, I will force her into a life of war, unlike anything she has ever known. It seems cruel, but it seems more cruel to consign her to certain death: with her immortality released, there is always the chance she will live another day, and experience another thing which may never otherwise have come her way.
It seems right to force her into this immortality now, to insure that she remains young and strong, to make certain it does not somehow slip away. Aroz has not seemed to age while I have known him, and Lorhen carries his years only in his eyes. How do I judge Ghean's peak, and thus the time to best tell her of the secret she bears in herself?
Lorhen says the Timeless cannot have children, that he cannot father a child on her. Though there are few deaths from childbirth in Atlantis, it is no longer a relevant fear for her safety, for the eventual release of her potential, not if she marries this man, at least. Illness does not come so quickly that she could not be dispatched into death by a mortal blow before sickness took her, and any other death, violent or accidental, will trigger the magic and force her into immortality.
I will do as Lorhen asks, and not yet tell her of her potential. There is time, yet. If she has not met her first death through accident in five years, then, I think I shall tell her. It is little enough time, even for a mortal. For her, it will be as nothing.
In the meantime, there are the Keepers to think of. I think it must be a group as unspoken as the Timeless themselves. As unlikely as a people who live forever are a society who record the lives of those Timeless, and both, I think, must remain separate from the rest of the world.
There are those on Atlantis whom I think would belong in my little group of Keepers. So many of the relics belonging to the Houses are objects reputed to prolong life. It seems natural to approach those who bear them to participate in this project. Even my own House has its Hunter’s Cloak, which legend claims will make its wearer invulnerable.
Perhaps I shall test the cloak, at that. Carefully. I should hate to discover the legends were wrong after plunging a knife to my breast.
Minyah chuckled softly at herself. Reserved and intellectual, she was probably one of the least likely people she knew to rashly test a legend in such a fashion. She yawned, setting her pen down, and pushed her fingers into the small of her back, stretching.
The tent flap burst inward, sending soft sprays of sand over the carpets. Ghean tripped on the edge of the first carpet, crashing to the floor. Fabric ripped audibly, and the girl struggled to her feet, oblivious to the torn knee of her tunic. Tears tracked streaks through the dust on her face. "M-mother," she wailed. Despite having just climbed to her feet, she suddenly collapsed, knees giving way in a boneless rush, sending her to sit hard on the floor, face buried in her hands.
Minyah sat frozen at her desk a moment, her hands still pressed into the small of her back. Ghean's dark hair was disarrayed and sand-streaked, tumbling over her shoulders in tangles. Judging from other rents in her gold-colored silks, and sand crusted under her fingernails, the fall at the door had not been the first. Minyah cleared her throat, and stood. "I must gather you have seen Lorhen," she said, as delicately as she could.
Ghean lifted a face pale under the tears and dirt. "He's not human!" The last word came out in a burst of miserable confusion, a floodgate for more tears.
Minyah knelt before her daughter, resting a hand on her shoulder. "I know," she said. "I insisted he tell you."
"Tell me!" Ghean's voice rose. "You knew? He's not human, mother, he's a, a monster, or a god, of some kind, and you knew?" Her tone ranged between despair and outrage.
Minyah straightened her shoulders. "I deduced it. I believe he is as human as you or I, Ghean." A small wince distorted her features for a moment, as she thought about the implications of her words. Ghean, focused on her own misery, didn't see the expression, and after a brief hesitation, Minyah continued. "He is human. He is merely longer-lived than most."
Ghean sat upright, the better to project. "Longer lived! He says he's immor—!"
Minyah cut her off with a sharp gesture. "More quietly, daughter." The frown sketched lines into her forehead. "Such behavior does not become you."
Ghean scowled, sullen, but repeated herself more quietly. "He says he's immortal, Mother. Humans aren't immortal."
Minyah settled back on her knees. "Most are not," she agreed. "Think about your history, Ghean. Even on Atlantis we have legends and stories, and indeed, history, of people who lived longer than normal. Is it impossible that others could share that longevity?"
Ghean pushed strands of hair out of her face, leaving a few still sticking to drying tear paths, but her anxiety was fading into the pleasure of debate. "Those are with the artifacts of Atlantis, Mother. It's not the same at all."
"But if our artifacts exist, and have the power to grant longer life, why is it inconceivable that some other power, unknown to us, could grant it without an artifact to focus through?"
Ghean frowned. "You sound like you've thought about this for a long time. How long have you known Lorhen?"
"I only met him today."
"Then you know somebody else like him. Not even you think this fast."
Minyah debated briefly, then shrugged her eyebrows. Ghean would learn eventually. "Aroz is like Lorhen, Timeless. I have known since I was a little younger than you are."
Disbelieving anger wrote itself across Ghean's face. "Are you like them too? Am I the only normal person in the whole world?"
Minyah struggled to control her expression. "I am not Timeless," she promised. "I am, however, quite certain you are not the only normal person in the whole world." She reached out to touch her daughter's face with gentle fingers. "Lorhen has trusted you with something very deep and personal about himself, my daughter. He did not have to tell you, you know. Think, before you reject him. You ran from fear of the unknown. Determine if your fear is greater than your love. Then make your decision. But not before, Ghean. Do not be hasty. He, and you, have time to think, before you act."
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br /> 11
The line was familiar, spoken by a fresh-faced young man trying to be politely flirtatious: "Where are you from? I can’t place your accent."
Ghean smiled. Try as she might, she couldn't erase the faint traces of Atlantis from her voice. At first the fact had been a source of chagrin, but she'd come to be quietly amused at having a singularly unique accent in all the world. "I'm from the Mediterranean," she explained easily. "My family moved a great deal when I was a child."
The lie came easily after more than a decade of living in the twentieth century. At first she'd stuttered and mumbled useless explanations, certain her secret would be revealed. The frightened voice often resurfaced in those times, screaming out its horror of being found out. The other, infinitely patient, waited until the frightened one had yelled itself out before interfering.
They have no reason to suspect you, it said then. Write out your new history and study it. Make it simple, and there will be no flaws. Be confident. They cannot possibly suspect us.
And they didn't. Ghean knew the exact moment when she'd begun to think of mortals as 'they', as creatures different from herself. It had taken years, years in which she grew accustomed to the new world she was in. She learned languages, Egyptian first, from the young guide who'd told her how much time had passed. Two years with him was not enough to feel the difference between herself and mortals, nor were the following handful of years while she learned English and German from archaeologists robbing the magnificent temples and crypts the Egyptian pharaohs had left behind.
The illusion that she was the same as she had been, as mortal as those around her, ended with a car crash. Her English teacher, a skinny American, sped around a corner and into a cart pulled by oxen. He, the oxen, and two of the three in the cart died; Ghean jerked awake minutes after the crash, shattered skull stitching itself back together while a handful of terrified onlookers stared. A woman screamed, naming her a witch, and ran for the authorities.
