Chapter 3

Raj did not notice the strange lightning that night, even though he was not sleeping. For one, there was no thunder, and although the crackling of electricity lit up the woods with an eerie blue glow, it only lasted a few seconds each time. What he did notice, however, was when someone knocked on his door in the early hours of the morning. Raj had a feeling that it might be Adam, but he could not have predicted the state he would be in.

When he opened the door and looked out, there was no one there. Frowning, Raj looked around, certain that his students would not be pulling a prank like this, not with Vikram in hospital. Then he looked down to see Adam, collapsed on his doorstep, holding his drawn sword as if it were his lifeline.

"Adam?" Raj asked, worried about the sword.

Adam stirred and looked up at him. "Hello Raj, do you mind if I come in?" he managed weakly, as he struggled to his feet. Raj took hold of the arm not holding a sword to steady him, and then almost let go as he noticed that Adam had the hilt of a knife sticking out of his back.

"You have a knife..." Raj started, and then realized that Adam must surely know that. "Come in." With Raj's help, Adam managed to get inside, where he propped himself up against a pillar and refused to let Raj call a doctor.

"But you need help," Raj protested, still eyeing the sword warily. In the light, he could clearly see streaks of blood on the blade, and Adam's right hand and arm were covered in blood as well.

Adam, seemingly following Raj's thoughts, dropped the sword, which fell to the floor with a loud clang that did nothing to steady Raj's nerves. "Sorry," Adam muttered. "Look Raj, I do need help, but you're going to have to help me. I can't reach this bloody knife. I need you to pull it out."

"No way," Raj said. "If I pull it out your lung will collapse and you may die. I know enough to know one should never pull out a knife like this. You need to be in hospital."

Adam gave a sigh that would have been exasperated if he had not been so weak. "I know all that, Raj, but if you don't do it, and do it quickly, you will have a dead man on your floor in any case. Please, trust me on this. Pull it out." As he spoke, his knees buckled and he slid down to the floor, so that he ended up on his knees in front of Raj. "Please."

"I can't," Raj said, helplessly. What do you do when someone asked you to do something that will kill him, but if you do nothing, he will die anyway?

"Yes, you can, Raj," Adam said from the floor. "All you do is put your hand on the hilt, and pull." He seemed to wilt in front of Raj's eyes, becoming grey in the face and blue around the lips. "I promise, everything will be al right." He held Raj's gaze with his own, imploring him wordlessly until Raj gave in. Then he nodded slightly. "Do it."

Raj steeled himself, bent over Adam and took the hilt of the knife in as strong a grip as he could manage. Giving himself and Adam a whispered count, "One, two ... three!" he pulled the knife out. It resisted for a moment, as if the suction in Adam's lung was holding it back, then it slid out with a sound that would give Raj the creeps for the rest of his life.

Adam tried to stifle the groan of pain that inevitably escaped him, and then reached up to grip Raj's hand. "Good man." His breath began to rattle through the open wound, just as Raj had feared would happen, and he struggled to speak. "Raj, promise me."

Raj, horrified, could only nod.

"Promise me you won't call anyone before dawn."

"But," Raj wanted to argue.

"Promise!" Adam's voice, harsh with effort, left no room for argument, and Raj nodded in agreement. Adam seemed to relax at that, his breath becoming shallower by the moment, until with a final rattle, he died.

Raj stared for a moment at the dead man at his feet, and then noticed that he still held the knife that had killed his friend. He looked at it numbly, then flung it violently away from him and sank down to the floor, utterly and emotionally spent. He could not think what to do. He should call Narayan Shankar; he should call the police. But he couldn't seem to move; it was as if Adam's final request had cast a spell on him, and he wouldn't be able to do anything until dawn came to release him.

He did not know how long he sat there, staring into nothingness, not thinking about anything. The night was deathly quiet. In the silence, Raj finally became aware of something incongruous. A slight, crackling sound came from the body lying next to him. As the sound continued, Raj found himself overcome with an urge to find out what was causing it. He tried to suppress it but after a while he gave in, moved closer and pulled Adam's coat away to look at the knife wound in his back.

What he saw looked like something straight out of the myths and legends. Around the edges of the wound, blue energy was flowing, pulling the wound closed and healing the flesh. The small sparks looked like electricity and were the source of the crackling sound. Raj watched in wonder, entranced. It could not be. "Brahman," he whispered.

At the word, Adam suddenly drew breath, pulling in air into his lungs with an agonised gasp. For a few moments, he struggled, then his breathing eased and he sat up. "Hello again, Raj," he said, looking at the pool of blood on the floor. "I've made a bit of mess of your sitting room, haven't I?"

Raj could think of only one thing to say. "Who are you?"

Adam smiled ruefully. "I am Methos," he answered, as if the name would mean anything to Raj. "But that's not what you're asking, is it?"

Raj shook his head dumbly. Nothing made any sense to him anymore. Adam had died, and yet, here he was, alive. Raj had seen the brahman power restoring him. Such things were impossible, a matter of stories, not real, were they?

Infinitely more experienced with dying, Adam realized that Raj would need some time to come to grips with what had happened, so he stood up, dragged Raj over to a chair, made him sit down, and started cleaning up his blood from the floor tiles. After a while, Raj went to fetch some rags and water, and helped him.

When the signs of violence were at last removed from the floor, Raj finally spoke. "Adam... what happened? How is this possible?"

"I can tell you now, I suppose," Adam said. "But it's a long story. If you don't want blood on your chairs, you'd let me change first."

The simple actions of finding clothes for Adam restored some sense of normalcy for Raj, as if it made everything less surreal. Finally, as the grey of dawn started to lighten the sky, Adam told Raj his story.

"There's a race of people living in secret amongst you," he started. "We look as you do, we live as you do. What makes us different is that we don't die like you do." At Raj's questioning look, he elaborated. "No one knows how or why, but the only way that we can be killed is by decapitation. Any other wound heals within minutes; even mortal wounds heal, causing us to revive from apparent death. We call ourselves Immortal, although that isn't really true. Thousands of Immortals have died through the millennia, killed by other Immortals."

"Why?" Raj asked.

"No one knows," Adam answered. "They play the Game: in the end, there can be only one. Some believe the one that remains will win some kind of prize, but no one even knows what the prize is." He ran a hand through his hair. "What happened tonight was part of the stupid Game, but they cheated."

"Someone stuck a knife in your back as part of a game?" Raj asked, incredulously.

"Well, not really," Adam replied. "I was challenged by an Immortal, and we fought." He stopped and sighed. "Raj, I told you that I am Death. That is still true, but please believe me I don't 'play' the Game. I have been hiding here, in truth, but when I left this afternoon, I left the protection of this place. I had to fight to save my life."

"Okay," Raj said, more to get Adam to continue than to indicate that he understood anything.

"I won the duel, but while I was still recovering another Immortal attacked me from behind with the knife. I somehow managed to kill him without losing my own head, but I couldn't remove the knife, which is why I came back. I am sorry for doing this to you."

One thing only had stuck in Raj's mind. "You killed someone?"

Adam nodded. "I killed two people today, Raj. Do you wonder about my conscience?" He looked at his hands. "No matter how I try to redeem myself, I am always forced to kill in the end. These hands have more blood on them than you can imagine. Does it surprise you that I am haunted by my past?"

"No," Raj said softly. "How do you bear it?"

"I don't," Adam said grimly. "You're seeing me in a bad spell, normally I hide it better. You'd think I'd have learned not to care by now."

"Not to care?"

"I know, that sounds shocking to you," Adam said. "You care so much that you're willing to sit here and listen to a confessed killer, still trying to find out how to help me. But Raj, sometimes the only way to deal with life is to shut it out, because that shuts out death too. I have spent too many years caring, trying to undo what Death has wrought. It hasn't helped at all." He smiled painfully. "I officially gave up caring three months ago, when Alexa died. That hasn't helped either."

"Alexa?" Raj asked, watching the sky grow brighter. Soon Narayan Shankar would be waiting for him at the lakeshore to greet the sun, but Raj would not be there. He would be here, finally getting the pieces of the puzzle that Adam was, putting them together and making them whole, if he could.

"Alexa was my wife," Adam said softly. "I loved her and married her even though I knew she was dying. I would have destroyed the world to save her, but I couldn't. I buried her in Paris, left my friends without a word and came here, to get away from my memories. And you know what? She didn't follow me, but all the others did."

"I am so sorry," Raj said. "I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't," Adam said. "Anyway, I came here, kept busy, safely hidden on Holy Ground, until this afternoon when I foolishly left, forgetting that a world of Immortals would be very happy to see me enter the Game once more. Silly me."

"Wait, wait," Raj interrupted. "Holy Ground?"

"Ah yes, I forgot to mention that, and some other things." Adam seemed distance himself from the emotion he had been experiencing, and entered a lecturing mode. "There are three rules for Immortals. No fighting on Holy Ground. Once challenge has been issued, none can interfere. There can be only one." He gestured out the window. "I don't know if you're aware of this, but Gurukul is built on Holy Ground, so it's a safe place for me. Monasteries, churches, military bases; they're all off limits for fighting. I don't know what will happen if someone does take a head on Holy Ground, but I don't think I'd like to be around if it ever happens."

"You knew that before you came here?" Raj asked.

"Yes, indeed. I've studied here before, long ago."

Raj frowned. Gurukul had been a college for 125 years, and in that time, it had always been run on tradition, no matter who the principal was. He could not imagine Adam being allowed here at any time before he became principal. "When was this, Adam?"

Adam closed his eyes, thinking. "I can't give you the exact date, unfortunately, but it must have been around 300AD," he said finally, opening his hazel eyes and watching Raj's reaction. "Of course the place looked different then. The woods were more extensive, and the ashram was about where your temple is now. I along with the other shishyas maintained the grounds, wandered the hills and listened to guruji's lectures." He smiled. "Those were simpler times."

"You're ..." Raj did a quick calculation. "You're 1700 years old? Unbelievable!"

"No, I didn't say that," Adam answered. "By then I'd been around the world a few times. I am Methos; I'm the oldest of them all."

The sun rose, blinding. Raj did not notice.

Methos
Myth

Ancient of ages
Sage for an aeon
Watching civilizations
Rise and fall

A lost soul
A life in limbo
Wandering the boundaries
Of time and space

A poet
A scholar
Chronicler of the world
Ever observing

Myth
Methos