(The Chaos Chronicles continue)
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       "What now?" Duncan MacLeod asked the murdered man inside his head. This had become the question du jour of sorts for the past several jours. They had each used it to imply they'd had enough, or they simply awaited the worst, or a myriad other divers questionings, but the son of the Scottish Highlands meant only, "Now that I am healed from the madness of my grief and guilt, what do I do with the rest of my life?" or even more simply, "What do I do in the next five minutes?"

        "Oh, and am I now to remind you to breathe as well?" the inner voice chided him gently, engendering a warmth which rose up from Duncan's belly. "You know very well what to do. All a matter of context, Duncan, a matter of context..."

        "And what context is that, Sean?" Duncan pushed the green cloak off and stood carefully, guarding his left ribs with a broad right hand where the fatal wounding had sliced him nearly in two. His side was actually healed, but the memory still remained in the flesh. Dusting the pine needles off his back, he asked the question again, wondering idly if he'd only exchanged the one madness for another.

        "The battle is just over, Duncan. Your wounded litter the field. You damn well know what to do... Better than this old analyst who saw the least actual fighting he could manage."

        Wounded? Field? Maybe twas the good doctor needed...

        But as Duncan looked down by the dying fire, there was poor Dawson curled on the cold ground, moaning in his sleep and Adam rubbing his shoulders and cursing quietly...and up on the hill behind the fire, Ram lay on the forest bed, bare-legged, drifting in a fitful dream.  Duncan picked up the cloak and the fur and went to his Field Marshall first.

        Ram woke just long enough to reprimand him for seeing to her first, before she snuggled into the fur and fought her way back to an uneasy rest. He covered her with the cloak and marched down onto the field.

        "Adam," Duncan thought it wise to announce himself, to let the tenor of his voice precede him and give the Eldest Immortal something to judge his sanity by. "What did you do to your shoulders?"

        Adam jerked as Duncan laid his hand on the rock hard musculature between neck and shoulder where the oars and the sea bay and the leaky boat had wrenched the Immortal. "Oh, you rowed the old bucket over?"

        "Actually," Adam's head lolled forward as Duncan's strong hands found their way over the ache that had claim his entire upper back. "Joe did at least half of the rowing...."

        "While I sat on his legs in the cold brine, bent up like a pretzel," Adam finished.

        Duncan's skilled fingers loosed the knots in the Elder Immortal's neck, and then over the crest of his shoulders. As Adam began to relax, he related the not-so-maiden voyage of the bad ship Mac- Barnacle, and by the time Duncan had finished with his arms both men were laughing. But when Duncan moved around in front of Adam to start uncramping his legs, the Elder Immortal begged off and turned the focus of their attention on the Watcher, Joe Dawson, huddled in the shadow of a log by the fire.

        Between them, Adam and Duncan bullied the Watcher out of his prostheses. Such plentiful and rich array of colorful profanity had never graced the wild little glen. Dawson was still spitting venom when Adam returned with blankets from the boat shed and bundled the furious Watcher up in two of them. Duncan had rebuilt the fire and rewarmed the coffee.

        "If you promise not to bite me," Adam began, reaching into one of the pockets in his long coat.

        "Oh, bite ME, you sorry supercilious pseudo-sophomoric sadist!"

        Duncan looked up from the fire and applauded. Adam joined him. Both of them bowed their appreciation in Dawson's direction. It was so rare that one found high hilltop satire in the modern day.

        "I respectfully defer, Wordmaster Dawson," Adam began again. "Here is some medication that may serve your aches."

        "I don't need anything!" Joe grumbled.

        "Well, then just humor me," Adam replied, handing over the pills.

        Duncan brought over some water and they both stared down at the grumpy old man who was hundreds and thousands of years their junior.

        When it was clear Joe wouldn't do anything with them hovering over him, the two Immortals went back to the fire, each of them suggesting that the other might tend to the Watcher's sore muscles. Adam settled himself down with Joe's legs, rolled down the synthetic sleeve of "skin" and began drying and oiling the hinges, cleaning them of the fish water stink and the grating salt.

        "I know I said some..." Duncan began haltingly at Sean's suggestion he speak with Methos.

        "You didn't mean..." Adam didn't look up. He wasn't in the mood for discussing anything just now, too tired, too disconnected. "You were sick. We understood."

        "I meant every word," was Duncan's unexpected reply. It was the truth, he hadn't said anything that wasn't absolutely true. Somewhere beyond the truth lay his transgression. He was sure Sean would be dunning him about that later. He was going to have to learn to be better than the rules, the truth.

        Adam did not exactly groan, but for the look on his face, he might have done. "And the part about the shower?"

        Duncan thought for a moment, searching his memory through the fog of his delirium and Methos' magic medicaments. "Oh," he said finally, "Oh, I see. That's why you wouldn't have me touchin' yer knee, ye winsome little wench." He reached forward and patted Adam on the knee, laughing.

        Adam stopped breathing and his eyes grew big as teacups. He jumped up to standing, Joe's leg dropping in the dirt. "I, I'm going for a walk," he said without even a pretense at covering his sudden dismay.

        "Sure, Adam," Duncan's dark brows rose. "I'm sorry," he called to the lanky back, though he wasn't exactly sure what he needed to apologize for. Surely Methos didn't think he had any untoward designs on him.

        "Oh, Duncan," Sean whispered somewhere exactly between his ears, in the middle of his rather thick old Gaelic skull. "For a man of your years and your experience, you can be so charmingly uninformed sometimes."

          "Oh, Brother," Ram mused from her perch in the life boat Duncan had deployed for her. "I do so enjoy these little impromptu chats. She lay in the raft curled over its pillow edge, her sore arms out of their braces and soaking in the cold water of the bay. As she laid her head against the soft rim, it was clear that a good portion of her enjoyment had to do with the view.

        Not, the dark, weathered boards of the boat house and dock, not just the morning light coming up over the wilderland sea inlet and the pines...it was the Highlander himself had her unabashed, though sleepy, attentions as he swam the chill waters like some merman out of a myth.

        "What?" Duncan broke the surface of the water and swam back to the raft, stopping just short enough so Ram would not have to worry about his bumping into her arms. She had taken every blow she had dealt him, except the mortal one to his heart, and they were severely broken and bruised.

        "You are such a pleasure to watch, Brother," Ram lifted up her head. "Really. It never ceases to amaze me how very fair you are."

        "Is my mother fair?" Duncan could not think why he would ask such a question.

        "Oh, exceedingly," Ram lifted her hands to gesture, but thought better of it and plunked them back down into the healing cool waters. "She has the darkest red hair in waves from her crown to her waist, pale, fine features, a tiny, perfect nose, honey brown eyes, and lush proportions for all she is a tall woman. She is far and away the loveliest Danaan Monarch in the history of The Crown."

        Duncan smiled. It was such a new idea for him, that he even had a mother.

        Ram smiled back, but there was a wicked turn to her grin. "Oh, my yes," she continued airily, "Seeing us together, one would never guess we were sisters."

        Duncan choked spastically and disappeared under the waves.

        Almost a full minute passed before he ascended slowly between Ram's battered arms. The look on his face was partly disgust and partly terror. "You are my aunt?" he asked in a voice more breath than substance.

        "Look at me, Duncan," she laughed. "I am far too ugly to be any kin to you. It was a joke."

        "Haven't you laughed at me enough this whole night?" Duncan stroked back away from the raft.

        "Forgive me, Brother," Ram lifted her arms out of the water and began replacing the braces. "This is not the best time, but then it is probably the only time, and I need to talk to you about my son."

        Duncan drifted back and lifted into the raft in one elegant, effortless wave. Ram stared again and the wicked grin returned, salacious and salty. "Mmm, mmm," she said.

        "Have you no sense of decency," Duncan struggled into his jeans.

        "None whatsoever," she replied. "And aren't you the last person to comment on my sense of decorum?"

        "You said you forgave me," Duncan fumbled with his zipper. "Are you going to hold it over my neck for the rest of my life?"

        "Just the rest of mine," Ram sighed. "Here," she handed him the second brace and then cautiously offered her right arm.

        Duncan put his large left hand out flat, palm up. He let her lay her arm on his hand and then he curled around the arm with a tender care which seemed inconsistent with his main occupation as warrior. His experience in the many wars of his four centuries, however, had taught him all the ways of pain and its various remedies and Duncan was exceedingly talented at this. He knew just how much pressure could be tolerated and where and how to increase the bindings as the senses accommodated and dulled. In short order he had Ram's right arm braced tightly enough for support while still being tolerable. He reached for her left arm, undid the brace and corrected the binding. It was too tight. Ram was too intolerant of her own discomfort.

        This latter disturbed Duncan, but not as much as the numerous older woundings and scars evident on the unbruised side of her arm and showing at the loose neck of her T-shirt and up and down the length of her legs. He ran his fingers lightly over a burn scar on her left knee. "What is this, Ram?"

        "I wanted to talk to you about my son," Ram repeated her earlier question, making it clear she was in no mood to be forthcoming about this other matter.

        "I have made all the arrangements necessary, Ram. I've baby-sat Mary often enough, I think I have the routine down. I know it's different with a newborn, but I've read quite a bit and Anne has been most helpful, and..."

        "My other son," Ram interrupted. "I left you all the legal papers for adoption at the dojo, as well as two books-full of instructions, poems, things to tell Sean when he is older..."

        Duncan ran his thumb across her temple. "We won't let you die," he said, as much to himself as to her.

        "My other son," Ram said again. "Duncan, I wish there was more time, because this would be better to approach more slowly, but now is all the time I have for this."

        "You can come back with us, stay at the dojo, or anywhere you like. Lucille said she would gladly rent the apartment on the next lower floor in her building for you if that is..."

        "Duncan!" Ram shook his hand off. "Lose the shepherd mode a moment and listen to me!"

        He drew back and folded his arms. He both respected and loathed the excruciating accuracy of her percipient aim. "Speak," he said as if he were a sovereign holding court and recognizing a major player.

        Ram nodded her head, "Thank you," she began. "Adam is in for a bad time with this. He knows this at some level, but he cannot deal with it. I want you to make him care for his brother, if not in his heart, at least in his efforts. Do you understand?"

        "As much as some old warmeat from The Project can," Duncan replied dryly.

        "...who's been to hell and back," Ram added softly. "I am very proud of you, Duncan."

        "How can you be proud of a coward?" Duncan was too readily reminded of her scathing comments in the death dream. "Who has murdered his own student?"

        "I guess I'm just a sucker for great buns," Ram said in such a serious tone that Duncan dissolved. It was obviously a Sweet Lucille remark, but entirely apt in responding to his attempt at self-denigration when she'd spent half the night teaching him a better way.

        "All right," she continued, "Now that I have your attention, there is something I must reveal--in confidence--about Adam...because it is bound to come between you, and fairly soon, as far as I can tell..."

        "You mean about Death and The Four Horsemen? I already know." That had all but ended their friendship; to discover the charmingly reticent young-old man had slaughtered tens of thousands across Europe with his bloody Bronze Age cohorts. Rapine and pillage and torture and murder littered the résumé of The Eldest Immortal, Methos.

        Ram's brows rose, "Well, yes, it does concern that...but not what you think."

        "What do I think?" He had long since suspected her of being telepathic.

        "I think you do not know what an incredibly rude question you have just asked me, but I will let it go this time." Ram closed her eyes and scratched her hawkish nose with the edge of her right brace. "I am really the very last person to be counseling you in matters of sexual congress with men. I only have the odd combative occasion to refer to and no experience whatsoever in the gentler approach."

        Duncan held himself still beneath her all-but-physical blows.

        "And again, you are not listening, Duncan. Please, this is important!"

        He breathed deeply, "I await your vengeance, Ram. I am listening."

        She said something low and guttural in Egyptian, that sounded for all the world like "scald the cats," and then tried again to connect with the Scottish stepchild before her. "Believe me, if it were vengeance I intended, there would be no need for discussion."

        "There will come a time," Ram breathed slowly and considered her words very carefully. "Adam will offer himself to you..."

        "Excuse me?" Duncan thought this must have something to do with Adam's odd reaction to the massage and the comment about the shower.

        Ram rolled her eyes to the sunrise-brushed heavens, the fading stars. "Let me think what the term is...ah, yes...he will 'come on to you.'"

        Duncan had had his share of other folk, both genders, who were--how had she said that?--"a sucker for his buns." He knew where she was going with this, just as surely as he knew she was nuts.

        "Look, Ram, if Adam were interested in me that way, then I would have known it before now. Four hundred years is time enough to have a great many experiences. I am not a child."

        "He is not interested in you in that way," Ram shook her head, "but still he will offer himself to you and you will need to decide how to handle the offer to the benefit of you both."

        "Ram, this really doesn't make any sense."

        "No it doesn't. Let me try this a different way, Brother. What did Adam tell you about why he raided with The Horsemen?"

        "Because he took pleasure in the killing and..." Duncan still could not resolve the two opposite visions he had of his friend, the languid junior professor, Adam, versus the mounted monster, Death.

        "Did you believe him?" Ram asked, waiting for the internal noise to die down.

        "Did I--? Why would he lie?"

        "Because the truth is more awful," Ram fixed him on her very sharp stare, the one which had transfixed him the preceding night, now lit with the rising sun and the shimmer of the bay waves.

        Duncan clearly did not believe, could not even imagine, anything more awful.

        "You need to understand, now or soon, God willing, that your concept of Right and Wrong is all too rigid and convenient...No," she interrupted his protest before he had a chance to give it voice. "There is no evil, Duncan. There is nothing done by another that would not be done by you in a similar circumstance...and until you understand that, all else is artifice."

        "Well then what was all that about 'Are you a good man, Duncan?' and 'Who judges you, Duncan?' that you sliced me up over last night? What can the answers possibly be if there is no Good or Evil?"

        "There is only bravery and cowardice. You choose to live or you decline the honor."

        "Oh, Ram," Duncan made some sort of hog sound, an expansive snort. "It can't be that easy."

        "I did not say it was. Making Order out of Chaos is never easy. It is the most difficult act of creation, entirely fraught with peril at every turn, frightening beyond measure, agonies most dire..."

        "...but that is the price which Life extracts, and for that price, a wondrous bounty awaits."

        Duncan yawned. "Very pretty, but it's worth about as much as this brine," he scooped up a palm- full of bay water and launched it her direction, baptizing her in the gelid, fishy fluid.

        Ram never moved. She didn't even seem to react, just reached over the side of the raft. Readying the answering assault, Duncan thought. But, no, she cradled the water in her cupped hands. "From this Chaos, from the Living Waters, God Himself makes the Order of the World Entire."

        Duncan heard the words. He heard their Truth, their import, but still he was deaf to the meaning, though he did not doubt now, as he had a moment earlier, that there was a meaning.

        "Good," she said, "Very good, Brother. Again, I apologize to you that this is done so gracelessly, but I have no time for a proper instruction. If you will only trust me and listen and remember, then my words will be of use to you in some time to come."

        "And even if you don't remember, I am sure Sean will remind you. He and I have been round the block on this very point many an afternoon tea. I am sure he will add his own version of Ultimate Order into the picture...as you will your own, when the time comes. Adam's history is important, both as an example and as explanation."

        Duncan settled back and did his best to listen, but what came out of Chaos' mouth was beyond him to bring to Order, though, in the end he had to agree, given the circumstances, he would have done no better than Adam, would have, in fact, done much, much worse.

      Methos first learned of his mother's continuing clandestine interference in his life somewhere at the end of his second millennium. Some incident that he could not now remember had kicked off a row between him and his very strange mother which ended with Adam headed for the wilds of Middle Europe. In very ugly terms he had made it clear to his forbear that he was no child to be coddled and pampered and guarded over, that he was fully capable of taking care of himself, and that she could bloody well go to hell for all he cared.

        And he had indeed thereby sent her to bloody hell as Ram, King Set, had retreated from her beloved son and promised to intercede for him no longer.

        But Methos had sent himself, all unknowing, into a hell far bloodier, incredibly more dire, than that to which he had consigned the Danaan monarch who had given him the life he was about to destroy utterly.

        Methos was, despite his protestations to the contrary, entirely unprepared for what he found among the beastes of the Western climes. Having spent his whole life in the quieter fields of the agrarian lands which would come to be know as the Fertile Crescent, he was unaccustomed to the sheer brutality of the hunters and nomads in Middle Europe. Here the beastes starved and fell ill from all manner of plagues and deprivations. He had thought he knew death in all its many faces, but here he began to understand horror and anguish and all the impossible grief of mortality as he had never known it before. Home--he thought of it as such only now that he had left it far behind--had been a place, a time, of civil thought and enriching conversations, of tender liaisons and gentle sadnesses. Here, there was only the raw, sere strugglings of sheer terror and constant, unmerciful fears.

        Endless sleepless nights, darker here somehow, where his only thoughts were of dawn and whether he would survive until then. Very gradually Methos grew more accustomed to moving through the madness of land and of people who were little more than animals. He learned the many different dialects and simple customs. Their languages and social order being rudimentary at best, this was not a difficult task for him. He found it nearly impossible to accustom himself to the constant, unnerving distress he felt which sapped his strength, and melted his frame to a spare shadow of its former heft, and curled his shoulders forward in a permanent posture of wariness. In simple point of fact, he had never been so absolutely afraid in his entire long life.

        At the end of Methos' first decade following his "running away from home," he ran afoul of Caspian and Silas, out on a special raiding party to procure "entertainment" for their master, Cronos.

        "And that was how Adam first met, Cronos," Ram paused in her story. "I am getting cold, Duncan, can we disembark this fine ship," she indicated the raft, "and continue on dry ground?"

        Duncan rowed the raft back towards the dock and helped her off. He climbed up and then pulled the raft after him, setting it upside down to dry. "I think Cronos is himself an argument that there is such a thing as pure evil," he commented.

        Ram popped Duncan on the back of his head with one of the metal forearm braces. "If I had the time, I would have started with Cronos' history. Did he not...do you not have his memories...did he not invest you as he passed on to Last Gate?"

        "Invest me?" Duncan opened the door to the boat house and waited for Ram.

        "Damn! Language is such a feeble, awkward...!" Ram sputtered as she stomped past him.

        It was as he suspected, Duncan thought. She does read minds.

        Ram spun round instantly and raised a warning finger, the only one not mangled, on her right hand.

        "And that," Duncan closed the door behind him and kicked on the generator so they could have some light, "just proved it."

        Ram tipped her chin down on her chest, which had become a veritable prow in her current condition, and glared at him angrily. "You do not yet remember what happened as your dead left you."

        It wasn't a question. "I know I didn't like it," Duncan replied digging in the cupboards for some blankets and...no there was no whiskey, scotch, or any other comforting nectar left in place. Adam must have found it looking for the blankets earlier when they'd seen to Dawson.

        "Here," Ram handed over a silver flask. She held it between her wrists, unable to grasp it.

        Duncan wrapped a blanket round her shoulders and took the flask. He offered her the first sip which she took silently, pulling back away from him when she was done. "Thank you," he said after taking his share.

        "Do not thank me, Brother," Ram said quietly, "you are going to need it."

        And she said not another thing until they were settled in the back seat of Dawson's car in the adjacent garage port.

        "I said I would let your rudeness go the first time," Ram began, "but you have not heeded my warning, have in fact given me full rights for what I am about to do to you and you have only yourself to blame for this."

        Duncan thought she sounded like a berobed judge in high court handing down the last sentence. Sean piped up in the depth of his consciousness, pleading with him to apologize, and quickly, anything to turn Ram away from her intentions. His friend seemed to know what those intentions were, though Sean was not about to enlighten him more than to say Duncan's continued ignorance about such matters was infinitely desirable. I am no coward, Duncan silently argued. Let her do her worst, this mind witch.

        A sudden sadness, not his own, gripped Duncan then and Sean faded into the morning's fog...Oh, Duncan...but the Highlander heard nothing else.

        "Time being short, this is probably for the best," Ram leaned forward and brushed his forehead with the tips of her taped and swollen fingers.

        ...and the world fell away into darkness. Duncan felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, felt his flesh writhe into a different form, felt a dull, persistent pain through the orbit of his right eye, felt his mouth twist into something very unlike a smile, felt...

        ...everything that Cronos felt that first morning he made the acquaintance of the pale, tall Immortal who would become the architect of his greatest campaigns.................

     Cronos dug his knuckle into his right eye and pressed until he felt the pain down to his shoulders. The pressure against the eyeball registered a false light, explosive and sparkling in the back of his brain. His cheeks plumped in a vicious grin and he removed his hand letting the one pain balance the other. The last wounding of his mortal life had been a horseman's pike through his right eye. The grandest irony, he thought, that I should have felt no pain at the moment of my death and all this ache afterward and for all my days.

        But, then I could be Silas, my skull crushed, and no more brains left than a half-witted bear.

        And here was his pet bear now, Cronos thought as the eerie light of a foggy morning glared suddenly with the lifting of the tent flap. His children had returned, and with a new toy. Delightful. Cronos settled back against the fur draped over his saddle and waited for Caspian and Silas to ready their unlucky guest. He studied the clothes which Caspian threw to the floor, piece-by-piece. They were worn and patched in places, but they spoke clearly of wealth, just as they spoke of their origin some- place far east of this godforsaken spot. Perhaps the lads had brought him something more valuable than the odd entertainment.

        Cronos turned his attention to the man. Being naked among strangers does not bother him enough, he noted. This one is some sort of prince or landed son. He is used to being undressed by others, used to slaves and servants. You have had great power in your land, but you have been given it, it is nothing you have earned. Not with that pale skin that bears only the one scar which took you out of life, the tiny mark beneath that left nipple. You died quickly, quietly, Cronos thought, a bit too young, but otherwise you came into your Immortality unscathed.

        And his weapon. Cronos came near to salivating, a finer sword he had never seen in all his near- millennium of years. An el's worth of bronze blade, jewel-encrusted, gold inlaid, Cronos picked up the sword with great reverence, running his calloused hands over the rich hilt and across the guards, entirely absorbed in the wondrous weapon while the lads finished tying the guest, wrists and ankles, upright between two of the tent posts. They had done well. He would reward them.

        "Silas, stop pawing him," Cronos called out. "Go!"

        Silas' face drooped into a pout of incredible proportions.

        "You have done well," Cronos said more gently, "Go on now. I will let you know when I am done with him."

        This brought a bright, beaming smile to the giant's broad features.

        And a transparent look of horror to the young man bound between the tent posts.

        Just the right effect in both cases, Cronos congratulated himself. Cloudy or no, this was going to be a wonderful day. Well, now, my fine young prince, let us see what you are made of beneath that fine white skin. Cronos lifted himself up from the furs and advanced slowly towards this new one with the strong aura that made his sore eye pulse. The man could not have seen more than two decades before First Death, but his bearing, even trussed between the poles, spoke of a far greater span of time, though it would have to have been a soft life by the look of him. Well, princeling, Cronos thought, that is all about to change.

        Silently he strode to a point just in front of the tall man, now rendered just below eye-height by the forced spread of his long and well-muscled legs. Cronos let his steel eyes take him inside the young man. (However old he was, he was young in the ways of this world, Cronos reasoned) Good, he thought, he neither flinches nor turns his gaze. Hah, he studies me as well. Excellent.

        But you are frightened out of your wits, you reek of it, lordling. Cronos breathed in through his nose...yes, the acrid aura was clearly fear, and yet this man held himself at practiced stillness between the posts, never once testing his bonds. This one would be quiet. Also, excellent.

        Cronos stepped back and let his eyes wander over the man's body, more to judge his reaction than to measure the man's physical state...he had done that earlier without thinking, as they brought the lad in. No, this one was too noble to be even slightly bothered by the indignity. "What is your name," Cronos asked. His eyes finished their tour where they had begun and he asked the question in the simple language of the plainsmen.

        "I am surely not going to put my name on your tongue beside the dung which resides there already," the bound man replied in a particularly ornate form of proto-Aramaic.

        Oh, dear me, Cronos laughed inwardly never cracking his smooth visage, and he's a scholar, as well. He affected a look of incomprehension, tilting his head, slacking his mouth. Oh, little fish, he thought, here is a bit of slack to make you think you have gained ground. He wandered almost aimlessly around the left post and planted himself behind the young man who had turned his head to follow him and now had his ear pointed towards Cronos, listening. "You think because I am with these animals that I am one of them, young lord?" Cronos crooned into the ear in the self-same Aramaic dialect. He watched the lean shoulders tighten, but otherwise no reaction could be observed. Oh, young lord, you are too perfect.

        "Well, now, once again, your name," Cronos leaned closer but kept out of the man's sight.

        "Methos," the man replied in an even tone which belied his helplessness.

        "That was very good, Methos," Cronos walked around again to stand in front of Methos. "I am Cronos." He extended his hand and, damned, if Methos didn't reflexively move the right hand forward in its tight leather bonds. Cronos smiled pleasantly. This is the look, my dear Methos, which you will soon learn to know as the most dire warning. "Does my eye interest you?" he asked.

        If this Methos had missed the expression, he surely heard the tones beneath the words and he tore his hazel gaze away from the hideous scar on Cronos' face. "No, Methos, when we have achieved an... understanding..." he paused a moment and reached his hand out to touch the man's clenched jaw, "these petty reminders will not be necessary."

         Cronos watched the man closely as he continued to run his hands over the smooth face, the chin. He traced the jaw line and down the neck and, side-to-side, along the prominent collar bones. Cronos kept his touch light, but firm. Methos held stock still against the preliminary foray, his eyes never wandering from Cronos' appraising stare.

        "You are high born, Methos. That much is certain. I am sure you have had the very softest beds, the fairest maids, the finest teachers when you were in your land, but you are in my land now!" As he said this last his hand slid suddenly down the young man's left pectoral and pinched hard the nearly hairless nipple. A shudder ran the entire length of his prisoner's frame. The hazel eyes closed and the air blew out of this Methos prince with the whistle of a viper. Cronos continued the painful grip and his narrative, "There are many things your fine teachers neglected in your education," he released the man. "Things about the order of power." The eyes opened again, glazed with unbidden tears. This did not please Cronos, but then the man had not cried out, had not moved...his endurance would improve.

        "There are things about your own nature that you have not even guessed, Methos, capacities undreamed of, desires unimagined, unimaginable..." Cronos patted the narrow waist. "We will certainly need to feed you...I imagine it has been difficult for you..." his voice turned into a soft whisper as his hand drifted ever lower. Every muscle in the bound man went rigid.

        Cronos stepped back suddenly and listened to the relief in the young man's breathing. "Difficult without servants to see to your needs. Difficult to learn all those petty chores which you had taken for granted like the rising of the sun." Yes, definitely, Cronos mused. This would be all too simple after all. He would have him powerless by the time the sun rose again. He was a little disappointed, in fact, thinking this one would be more of a challenge.

        Cronos strolled round the man, ticking off this or that torment, watching to see if he could command a stronger response. "We could reopen that tidy little wound," he indicated the scar beneath the now bruised nipple. Cronos reached towards the spot and again the eyes closed the body attempted an involuntary defense. He was careful not to touch Methos as he continued, coming close to him with this or that gesture, never quite making contact, building the man's anxiety gradually, twisting his silent fear to an unbearable pitch. "Caspian is very fond of branding and burning," Cronos commented almost casually. No reaction. "Silas, on the other hand, is more fond of fracturing...fingers, legs, faces." Again, no reaction until Cronos reached out his hand.

        "Sometimes," Cronos shrugged his shoulders as if the boredom had undone him and turned his back on the man. Behind him, he could feel Methos' cranking up the last of his splendid reserve. It was almost time. Cronos readied himself, calling up his own assortment of imaginings.

        "Sometimes," now he walked purposefully back across the tent towards the trapped young man. "I favor the more complex methods of abacination, disarticulation, " he proceeded around the man moving to the blind spot at his back. Here, every word, every sound strained the fine mind, the keen senses. "But you know, princeling," there was a quiet rustle of leather passing over leather. Let him think I mean to flog him...he is ready for that, Cronos thought. "I find the simple approach is always..."

        "THE BEST!" with this last, he swung an arm around the man's chest.

        Methos' lips closed suddenly to stifle a yelp and he backed reflexively away from the arm and into Cronos. The next instant, Methos began screaming as Cronos entered him in one horrible thrust. Every muscle strained as Methos tried to crawl out of his own skin, away from this hideous violation, but there was no escape possible.

        Fully buried in the frantic flesh, Cronos found it difficult not to finish immediately, but he brought the full presence of his disciplined cruelty to bear and forestalled his climax as he reached his free hand round and cut off both the scream and the breath of the young man. He held his large, rough palm there until Methos began to lose consciousness and the taut, slim body relaxed. Then he released his hand and began to move slowly, his mouth close to the drooping head. "So many things to learn, Methos."

        Cronos' hand moved down from the man's chest to Methos' erection, a consequence of the strangling. "You see, there are things about your own flesh you do not even admit. Desires unimagined." He began to slide his hand in time to his own rhythm, trapping Methos between the man's proud flesh and his own.

        Cronos felt the man dissolve in a maelstrom of pain and pleasure and unassailable self-loathing. When Silas and Caspian had done with him, this princeling would hardly remember any other life before this moment, or remembering would see it as the ramblings of another, far more fortunate than he. The moment of this man's breaking was so utterly delicious, Cronos could hold back no longer. He hurried the pace, his own and the man's, and the moment was over.

        The dull ache returned to Cronos' wounded right eye.

        Get me out of here! Duncan pleaded, struggling within the Bronze Raider's skull. With a supreme effort he disengaged from the scene of Adam's devastation only to find the best he could manage was to move forward to the next morning.

        Duncan found himself, as Cronos, holding Adam, Methos, in his lap, rocking him as if he were a child. He might as well have been. The fine, patrician features were haggard and blank, the hazel eyes so widely dilated they might have been black, and bearing the archetypic expression of the lost and damned. Methos was no longer bound. There was no need. As he, as Cronos, spoke to him he touched him both gently and obscenely and there was no reaction at all, not the slightest move to protect himself, not the barest sound.

        "You see how very simple it is, boy," Duncan felt the words rising from his own throat, "now that we have come to an understanding..."

        "Duncan?" Ram's voice led him out of the nightmare.

        The Highlander jerked awake howling. When he looked down to see the dampness overlying his crotch, he bolted out the car door and fell to his hands and knees, spewing until he thought he would hemorrhage with the effort.

        Ram waited until the worst paroxysm had passed and then reached down to offer him...

        Some sort of large white pill, Duncan thought. "What is it?" then he gagged again.

        "Your peppermints," Ram replied, "They always help me."

        "You know," Duncan tensed and tried to stop the next wave, "I could kill you for this."

        "Not to worry, Brother," Ram handed him a wet cloth and rubbed his back as he set to spewing again.

        "You already have."

       "I have run out of dry things to wear," Duncan complained as he levered onto the dock. The cold water had brought him part way back from the grim revelation, the unmerciful visit into the three souls of Duncan himself and Adam and Cronos--though there was little enough of this last soul. Back in the world of the present, he could not seem to completely reinhabit his own flesh, could not lose the distinct sensation that he was sullied, marked, by the experience. Duncan was hard-pressed to find a "fit" within himself.

        Ram handed him a new pair of slacks, soft grey wool with a pleat down the front.

        "Where?" he began to ask as he dried. She must have packed them along with the sumptuous feast she'd bought, as if catering his transformation weren't enough. Duncan pulled on the soft trousers, thinking at first that wool was going to be impossible to wear against his bare skin, but they were lined in silk. They fit better than he did and helped, like the chill water, to define...what? the edges between what he was and where the rest of the world began. "Why?"

        "I thought I might want something clean to bury you in," Ram hooked under the matching shirt with her left brace and lifted it up to him. She had changed as well, in black turtleneck and jeans, a MacLeod tartan wool shirt over the rest, hiding the bulge where Sean lay sleeping. He begrudged Ram her lushness, belly and breast. The sheer substance of her gravidity seemed only to demean him, juxtaposed as it was against his raw transparencies. He wasn't used to feeling fragile, and she was almost too solid for him to bear.

        Duncan was still too deep in the experience, too open, to tolerate her dark joking. Perhaps she did not understand how wounded he was by what had happened inside his head, by what had happened to Adam at his, at Cronos', hands. He was weary of her continuing references to dying, when clearly she felt nothing at all. Perhaps she was every bit as heartless as she sometimes seemed. Perhaps the Danaa were not only not-human, but inhuman. He sat down beside her on the dock trying to find the words that would elicit the gentleness that he knew was there, that he sorely needed just now, "I have talked this over with Sean. I need to ask you some questions about what you said, and what happened."

        Ram did not soften. She seemed to be politely ignoring him, or rather, giving him just enough attention not to be rude. Her gaze traveled away from him, over the road, up the hill to the clearing. "Dawson is just making coffee. We have some time. Go ahead."

        "I know you said this was to explain why Adam would, would, I think you said 'offer' himself to me at some point in the future. But I cannot imagine why he would...offer...himself to anyone, ever again."

        "He maneuvered himself through guile and wit out of that wretched place and into a position where Cronos needed him other than as court catamite. It took him many years, but he is very, very intelligent, and his motivation was...ample. He still got boffed the night before any raid..."

        Duncan's deep brown eyes opened wide. How could she speak of this so casually?

        "...because it made him fight more ferociously. And, I suppose, because Cronos had his own sense of order, to which he was devoted and through which bright Adam caught him up in the vision of The Four Horsemen." Ram waited for dead Sean's silent commentary to cease before she continued. Methos had been more friend than patient to Sean, but still Dr. Burns had always suspected there was some deep mystery lurking beneath the surface of the perpetual cynical and amoral disdain which Adam affected.

        "Adam loves you.  At some point in time he will offer you that thing which is the most precious to him, that thing which he had lost and which he fought so hard to regain...the sovereignty of his own body, the integrity of his flesh." Ram finished her recitation of the history as if it were only that and no part of anyone she knew or cared for. The words would have been touching but that their narrator remained unmoved.

        Duncan put his hand on her shoulder. "Wait a moment...what will I do when that happens, Ram?"

        "I am sure you will think of something that pleases both of you."

        "If I accept," Duncan wrapped his arms around him and ducked his head, "Oh, Dear Lord, I could not possibly...I have lived through sodomizing him, and I understood how Cronos felt, and, and..."

       The bay water lapped against the dock bearings while Duncan fought for the truth...

        "I enjoyed it. I had the exquisite pleasure of it..." Duncan felt his gorge rise and he had to remain still until he settled again. "I could never stand to do it...to make it real."

        "Duncan," she looked up at him, the first time since he'd boarded the dock. "I am sure this consumes you presently, but it will find its place in the scheme of your life, its order. I apologize for revealing this to you with such wretched timing, but it was all the timing left. Let the vision rest, put it away from you and Sean will help you with it when things are more quiet, more reasonable."

        "You mean, when I do not care about it any more?" As much as he detested his current vulnerability, he was loathe to lose it just yet. "Like you?"

        Her grey-green eyes never moved away from his, but she was blind to him. Duncan jerked back from her sudden unseeing stare which threatened to dematerialize him.

        "Sorry," Ram said with an irritating composure. "I was trying to think what you objected to, perhaps the term 'boff,' was too base. Or perhaps..."

        "Do you feel nothing?" Duncan's question bordered on accusation.

        "Probably not," she said with the same unchanging tone. Carefully, Ram unwound her sore limbs and stood. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, Brother. You will think of something splendid to resolve and enrich your friendship with my son. You will find a way around this unfortunate incident of Adam's past."

        "Ram," Duncan stood up and wrapped his hands around her upper arms. He felt the tiniest tremor, a physical hum beneath his fingers. "Why are you doing this?"

        Ram tilted her chin up and said nothing, but the hum in her upper arms began to resemble shaking. It was the good Dr. Burns pointed Duncan away from himself and towards the answer to his question, "Context, Duncan, my boy...context."

        The answer came not as words or even images, but in an instantaneous understanding. Duncan released her arms immediately, cursing himself for forgetting she could not bear to be bound. He had never questioned why before...but of course he knew, hadn't Sweet Lucille told them after all? "Are you so afraid, then, to show me only the flashes off your armour so that I will miss that you are wounded?"

        Ram's head sunk down on her chest, but otherwise she stood before him motionless, unbreathing.

        "How afraid are you?" he asked. How had he not considered this before? "Ram?"

        Very slowly, with a great effort, Ram raised her face, now opened, to him.

        Duncan was stunned to see the wild-eyed child that resided there. He knew better than to grab for her, knew better than to invade her nakedness.

        "Worse," she whispered trying to hold herself still when even the touch of his eyes was intolerable.

        "Yes?" Duncan prompted as gently as he could.

        "Worse than Adam between the posts," she rasped, holding herself rigidly back from her tears.

        Then Ram turned on her heels and walked away, up the dock, across the road...and with every step, the child fell away and the warrior returned.

        And Duncan thought he had never seen such bravery in a retreat.

         "Good morn, Watcher Dawson," Ram's throaty tones wafted by Joe's right ear, and he turnedto see the night demon transformed back into a more ordinary state.

         "Have some coffee," Joe offered.

         "Only if you hold the cup," Ram held up her battered and swollen digits.

         "My pleasure, Ram," Joe waited for her to sit beside him on the log then lifted his cup carefullyto her lips.

         "Thank you, Joe," Ram wiped her mouth on the ace wrap and stared at the refurbished firewhich she had set not half a day, but another world ago. Things were moving too fast to keep up and time was about to catch her and sweep her into the past forever. She should probably let thisgo, let it pass silently with the moment, but she was determined to have no regrets, determined not to leave anything unfinished.

         "More?" Joe offered his cup.

         Ram turned towards him, bending her knee across the log between them, setting a definiteboundary so she would not be misinterpreted. "I need to say something to you, Joe. I don't want you to feel you have to reciprocate. I hope you won't take it in the wrong way..."

         "...and if it's all the same, I do hope you wouldn't laugh."

         "You love me," Joe said, but he couldn't quite meet her gaze. "I would have known that even if Lucille had not told me."

         "Oh, well then," Ram turned back to the fire, "I don't have anything to say at all."

         "Why do you?" Joe meant the question in all honesty. Though she fascinated him, though hefelt extremely comfortable and disturbed all at once, when in her presence, still he in no way understood her. He certainly never understood her affection for him, whatever she chose to call it.

         Ram leaned as far forward as baby Sean would allow, "I cannot for the life of me recall justnow." Her tones were more acid than the pine needles at her feet. "I need to see to Adam," she said suddenly, as if nothing had passed between them. Then she stood up and retreated to the insensatebundle on the far side of the clearing at the edge of the pines.

         Duncan arrived at the Dawson coffee mill, just as Adam was awakened. It was not a prettysight. Doctor Piersen was never at his best in the early hours, but this was something else altogether. The Eldest Immortal bounded up growling in some ancient tongue, maybe early Jurassic, from theroar of it. He advanced on Ram, backing her their direction.

         Duncan started to rise, but Joe stopped him. "You are a brave man, Mac, but that is not yourfight or mine. Adam drew his sword on her twice last night, but he was too drunk to...Anyway, I don't know what's put such a twist in his shorts, but he's a big boy."

         "I was more worried about Ram," Duncan corrected the Watcher. Watching her now, though, he could see no hint of the frightened child. There was only the warrior, jockeying for position, waiting to parry, or to strike.

         "Ram, Buddy?" Dawson reached for the coffee pot. "Ram of the Danaan buzz saw massacree?Ram who cooked your grits last night? Ram who..."

         Duncan's shoulders lifted around his ears, "Never mind." Maybe he had only imagined it. Looking at her, even under Adam's gangly assault, he would not worry for any money on her side of the bet. .

        As Adam and Ram moved closer, it became evident he was speaking English, just with such venom that it was nearly incoherent.

         "Adam," Ram said with a practiced calm, "I know you are angry about something, but if youcannot calm down and make some sense, I can't help you." All the while she backed away from him, staying just out of his long reach as if they were physically, rather than verbally, dueling.

         "Angry is not a name for what I am," Adam said in full voice and equal rage.

         "About what?" Ram asked it as if this were the tenth time through the same question.

         "This!" Adam replied, throwing a small, leather-bound volume straight at her head.

         Ram dodged handily and the book sailed into the fire. Dawson gasped and Mac pulled it out of the fire, patting out the singed pages.

         "Plain English would do nicely, Adam," Ram's superb restraint was beginning to wear thin.

         Adam sited down his hawkish beak, the twin to Ram's. "You were there with Alexa when I left to find The Stone."

         "I was there in Switzerland, to stay with Alexa while you were gone, yes. What stone?" Ram turned slightly and gauged the distance and direction of the fire and the general "lay of the land" as if she were doing preliminary tactical plans.

         "The Methuselah Stone," Adam replied as if speaking to a half-wit. "The combined crystals of the..."

         Comprehension dawned on Ram's sharp features. "Oh. But why would you have gone to lookfor the Orb?"

         "Ah, well," Adam backed her up another step. "But until I read it in your journal there, I didn't know it was the Orb of the King, that it only represented and did not actually contain the power to heal."

         "Adam, what are you talking about?"

         "You are the Methuselah Stone!"

         Duncan and Dawson exchanged stares.

         "No," Adam amended, "You were the King. You were the Methuselah Stone."

         Duncan pulled his feet under him and leaned forward to stand and set Adam straight. He couldken where this diatribe was going. Why didn't Ram tell him herself?

         Ram's hand moved behind her and she waved him off. Duncan settled back on the log.

         "I have loved so few women in my life," Adam's tone had changed to a darker melody, the rage leavened with sorrow. "Why is that, Mother?"

         Ram pulled up straight and her long neck extended, but she did not reply.

         "You damnable possessive bitch! You couldn't stand for me to be that close to someone, so youlet her die when you could have saved her! You sat by her bed and watched her dying in agony and you did nothing! Nothing! You murdered her!"

         Dawson just about burst trying to remain silent. Why in hell didn't she tell him?

         "I could not interfere, Son," Ram answered, "I am so sorry, I--"

         Adam moved towards her again, his hands up. This time Ram stood her ground.

         "Don't--" he sputtered, his voice so strictured by emotion he could hardly speak at all, "Don'tcall me that. I am no son to you! Do you know....you were not even there then...the morning that she died..." he paused and caught his breath. "She had fought so hard through the night. She made it through the whole night. I fell asleep...I.." Adam stopped again and let his anger buoy him above his grief. "Do you know I literally collapsed when I woke to find her dead. To the floor, I could not see orhear or do anything but blubber away like an infant."

         Ram said nothing. Her expression did not change from the placid, attentive listening which was her signature.

         "Some woman, a nurse, a stranger, came into the room and I could feel her kneeling behind me.She said nothing. To this day I do not know who she was, she only held me, connected me back to the earth...." he had run out of breath or words again. Adam's graceful, long hands reached either sideof Ram's face and he pulled her forward. "That woman may call me 'Son." Not You!"

         Stupid, stupid Adam, Duncan thought, of course that stranger was Ram and no one else. The same Ram who now lets you twist in the wind on the hook of a lie. But why?

         Ram looked down and started laughing suddenly. It was clear she strove not to do so, just as it was clearly beyond her power to control. Adam fairly boiled but, as his gaze followed hers downward he released her and jumped away, shaking his arms as if they'd been dipped in acid and a look on hisface of absolute disgust.

         "Well, Dr. Piersen, I can surely stop calling you 'Son,' but I cannot answer for what my bodythinks." Ram pulled her shirt forward and shook her head, laughing at herself also.

         "Yeccch!" Adam sounded and looked like he had a lemon half-way down his throat.

         Dawson started laughing as well.

         "What? What?" Duncan couldn't follow what had happened.

         "Well, and is it not your own damn fault for resting your elbows on me?" Ram began tomanage her mirth, but she could no longer restrain her ire. "It seems to me there was a time you couldn't get enough of this," she pulled the front of her shirt forward. It was sopping wet. "Youfairly howled if you didn't get to nurse on the hour."

         "Stop! You're disgusting!" Adam glowered at the two men by the fire just as Duncan "caught the bus" and fell backward off the log in hysterics.

         "You should have given me to be raised by my father," Adam had been driven too far. "Piermay not have been more than a simple farmer, but I would wager he was a kinder soul than you...and better still if only for the fact that he was mortal..."

         "...and dead and buried these past five thousand years!"

         With that, Adam stomped off into the pines, in such a snit he never heard Ram say goodbye.

         Duncan watched Ram watch Adam until he disappeared.

         And Dawson watched them all, wondering how the hell he was going to work this into some sort of report that made any sense. He opened the singed journal and was disappointed to see it was in no language he could decipher. What had Adam said? Encoded cuneiform, Aramaic anagrams?

         When Adam was out of site, Duncan reached towards Ram, but she shook off his offered embrace and mumbled something about getting changed. She started down the hill towards the road. Dawson watched Mac hesitate a moment and then he caught up with her, lifted her off her feet and carried her back to the fire, depositing her gently on the log next to Joe.

         Dawson set the book aside. He was not sure what all of this meant or how he should proceed.

         "All I said was--" Ram began, every word short and clipped.

         "Frankly, Scarlet," Duncan replied.

         Ram threw a questioning look at Joe. Evidently she did not frequent movie theaters.

         "He doesn't give a damn," Dawson translated.

         "And who was it mewling around about my lack of caring?" Ram jerked her gaze back to Duncan.

         "You are not disappearing again," Duncan pronounced. "You can't do this..." he took a deep breath and turned down the intensity, "Ram, you do not have to do this alone. Come back with us."

         She looked back at Dawson. Joe put both his palms up to indicate his innocence, or more accurately, his ignorance in this scheme, if scheme it was, of Mac's.

         "Look at your hands, Ram. You can't drive."

         It was true enough, but Dawson remained silent. He was not about to get in between these two. Momma Dawson did not raise a fool.

         Duncan leaned down and stroked her short, frenzied curls. Ram drew back suddenly.

         "Will you stop pawing at me!" There was a tension in her voice out of all proportion with the situation.

         Dawson wondered what had transpired in their predawn excursion down to the boat house. If he had thought it was possible, he might suspect Ram of verging on nervous collapse. Momma Dawson notwithstanding, Joe could not keep from interfering after all. "Why don't we all have some coffee and what's left of the bread and get a grip?"

         This brought a synchronized duet of stares his direction. "I realize I am only the mortal-designate here," he handed a cup up to Mac who sat down sullenly, "but I am far too young to be the only voice of reason in this noble glen."

         Ram punched the Watcher gently and grinned ear-to-ear. "And you were asking why I love you?"

         Dawson would have thought he was too old and too tired to blush, but he wasn't. "So what is going on here?"

         "Duncan wants me to stay with you or with him or with Lucille until the baby comes, Joe."

         "That would be nice," Joe commented.

         "Not for me it wouldn't," Ram answered. "I cannot stay and that is final!" Even though she didn't turn back towards Duncan, the object of her statement was clearly not Joe.

         "Why?" Joe asked, holding a cup so she could drink.

         "Ram, you can't even hold a cup," Mac observed, moving his leg as she aimed a heel for his shin by way of answer.

         "If you would just listen to me," Duncan tried again, "I am sure we could come up with--"

         "And if Joe had brought his guitar, we could sing camp songs and pretend we were boy scouts, but that is not going to happen," Ram took off the left brace, pulled a roll of tape out of her pocket and asked Joe to tape her fingers and her hand and wrist, leaving the thumb and first two fingers free.

         Joe handed the tape over to Mac who was far better at this and Ram looked at him as if she would bring charges of treason before the highest court. Shifting around she offered her hand to Duncan, but she was clearly not amused.

         "Ram," Duncan sized up the macerated hand and reached over for the ace that had held the brace on. As he wrapped this over her arm and hand, he wondered how easily she had once again drawn him into the blinding flash of her armour. "Can we leave off the dramatics and just speak simply?"

         "Speak," she said.

         Where to begin? Duncan wandered back in his mind to the night before. Yes, he had forgotten, but he would ask it now.

         "Why don't you just tell Adam the truth?" Joe interrupted the silence.

         "And what truth is that, Watcher Dawson?"

         "Don't do that!" Duncan found he had little to no use for Ram's usual clever banter. He pulled the tape too tight over the ace and had to begin again. "Can you just say you won't answer if that is the case?"

         Dawson wondered if it was only his imagination or if Duncan was starting to sound a bit reminiscent of the way Adam spoke with Ram, at least in the tenor of the melody. "I mean, why don't you just tell Adam that Alexa is still alive?"

         "Oh, you mean," Ram stared at Duncan, making sure he noticed that she was answering, "I should tell Adam that he wasn't man enough to give Alexa children and that's why she pretended to be dead?"

         Duncan thought about this, "I think he deserves to know the truth."

         "And so he will, when her children are grown and her husband no longer among the living."

         "You mean when she's so old it won't make any difference anyway?" Joe thought this was the cruelest approach possible.

         "Except that she won't seem any older than she is now," Ram said. Distracted by the pain in her arm and the baby waking and the general fatigue from the awful night before, she answered far too simply to serve.

         Everything stopped as both men replayed her words, and the words wove a wondrous array of permutations and possibilities. Finally Joe voiced the most obvious one, "Alexa is Immortal now?"

         Duncan could see Ram racing inwardly, trying to cover her dreadful mistake. "Don't," he said. "Just tell us we shouldn't know this. Don't bother to lie."

         Ram cast him a warning glance that he was just about to presume too heavily upon their Shield Vow. "Just ask me something else," she spoke to Joe.

         "All right," Joe stopped his furious mental note-taking for a moment--memoes to review with Dr. Piersen later. "Who is Pier?"

         Ram relaxed, "Pier was a tall, fair..."  She bolted up, ripping the tape out of Duncan's hands. Her nostrils flared like a dragon readying the flame. "Who told you? Ah, Lucille! Damnation!"

         "Enough!" she vaulted over the log and strode away down the hill.

         Duncan's shoulders sagged, then he picked himself up and went after her. "Ram..."

         "Get away from me!"

         "Ram, I swear we have not told Adam, and except for Lt. Crane, no one else knows."

         "Crane?!" she shrieked, throwing her hands up, the tape roll bobbing at her wrist.

         She stopped so fast, Duncan was by her before he could slow his pursuit.

         "That is why you thought you could...why you thought I had no right to refuse you."

         "No," Duncan pulled his hands down to his sides, "I did not know then. And I have never felt that way about you. I hold you in the highest..."

         "Thank God for that," Ram's teeth met edge-to-edge and every word sizzled, "I should hate to think what would have happened if you didn't respect me."

         "At least let me finish taping your hand," Duncan had already offered his life for the transgression. He decided, though she forgave him, he was never going to hear the end of this and he was in no mood to put up with the lash of her sharp wit. He sat down on the damp pine needles and offered his hand.

         "Believe me, Ram," Duncan did not acknowledge her surrender as she sat down beside him and let him finish the binding. "If I had known the particulars about Adam's conception, I would not have..."

         "Used goods?" Ram supplied.

         "Will you stop!"

         Ram chewed on her lip and affected something very like a pout. It did not suit the raptorish features at all and the incongruity would have made Duncan laugh in any other circumstance. "Who judges you?" he might as well ask the questions she had asked him. He wondered if even she knew the answers to such "simple" questions.

         The angular features reassorted into a stunning grin. "Warmeat," she exclaimed, "How very clever you are." And she meant it in all sincerity. "I am the Judge and the Judgment."

         Oh, sure. It was easy for her, Duncan thought, she made up the questions, or at least she's had a very, very long time to think of the answers. "Are you a good man?"

         "No."

         "Excuse me," he ripped off the length of tape and started on her fingers. "Are you a good woman?"

         "No."

         "All right," he tore another length of tape with his teeth, "are you a good Danaa."

         "No."

         "Really?" Surely she was joking.

         "Do you want signed affidavits? Yes, really, Brother. I am not good."

         "That can't be the right answer."

         "That is not your right answer, but it is mine."

         Dawson joined them. "I thought I'd go down to the car and get some..."

         Ram reached in her pocket and handed up his Percocet. She declined his offer to share.

         "If I'm not speaking out of turn," Joe let Mac help him down to the ground, something he would never have allowed before. "You are wrong, Ram. I submit to you that your obvious love for your son is evidence to the contrary. I rest my case."

         "Well I hope if you are after a barrister's license, you keep your day job," Ram tested the taping on her fingers. "My obsession with Adam's welfare is entirely an affect of atonement without merit or redemption."

         Both men stared at her. "Atone for what?" Dawson voiced their mutual question.

         Ram hesitated a moment, trying to form an answer that would be just obscure enough to...

         Then she noted Duncan's expression and surrendered, "When Adam was twenty, I killed him."

         The bright wind echoed between them and into the gigantic, silent chasm which Ram's words had made in the forest bed, deeper and wider by far than any mark of the ferocious night fighting with Duncan. Dawson reheard the words again and again, tried to make a different sense of them. They were English, simple, precise, and still they had no reasonable meaning.

         Ram did not try to leave them, as she had before. Having surrendered, still she stood her ground.

         Duncan finally threw the first words across the gulf between human and Danaan. "You would not be the first teacher who sought to give his student an advantage by gaining Immortality in their prime."

         "But if Methos was the First Immortal, how could you possibly know he would survive a fatality?" Joe asked it knowing she would be able to modify her pronouncement into some more palatable form.

         "Thank you for clarifying that, Watcher Dawson," Ram did not sound at all grateful. "No, gentlemen, there are no mitigations to Adam's murder, except that it was quick, clean, and there was no pain, no fear...and I did it myself, when clearly I could have delegated it to another. Yes, as far as the Clave or the Throne knew, Adam was nothing more than mortal."

         "And when he Awakened?" Duncan asked.

         "That is the reason you and all other Immortals exist today, Brother, because Adam proved himself extraordinary and we saw in him the saving of our race."

         "I don't imagine you sent your sister Danaa off to visit The Five," Duncan referred to the barbarians who had raped Ram, one of them a sire to Adam...his true father, not the mythical Pier.

         "No," the answer was intoned in a sinister, bass register. "In the first place, the Danaa do not know about that to this day. In the second, The Five, as you call them, had long since...expired."

         "You killed them?" Dawson asked.

         "Yes. I told you I was not good."

         "But you did it out of a just vengeance," Duncan attempted to excuse her.

         "Nooo," she sighed, "That, I did out of mercy."

         "Mercy?" Joe shook his head and stared sideways at Mac.

         "Yes." Ram started away from them, then stopped and turned back, stretching the divide between them to a veritable canyon. Not twenty feet away, she was as distant as the stars. The Royal Plural only seemed appropriate to such a terrible, fantastic wonder as she.

         "When We were finished with the five beastes, they begged Us to kill them. And, because We were merciful, We allowed them to die."

         Ram walked away from them then.

         And neither man made a move to stop her.

        Joe Dawson geared the car down, punching the old manual clutch, and thinking for the thousandth time he ought to buy a customized car with an automatic transmission. Driving through the mountain pass back from Mac's island was ample reminder, the steep descents occupying his full attention as he strove not to burn the brakes. All in all, though, he was grateful to have his thoughts removed from the immediate frosty silences and acid, mumblings of his two passengers, the Highlander and the Oldest Immortal.

        Joe supposed one had to expect a certain amount of inflexibility with folk who counted birthdays in the triple and quadruple digits, but this was ridiculous. Adam, now poured over the back seat, boneless and brooding, had returned to the boat house just as they finished packing to leave. He was not at all either surprised or upset that Ram had once again bolted, but that hadn't improved his mood, his signature melancholy which was dark as a well and as deep. It slowed his every movement into a maddening dance three beats behind the music.

        Duncan, on the other hand, was wound tighter than a G wire on a twelve-string, and every bit as tenuous. If Adam was three beats behind, Duncan was ten ahead. Joe had started to recut Mac's ruined hair, to bring up the long sides which remained, but the Immortal could not sit still long enough to do more than rough fix.

        Joe could deal with Adam's indisposition, but Mac's state disturbed him. Too much had happened to the Scotsman of late. Any other man would be dead by now, or right out of their bloody minds. Joe was not at all certain of the Highlander's full return to sanity.  He wondered if they were bringing back the MacLeod son in better shape, or only different, than when they had stolen him away.

        Duncan broke the stagnant, heavy silence, "He wasn't there!" He wrenched around, reached over the seat back and banged on Adam's leg. "Listen to me, he wasn't there!"

        Adam jerked up from his semi-doze. "Who wasn't where?" he grumbled and yawned.

        "Wait--" Duncan went silent again for a moment. "No, Sean hasn't seen him at all. He didn't come there. He wasn't there!" The Highlander's pitch went right on rising with his volume and his excitement.

        Joe pulled off into a truckers' rest stop and turned off the car, casting a warning glance back at Adam, but the Eldest Immortal wasn't born yesterday after all, and the "just-in-case" hypo he had kept in his coat pocket was emptied into Duncan's left bicep, straight through the grey shirt fabric, before Duncan could say another crazy thing.

        "Nooo," Duncan barked in surprise at the effrontery. "You don't understand..."

        "Just breathe," Adam cautioned. "It's a large dose and it's going to hit full on about..." he counted on his fingers, three, two...

        Duncan's head lolled back.

        "Now," said Adam. "I guess the magic broom treatment wore off," he quipped and crawled out of the car to retrieve his med bag from the trunk and reload. When he returned, he set the bag on the hood, opened the passenger side door, undid Duncan's seat belt, and pulled him out. Leaning the large Scot against the car, Adam tipped him over his left shoulder and carried him around the back door to unfold Duncan onto the back seat, tucking up his long legs and closing the door. Grabbing the bag, he slid into the front seat. Pointing at the windshield with a limp wrist he said, "Engage."

        "Back to the island, Buddy?"

        Adam thought a moment. "Just keep driving towards Seacouver. When he wakes up, we'll see if he's any better..."

        "And if he's not?"

        "Then it's over, Joe. I cannot go through any more of this. He can't either."

        Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod floated over the waves, rocked and jostled to the rolling motion as he sped through the dark.

        "Oh, that was well done, Duncan. We'll be off to Last Gate with Adam's help and blessing the next time you wake up, son."

        "Sean?"

        "Yes, Duncan. You frightened the wits out of them both, the bartender and Methos. You are going to have to be more careful."

        "And you charge how much an hour for that kind of advice?"

        "It won't be so funny if you let Ram's good work go up in holy smoke for want of a bit of brains, now, will it?"

        "You know Ram from before, don't you?"

        "Yes, Duncan. Have you heard...?"

        "I heard it all, Sean. I will be more careful. You are right. I was just..."

        "I know, about Ryan being absent from your dead army. I admit, I don't know what to make of that myself, but it isn't worth getting killed over, now is it?"

        "No, I just..." Duncan tried to explain, "I can't seem to get comfortable with myself. It used to be so easy, I never even thought about it before."

        "The feeling will pass. It has to do with you being Cronos..."

        "You were there?"

        "Where else would I be. Where the hell else could I be?"

        "Oh," Duncan flinched under the insight, "I have imprisoned you."

        "No, Duncan. You have killed me."

        "I know, Sean. You reached out your hand to me and I took your head. I don't wonder Adam wants mine. I guess the only real mystery is why he hasn't taken it before now. If it's any consolation, he tried to take my head when your Quickening was done."

        "As I have said, Duncan, I was there."

        Duncan thought about this for a moment. "Always?" he asked.

        "Always."

        That revelation made Duncan all the more uncomfortable, sending him immediately to the task of cataloguing his activities since the time of the Dark Quickening. The tally of black deeds was daunting. "Are you sent to judge me?" he asked.

        "Actually, I've not been much concerned with having a purpose to my existence, since I have none. I would like to discuss this on a philosophical level...and we shall, later. Now you need to wake up and make sense, quickly, and explain what is going on."

        "All right. Then what?"

        "Then, Dear Duncan...we pray they believe you."

        Duncan had forgotten the headache that went with this particular medication. He loosened his jaw and tried to clear his mind. "Adam," he said as soberly as he could under the drug's powerful sway.

        Adam turned around, the hazel eyes narrowing as they took the measure of his very ill friend.

        "I know I sounded crazy," Damn, Duncan cursed silently. Not the word he might have chosen sober. "But I was suddenly aware of something that happened after Ram killed me."

        "Yes?" Adam replied all too pleasantly, calmly.

        If he told him the truth, Duncan reasoned, he would be dead before he got finished. The drug still had his arms and legs numb. Any effective defense was impossible, whatever Adam had planned. Wait! Duncan kicked himself, or would have done if he could move anything below his waist. He could prove it. "Adam, listen to me--"

        "No," Adam replied, "I have listened to your mad ramblings over two weeks now. It has not gotten either of us anywhere. YOU listen to me. There's about five more minutes incapacitation left in that shot I gave you. At the end of that time, unless I am convinced otherwise, I will shoot you with another medication I brought along. It will kill you. Joe will turn off this main road. We will find a quiet place and I will take your head."

        Both Duncan and Joe were amazed at how like Ram her lanky son could sound. Joe worked the clutch and tried not to hear the mantra echoing round his skull as it had for the past month--"This can't be happening...this can't be..."

        Duncan, even drunk as a deacon, saw the abject pain in old Adam's eyes, felt it in his bones. How afraid are you? he thought. I know how afraid you can be, Adam, and I am truly sorry about this old man, but, "Ram took my dead, the Quickenings of my four centuries, and marched them through my soul, leaving their memories as they departed to a more final rest."

        He watched Adam dig deeply into his pocket, saw the bulge as the long fingers wrapped around the killing needle. "I have Cronos' memories, Adam," forgive me, Duncan added silently. "I know the first morning you met, that Silas and Caspian were there and it was foggy as you entered Cronos' tent with the curious poles set just five feet apart at the tent's center..."

        Adam lifted his hand, empty, out of his pocket. His face had drained of all its color and an ashen shade of grey brushed over his mouth and under his eyes. "Who was not there? What you said before I hit you with the drug?"

        "Richie was not among the army of my dead. I am sure of it."

        "And what did you mean about Sean? I assume you were talking about Dr. Burns."

        "Sean is the one of my dead who remains."

        "And he speaks to you?"

        "Oh, I do, my old friend. Incessantly." Duncan's voice changed abruptly and his dark eyes went blank. "And you have yet to pay me for those last six sessions, lad."

        "Sean!" Adam leaned over the seat back and laid his hands on Duncan's shoulder. "Welcome back!"

        "And wouldn't I feel all the more welcome if you promised not to kill us, Dr. Piersen."

        Adam turned around and flopped back down in the passenger seat, his color returning and a broad smile gracing his visage. "I would be only too delighted, Dr. Burns." And then he bent his head forward on the dash and wept...out of relief, but also out of the shameful fear which almost never left him.

        "Pleased to make your acquaintance," Mac's hand flopped over Joe's right shoulder, "Dawson, isn't it?"

        Joe did not answer. They were going two-for-three on the "let's get crazy" scale and he was in no mood to make it unanimous. His main mission for the moment, was to get them through the pass, get them all home, back to safe harbor. All the while, he blocked out Duncan's happy philosophizing in someone else's voice and Piersen's quiet sobbing in the corner. Dawson shut out everything but the noise of the engine, the rumble of the tires and the road in time to the chant in his brain..."This just can't be happening... happening...happening."

        With Chaos gone, life in Seacouver began to settle down to the more normal rhythms for Mac's incredibly odd clan. Summer surrendered entirely to Fall, the bright days to the misty, bone-dead days of pre-winter. Dr. Anne Lindsay moved into an apartment down the block from Seacouver County General and took a sabbatical from her job at the path lab. She entered into an abbreviated  preceptorship under a noted Obstetrical surgeon with whom she'd gone to med school. The house Duncan had built for her north and east of the Seacouver outskirts was simply too far away from the hospital and Ram's imminent delivery. Little Mary, now walking like a champ, spent her time equally divided between Joe's bar in the mornings and Sweet Lucille's in the afternoons.

        Adam moved into the second floor of the dojo, into a small room off the showers, but as the days grew colder, he could be found more and more often in Duncan's top floor loft, raiding the frig or sitting around looking bored and reading Ram's journals.

        The clan chieftan himself spent most of his days touring Seacouver with Sean Burns, showing him this or that item of interest, walking through Stanley Park, shopping in the Chinese district, watching the ships down at the docks. Each place formed the background for yet another session with the good Dr. Burns, although there were days Duncan doubted Sean's goodness. Step-by-step the internal tour through MacLeod's psyche traveled through his past, the near and the distant. Sean was friendly and charming. He was also ruthless, and there were many days Duncan returned from the tour and collapsed in the loft to sleep the day round.

        And every Friday, as if by some unspoken mutual consent, they all met at Joe's and washed down the week in beer and banter. At evening's end they would split off in various pairs, usually Joe with Lucille, and Anne with Mac, and Adam odd man out or off to pick up Mary at the sitter's and play nanny for the night. For all that Dr. Piersen complained about the situation, he actually enjoyed the toddler's company, and she had only to grab for his very prominent nose to instantly melt his usually distant demeanor.

        "And what language is that?" Anne had asked, finding Adam at Joe's one morning, filling in on the "Mary watch." The research professor had been prattling a mile-a-minute with the three-year old.

        As she recalled Adam had mumbled something about fricatives in developing speech patterns of young children, or something like that.

        "All right," Adam bowed his head to hide his very wide smile. "Mary was teaching me 'baby-talk' and I believe she was just about to tell me the secrets of the universe when you interrupted."

        "They do seem like little mystics, don't they," Anne agreed, running her index finger gently along the Eldest Immortal's nose.

        "They are so close to the source," Adam wrapped his graceful hand around her finger and pulled it down from her face, changing subjects suddenly. "Actually, Mary was telling me about 'Auntie Ram.' Is she all right, Dr. Lindsay?"

        "Do you care?" Anne hadn't meant to be so abrupt, but as a mother she had no patience for this ungrateful child.

        "Yes, I do," Adam replied.

        "Well," Anne picked up Mary and started gathering her things off the bar. "I was supposed to leave this message with Joe, but you will do. How did she put it? Yes, 'Tell the thick-headed son of the Highlands that in the next fortnight, he will know his own son...and after that..." Anne smiled and turned back towards Adam. "After that," she repeated, "May God Himself help Duncan MacLeod."

        Adam tried not to react to the obvious denigration, but his face drooped.

        "I am sorry, Dr. Piersen. She is very concerned about you and she made me promise to be kind. I know it is one month early, but we've done some interventions to mature the lungs, and we can't wait any longer and expect..."  Anne wanted to comfort him by the sheer force of her science, but he interrupted the medical "history of present illness" recitation.

        "I have done quite well these five millennia without your concern, Dr. Lindsay. You may let Setan'm know that the message will be delivered...verbatim." Adam's face recovered its look of disinterest in all things general and specific, meddling pseudo-obstetricians and amateur couriers included.

        Ram finished watering Anne's plants. She moved slowly through the house, trying to lose the very nasty notion, the unreasonable anger that all of these things would be here tomorrow, some of them even living, like this philodendron, but she wouldn't give much for the fern's chances, or her own, for that matter. She had spent two incredibly quiet months in the house Duncan had refurbished for Anne and Mary.

        And when the sun rose this day, she would get in the old green Chevy, she'd bought when she turned the rental in. Bless Anne, even though she didn't want Ram driving herself into town, still she'd made sure the car was tuned and gassed up.

        Happy Birthday, Sean, Ram thought. Today you will come into the world. Long may your life be and may you have some joy and peace and love in your time. She felt him stirring as if in answer, but she rose over the pain, judge herself still whole, and then turned her talents to rendering him still.

        And that had been her chief, her only, occupation for fifty long days:  stillness. A more tedious chore Ram had never pursued. She was happy for this day, even if it were only the end of the stillness. She was sure Sean Burn's godson would feel the same if his baby thoughts could attain such clarity.

        But you do not know life yet, she said silently. And I do not yet know death. We shall both be on an incredible adventure. We shall...

        "And how do you fare, Satan'm?" a liquid soprano floated by Ram's ear.

        Ram turned slowly, keeping her eyes down, away from the speaker's face. She started to bend her knee. "Majesty."

        "No, Set, do not kneel. We should be all the rest of the day getting you up off the floor."

  &n