Chapter Four

Methos edged his way around a class of third-graders to stand uncomfortably close to Duncan, letting grey-haired dignitaries squish past him towards the stage. "I hate crowds," he muttered in MacLeod's ear. He stepped backwards, and a woman yelped as his heel landed squarely on her toes. With a patently apologetic and utterly insincere smile over his shoulder, Methos leaned forward again, hovering at Duncan's shoulder. "Please tell me our seats are near an exit so we can bolt out of here."

"Down there." Duncan pointed absently towards stage left, near the front of the auditorium. "There's an exit behind the end of the row, so there's your escape route. I had no idea so many people would be here. We should have gotten here earlier."

"Really," Methos said sarcastically. Joe, just in front of the two men, laughed.

"C'mon, Adam," the Watcher said. "You must've expected a lot of interest in Atlantis. It's everybody's favorite legend."

Methos lifted a finger. "One," he said, "you're discounting the entire Eastern half of the world with that statement, and two, I always thought King Arthur was everybody's favorite legend."

"Don't be difficult." Joe grinned over his shoulder at the oldest Immortal. "Pretend you're having a night out with the old man. Look at us. You two could be my kids." Merriment glinted in Joe's eyes as he looked back at the aisle, edging his way through the crowd.

Methos snorted. "Old man."

"There's not much family resemblance, Joe," Duncan pointed out, grinning.

"I guess you boys must've had a good-looking mother. Sure didn't get it from me." Joe grinned again, pushing his cane forward to secure a small pathway down the aisle. The grin acknowledged his unfair assessment of himself; despite the greying, brush-cut hair and the slightly awkward gait from artificial legs, Joe still had the spark of charm and the rough good looks he'd had twenty years earlier. At six feet in height, and, in his fifties, still with the build of the football player he'd once been, Joe looked very much as though he could be his companions' father.

The tattoo concealed on his left wrist made the relationships more complicated than that. After a crippling injury in the Vietnam War, an Immortal had saved Joe Dawson's life, and by doing so, changed it forever. The Watchers recruited the young man into their ranks, and much of his life had come to revolve around the secret society, and his charge, Duncan MacLeod. For fifteen years, he'd Watched the Highlander, learning almost as much about Duncan as Duncan himself knew. Their paths had crossed only in the last few years, and a friendship had grown up between Watcher and Immortal, against all regulations.

That friendship lead Mac to tell Joe that research Watcher Adam Pierson was in truth the legendary Immortal, Methos. Joe kept the ancient man's secret, first for reasons that even he couldn't define, and over time, to protect the man with whom he'd developed a wary friendship. Immortals would not be the only men after the oldest Immortal's head, if the Watchers were to learn of the secret Adam Pierson had harbored for a decade.

They finally edged their way down to the seats, and Duncan gestured Joe in. "You first, Dad," he grinned. Joe chuckled, and stepped down the aisle.

"Not bad seats," Methos said approvingly. "How'd you get us right up next to the stage?"

"Called in a favor," Duncan admitted. "I thought it might be busy. "Not," he added, looking over the auditorium, "this busy. They should have held this somewhere larger."

"This way it looks like more people are interested. 'Record crowd attends Atlantis lecture', along with a picture of people overflowing the aisles." Methos dropped into the seat next to Joe, doing his best to stretch long legs out in the narrow aisle. "I suppose I should thank you for thinking to get good seats."

"Don't strain yourself," Duncan suggested dryly.

"Okay," Methos said, more cheerfully.

Joe shook his head. "What do you do when Mac's not around for you to irritate, Adam?"

"Pick on myself," Methos said. "It's not nearly as much fun. I don't get half as outraged as he does." He smiled innocently at Duncan, who waved a hand, implying he was above the need to respond as he took the seat next to Methos. Still grinning, the oldest Immortal turned back to Joe. "How's the bar? I haven't been by in a while."

Joe's eyes lit up. Aside from the Watchers, the other love of Joe's life was his gin joint, a blues bar that filled up nightly with blues fans, musicians and listeners alike. "Good," he said. "There's a new bass player who comes in at least a couple times a week to jam. He's good. You should come by and listen. Both of you."

Duncan nodded. "When we get back," he promised.

The auditorium lights dimmed, turning all three mens' attention to the stage. A small round man with a gleaming head came out, blinking into the lights.

"Good evening, everyone. If you can just take your seats, we'll get started." He squinted against the lights, judging the crowds. "Looks like we have quite a turnout this evening. It's nice to know archaeologists can grab the general populace's attention every once in a while." As his eyes adjusted further to the light, he frowned. "Perhaps we can get some extra chairs in . . . ?" Light bounced off the top of his head in a hard reflection as he turned to talk to someone offstage, the microphone picking up scattered syllables. After a minute's discussion, he turned back to the microphone, nodding. "We'll bring some more chairs in for the back rows. If everyone who can't be seated yet could step back to give the crew some room . . . thank you. I'll go ahead and begin my introduction while they're doing that, so we'll get started on time." He cleared his throat, straightened his tie, and put on a rehearsed smile.

"Good evening. I'm Dr. Michael Powers, head of the Archaeology department here at the University. I expect a lot of you are waiting impatiently to debunk the findings we've made claim to."

Beside Duncan, Methos snorted. The Highlander elbowed him in the ribs.

"I think you'll be pleasantly surprised," Powers went on. "This isn't the kind of announcement we'd make without being very sure.

"I have the honor of presenting to you tonight's speaker, Dr. Mary Kostani. Dr. Kostani has been an associate of the University for five years, and is widely known in archaelogical circles for ground-breaking work in translating some of the more difficult Egyptian hieroglyphics. Like many of us, she's had a goal her entire life of making that one major find, the one that would make a real mark in accessing our past and the peoples from whom we're descended.

"Unlike most of us, Dr. Kostani has actually succeeded in achieving her goal. Eighteen months ago she located a site she felt certain was Atlantis. We've spent the last year and a half fundraising and beginning to explore the site. What Dr. Kostani has lead us to is a city nearly beyond our ability to imagine, so rich is it in artifacts. Last week's announcement and tonight's lecture are our first step in beginning a massive fundraising effort so that we can properly explore this new site. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to introduce you to the woman who has rediscovered Atlantis: Dr. Mary Kostani."

Applause rippled through the auditorium, louder than simple politeness dictated; the audience was interested in the topic, whether they believed Atlantis had been located or not. Dr. Powers stepped back from the podium, beckoning Dr. Kostani onstage with a smile.

Petite, with straight black hair cut at cheekbone length, she stepped out, a more genuine smile on her face than had graced Powers' during his speech. That smile froze in place, and her chin lifted a little, as she scanned the audience through the bright auditorium lights. To Joe's right, Methos and Duncan reacted in much the same way, both stiffening in their seats and straightening to better see the woman.

Joe, long familiar with the reaction, shot a startled look first at the two Immortals with him, and then at the woman on the stage. "She's one of you?" he hissed under the applause.

Dr. Kostani continued across the stage with only the slightest hesitation, her smile still warm, if no longer quite reaching her eyes. Her skin was warm olive, absorbing the stage lights to good effect, and her eyes were slightly tilted in a round face with high cheekbones. Not exactly beautiful, she was more than pretty; striking, with features worth a second look. She adjusted the microphone to her height -- even standing on the raised podium, she was clearly not quite five feet tall -- and inclined her head. "Good evening," she said, in faintly accented English. "Thank you for your welcome. I assure you, I have been looking forward to this day for a very long time."

Masked by the pleasantries opening her speech, Duncan nodded at Joe, without taking his eyes off the woman. "Aye," he whispered, "but I don't know her. I'd remember that face. D'you know her, Adam?"

"Yes," Methos said, almost voicelessly. The expectant expressions that crossed Joe and Duncan's faces were lost to him, as bright stage lights faded into the even brighter sunlight of memory.

Pacing in sand did not lend itself to the dramatic strides Methos tried for. The ground had the unpleasant habit of shifting away underfoot, causing unexected lurches at best, and badly twisted ankles at worst. After the third such twisting, Methos stopped pacing, lifting his hands to guard his eyes as he squinted over the dunes. In the distance, the great Sphinx, nearly completed, rose up, dignified and silent. Unable to track any motion nearby, he scowled at the Sphinx, and waited.

"Methos! Methos!" The voice came out of the dunes, sounding thin in the desert heat. Moments later sound was followed accompanied by a slim young woman bounding over the edge of a sandy hill. She jumped up and waved once, drawing attention to herself, as if there were other creatures of equal vibrancy nearby to distract him from her. Once she was certain he'd sighted her, she slid down the hill, leaving ruts in the sand in her wake.

Methos grinned, sliding down loose earth himself, to meet her in a small valley. With ease, he lifted her up against the crystalline sky, spinning around before he set her on her feet again. No more a native of this country than he, Ghean looked the part more, with her bronzed skin, dark eyes and black hair. Small as the Mediterranean folk were, Ghean was small even for them, less than five feet in height, and deceptively slender. There was more muscle in her compact frame than met the eye, but her weight remained slight for Methos' six-foot frame. Like Methos, Ghean was dressed in creamy white robes; unlike his clothes, hers seemed alive, crackling with the energy she possessed.

"Where have you been?" Methos demanded, smiling down at her. "I've been out here sweltering under the sun for half the day."

Ghean laughed. "I saw you leaving the edge of town not more than," and she glanced at the sun, pursing her lips before finishing, "not much more than an hour ago. Mother wanted help with a seam. I don't understand how she can write so neatly and not sew a straight seam."

"She probably doesn't understand how you can sew straight seams and still have dreadful handwriting."

"True." Ghean slipped an arm around Methos' waist, looking up at him. "Come. Let's circle back to town."

Methos chuckled. "What did you want to talk about that had to be done out in the sands instead of in the shade with some juice?" The chuckled turned to laughter at Ghean's pouting expression. "Just asking," he said mildly, to appease her.

The sensation he felt around the young woman was peculiar, not something he'd felt often before. A sense of the Quickening resided within her, untapped, waiting to be triggered. Her life might be gentle all the way through, and she might die aged or of illness, the potential within her never brought to life. If she met with violence, though, her mortal life would end, and she would awaken to a new existance, an Immortal life like the one Methos lived.

The thought distracted him for a moment, as they walked slowly through the sands. Centuries fell away, back to the night he had taken his first head. The memory was blurred, with a black sky and hard stars, and an axe in his hand. Nothing told him where he'd learned the skill to weild the weapon as efficiently as he had, or if it had been dumb luck that had prompted him to take the nameless man's head in a moment of panic.

Certainly nothing had prepared him for the storm that surged from the clear sky, or for the lightning that screamed through him, to leave him trembling in the shaking aftershock of the Quickening, shuddering from the intense pain/pleasure that rattled his body. When it occurred to him in the black night that he still lived, he staggered to his feet and limped away, leaving the body behind, but keeping the axe clenched in his fist.

Before that night and the foggy memory, there was nothing at all but a vague sense of many, many years passing.

"What are you looking so solemn about?" Ghean stopped to look up at Methos, the giant of an outlander, even more foreign to Egypt than she was. His pale skin was burned now, from the sun, but she knew it would fade quickly. Methos' sunburns always did. He browned, but slowly, and he would never pass for a native.

"Mmmm. I was thinking about the past. And the future."

Ghean held her breath, dark eyes lighting up. "Our future?"

Methos looked down and grinned. "You are never one to dance about the point, are you, Ghean? Yes, our future. Tell me what it was you wanted to talk to me about." He nudged her into walking again.

"Mother wants to return to Atlantis at the end of the flood season. She thinks she'll be done with all her work by then. I know your own work has kept you from meeting her, but I want you to talk to her before we go. I want you to come with us. You will, won't you?"

Methos nodded. "Yes. I would . . . I'd like to see your homeland. Its reputation precedes it, as a center for learning."

Ghean laughed. "Mother will like you," she predicted. "You're cut from the same cloth she is, a scholar to the bones. Why don't you just live there, in Atlantis? Very few people outside of it can read, but I know you can."

Because I am afraid I might want to never leave, and even hidden in a library, eventually someone will notice the scholar who doesn't age. "I learned to read and write when I was -- younger," Methos said absently, and chuckled to cover the hesitation in his words. "Obviously. It would be difficult to have learned when I was older, wouldn't it?"

There were journals secreted away, on clumsy clay tablets, rough notes sketched out in Sumerian pictographs and later, cuneiform. Much of it had been transcribed into the Egyptian heiroglyphics, a writing form far more capable than the earlier written languages. Over the last decade he had learned the Atlantean tongue and printed word, precise and more elegant than even the heiroglyphics. Methos thought he might someday transcribe those oldest journals into the newest language he had learned.

An astonishing thing, the invention of writing. It made him wonder how old he'd been when it was invented, and how it was he'd been in the right place to learn of it in its infancy. Had he been born in that region, sometime in the forgotten past, or had he merely come to be there? He'd started the journals as soon as he grasped the significance of the written word. It preserved his own history, and prevented him from losing any more time.

He was brought back to the present by Ghean saying, tentatively, "We could settle there, perhaps, after the wedding. You could study." Black eyes searched his face, waiting for a reaction.

Methos' heart lurched, though he smiled reassuringly at her. How fair was it to wed her, when he would not age, and she would -- or when she might die violently, releasing the Quickening within her and extending her life down through the centuries, married to a man she'd met in her childhood? "Perhaps," he answered. "It isn't a decision we have to make now, or quickly. Tell me," he continued lightly. "Did you have to escape from Aroz?"

Aroz was another problem, entirely outside the question of Ghean's potential. For years he had been Ghean's mother's bodyguard, and was clearly viewed less as an employee than as family. Just as clearly, he loved Ghean, and had become her self-appointed guard dog after she met Methos. Above that, he was skilled with the heavy blade he carried, and Immortal to boot. There was no love lost between Methos and Aroz, and while there had not yet been cause or opportunity for a confrontation, the status quo would not hold.

Ghean rolled her eyes. "Luckily, no. Mother'd sent him to get more ink, and so when I was done with the stitching, I just slipped out. Methos." Her next words tumbled out in a rush. "You must come meet Mother, very soon. I've told her all about you, but I'm afraid she's planning to marry me off to Aroz. You have to convince her we want to marry."

"Aroz?" Methos frowned, gnawing the inside of his lower lip thoughtfully, distracted from the conversation by considerations of survival. Staying within the town's boundaries would be the easiest way to delay the abruptly inevitable battle. It was one of the Rules they lived by: there could be no mortal witnesses to the battles in the Immortal Game. With luck, Methos would be able to keep Aroz inside the city until they had time to discuss the situation. Methos glanced at the tiny woman beside him, hope and worry sparking from her almost visibly. He had no desire to bring death into her family on the eve of their wedding; he had far less desire to die himself. If Aroz insisted on a fight, Methos couldn't allow himself to do anything less than fight as though his life depended on it. He was certain Aroz would have no compunctions against taking his head.

"He's like a brother," Ghean said miserably. "I love him but I don't want to marry him. I'm not sure Mother understands that. You have to tell her, Methos. He's so -- old!"

Methos couldn't stop the laugh, although he swallowed it and looked as apologetic as he could manage. Aroz appeared older than he did, indeed, but Methos was positive he was not only the older of the two Immortals, but the elder by centuries. "He's certainly a better financial match than I am," he teased, but relented at the horror on Ghean's face. "All right," he said. "I'll come meet your mother tomorrow. What will you do if she opposes the match?"

"Marry you anyway," Ghean said defiantely, frowning to hide the doubt in her eyes. "When tomorrow will you talk to her?"

"Early," Methos promised, "and alone." He lifted a hand to ward off her protestations. "You've already told her all about me, and I don't think I can make a good impression on two women of your family at the same time." He winked, and grinned.

Ghean's shoulders dropped. "All right. But you promise? Tomorrow?"

Methos nodded. "I promise."

Duncan elbowed Methos in the ribs again. "Well?" he demanded softly, as the woman onstage began speaking. "Who is she?"

Methos cleared his throat quietly. "Technically," he whispered, "I think she's my wife."