The Captive Soul

by Josepha Sherman

  “Well?” MacLeod prodded after a while.

  A shrug. “I’m not sure. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any of the Hyksos writing… a very long time since I had to actually read any of it….”

  Another period of silence.

  “Wait, now….” Methos said suddenly. “That could be a god-name… and that… ha, yes, it’s beginning to come back to me.” He raised an eyebrow at MacLeod. “It’s Hyksos, all right. Nothing coherent, which is what gave me the difficulty, just bits of what looks like a prayer to, I’d guess, the Egyptian god Set. The nasty fellow who murdered his brother god, Osiris.”

  “I know the story.”

  “Yes, well, the Hyksos were big on him.”

  “Nice people.”

  “Told you.”

  They left the computer offices, returning to the safer anonymity of the noisy city streets before continuing the conversation.

  “Then,” MacLeod began, “the West Side Slayer is Khyan.”

  Methos’s face was unreadable. “It does seem the most likely possibility. As to why he’s here… the sword. Khyan can only be hunting the Hyksos sword.”

  “The one you said held a—a royal soul?”

  “He’d believe that. If he’s still half as crazy as I think, he would certainly believe that—”

  “Then why is he hunting it in Riverside Park? That’s the wrong side of Manhattan!”

  “—but, we will assume, isn’t sane enough to find the sword easily. Yes… that would be why he’s performing those sacrifices: They’re appeals to the gods. Khyan knows that the sword is here, he wants it, and he’s trying to get the gods, Set in particular, to help him locate it.”

  “And we,” MacLeod said, “have to stop him.”

  Methos looked at him with absolutely no expression.

  “ ‘We.’”

  “Come on, Methos! You’re the one who knows what he looks like! You want me to call the police and tell them, ‘There’s a three-thousand-year-old madman sacrificing people, and you can only kill him by cutting off his head’? You know about the Hyksos—and about this Khyan.”

  “Sorry. I gave up my Boy Scout badges a long time ago.”

  “Methos.”

  “And no, I am not going to feel guilty over the antics of a lunatic I didn’t get to behead over three thousand years ago.”

  With great restraint, MacLeod said, “I’m not asking you to be a Boy Scout. But we are faced with an insane Immortal. One who is killing people so that he can perform divinations over their mangled bodies—”

  “Exactly. I am, as the saying goes, out of here.”

  “No, you are not. Think about it, Methos: Even if the police do manage to track Khyan down and capture him, he’s not going to stay caught for long. Nor is he going to keep his mouth shut about himself or the rest of us. And a murderous, crazy Immortal who isn’t going to worry about mortals discovering who and what he is—”

  Methos held up both hands in resignation. “Is a danger to all Immortals,” he finished. “Yes, right, true enough. Particularly if he happens to miraculously come back to life in front of everyone, or is subjected to any in-depth medical tests. And yes, true enough, I’m the only one who knows enough about him and his native time and place to have any hope of stopping him.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what? I don’t have much of a choice, do I? But—d’you know something, Duncan?”

  “What?”

  “I really do hate it when you’re right.”

  Chapter Ten

  New York City, West Side:

  The Present

  He woke with a start, for a terrifying time not sure where he was or why the room should seem so… wrong. There should be a good, hard bed, a sensible wooden headrest, not this sagging, too-thin mattress. There should be a window set high in the wall to let in the clean desert breeze, not this—this staleness, this ugly, dirty glass through which one could barely see, and see only walls at that, and yet more walls—

  Walls, yes, glass, yes.

  Realization shook him. This was not the once-and-no- more. This was what these people called the twentieth century. He was still in the city they called New York, still in Manhattan, in the cheap little room he had rented, must have rented (he could not remember how or when), somewhere on the western edge of the island.

  Ah. More memory. He had returned here sometime just before dawn, that much he did recall, yes… after the sacrifice.

  The sacrifice that had failed.

  With a shudder, he leaped to his feet, his reflexes still those of the warrior. He was, he noted without surprise, still fully clad, and a sudden surge of caution made him quickly check himself and his sword blade for telltale signs, bloodstains—

  No. Nothing to betray him.

  There was suddenly a dim memory of other times, other places. He stood stock-still, letting it come as it would, if it would…. There had been a—what?—occupation, a series of occupations, times over a long, long span when he was something these people called “sane” (meaningless term, useless term), living in their dull little plane of existence, cut off from the gods, from his god, even a recent space wherein he’d known the means of earning the coins this time and place required.

  But now… but now…

  Nothing. Nothing!

  Set, he prayed, Set. Let me not be barred from you. Let me not become not-me.

  He could not hold fast to memories of what he’d done, how he’d lived, and they drifted away. No matter, no matter, he was above small things such as salaries, the worries of commoners.

  He wandered from the room, from the house made up of several of these cheap rooms, ignoring the sneers of the rough-faced man behind the front counter—something about “rent,” and “stupid Arab,” and “come back with it or don’t come back.”

  Words. They meant nothing.

  He wandered on, through streets busy with trucks—an area of busy commerce, some fragment of logic told him, not surprising with the river’s docks so near. He wandered, drawn to that river. Not the right one, he dimly knew it, not the regal Nile, but sacred, surely, just the same, so broad and with such mighty tides. Staring at it, he knew it was so. The river was sacred, yes, the Great River, this Hudson, and he softly repeated the proper prayers.

  Then why would the god not hear? Why would Set not aid him?

  But—how could he? Set was, after all, a god of the desert waste. The realization made him shudder: There was no desert here. Did that mean—

  No! He could not fail, he would not fail! His brother was here, somewhere in this city, he knew that, felt that, like a faint voice calling to him, Here, find me, here.… The voice had brought him to New York—but with all these many lives, how could he ever find…

  He would not doubt. He would find his brother, help him, even if it meant slaying hundreds for the god, thousands! He would help his brother, though he turned this city into…

  Was that it? Was that what the god wished?

  The force of this new revelation shook him so fiercely that he sank to his knees. Yes, this was the answer, this was the answer!

  “Hear me, oh great Set,” he cried. “Help me now, and I shall turn this vast city into a desert waste in your holy name.”

  He spoke in the ancient tongue, dimly aware of passersby, of sneers of “foreigner,” meaningless “Arab, betcha.” But no one touched him, so he need not heed them. And as he continued his prayers, the watchers drifted away.

  “Help me, oh great Set, and I shall slay them all, one by one, ten by ten, a hundred by a hundred. They cannot stop me, they do not know me, they cannot know me.

  “For you, oh great Set, have placed your hand upon me and your breath of Life in my nostrils. You have made me your child.

  “And I, oh great Set, am truly your son.”

  And yet, a surge of memory warned him, there was one who might try to stop him, yes… one other who had been touched by a god….

  The name surfaced without warning: Metho
s.

  Yes, yes, he had not seen that one since… since… But his mind refused to remember that terrible day, told him only: That one is here. Methos is here. For had he not from time to time in this vast city been brushed by that familiar aura, the eerie sureness that he’d been near one touched by a god? Once he’d actually drawn sword and tried to pursue, only to have lost the trace amid the teeming, godless others, then, most shamefully, having been pursued himself by their officers of the law. (And had there not been other times, others he’d fought, yes, and… and felt the splendor of the gods enfold him… something… a Game…? He could not quite remember.)

  But it could only be that one. Methos.

  Methos, who would try to stop him. Try and fail.

  Methos, who would die.

  Chapter Eleven

  Egypt, Avaris: Reign of King Apophis, 1573 B.C.

  “There,” Khyan said proudly as the Hyksos ship came broadside to the dock.

  As sailors busily raised oars, moored the ship, and lowered the wooden gangplank, Methos stared up at the massive wall surrounding Avaris. The wall, he mused, that looked even more impressive seen up close, particularly since now he could see that it stood on a rampart of earth and stone.

  But: There? he wondered, looking at the unornamented expanse. There where? “Ah?”

  “That gate!” Khyan’s quick, contemptuous glance said, Only a fool wouldn’t have instantly known what I’d meant! “That is the only gate by which one may enter Avaris. No enemy may ever invade!”

  “Ah.” Never, my mad prince, say “never”

  Still, Methos added to himself as they came ashore, no attack was likely to make it across this exposed field and through that heavily reinforced gate. And it did, indeed, seem to be the only access through the all-too-solid wall.

  As Prince Khyan, not waiting for his attendants, strode boldly through, guards barely got the thick, bronze-plated door open in time. The prince kept going, not deigning to notice their salutes or the frantically following retainers, and Methos, perforce, kept going with him, surreptitiously noting every detail of his surroundings as he went. Thick wall, all right, just about… hmm… one and a half bowshots thick. No one was going to cut through all that mud brick. And the regularly spaced watchtowers meant no one was going to scale the wall, either.

  So then. No possible safe attack from the Nile. Not a frontal attack, at any rate. But what if one came in from the side? Or, for that matter, under the wall? No, not likely; an attacker would be pinned down by arrows from above before he could—

  “There!” Khyan repeated, and Methos started almost guiltily. The prince was pointing. “There ahead of us is Avaris’s heart, the royal citadel itself.”

  “Ah!” Methos said yet again. Good, safe, all-purpose exclamation.

  All around them lay a crowded tangle of buildings, without so much as an alleyway separating most of them: The Hyksos citizens attached to the royal court had to live somewhere, and apparently this lot didn’t want to try their luck out there with the not necessarily cowed Egyptians—even though space within the walls was clearly at a premium.

  Useful fact. Easy to spread plague or fire in here. Always assuming, of course, that one could somehow by pass that cursed outer wall.

  Beyond was a second, inner wall, not quite as impressive, the bronze gate of which was flung open at Khyan’s autocratic approach. Beyond that lay, surprisingly, some rather handsome gardens, quite beautifully landscaped. But their green loveliness only made the brooding fortress they surrounded look the more menacing by comparison: more thick walls, more square-sided towers. The fortress was basically one great, unornamented rectangle taller even than the outer walls.

  Methos fought down the urge to say, Ugly, isn’t it? “Impressive,” he safely chose instead.

  Which was, after all, just as accurate.

  No answer from Khyan. For want of any other choice, Methos followed him on into the citadel, down corridors painted with murals it was too dark to see clearly.

  They look like Canaanite designs. I think. Well, rumor does have it that the Hyksos are at least first cousins to the Canaanites.

  The corridor ended in a sudden blaze of torchlight. Blinking, Methos found himself in the royal audience hall, a large room, shadowy despite the number of torches and smoky because of them. The roof was half lost in darkness, but Methos guessed from what he could make out that it might be made of expensive cedar-wood planking, probably imported from Tyre, its weight supported by sturdy stone columns.

  The torches illuminated the predictable crowd of courtiers to be found at any royal court, this lot almost all in the striped, fringed robes that seemed to be in current fashion for the Hyksos.

  As Prince Khyan continued his forward march, Methos, following in his wake, had only a brief glimpse of walls painted with more murals, these of lesser deities worshiping a greater—Set, yes, that’s who it was, labeled by a cartouche over his head, and dressed up as a Canaanite!—before he was brought up short by guards with crossed spears.

  There ahead of him, on a stone chair of a throne, sat the man who, glittering with gold at throat and waist and hilt of sword and dagger, must surely be King Apophis.

  The ruler of the Hyksos was of middle years, just at the point when a well-muscled mortal man began to turn to fat. His face was olive-skinned, with wide cheekbones, a jaw that looked strong enough to chew stone, and dark eyes that said their owner had seen a great deal and had given mercy to none of what he’d seen.

  Save for the dark hair, now streaked with gray, he looked not in the slightest like Khyan.

  So that was why the convenient fiction about Khyan being only a half-brother! “He doesn’t look at all like you, King Apophis!” “Really? Congratulations on becoming tonight’s sacrifice!” Much safer this way for everyone.

  Khyan, impatient with any ceremony, pushed the guards’ spears brusquely aside, hurrying straight to the royal throne. “Brother!”

  Apophis, to Methos’s great astonishment, got to his feet to pull Khyan into a firm embrace. And those cruel, jaded eyes softened for a moment to something approximating genuine love.

  So-o! Methos quickly put together what facts were known, extrapolating others: Khyan had spoken often of his brother, rarely of his brother’s wives, never of any nieces or nephews. Was that it? If King Apophis had no sons to his name, he might well have poured all his hopes, his frustrated parental longings, on Khyan.

  Only to learn too late that said brother is insane. My, my, see what love gets you? A blind spot where the loved one is concerned; a refusal to see the truth.

  That he himself had occasionally possessed such a blind spot over the centuries… ah, well, no man, not even an Immortal, was perfect.

  Ah, but I don’t like being on display like a conquered prize. I wonder if there’s any way I can just… merge with the crowd.

  But Apophis had released Khyan, and the cold stare was studying Methos, who, politic behavior being the better part of valor, gave up any attempts to slip away and bowed.

  Apophis glanced at Khyan. “Who have you brought me, brother?”

  “This… this is a valuable ally!” Khyan crowed.

  The cold stare never wavered. “And have you a name, oh valuable ally?”

  “I am Methos, King Apophis. And I have come—”

  A gasp from the crowd cut into his words. The king straightened in his chair, sharp gaze hunting out the one who had dared interrupt, and Methos thought that he’d seen snakes with warmer eyes.

  “You.” The royal hand stabbed out, and a man flinched. “Step forward.”

  The man not only stepped forward, he prostrated himself. “Oh mighty king, I meant no disrespect.”

  His voice was muffled against the stone of the floor, and the king snapped, “Up!”

  Scrambling hastily to his knees, the man repeated, “I meant no disrespect. But I know this one—and he is no friend to the Hyksos!”

  Damn it to the desert wastes, that’s the customs offi
cer. Of all the foul luck—

  But luck, Methos had learned over the centuries, was very much what one made it. He would much rather not have had so much hostile attention so suddenly drawn to him, but one took advantage of what was given.

  “Do you know me?” Methos purred at the official after only the smallest of pauses, ignoring the startled glance from the king at this arrogance. “Truly know me? Who am I, then?”

  “Stand,” King Apophis ordered shortly. “Speak.”

  The customs official shot Methos one quick, nervous glance. “This man, this foreigner, oh king, is someone of no known nation, no known abode. And more, oh king, he—he claims to be a magician!”

  A superstitious murmuring raced through the court. Methos, gambling, let out a cold, sharp bark of a laugh, and the murmurings stopped as though cut off by a blade. Into the sudden tense silence he said disdainfully, “Your Majesty, I made no such claim! I spoke the truth, told this… underling that I was merely a traveler, a pilgrim of sorts. And if he took those simple words to mean anything else…” He shrugged.

  “And are you a magician?” King Apophis asked.

  No verbal clue as to how he should answer. No hint of how the Hyksos felt about magic. Khyan was staring at him as though expecting him to say something wondrous, so Methos, feeling his way, said, “Maybe.”

  “Maybe!”

  “Your Majesty, if I were a magician, what good would boasts do me? And if I were not a magician, what good would boasts do me?”

  To his relief, King Apophis chuckled at that, and there didn’t seem to be active malice in the tone. Khyan laughed, mouth wide like that of a child, and said, “You see, you see? He is an ally, and”—his voice dropped to a fierce whisper—“he has been of—of great help to me. The dreams… he has been of great help.”

  “Has he? I thank you for that,” the king said to Methos, and seemed to mean it. “But why are you here?”

  “I come in the name of Pharaoh Kamose, oh king, to offer you tribute as is your due.”

  “Smooth words. And the tribute has, of course, already been accepted. But why are you here? You are not, I think, Egyptian.”