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"I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod."
He spoke those words aloud, even though no one was within earshot.
Spoke them aloud because no one was within earshot.
Smiling inwardly, he repeated the phrase - trying, this time, to reproduce the thick Scottish burr of his youth.
"Oy'm Duncan MacLeod o' the Clan MacLeod!"
Yes. The accent might have been exaggerated; but he'd captured the brash, innocent overconfidence of the Highland lad he'd been. Ready to take on anyone, at a moment's notice, in defense of that beloved clan.
It's a wonder I didn't have my first death a decade before I did.
Sitting on a hilltop in his native Britain - a region he hadn't visited in many, many years - he felt achingly close to his roots.
Still, he couldn't help being amused by his reason for being there.
I have a topsy-turvy life.
Watchers are supposed to be lurking in the shadows. Doggedly following Immortals in our mysterious travels.
But here I am, good-naturedly tagging along with my Watcher on his business trip! Making contacts on behalf of his wife's well-to-do family, no less.
Okay, admit it. I like the guy because he reminds me of the first Watcher I knew and treasured as a friend, Joe Dawson. Is it just because he has a form of the same name? There's no physical resemblance. But could he possibly be...another incarnation...?
Despite the men's friendship, MacLeod needed his times alone.
He'd just worked out with sword and staff, performed an elegant kata. Rejoicing, as always, in his perfect physical coordination. Striving, as always, to achieve an equally perfect harmony of mind and body. He never quite got there. But there was joy in the striving, joy in coming close.
Now he was content to sit for a few minutes on the hilltop.
I was born and raised hundreds of miles north of here. But I knew this area, too.
He'd chosen this site for his kata because he was sure his younger self had climbed this very hill (not much of a "climb," in any era), sat in this very spot. Under a tree...that wasn't here now, of course.
The view from the hill was different, too. Very different. But to MacLeod, it was just as beautiful. (At this stage of his life, he tended to see beauty everywhere. How could anyone not appreciate such a magnificent world?)
Nevertheless, he closed his eyes. He couldn't - and didn't want to - dispel the memories of his youth. And he could bring them into better focus with his eyes closed.
I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod...
Joe Dawson "accompanied" me - uninvited! - on my first trip back, after hundreds of years, to my home village of Glenfinnan. I was only a few years past my four hundredth birthday...
Dawson had not, of course, known a four hundredth birthday of his own. But he had celebrated his ninety-fifth before dying, unexpectedly, in his sleep. He'd been in good health till the end - had even been Duncan MacLeod's Watcher till the end. That had been feasible because MacLeod told him everything that was going on in his life; all Joe had to do was write it up for the Chronicle.
Joe's daughter Amy had reconciled with him when she had a child of her own, and realized Joe was that child's only living grandparent. Later, MacLeod had been diligently Watched by several generations of Joe's descendants.
Joe Dawson belonged to the same era as Tessa. But MacLeod thought of her every day and every night, wherever he might be. Countless women had shared his bed; but he'd never again considered marriage. He still thought of Tessa - the first mortal lover he'd told of his Immortality, the only woman he'd lived with longer than a year - as the great love of his life.
Britain brought back other memories. Of companions long absent from that life.
Fitz...
The most cherished ''buddy" he'd ever had. Dead way too soon, by Immortal standards...and killed because he was a friend of Duncan MacLeod.
Would he, really, have died even before then if he hadn't known me? Or have I imagined that, to absolve myself?
Either way, I couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't avenged his death, taken the Quickening of the Immortal who'd taken his. Some small part of Fitz does live on, in a way, within me. And I won't allow the shade of Kalas that kind of survival.
"Survival" within him...but he'd never thought Quickenings held more than fragments of Immortals' psyches. Now he believed both Fitz and Kalas had moved on to other incarnations.
Connor...
He'd never learned Connor's fate, never seen or heard news of him after they'd celebrated his "resurrection" in Rachel MacLeod's inn.
Over the years, he'd come to believe Joe had been right in speculating that Connor's subspecies had a real, biological imperative to fight one another to the death - but wrong in thinking last-survivor Connor had won as a "Prize" absolute, literal immortality.
Eternal existence, in a human body, would make no sense. The person would ultimately wind up "temporarily dead," floating in space, with there being no habitat - none, anywhere in the Universe - that could support a living, breathing human. And we don't even have dreams when we're "temporarily dead." Some "immortality"!
No, there'd never been a "Prize" beyond having the Quickenings of all members of that small subspecies. So Connor must have been right in speculating that he'd come back to life because he'd been cremated, and the ashes kept together. By a big stretch of his imagination, MacLeod could conceive of mutation's producing a life-form that could reconstitute itself from ashes.
If that happened a few times long ago, it might account for the myth of the phoenix.
And I don't think the timing, in Connor's case, was really dependent on its being his birthday. Or New Year's. He came back to life when I'd be sure to find him...and, just as important, Richie would be with me, for much-needed moral support.
Connor had said his subspecies never stopped aging, just aged very slowly. A disturbing thought, when MacLeod had realized Immortals could have extremely long life spans! But he'd recalled Connor's having looked younger after being "remade" from ashes. As if he'd been restored to "optimum adulthood." And he'd always hoped that revival had transformed him into an Immortal who wouldn't continue to age.
He could have gotten in touch with me again, safely, after the Watchers had given up trying to prevent Immortals' learning there was no penalty for killing on holy ground.
But he knew humanity would be in danger if a power-mad Immortal were to take my head, after I'd received the Quickenings of all the Sanctuary Immortals. And he also knew I'd be reluctant to kill anyone.
So even with his old enemy gone, he may have feared leading other Immortals to me. He may even have resolved never to think of me, lest someone learn too much about me from taking his head.
And he still expected a future Gathering! If he was still alive, he may have been among the last to abandon that idea.
I'm glad I don't know more than I do. Whatever he himself wanted, I want always to think of him as being "out there, somewhere."
Amanda...
He could never think of Amanda without smiling.
He'd known her, too, since he was a young Immortal in Britain. But centuries later, he and his friend Nick Wolfe had both loved her, in their different ways...and she'd loved both of them.
MacLeod and Amanda had been old enough Immortals at the time that they were comfortable with nonexclusive sexual relationships, as long as no one was being deceived. The younger Nick was uncomfortable, despite his attempts to hide it.
No problem, MacLeod had thought. He'd simply backed off - been perfectly willing, at that point, to dial his relationship with Amanda back to "platonic."
I didn't exactly love Amanda "less" than I'd loved Tessa. But it was a different kind of love.
Unfortunately, Nick had realized why MacLeod had backed off. And that had made him even more uncomfortable.
On top of that, Amanda had been honest enough to tell him she sometimes had sex with other women - had been doing so ever since her days as Rebecca's student. Once past that teacher-student relationship, she'd seen her flings with women as "chumminess," essentially different from her feelings for the men in her life. MacLeod had never had a problem with it, as long as everyone who had a reason to care understood that he was strictly heterosexual. But again, the younger Nick did have a problem.
In the end, Amanda had bidden both of them a cheery farewell...and "ridden off into the sunset" with her first male Immortal lover, Jeremy Dexter.
Maybe he was the right match for her. A pair of rogues! I like to imagine them, too, as being happily "out there, somewhere." Getting themselves into - and out of - a new scrape every week.
Darius...
The mentor who'd taught him the most valuable lessons of his life. The friend whose loss he most mourned.
I owe him even more than I knew, when I imagined he'd be in Paris forever. Years after Darius's death, he'd been told how the Immortal priest had learned through dreams that Methos was in danger...journeyed to Scotland to warn him...and helped Methos realize the child his wife, Margaret MacLeod, was carrying in her womb was indeed his.
He had to know - from the name MacLeod, and what I told him about when and where I was born - that I was Methos's son. And that I had a special destiny - though he may not have known it involved Ahriman, or anything beyond thwarting Roland Kantos.
Ironically, that had been relatively easy - given that Cassandra had hidden him when he was a child. As an adult, he'd realized Kantos's power over others was completely dependent on his hypnotic voice; so all he'd had to do was plug his ears.
But Darius didn't know that. There was no way he could have prepared me for any "special destiny," so he kept silent about whatever he did know.
A related thought brought a smile to his face. His visit to Scotland...he told everyone that back in the fifth century, when he abandoned his plan to lead a conquering army all the way to the sea, he'd vowed to deny himself even the sight of that sea. He never actually said he'd never broken that vow.
The smile faded. I made a long-ago vow that I've broken at times, too...
He still grieved over Darius's death at the hands of mortals - renegade Watchers - in 1993.
But he wondered, now, whether destiny had been at work even then. It was only a decade later that the Watchers - and MacLeod - had learned nothing calamitous happened when Quickenings were taken on holy ground. MacLeod and the few Immortal friends he told had kept it to themselves. But there were, inevitably, leaks from within the Watchers' organization. By the time another decade had passed, holy ground was no longer a refuge. No Immortal cleric was safe.
Even if Darius had been willing to do what I do now - fight in self-defense, but not take heads - he wouldn't have lasted long. He hadn't used a sword for over a thousand years. And he probably wouldn't have let me help him get back in shape. Wouldn't have wanted to be a good enough swordsman that he might be tempted to kill.
What knowledge, what dangerous powers, might have passed to some cruel, ruthless Immortal with his Quickening? As great a threat as mine, if not more so.
He believed he'd been changed for the better when he took the Quickening of that ancient holy man, Ludovic, at the gates of Paris. But he'd been a decent person to begin with, bent on conquest because soldiering was the only life he'd ever known. There's no guarantee a transfer of his Quickening would have worked the same way.
Not even those reflections could ease MacLeod's grief over Darius's death.
Nevertheless, the name "Darius" brought a happier thought to mind.
His namesake. My first grandson!
The last MacLeod had heard from Richie and his son Dare, they'd been together, hard at work on a project they'd described as "exciting and challenging."
Can't imagine either of them doing anything not "exciting and challenging," he thought with a smile. Sit around and reminisce? No way! If they saw me now, they'd tease me about getting lazy in my old age.
But he knew he had to delve deeper into his "homeland" memories. Face the ones that were most painful.
I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod...
But until he'd dealt with Kanwulf (temporarily), he'd brought nothing but grief and shame to that clan.
If Ian MacLeod hadn't been clan chieftain - and even as it was, if he hadn't publicly denied I was their son! - he and my adoptive mother might have met the same fate as Connor's adoptive mother. Been burned at the stake for having spawned a "demon" child.
He shuddered at that thought.
At least I understand, now, why Debra Campbell's parents promised her to my cousin Robert rather than to me. The clan chieftain's son should have seemed a better match - and I was the one Debra loved.
But everyone in Glenfinnan knew I'd been born at the winter solstice. And when that sinister Kantos showed up, searching for a "foundling" who'd been born at the solstice, I conveniently wasn't there. I was "lost in the forest." I didn't realize it at the time, but that must have convinced some of the villagers I was the "foundling" - not a MacLeod by blood, and somehow dangerous, to boot.
Debra was my first love. A love that had never been consummated. We'd dreamed of a life together since we were children! And I'd loved Robert like a brother.
But I wound up causing both their deaths...
Years before he learned what he was, Debra had made it clear he was the man she loved. A furious Robert had challenged him to fight - with swords. His "father" Ian had insisted he do it; and he'd unintentionally killed Robert.
After that, he'd been so distraught that he'd felt he couldn't marry Debra, much as he loved her. That had driven her to run to a cliff edge, meaning to kill herself. He'd raced after her...assured her he would marry her, couldn't believe he'd ever thought otherwise! She'd turned back from the cliff edge. But then the ground had given way beneath her, and she'd fallen to her death.
Ironically, as he knew now, he actually had been "a MacLeod by blood."
I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod...
When I was a child, I knew Father James MacAlpin. To think that he knew the truth about who I was, what I was - and he was guarding the secret, all that time! I understand that he had no choice. But I so wish he could have told me about my real parents...
He'd died before Kantos came to Glenfinnan. If he'd still been alive, might he have spirited me away? Might I never have met Cassandra?
He couldn't imagine how that change might have altered his life...or other lives.
Finally, he let his thoughts go back to the circumstances of his birth.
I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod...
A MacLeod, yes, through my mother. But my birth killed her. In a sense, I killed her.
And Methos...what he must have gone through! Thrilled at the birth of his son, but agonizing over the need to give me away. And then, caught by surprise when my mother began hemorrhaging. It must have been an even worse blow because he'd delivered me...had been safely delivering babies for millennia, probably had as much medical knowledge as anyone alive at the time. And he still couldn't save her. Still had to give me away, on top of losing the woman he loved.
Methos...my father...
He felt tears sting his eyes, closed though they were.
But right now, Methos is in Rome, he reminded himself sternly. Living life to the hilt, savoring every minute of it.
That's how I should think of him.
Sadly, he couldn't think of Margaret MacLeod in any way other than as a woman in her twenties (twenties!), dying after giving birth to him.
If only I'd been able to know her...
He did know she'd spoken to him, during those brief minutes when they'd both been alive. Given him a "secret name."
He'd actually learned of that custom in the nineteenth century, when he'd lived among the Roma. Hadn't imagined it had any relevance for him, of course! But he'd understood that the giving of such a name was intended to protect a child from black magic, and the child was never meant to know it - not consciously. Subconsciously, he undoubtedly did know it.
Even now, he found it hard to think about the bizarre episode in which misguided Watchers had all but destroyed him with drugs, and Nick Wolfe had somehow brought him back to himself by guessing the secret name, and calling him by it.
Nick, of all people! In his thirties at the time, knowing zero about the Roma...I'll never understand how he did it. Have to settle for just being eternally grateful.
When he'd come back to his senses, he'd quickly told Nick, "Please, don't tell me the secret name! I can't remember it. And I want to know what it is, but I think I'm not meant to know. I have a feeling that if that someday changes, I'll remember it on my own."
Nick had replied with a grin, "Glad you feel that way - 'cause the only way you could have gotten it from me was from my Quickening!"
He didn't care about the name any more. Not for its own sake.
It couldn't possibly matter now. I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod! (Though he hadn't used even that identity for centuries.)
But he still tried, every so often, to remember those first few minutes of his life. For the sake of hearing his mother's voice. He was sure he'd picked up fragments of it at times...but not enough that he could remember its timbre, let alone specific words.
Time to try again. Maybe that's the real reason fate brought me back to Britain...
Ridiculous, yes. If I couldn't "hear" her speaking to me - in Britain or anywhere else - less than five hundred years after it happened, why should I expect to "hear" her now?
But I can't shake the feeling that this time is different. That I'm here for a purpose, beyond my Watcher's family business.
He put Watchers, business, all of it firmly out of his mind.
And let himself drift back through his early-life memories.
Beyond trying to reach weapons kept safely out of his reach...
Beyond playing with Robert...
Beyond clinging to Mary MacLeod's skirts...
Beyond waking in some sort of crib...
Back to...another waking. His first waking?
He heard sounds. Many of which, it seemed, were being made by him. Indignant at being so rudely expelled from his quiet, cozy nest!
But then...he felt someone's breath in his ear.
And yes, he could hear a voice. Gentle, female. Saying - saying -
"So here you are!"
This voice was harsh, unfriendly, and definitely not his mother's. "This is how you 'work out'? You didn't even exert yourself by climbing the really steep hill!"
Jolted back to the present, MacLeod needed a few seconds to reorient himself. Catch his breath, still the pounding of his heart.
Of all the rotten timing... I was so close - so close!
But then he sighed, looked up at the glowering fifteen-year-old, and said mildly, "I did work out, till I was so exhausted that I had to stop and rest. And I know your uncle told you we'd decided none of us should tackle the steeper hill till we go together. We two old guys, and you and your brother."
He's also told you never to disturb me when I'm meditating. But it's not worth making an issue of it.
Suddenly realizing where the youth had come from, he said, "You borrowed another canoe? Just to come looking for me?"
"No, I walked on the water." A disgusted snort. "Of course I borrowed another canoe. We needed a second canoe anyway, because the four of us are going fishing today. Remember?"
"Ohh - I clean forgot about the fishing plan! Stayed here longer than I'd intended. I'm sorry!" He really had forgotten, and was genuinely sorry. "I'm coming. Just give me a minute to collect my stuff."
Gathering the "stuff," he had the sad thought that even if he hadn't known the voice, he would have recognized the boy immediately.
Why was that a sad thought?
Because this boy, and his three-years-younger brother, looked so much alike that they could have passed for identical twins. When they were together, the height difference made it easy to tell which was which. Seeing only one of them, it should have been well-nigh impossible.
It wasn't...because the older boy wore a perpetual scowl.
Angry at the world, at me in particular...and I don't blame him. I wish he could see the world through my eyes! But I'm the last person who could help him.
As they made their way down what would one day be called Wearyall Hill, they were of course conversing in the boy's native tongue.
Aramaic.