Immortal Beloved

by C. E. Murphy

  Ghean nodded, picking up the drink to taste it, and grimaced. “What is this?”

  “Gin and tonic.” The brunette laughed. “It’s awful, but it’s cheap.” She sipped her own drink, then offered a hand, across the table. “I’m Katerina. I was born in Venice four hundred and nineteen years ago. Have you ever used a sword?”

  Surprise, largely heart-felt, flooded Ghean’s face. I thought Immortals would be much more secretive. She shook the other woman’s hand slowly. “I’m Ghean. I — no, I’ve never used a sword.”

  “Funny, you look as though you’re here. Maybe it’s a case of here today, Ghean tomorrow.” Katerina grinned, then shook her head. “Sorry. Unusual name. Kind of pretty, though. You’re going to need a teacher, then. Finish your drink and we’ll go to some nice little church and I’ll tell you all about what you are.”

  Two days later Ghean went west with Katerina, to an isolated cabin in Navajo territory. “I lived with the tribes about three hundred years ago,” Katerina explained. “Their holy people gave me permission to build a retreat here. It’s a good place to hide, and to learn.”

  For three years, Ghean learned. Even Katerina towered over her, and most men would be at least the Venetian woman’s height. “Use it to your advantage,” Katerina ordered, and taught her the short sword, and the use of daggers first. Ghean came to love the elegance of the rapier, and drilled long hours even after practice had ended.

  Katerina came out of the cabin early one morning to watch one such drill, arms folded. When Ghean eventually turned to her, the other woman came forward with an envelope. “There’s more I can teach you, but you’d be better trained if you went to the far East. There are martial arts which will suit your size and frame, but I can’t teach them to you. This is a letter to a friend of mine, and cash for the journey. I’ll bring you to California. I’ve already arranged passage for you, if you’re willing to go. It’ll help you keep your head.”

  Not until the mid-30s did Ghean return to America. Only days after she landed, the thrill of warning shot through her as she walked a San Francisco street. The warning was accompanied by the close-by sound of swords clashing. Curious, she followed the sound, creeping forward down an alley to watch the battle. It lasted only minutes, two men silent with intent, the only sounds that of labored breathing and metal slamming against metal.

  Ghean had taken no heads herself; the fury of lightning that rained from the sky was the closest she had ever been to a Quickening. She stood rigid in the aftershock, hair blown astray and heart racing as the survivor walked away, down the other end of the alley. Ghean sank against a wall, eyes closed, only to shriek in surprise when someone put a hand on her shoulder. Years of drilling came into play before she thought, as she knocked the hand away, and nearly drove the heel of her hand forward into the lower chest of the man who’d touched her.

  He jumped back nervously, both hands lifted in apology. “I’m sorry,” he said. He was brown-haired and brown-eyed, mild-looking. “You saw?” he asked, though he gave no indication what she might have seen.

  Ghean pulled in a breath, about to deny having seen the battle as the man lowered his hands. For an instant she froze, reconstructing the image of his hands in the air. There was a mark on his inner wrist, impossibly familiar. “I — what was — he killed that man!” she blurted. “And the storm! Where did it come from?”

  The brown man hesitated. “It would be best if you forgot what you saw,” he suggested.

  Ghean shook her head. “No. No, I want to know. What was it? Who were they? You know, don’t you?” She could hear her accent growing thicker, and calmed herself a little. “Please tell me.”

  Another hesitation, then the man gestured with his head. “Walk with me a little while,” he said. “Tell me about yourself. My name is Thomas Burns.”

  “Marion,” she replied in kind. “Marion Townsend.” It was the name that had been on her travelling papers, the ones Katerina had provided for her. “I just came to San Francisco. I want to go to college. I want to learn history.”

  “Do you?” Thomas smiled. “I’m a historian, myself.”

  Ghean lifted her eyebrows. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a historian with a tattoo.” She nodded a little at his wrist. “That’s what’s on your wrist, isn’t it?”

  He smiled again, and turned his wrist over, displaying a dark blue tattoo, a deeply curved Y within a circle. Ghean stared, feeling heat surge to her face.

  It isn’t possible, the frightened one insisted, and even the patient one seemed to agree. There was no detail within the Y, yet the curves were terribly familiar. The circle bordering the design had thirteen points. Ghean counted them rapidly, and then again, heart pounding.

  It has to be, she told the voices. The thirteen Houses in the circle, just like all the House symbols had. The ram’s head. It has to be. That’s my House symbol!

  After five thousand years? the frightened one demanded dubiously. It’s impossible.

  It’s improbable, Ghean corrected it, and slowly looked up at Thomas. “It’s very interesting. What’s it of? The only tattoos I’ve ever seen have been fantastic creatures or women’s names, things like that.”

  Thomas shrugged, smiling again. “It’s a symbol that caught my eye a long time ago.”

  Ghean glanced back down the street towards the alley where the battle had been. It’s impossible, the frightened one whispered. Aloud, she guessed, “It has something to do with the fight back there, doesn’t it?”

  Thomas stopped walking, frowning down at her. “You’re very astute.”

  Ghean nearly stopped breathing. How? What does my family have to do with the Immortals? Who are you? Why are you watching us? What do you know about us? She stopped the race of thoughts with effort, and said, “I think I would like you to tell me about it, if you would.”

  Eight months later, Ghean entered the Watcher Academy. She had taken no heads, and her life as an Immortal had been quiet enough, evidently unnoticed by the Watchers. She went into research as quickly as she could, and in a few years transferred to the European branch of the Watchers, unable to find what she was looking for within the American texts.

  The Parisian vaults held no more answers regarding the use of her House signet than the American histories had. Paris did, however, have dozens of texts on the only Immortal she had any interest in finding. They were called the Methos Chronicles, and for nearly a thousand years, there had been no new entries. The final journal came from 1066, the Battle of Hastings; his Watcher had lost him, and no one since had been able to find him. There were a few sightings that might have been him, over the last ten centuries, but most of the writers seemed to agree that Methos was dead, if he’d really ever existed at all. More than one chronicler suggested ‘Methos’ had been a number of Immortals over the centuries, laying claim to the name of a legend.

  Ghean sat with the newest of the Methos Chronicles a long time, turning pages without really seeing them. It hadn’t really occurred to me he might be dead, she realized. Even looking at the scrawled handwriting that recorded the last verified sighting, she did not entirely believe it.

  She had time. If her old lover was still alive, she would find him somehow. The Chronicles were a disappointment in that aspect. She decided to study them anyway, as much for the sake of learning history as reading about her beloved. The newer texts were fairly easy to decipher, written in Old English or German, but she had to spend years learning Classical Greek and Latin. The latter was easier, and let her read back centuries; the former took more time, but the oldest texts about Methos were in that language.

  The older the books, the more unweildy they were. By the time she had learned enough Greek to read the very oldest books, the covers were nearly as thick as the paper between them. They were terribly fragile, three thousand years old, and Ghean turned the heavy covers and thick paper carefully, remembering the fine, thin paper her mother had used in Atlantis.

  The next piece of paper was very nearly tha
t thin, and Ghean’s fingers slipped on it, crumbling an edge to dust. She’d hardly been reading the pages as she turned them, and gave the piece under her hand a startled glance.

  My darling Ghean,

  For a few seconds Ghean couldn’t read beyond the first words, written in her mother’s delicate hand, in her native tongue of Atlantean.

  My darling Ghean,

  I realize the chances of you finding this are so slim as to be nonexistant. Still, I write these words in the hopes that this letter will somehow survive the centuries and end up in your hands.

  Your Methos saved my life. I find this ironic, as only weeks before I had chosen to make him and his kind my life’s study. Had he not saved me when Atlantis fell, that study would have died with me, and the Watchers would not exist. Because he did, I have this final chance to communicate with you, through the barrier of time.

  He said that you died in the first moments of the panic. I have no reason to doubt him, other than the hopes of an aging mother. I know that you are, as he is, Immortal, or have that potential within you. It is a comfort to me to imagine that you somehow survived the destruction of Atlantis and live on, last child of our House.

  Sheer willpower prevented Ghean from crumbling the paper to dust. Her hands trembling, she stared down at the words. I know that you are Immortal. She was betrayed on all sides. Shaking, she took her hand away from the paper, to prevent herself from clenching her fist and taking her mother’s last words to her away. In time, she was able to go on.

  I do not know when you will find this letter. I do not know what the world will be like, how much it will have changed, where the Watchers archives might be.

  If you have found this at all, it is likely you have found the Watchers themselves. I chose the symbol of House Aries as the marker for the Watchers before Atlantis fell; now I am glad I did so, for it is a sign you should be able to recognize, no matter how many years pass.

  I have taught many of my followers — the Watchers — Atlantis’ tongue and written language, for it is more elegant than any other writing yet known. I can only imagine what language this letter might have been translated in to by the time you find it. I only hope that in whatever form, it survives the years, and that you, too, have somehow survived, and will be able to read this.

  If you do, share your history with the Watchers. Share our family with them, as they are a very real legacy of House Aries. Tell them of Atlantis, and if there is some way in the new world that you live in to bring Atlantis back to the sun, I hope that you will try. I hope that its magic will be a part of the world again someday.

  Remember that for all time, I love you.

  It was signed with the graceful scrawl of Minyah’s name.

  Ghean read the letter until she could see the words with her eyes closed, committing them to memory. Her mother had known, and hadn’t told her. We don’t interfere, the patient one reminded her, echoing Katerina’s lessons.

  She was my mother! Ghean shouted back. She wasn’t Immortal! She wasn’t bound by the same rules! She should have told me!

  She began the Watchers, the patient one said, too rationally. She made her own rules of non-interference. We couldn’t have known Atlantis would fall. If we’d known, perhaps she’d have told us, to protect us. It’s too late now. Let it go. Be glad there is anything of her at all, after all this time.

  Ghean’s head dropped, and she nodded a little. “The letter,” she murmured, in Atlantean, “the Watchers, and me. And someday, we’ll bring back Atlantis for her.” Feeling weary, she turned the letter over, trying to focus again on Methos’ history.

  A second piece of paper cracked free of the back of the letter, falling forward against the Chronicle’s pages. For a handful of seconds she simply stared at the blank sheet. Picking it up took conscious will. She could see the impressions from where pressure had sealed it to the back of her mother’s letter. I wonder how long it’s been since anyone’s looked at the Methos Chronicles. She turned the sheet over, carefully. It was old, but far less delicate than the ancient sheet her mother’s letter had been written on. Seeing her name written again, in a different hand but in the same tongue, sent a dull sick thud through her, the feeling of a missed heartbeat.

  Ghean,

  This is the third time I’ve joined the Watchers to make certain your mother’s letter was all right, and to hide something she left for you. It’s funny, the things we do for long-dead friends. I can’t imagine that you’re alive, and still, here I am.

  If you’re reading this, you’re in the Paris Headquarters. In the extremely impressive vault where they keep my chronicles, there’s a safe cut into the wall in the back bottom left-hand corner. I could fit under the stacks to cut it there, so I’m sure you can fit under it to open it up. There’s no lock, just the stone set back into the wall. There’s a box in there, one of those damned Atlantean things with the pressure points. Minyah left it for you when she died. I expect it’s going to stay there for the rest of eternity, but here I am writing a note to someone forty-six centuries dead anyway.

  I wish I could have saved you, Ghean. There was no time, and I don’t believe anybody could have survived that cataclysm. I still think about you sometimes. I hope your rest has been a peaceful one.

  There was no name, only a date, written out in longhand, in Atlantean: eighteen hundred and forty-five.

  Ghean set the letter down gently, hands shaking. Only ninety years ago. He’s alive. The conviction filled her.

  He’s alive.

  Chapter 8

  I thought she would forbid the marriage.

  Methos sat gracelessly, scowling at toes buried in hot sand. That would have been convienent, wouldn’t it? The thought was a mix of acidic and amused. Methos shook his head, half smiling despite himself, and lifted his eyes to look over the shifting sand. Wind blew grains into small heaps, and smoothed them out again, an ever-changing constant. Relieving me of the burden of choice. Methos half grinned again, standing and sliding down the dune into one of the endless valleys of sand. It’s never that easy.

  I probably shouldn’t have told her about Ghean. Methos glanced at the sun, and closed his eyes, afterimage dancing behind his eyelids. I wonder what she’ll do.

  “What would you do?” he demanded of himself, stopping at the top of a dune. “If you had a child?” He shied away from the question, even asking himself, in the same way he’d argued it with Minyah: I can’t have children. It’s not a relevant question.

  The corner of his mouth turned up in a sardonic grin. All right, he admitted, silently, to the sands. If I had a child, a girl like Ghean, I’d probably throw her off the Sphinx myself. He looked up at the sun again, hard white ball in the heat-seared sky. Time is such a gift. The pain of losing friends balances it, but the possibilities time grants are too great to ignore. Their lives are so short. So many of then disappear so quickly. Even the lucky ones burn bright for their brief moments, and still they’re simply gone.

  Ghean burns bright. He smiled at the sun, eyes closing to better envision her face, dark eyes and a quick smile, enthusiastic for life. Time might dull that edge, but the gift is greater than the potential loss. I’ll tell her. Not yet, but before her youth is gone.

  I can’t remember who told me the rules, anyway.

  Methos slid back down the sand dune, following his tracks back towards the town. A more purposeful glance at the sun told him that he’d been debating the question for far longer than he’d thought. Hours had passed since he left Ghean to speak with Minyah. Ghean will have chewed her fingernails off. He chuckled, and picked up his pace a little. Whether I tell her about herself now or not, Minyah is right. She needs to know about me.

  The market was growing busier, with high noon’s heat passed. Methos made his way through the growing crowd, skimming for Ghean’s small figure. A chill, at odds with the lowering sun, ran up his spine, and he turned, searching for the Immortal who’d triggered the warning.

  Aroz sat at a table under an o
pen tent. He lifted his head, looking over his shoulder with the same slightly wary expression that graced Methos’ features. When he saw Methos, a frown settled over his face, but his eyes dropped, unchallenging. Just beyond him sat Ghean, fixedly studying a cup of juice which she held in both hands. She looked up as Aroz settled back into place, craning her neck to look around him. With a smile, she came to her feet, darting around the end of the table to come towards Methos. She waved her juice cup, grinning. “You’re always so easy to see. So much taller than everyone else.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Methos still watched the other Immortal, whose face darkened again as Ghean left his side without a word. He met Methos’ eyes again, and this time the challenge that had not been there a moment earlier was clear. Methos returned the gaze blandly, glancing down at Ghean so he would not have to acknowledge Aroz’s intent.

  Ghean frowned up at him. “What’s wrong? Did Mother say no?”

  “Actually,” Methos said absently, “she said yes. We need to talk, Ghean.”

  Ghean let out a happy shout of delight, nearly flinging the contents of her cup into the air. “She did! Oh, I knew she would!” She switched the cup into her other hand, licking spilled juice off the backs of her fingers, and then drained the remaining juice from the cup, pressing the empty vessel into the hands of a startled passer-by. The man blinked at it momentarily, then grinned as Ghean caught Methos’ hands in hers and began pulling him towards a nearby booth. “Come, let’s get betrothal bracelets now, Methos!”

  Merchants suddenly appeared out of the crowds, barking out pricing and quality of their wares. “Betrothal tokens!” called the man at the booth Ghean dragged Methos towards. “You’ll find no better! For the outlanders, a special price, mm? Let me show you.” He lifted a pair of glittering bracelets, turning them to catch the afternoon sunlight.