Q Me?

Chapter 3:  A Rose among Thorns

                "Mac" Amanda appealed "Rebecca loved this man.  Can you see her, for even an instant, loving someone evil?"

Mac's frown was more sulky than thoughtful as Amanda continued "Did you ever have cause to question Rebecca's integrity?  I thought not, who do you think taught it to her?  Honestly, MacLeod, he was the final arbitrator of justice for the whole world."

"And he thinks he still is!" Mac exclaimed indignantly "What are you two starring at?"

"Not a thing." I said and sipped my drink while Amanda gave a sarcastic shrug.

"It's not the same." Mac rumbled "I don't put myself forth as a god."

Amanda's glass came down with a crack, "We're not talking about modern times MacLeod.  The man was taking photographs before the rest of humanity had mastered written language.  Just what do you think a lot of the old gods were?  And I don't see him calling himself a god now."

"So you never met him until today?" Mac asked tight lipped.

"No" Amanda admitted "a few near misses when he visited Rebecca but, no we never actually met before today."

"Then you don't know" Mac parried.

"Wait a minute" I sat up to catch Amanda's eyes "You met Methos in 877 at Rebecca's so why didn't Methos know Ari-El was alive?"
Amanda gave us a loaded look, "Because Rebecca swore to him that she had neither seen nor heard from Ari-El since Methos came to fetch him at Ebla over three thousand years before."

While Mac looked bemused I injected incredulously "Rebecca lied? We have more Records on Rebecca than and other Immortal, living or deceased.  The woman never lied, not in over three thousand years of paperwork.  Do you have any idea how many generations of Watchers have spent their lives trying to catch Rebecca in a lie?"

Amanda shrugged "I know of one and only one.  It was 877, the year Charles the Bald died…"

877 AD

                "Amanda!"  Rebecca smiled a broad greeting as she descended the stone stairs "I see the last decade has been kind. "  The two met in a swirl of skirts and a bear hug "You just missed him"

"Missed who?" Amanda asked bemused.

"Blade" Rebecca sighed, "He's not three days gone.  I wish you had told me you were coming.  I would have tried harder to convince him to stay a bit longer.  Come dinner will be laid soon.  You must tell me all your adventures."

****

                The dining room was filled with the merry sound of women's laughter. 

"Amanda!" Rebecca tried to scold through snickers, "You didn't"

"I most certainly did and what's more…"  Her story was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a man-at-arms in the doorway.

"Berengar is there a problem?"

"Your pardon, milady, but there are a group of priests requesting sanctuary.   They warn of Danish raiders."

Rebecca rose immediately, "Double the watch and send Rothgar to warn the town.  Where are these men?"

"In the gate house, under guard, awaiting your ladyship's pleasure."

Rebecca swept up her sword belt and a lantern on her way out the door with Berengar and Amanda on her heels.  Both women paused and they exchanged questioning looks before entering the gatehouse.

"Lady Rebecca, I presume" the best dressed of the company addressed Rebecca with a minimum of deference "I am Hugh the Abbot.  My companions and I were traveling from Jemieges to Chelles when we were set upon by Danish raiders.  We are sorely in need of rest and I fear Brother Bernard may not live to see the morn."

"You are welcome here, good Abbot.  Berengar, please tell Ronegonda to lay fires in the west chamber, have Drusla prepare supper for these men and tell Brother David to come with a litter."  Even as she issued commands concerning her guests comfort Rebecca was already kneeling over the still form lying on a pallet near the blazing gate room fire.  It was in that moment that her eyes met those of the man kneeling opposite her.  She gasped in sudden shock and straightened with her hand on her sword hilt, "This man is NOT welcome in this house. You, sir, will leave - NOW"

"Lady Rebecca!" Hugh thundered "You can not send Brother Adam out into the night.  We barely escaped the Danes to reach here!  Never have I met a meeker or milder man.  On my oath he is no threat to you or to this house."

The man in question never raised his eyes from his labors over the wounded Bernard.  Rebecca's sword rasped free of its sheath before another protest could be lodged.  The monk's hands remained busy even when the cold iron tip touched the hollow of his shoulder.

"Lady Rebecca this behavior is most unbecoming.  You threaten a man of God, woman.  I will have you before the king's justice."

"No" the monk looked up for the first time, "No, sir, I have told you I have not always been the man you know now.  Lady Rebecca had the misfortune of knowing me in darker days."  His hazel eyes bore into Rebecca's azure ones.

"Have you seen or heard from him since the day I came to fetch him?" The tension in the man showed in every line of his face.

"Not a word" Rebecca's reply was less than a whisper.

"Not one?" the man's eyes begged for a denial.

"NOT ONE!" Rebecca's reply was a roar that turned suddenly to quaver of rage or tears, "What did you do with him, Adam?"  Menace began to thread its way into her tone, "Where did you take him?  Why did he never return?"  She raised her sword forcing the man to rise with it or risk a slit throat.  They stood a long moment eye to eye "Who did you betray him to Adam?  What ditch did his body lie in or were you decent enough to bury him?"

Adam started to reach out but Rebecca hissed "Don't touch me. Don't you dare touch me."

"Swear to me, Riv, swear that he never came home."

There were tears in Rebecca's eyes "I swear, Adam, he never came home."

Adam nodded very slowly and very solemnly and turned toward the door. 

"Brother Adam" Hugh snapped "Where do you think you're going?"

The monk spoke without turning "You asked once why I do so much penance do you remember what I told you?"

"Yes, that once you served a exceptional and benevolent liege and that you betrayed him."

The monk turned with eyes full of desolation and anguish, "I knew that he was maimed because of my actions.  Now I know that he died.  The Danes can do me no greater harm than that knowledge."

"Adam" Rebecca called as she sheathed her sword  "Don't be a fool."

The monk stood silent with the light flickering off the pale skin of his tonsured head.

"Stay" she invited quietly, "he wouldn't have wanted you to waste your life."

"No" the monk whispered back "He always did deplored a waste." 

  Rebecca nodded once slowly.  The monk nodded back "I know how little my word is worth to you but I swear I will harm nothing and no one under this roof."   He licked his lips, "I swear to you, Rebecca, I never meant for it to… I'm so very, very sorry.  Can you ever forgive me, Rebecca?"

"No, Adam, I don't think I can.  I don't think I ever will." She swallowed and dropped her eyes, "Berengar show these men to the west chamber.  Tell Ronegonda that they are to have everything they need.  Amanda please come with me."

Amanda had to nearly break into a run to keep pace with Rebecca.  Finally she managed to grab Rebecca's arm, "Rebecca, stop."

"Not yet, Amanda.  I'll explain inside."

Amanda nodded and followed in harried silence.  Rebecca knelt and pulled the crystal shard from around her neck free.  She held it up to the light so that it caught and refracted tiny rainbows.

"I want you to promise me something, Amanda.  No, that isn't right, I want you to swear it to me.  The man downstairs name isn't really Adam, it's Methos and he was one of the Blades.  Of all of us he was the one who was closest and dearest to Ari-El.  And he was the one who betrayed him."

Amanda's eyes widened "You lied to him" she whispered, "You told him Blade was dead."

"Yes, I did" Rebecca replied levelly.  She grasped Amanda's arm "And when he asks you you're going to back me up, Amanda, please."  She was nearly begging "I've never asked anything of you but I'm asking this.  I know better than to tell you to stay away from him, so I only going to tell you to be careful and I'm going to tell you why.  After the last Arattan gathering Ari-El had decided to give up his kingdom and his influence.  He claimed that it had served its purpose and that he was weary of the time and trouble involved.  He'd disbanded the Blades and was gradually weaning the surrounding kingdoms of their dependence on him.  Of all the Blades he took only me with him and Methos hated me for that.  Ari-El had taken the name Azi and we had settled comfortably in Ebla as the city's chief scribe and his wife…"

Ebla  - 2154 BC

                "Rivkah?" eyes the color of fine honey swept the room and finally came to rest on the slumped woman near the loom.  He crossed the room in a few swift strides and touched the quietly weeping woman gently.  She smiled up at him weakly and tucked his single rebellious lock back into his otherwise pristine braid.  "I still can't get used to you with black hair and matching eyes."

Ari-El touched a fingertip to his left eye and blinked once "Better?"

Rivkah gave him a watery smile "Well, at least you look a bit more like yourself."

"Yes, well, not looking like oneself is the point of a disguise, Riv."

"Have you heard?" Rivkah asked tentatively

 "Of Enmerkar's sacking of Elam? I've heard.  The whelp supposes that he will roll across the plains, up into the mountains, and lay siege to Aratta itself.  He will find the road to Aratta more elusive that he imagines."

"So you are not going to Elam's defense?"

Ari-El picked up a stylus and tablet, "No, no I shall not.  I've no intention of being drawn into Enmerkar's little games and intrigues.  Besides Chedorlaomer is an abler man than anyone is giving him credit for."

He glanced up suddenly from his work, "Take care, Riv, in word and deed, Enmerkar has taken mortals into his employ."

"He isn't going to stop" Rivkah injected quietly "He's going to keep hunting you."

Ari-El rose and went to the window "No, Riv."

"Why not?  Why are you letting him destroy centuries of work? I don't understand."

"Because it won't stop with Enmerkar or Lugalbanda or Dumuzi, or Bilgames or Lilitish once this begins Riv it won't end until there is only one."

Rivkah frowned "Only one what?"

Ari-El only shook his head and leaned against the lintel staring up at the stars "For nearly two thousand years we have lived in peace with one another, I shan't be the one to start the slaughter, Riv."

"You know what they're saying about you, don't you?"

Ari-El's laugh was merry, "Do you really think it concerns me that a pack of whelps I could best en mass, one-handed, and drunk are calling me a coward?" His mirth ended abruptly "At least this way they're living puppies."

"Puppies eventually grow up and become wolves, Ari."  She ran a hand over the gray at his temples "You can add all the gray hair you want to but it will never be truly convincing.  You died too young.  You can't hide forever, you're too distinct."  She wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek against his shoulder, "But I could think of a way to make us less so."

He turned and gathered her into his arms with an amused glance, "And how's that?"

"Everyone knows that we're…  that we have no children" Ari-El caught her fingers as she faltered.

 "There are reasons for that, Riv"  he said not unkindly.

"Look me in the eye, Au'Brey, and tell me it's impossible.  Tell me that you in your infinite wisdom can't give a Quickened woman a child.  The truth is all I'm asking for."

Ari-El drew a long, deep breath "It's not impossible, Riv, just dangerous, difficult and inadvisable."

"I want a child Au'Brey, I need a child.  A child, one that can bear children of its own and you need protective coloring."

"Rivkah" Ari-El leaned forward so that their noses were nearly touching "you have no idea the danger you are courting or the sorrow you will create for yourself.  Children are a mortal's immortality.  We are Immortals ourselves, Rivkah.  I can give you a child, of your own flesh; I only hope you will not hate me for it."

"WHAT?" MacLeod nearly came out of his chair "It's not possible.  Immortals do not have children."  He looked to me for support.

I shrugged "If it's ever happened we don't have a Record of it."

Amanda took a sip of her long neglected wine, "It is possible, MacLeod.  I saw the photographs, Mac.  Photographs taken four thousand years before anyone invented the camera of Ari-El and Rebecca and their daughter, Eveshka.  Rebecca swore she bore Eveshka herself.  Mac, seeing them together you couldn't doubt it.  She had Rebecca's eyes and Ari-El's hair and nose.  Now do you want to hear this or what?"

Ebla  2146 BC

                "PAPA!  PAPA, Mama, Papa's BACK!!" a small whirlwind of gangly seven year old limbs launched itself into Ari-El's arms.  She sighed in happy contentment and snuggled in his arms.  He kissed the top of her golden head lightly as he glanced up at the woman framed in the doorway.  She raised an eyebrow in question; he inclined his head minimally in affirmation.

"Papa?" she tilted her coquettishly "Did you bring me anything?"
He set her down and whispered conspiratorially in her ear.  Her eyes widened and she squealed as she ran out the door.  He watched her until she was out the door and then turned to Rivkah, "It was not a simple or easy thing you asked of me eight years ago and it is a thorny task you handed me two months ago."

"It was probably the first real challenge you've had in centuries, wasn't it?  I wonder did you consent to it because I asked or because you were board?"

Ari-El only gave her an enigmatic grin in response and handed her a cloth wrapped bundle.  She raised one of the long crystal shards to the light and then gave him a bemused look.  He turned toward the single window and spoke while still gazing out "It was a pretty quandary you set me, Riv.  To find a means to grant reversible immortality with undiminished fertility." He left his position at the lintel and rejoined Rivkah.  He quickly fitted the shards together and then plucked the last one from her unresisting hand.

"Watch" he whispered as he fit the last piece into place.  She gave a squeak of surprise and nearly dropped the bundle as it metamorphized into a perfectly faceted globe.  He touched the globe and it fell into its disparate pieces "When she's old enough, have her reassemble it.  As long as it is assembled and in her possession neither illness nor age will touch her.  And when she is ready to grow old" he paused as she made a small sound of protest.  "Rivkah" there was a stern note in his voice "she is mortal and, eventually, all mortal things die.  It is their nature.  And you know it or you would not have made reversibility a condition of your request.  When she is ready to grow old all she need do is return it to its native state and she will resume aging normally. "

She started to speak and then froze wide-eyed. 

"It's Methos" Ari-El reassured her "I made greater haste than I would have preferred to arrive ahead of him.  He has come from the south with great urgency."

"Why?"

It was Ari-El's turn to appear vaguely bemused "I suggest we go find out" he rebutted as he strode out the door.  Methos' horse panted heavily with its head hanging wearily between its braced forelegs.  Methos himself was frozen in absolute astonishment gaping at the child before him.  She gave him a dazzling smile as she stroked the tiny ball of fur in her lap.  He raised dumbfounded eyes to Ari-El's whose only reply was a self-satisfied grin.  "Brother, for what cause do you abuse your horse so?"

Methos pulled his eyes away from the girl with difficulty "I need your help.  Can we talk, privately."

"Your horse wants tending, I'll help you stable him.  Riv, have Sheba prepare the bath house and tell Hagar we will be having a guest."

"Sheba is already drawing your own bath."

Ari-El's nostrils flared slightly "Methos needs it more, your horse is a fresher flower, Brother."

"Such a sacrifice" Methos jibed "I am truly honored."

"The true sacrifice, Meth, would be sitting with you without the bath.  Come, tell me what errand has driven you to ride three horses to death and to break the wind of this one."

Rivkah shivered as if taken by a sudden chill as she watched the two men walk beside the faltering chestnut.

* * *

                Ari-El rose smoothly without jostling the peacefully sleeping child nestled against his chest and moved soundlessly out of the room with his tiny burden leaving Rivkah and Methos to exchange hooded glances across the low table.

"Motherhood quite agrees with you, Rivkah.  You have that certain, glow, about you" the words were spoken in a light and friendly manner but you could almost taste the anger beneath them "Tell me how does it feel to be a real woman."  His smile was slow and lazy as he appraised her "Tell me do Immortals get stretch marks?"

Rivkah made no reply as Ari-El's shadow fell across both of them.  He offered Rivkah his right hand.  He gave her fingers an affectionate squeeze, "Would you mind overmuch if Methos and I continued our earlier discussion?"

Rivkah rose and padded quietly out of the room.  There was an interval of silence before Methos spoke  "So you've given her everything she ever wanted and probably more than she ever dreamed of besides."

"Jealous is most unbecoming, Brother, nor can I recall ever denying you you're heart's desires."

"You didn't take me with you" was the petulant reply "You took her."

Ari-El sighed heavily "Meth, we were together for nearly two thousand years.  Tell me, truly, with the exception of the last fifteen years do you have a single memory without me?"

"You've wearied of me then.  I'm not good enough for you any more? Is that it?" Methos was nearly hissing as he tried to keep his voice down.

"No, Bren'hamin, I've not wearied of you."  There was a long pause "But I have become apprehensive about your individuality.  You're my shadow, Meth.  I'd hoped you would use these years apart to see the world, to return to me with your own dreams and hopes and visions.  Now it's apparent that all you've managed to do is sulk."  There was a heavy weariness in his tone "I apologize, Bren, for I've no one but myself to reproach for any deficiencies in you."  There was a long, flat silence after Ari-El's pronouncement.

"All right" Methos said quietly into the stifling stillness "You want a dream, Au'Brey, I want one too."

"One what?"  Ari-El's reply sounded a bit perplexed.

"A child." Methos clarified "bear me one."

"You want a child" Ari-E's incredulity was clear in his tone "No, Methos, you do not.  I think you have forgotten just how well I know you.  You don't want a child any more than I do.  Don't borrow other people's dreams, Bren, dream your own."

There was another tension-loaded lull in the conversation.  Rivkah leaned into the wall listening intently to the faint rustle of clothing as one of the men moved. 

"What are these?"  Methos inquired in an apparent shift in the conversion.  Methos gasped suddenly in astonishment, "The Methuselah Stone, I thought this was just a myth."

"It's a gift, for Eveshka, when she is a bit older."  Ari-El replied coolly.

"They say whoever has this lives forever" Methos whispered in awe.

Ari-El chuckled "I intend to live forever I have no need of a stone to do it and neither do you."  There was a faint clink "They are for Eveshka.  Now, given your desire for speed in the morn I suggest we retire."

A hand closed over Rivkah's elbow before she had a chance to move away from her hiding place.  Ari-El led her silently through the servant's chamber and back into their own.

"Rivkah, on the off chance that I have not made this clear previously, do not ever eavesdrop on me again."

"I'm sorry" she dropped her eyes and then plead with him, "you can't leave again so soon."

"I'll only be gone three months Riv, maybe less if I can straighten this out more expeditiously."

"But you just got back" her voice quavered on the edge of tears as she protested into his chest.

He stroked her hair "Let me explain something to you, Riv" he cradled her face in his long, elegant fingers "Do you remember how you were when I arrived in Kanish?"

"How could I ever forget?" she whispered back up to him.

"Methos was worse, much, much worse."  He traced her eyebrow with a feather-light touch "After many long years and futile attempts to give Methos something resembling a human mind by more traditional means I finally gave him my own."  She frowned up at him in confusion "Like the way I linked the Blades only for much longer and much deeper." He frowned as he sought the means to explain "If a child never hears a human voice how will he learn to speak?  The answer is, Riv, he will not and if he does not learn as a child he can not learn as an adult no matter how patient you are or how long you try.  And what is more if a child never sees another human face he will not learn how to deal with other humans."

"But if no one raises a child, how can he survive to grow?"  Rivkah protested in confusion.

"Methos' youth is a testament to his unswerving will to survive at any cost and against any odds."

"But Methos doesn't remember his youth, how do you?"

Ari-El sighed and drew Rivkah down beside him on their couch "Human are not like birds, or fish, or bees.  You are not born knowing how to think, you learn it just as you learn to speak and the child that does not learn is like a hawk or hound there is only now and eternity.  There is only a remembrance of pain and its apparent cause and a recall of pleasure.  What Methos has of his early years is jumbled images and it is better so.  I would not wish Methos' early years on my worst enemy." His eyes drifted to the newly risen moon hanging low and full just over the horizon "About fifteen hundred years ago I gave up my largely futile attempts at teaching which were more like training anyway and I … linked with him.  For the next century all of his amorphous thoughts were given organization, structure, and interpretation by my mind.  Until, gradually, ever so slowly he developed a mind of his own."  He traced a faint crack in the wattle and daub wall "It should have been over then but" he breathed heavily through his finely chiseled nose.  "No mortal could travel more than a day's march without becoming embroiled in the endemic warfare that so plagues human society.  The mindless ones were spreading at a rate I had no hope of containing alone.  I needed help, more I needed Immortal help.   I was over thirty-five hundred years old when I found Methos and until that moment I had truly believed myself completely alone.  It would be another  four hundred and forty seven before I encountered another" One corner of Ari-El's lip twitched in what might have been a frown.  He stared intently at the flaw in the wall "he was available, and willing, so I used him.  As the centuries passed I found others and made them my students and placed them as their inclinations and talents warranted.    He turned back to her "And a few, a rare and special few" he flashed her a smile "I made my Blades.  Even though I had other hands, as it were, and less need I continued to lean on Methos far more than was healthy, for either of us."  He made a self-depreciating shrug "It was comfortable, it was easy."  He met her eyes briefly and for the first time his dropped first.  His next words were spoken to the floor "I have stunted his growth, Riv, badly.  I tried to explain this to him when I scattered the Blades but in many ways he is still a child" the grin he flashed her was full of wry amusement "and a petulant one at that.  He's conveniently refusing to understand.  He's also lying to me."

"Lying to you?" Rivkah echoed.

"And doing surprisingly well at it I might add.  If I did not know him better than he knows himself I might even be fooled."  Rivkah gave him a sidelong glance as he continued  "I suppose I should not be too surprised, the first thing he did once he could think was lie to me."

"But if your mind is his, how can he lie to you?"

"Was" he corrected "My dear Rivkah that is the point of my rather lengthy admission.  In brief, I have cut him off, I have cast him out of the nest a bid him fly on his own well-feathered wings.  I could ascertain the truth but that would be the undoing of the last fifteen years work."

"But you knew" she protested "you knew he was coming, you knew about the horses."

"The links between Methos and I will endure as long as we are both alive.  I can spin them to gossamer but they will never break.  Methos' awareness is not as perceptive as mine but I will never draw a breath without knowing where Methos is and something of his state, that is one of the risks I accepted when I chose to make Methos into a man."

Her sky blue eyes bore into his miss-matched ones "What about Eveshka and I? What about Ebrium?  The king will not be happy that you are leaving again."

"I have already spoken with Ebrium and he has granted my suit."  He cupped her chin at her stunned look  "I am NOT abandoning you" he denied fiercely with a slightly wounded look "At the very least I have a duty to Eveshka as compelling as my responsibility to Methos."  He laid a quelling finger against her lip

"I may have removed myself from him in one sense but I will NOT abandon him either.  He is in greater difficulty than he will admit to, it takes no great skill to read that.  Just because I want him to stretch his own wings does not mean I will allow him to plummet."

"And you will be riding into that 'difficulty' blind!"

"Even if we were as wasteful of horseflesh as Methos was on the way here we would still be over a week on the road and unless he is willing to give me a better reason I have no intention of squandering resources so frivolously.  Either he will tell me the real reason or we will be a full fortnight on the road"  the reassuring smile he gave her was full of confidence "Besides, Riv, I've been taking care of myself for a very, very long time."  He kissed the tip of her nose "Do not look so fretful, l will be back in time to argue with Harab about using my apprentices to help with the harvest.  Who knows maybe I will let him win this year."  He gave her a long, deep kiss as he drew both of them into the nest of blankets on the couch.

"Is that all Eveshka is to you? A duty?" she demanded as soon as he let her up for air.

  His eyes hardened "Eavesdroppers rarely hear anything to their credit."  A bit of the hardness bled out of his features but there was still more than a trace of annoyance in his eyes "Eveshka has her own charm and I am not sorry but of my own volition I would NEVER have had a child."

Rivkah lay in stunned silence for several breaths before clutching him in a fierce hug "You've given me so much, how can I even begin to repay you?"

He brushed his lips against hers ever so delicately "Between true friends there is no reckoning."

"I love you" she whispered as he quietly stroked her hair.  She snuggled against him burrowing into his chest and sighed longing.  She glanced up at him and started to speak but something in his eyes made her think better of it, "I'm sorry" she whispered "I should be letting you rest."

Ari-El's reply was a slow, lazy smile and a throaty chuckle "Actually, wife, rest was not what was uppermost in my mind."

Her smile was a mirror of his own "What does milord have in mind?"

"Whatever milady desires" he breathed in her ear as he caressed it delicately with his lips "whatever milady commands."

And there were no more words only moonlight…

                She lowered the crystal from the light and cupped it in her palm.  When she spoke again her voice was thick "But it wasn't two months.  It wasn't two years.  It wasn't two decades.   It wasn't two centuries.  It would be nearly three hundred years before Ari-El reappeared."  There was a quaver in her voice "I stayed in Ebla as long as I dared, until the rumors began to turned ugly.  Then I took Eveshka and the not inconsiderable fortune Ari-El had left us and we wandered for a time until Eveshka fell in love" Her smile still held a certain awe-struck reverence "and she made me a grandmother, many times.  We had many years of both hardship and bliss.  We went north and settled on the edge of the steppes.  Through the years the village came to be populated by my descendents but there was always a shadow over my joy.  With Enmerkar's hunters still out looking for Ari-El and the Blades every message had to be written in code and sent with the utmost secrecy.  Replies took months at best and sometimes decades and there were far too few.  Only Ashe, Salim, and Imhotep sent word back there was nothing from any of the others.  I was torn.  Torn between the village that had become the center of my world and fear for the men who were my dearest friends.  I meant to leave but it was so easy to keep saying I'd go tomorrow that in the end I never went.  I didn't go until Ari-El's Touch warned me."

"Ari-El's Touch?" Amanda broke in

"Ari-El's Touch is what truly set the Blades apart.  A few of us have special abilities, Amanda, the Voice, the Gift of Visions, Foresight."

"Like Darius' dreams" Amanda interjected.

"A little, except Ari-El's gift is different.  It's a bit like Visions.  He can project his own thoughts and receive those of others.  He calls it the whirlwind in his head.  The Blades went into battle as one mind in twelve bodies led by a master tactician.  Distance was no barrier for Blade.  I was convinced that he must be gone for the silence to have stretched so long and completely.  Until that morning, that wonderfully, horrible morning…

The southern Ukraine - 1857 BC

                Rivkah burrowed deeper into the cocoon of furs as she strove to ignore the gradually lightening sky in the east.  She bolted upright letting the furs slide down around her bare waist.  Her breath misted as her partner moaned a protest at the sudden chill swept into their now disturbed nest.

"Get them out, Riv" a voice echoed in her head.

"Au-Brey-El" she whispered in joyous incredulity.

"You have no time, Rivkah" the thought persisted as an image of four men appeared in her minds eye.  Four cloaked men in masks riding through the tall fall grass by the pre-dawn light.  "Strike the camp, Rivkah or neither you nor any here will see another morn."

"You're alive" her mind exclaimed back.

"Let's celebrate both our survival's later.  Strike the camp.  Gather the village.  Leave the harvest and the herds.  Wrap the horses' hooves.  Scatter the ashes.  Anything you can't gather in an hour – leave.  Head for the Deep."

"But they're only four men" she protested.

 "They are many things, Rivkah, but they are no longer men.  Live, grow stronger, fight another day" with that the Touch faded away leaving her grasping after it.

"Riv?" the brawny redhead reached a questioning hand out to her as he blinked the sleep from his olivine eyes.  "We have to leave, Daudum, now" she command as she secured her sword belt around her narrow waist.  The man voiced no protest.  He merely rose and swiftly began dressing as she gave the alarm call.  The once peaceful morning was shattered as the other seven scrambled out of their tents with their weapons and little more seeking the cause of the disturbance.  The lone night watch man rose scanning the horizon in near panic.

"Strike the camp." Rivkah command in a tone that brooked no opposition and allowed no questions.  In a few brief moments both men and women had organized themselves and were rapidly dismantling the tents and tacking up the group's small herd of horses.  The sun had not yet cleared the horizon when Rivkah rode out with the others leaving behind only a ring of flattened grasses to show the site had ever been inhabited…

                The sun had not yet reached its zenith when the group topped a gentle rise and trotted into a swarming beehive of activity.  Eveshka appeared at Rivkah's knee as if by magic.  Her eyes shone into her mother's matching ones "Papa's alive" were her first exultant words.

"Was he here?" Rivkah asked urgently.  Eveshka shook her golden head "No but he spoke to me as you claimed he could, Mother."

"He told you to abandon the village and head for the Deep?"

Eveshka swept her single rebellious lock back "Yes he said it was urgent but he didn't say why.  He said to be gone by noon and that he would try to meet us in the Deep."

"How soon can we be gone?" she demanded as her horse pawed impatiently

"There are only the twelve of us here.  I sent the children and the elders" her lip twitched at the word elder "on ahead with most of the woman and half the men.  We were just trying to make the village look like it has been abandoned for some time while we waited for you."

"Then let's go" she kneed her horse past her daughter "Mount up."

                The sun had just begun to sink when they overtook the small slow moving caravan. 

"Rykyrd" she snapped as she pulled alongside the redheaded leader "you're a leaving a trail a blind man could follow."

"It can't be helped, Rivkah" Rykyrd bit back "it will not matter.  An army could not take us once we are safely in the Deep."   Rivkah frowned her brow furrowing with worry.  She gave him a curt nod before weaving her horse through the bleating sheep toward Eveshka.  Both women's eyes suddenly lost focus.

"I told you to leave the herds and the harvest" the voice echoed in their heads "Leave the baggage.  They're

gaining on you.  Leave the baggage behind, you will move more swiftly and they will pause over it."

The presence was gone as suddenly as it had come. 

"Rykyrd, Arioch, Ellasar, Rekem, Rizpah, Abi, Shela." Rivkah exclaimed over the milling sheep.  Four men and three women rode swiftly to her side from different points in the train.

"We need to lighten the load and leave the flocks.  We leave everything behind and ride in all haste for the Deep."  She commanded.  No one moved.

"No" was Rykyrd's succinct reply.  Rivkah's eyes paned the seven grim faces. 

"We mean no disrespect, First Mother" the green-eyed, gray-haired woman at Rivkah's left began "We have left our homes on your and Eveshka's word alone but…"

The man on the pinto beside her continued when she faltered "We are sorry" he rumbled his deep bass voice resonate "but we will not abandon years of work.  What will we feed the children this winter if we leave both the herds and the harvest?  How will we plant in the spring with no seed?" 

"We do not even know the nature of the threat" another of the hoary haired group protested.

Rivkah straightened in the saddle as she crossed her hands across the tooled pommel.   She absentmindedly let the reins slip through her fingers.  Her bay took advantage of her inattention to snatch several mouthfuls of grass.

"Alright" she said quietly "On your heads and hands be it.  I and three of the young men will ride back to the gap.  If you can keep this pace you will reach the Deep before moonrise, we will watch the trail until then and join you in the Deep.  If we can."

"Who?" Rykyrd barked.

"Your stubbornness.  You choose."

He ran a hand through his gray streaked, unruly hair and shot a glance at his companions.

"I will go" the man on the pinto volunteered.

"Arioch!" the woman beside him protested.

"Rizpah" he laid a heavily callused hand on her shoulder "Our children are grown and wed.  I will go so that none of our sons must."

Rykyrd sighed and muttered "Let it be men without wains to leave fatherless."

"That would be Rivel" she paused "and Daudum."  She gave them one more piercing glare before wheeling her horse and riding to the rear of the caravan with Arioch close behind.

"Daudum, Rivel" she gave each a weighted look "We're moving too slowly.  I'm going to create a diversion."

Daudum neither paused nor spoke, he merely fell in with them.  Rivel gave the rest of the caravan a longing look before following with a certain heaviness.

               

                Rivkah's blue eyes met Arioch's dark ones across the stony narrow place in the trail they had chosen for an ambush site.  Arioch laid his ear against the moist forest earth.  His brow furrowed in concentration and he raised his head his eyes straining against the rising mists and the premature forest twilight.  The gray horse did not emerge from the fog so much a it grew out of it as if birthed of its amorphous substance.  Daudum shuddered as the mist parted to reveal the Horseman's bottomless, empty eye sockets in his skeletal head.  Rivel's eyes were wild with fear.  Arioch and Rivkah both continued to patiently watch their foe with stoic determination.  His clock drifted and bellowed in the breeze like a living thing.  Rivkah's eyes widened as the Horseman drew to an abrupt halt.  His three companions appeared wraith-like, half-hidden in the disturbed vapors.  Rivel nearly bolted as a wild undulating cry washed over them. 

"Caspian?" Rivkah whispered.  Her eyes flickered back to the gray's rider "Methos?"

"Come out, come out wherever you are" came a sibilant whisper.

Rivkah gripped the golden hilt of her sword, white knuckled, as she frowned in growing confusion "Kronos?"

One of the black masked riders urged his horse forward.  The mist clung to him as if unwilling to divulge its horrors.  The palomino snorted and rolled the whites of its eyes.  One of the mist-shrouded riders loosed another hair-raising shriek followed by maniacal laughter.  There was a moment of eerie silence before the Horsemen moved as one.  They ignored the trail and charged up the berm.  Rivkah and Daudum scrambled to stand should-to-should with their backs against the rocks of the Gap.  Arioch leapt up cursing the foiling of their carefully laid ambush.  He flung his hand ax with all the strength of his burly arms.  It made a wet thunk as it buried itself deep in the foremost rider's masked face.  He reeled in the saddle and slid bonelessly down under the churning hooves of his fellows' horses.  Rivel's nerve finally failed as the black's rider tittered insanely at his companion's misfortune and he whirled his horse to bear down upon them.  Arioch clutched his ax in grim resolve as the black leapt the tiny dell and landed heavily before him.  He blocked the first swing deftly even managing to nick the black's shoulder.  He slipped on the wet leaves and the Horseman's bronze sword slid neatly under his ribs.  As the light faded from his eyes the red and gray riders closed in on Daudum and Rivkah.   

                Rivkah's first block sliced through the gray's rider's bronze sword with her own gleaming sliver blade.  Daudum had managed to catch the hulking giant's ax with his bronze sword.  The metal groaned in protest and the sword bent at a nearly useless angle.  Rivkah moved with a desperate speed.  Her keen blade bit deeply into the ax's haft but the gray's rider was on her in a flash.  He sank his bronze dagger deeply into her unprotected ribs, grasped the unsharpened forte of her sword, and twisted it out of her weakening grasp.   He raised the mask and gave her a parody of a smile.  He wrapped his left hand in her jerkin as she began to sag and placed a kiss on her forehead.  The gesture was gentle but the look in his eyes was anything but.  His lips left a tiny smear of woad,  "Greetings, Rivkah, I've been looking for you…

                She arched and convulsed against her bonds as she returned, painfully, to life.  Her eyes strained in the dark as the night was split by panicked screams.  The screams ended abruptly to be followed by whimpers.  There were throaty, masculine chuckles.

"Quite a screamer" Kronos' tone was that of a state predator.

"The cowards generally are" Methos observed in a scholarly tone "If you'll pardon me, I think my guest is awake."

She blinked against the sudden flare of torchlight as her captor drove it into the soft ground

"Methos, what are you doing?"

He gave her that twisted smile "Whatever I like.  Whatever pleases me."

"Where is Ari-El?" she demanded with fear threading its way through her voice.

"Now that was just what I was going to ask you"  he uttered as he drew a bronze dagger.  He let the blade play teasingly along her throat before dragging it the length of her torso.  Fresh blood welled up at random intervals where the blade bit into flesh.  Her eyes never left his as they searched for some sign of the man she knew but there was only a psychotic amusement in his over bright hazel eyes.  Abruptly he sliced the cords restraining her ankles and yanked her roughly to her feet.  She nearly collapsed as her numb feet and legs refused to support her but he viciously twisted the cloth of her jerkin into her throat and propelled her forward.  She fell heavily as he released her.  She slid forward unable to stop because of her bound hands until her face was only inches from the roaring campfire.  She rolled awkwardly away with the smell of scorched hair perfuming the air around her.  Kronos grinned at her a livid scar bisecting his right eye forcing him to squint just a bit.  He placed a still oozing scalp on his head "How do I look as red-head?"

Rivkah just blinked at him in horror. 

He curled his finger through the thick, unruly hair "No, I think I quite prefer black." 

He tossed the scalp nonchalantly into her lap "Tell me what was his name, the old man, the one with the ax?" When she didn't answer he sliced a bit of meat as he turned the spit "Are you hungry? We're having a friend for dinner.  Your friend, not ours."  He sucked each finger clean as he rolled his eyes toward the other side of the fire.  The dancing flames cast macabre shadows over Caspian's back.  He chortled madly as he slunk back from his handiwork, slowly and dramatically unveiling the shattered ruin under him.  Rivel's chest fluttered in shallow breathy pants.  Caspian lapped, doglike, at the blood that seeped from Rivel's wounds.  Rivkah swallowed her gorge noisily as she realized what was on the spit.  Methos carved off a larger piece and offered it to her with a gracious formality that contrasted sharply with the rude setting

"Aren't you hungry?" he inquired with false innocence and mock concern.  She lunged away from the proffered morsel setting her hair a flame.  All four of her captors shared a hearty laugh as she rolled frantically to put out the flames.  Kronos continued as she straightened slowly and painfully  "Caspian is quite good.  I rather think he's found his true calling in life.  Between the tourniquets and cauterization he can keep the…meat alive and kicking for… days.   Are you positive you're not hungry?  There's nothing quite like terror to improve the flavor."

She swallowed again and fixed her attention on Methos' woad stained face "Where is Ari-El?"

He dropped down next to her and purred in her ear "Now that's what we've come all this way to ask you."

He loosed the remains of her once long, thick mane letting it flow down her back.  The shorter burnt ends frazzled around her shoulders.

"Pity" Kronos commented "Your hair always was your best feature."  Methos leaned over her his breath tickling her ear.  He trailed his dagger across her shoulder before wrenching her head back and sawing through the remaining length.  He tossed the shank of hair into the fire.  His long, strong fingers expertly kneaded out the knots caused by her bonds.  Rivkah's eyes flickered to the hulking man who was mumbling to the horses. 

"That's right!"  Kronos exclaimed with a shark's grin "how rude of me.  Silas."  The brutish form turned slowly and lumbered over "Rivkah, allow me to present, Silas,.  Silas, Rivkah."  He stared at her dully before returning to the picket line.

"Yes, well you'll have to forgive him.  He isn't terribly social.  We found him living as a hermit in the forest not long after we escaped.  Caspian wanted to take his head but Methos thought he had potential."  As he leaned toward her the raging insanity in his eyes became clearer "How is Blade these days?"

"Why don't you ask Methos? I haven't seen him in nearly three hundred years."  The fingers that had been kneading with a soothing gentleness struck with savage viciousness.  When he was finished she was left gasping and nauseous. 

She gathered herself and glared at Kronos "Torture won't change the answer.  I can not tell you what I do not know."

Kronos casually licked his fingers clean before addressing Methos over her head "He must know he could never have reached Aratta, not in his condition."

"I can not imagine that he would have even bothered to try."  Methos' tone was cool and dispassionate, purely scholarly.

"We aren't the only ones hunting this quarry; perhaps another has already bagged the fox."

"He's not dead" Methos rebutted, for the first time an emotion colored his tone, hunger, pure unalloyed hunger "And he will come here."

"Then we will wait" he gave her that bright, insane smile "And we'll even have… entertainment"

Caspian slunk over on his elbows, his shoulders rolling like a boat in heavy seas.  His eyes were as hungry as Methos' voice.  The night was lost in a sea of pain.  She swam up on the edge of awareness to gaze up at Methos over her.  She snagged the trailing edge of his gray cloak in her teeth, tearing at it as violently as her bonds allowed.  Methos gave her a quizzical look as wiped his blood soaked blade on one of the tattered remnants of her clothing "you have a problem with my wardrobe?"

She spat out the ripped fabric "How dare you.  How dare you wear the garb of a Blade?  You mock everything that attire stands for."  She snarled up at him and shrieked like a harpy "Take it off!"

"Brother, you disappoint me" Kronos' tone was scornful "How is it that she can still scream like that.  I think you've lost your touch."  He smiled at her "My turn."

"I can't tell you anything."

"I know" Kronos tilted his head to the side "I believe you.  You've always been quite honest, Rivkah.  This isn't about Blade."

"Why?"

"Why! For the very best reason, because I want to, because I can."  The rest was a blur of pain and degradation…

                She drew a ragged, whimpering gasp as she returned weakly to life.  She lifted her head wearily, straining for any sign of her captors.  She writhed her hands until her fingers were wet with blood but her bonds were as merciless as the men who had tied them.  She shivered.  The tattered blood soaked remnants of her clothing were no protection against the brisk fall chill.  She slumped, defeated, as the full setting moon cast its light like cobwebs through the frost in her hair.  Her eyes widened and she stiffened.  Her hands were suddenly free.

"Sh –h –h" his breath was a warm tickle against her ear.  He freed her feet and wrapped her in a cloak still warm from the heat of his own flesh.  He withdrew as swiftly as he had appeared leaving her to work the blood back into her bloated extremities.  A hand brushed her shoulder drawing her back into the shadows.  They moved swiftly and silently away.  Ari-El led her agilely through the dense forest darkness as if the night was as bright as noon.  She stumbled a bit as they broke through into a clearing.   She blinked in bewilderment at the strange contraption that sat bathed in the bright moonlight. 

"Abe" she protested.  He neither turned nor paused.  She caught at the trailing edge of his tunic but it ripped loose in her hand.

"Why are we fleeing?"

He paused and stepped into the shadows formed by the trees and the machine before turning to face her

"In case it had eluded you, Rivkah, they are… not exactly themselves."

"That's quite an understatement" she snapped back.  She took a step toward him but he retreated further back into the shadows.

"We haven't the time to argue, Riv.  Your children's disobedience has placed them in deadly danger.  We have little time until dawn and much to do."

She stared at the shadowy figure; her eyes following the rounded line of his shoulders and a coil of fear knotted in her viscera at the incongruity of his body language.  She snatched the bundle he tossed her out of the air "Get dressed."

"They're only four men" she protested quietly.

"The Blades were only twelve, Riv, but nations trembled before us and armies fell to us."

"Because you led us."

"Methos has found his wings, Riv.  In this matter, with his brethren, and in his current state he is my equal" he paused "and perhaps even my better."  He continued through her stunned silence "If they had caught your children in the village no one would have survived and even now in the Deep the price could be high."

"They would kill our children?" she demanded quietly.

"Yes" he replied bluntly with more than a little annoyance coloring his tone.

"Give me your sword" she demanded.

"Why?" the word hung oddly on the night air.

"Why do you think" she retorted "They are asleep." A thread of contempt crept into her voice "without a watch."

"They had a watch, Riv, the arrow in Caspian's heart will only gain us until first light."

"I will not allow him to kill our children" she rejoined advancing on him as he retreated further into the shadows.  She halted confused by the utter wrongness of his reaction.

"Are you alright?" she quarried as she recalled Methos and Kronos' veiled comments about Ari-El's 'condition'.

"I'll live" was the shadow's toneless and unadorned answer.

"That isn't what I asked" she rebutted sternly.  She relaxed a bit as Ari-El's familiar amused chuckle floated on the air.

"I'll live" he repeated with more life "but our children might not."  He sighed and it held a wealth of weariness  "They're ill, Rivkah, and I would prefer healing them to slaughtering them."

The moonlight glinted oddly off his hand as he opened a door in the strange contraption he had led her to.  With a single graceful leap he disappeared into the thing's dark maw.  His voice was poised between annoyance and amusement as he inquired "Are you going to join me … or are you waiting for a formal invitation?"   She gave the thing one more dubious look before clambering in.  There was a faint whumping sound and suddenly they were airborne.  She cast a glance at the rapidly receding ground before settling in more comfortable into her seat.  She tensed as the machine bobbled slightly and then pitched forward

"This doesn't look much like your other flying machines."

"I improvised a bit" was the spare reply.

She went white knuckled as they pitched a bit in the wind "You….improvised?"

"I am capable of it" was the dry retort "I do prefer preplanning but I can think on my feet when pressed."

She lapsed into silence uneasy with his abrupt manner.  The fires in the Deep twinkled like orange stars below them.  Rivkah grasped frantically at nothing as they plummeted.  Her panic was short-lived as they landed softly out beyond the camp.  She gave the silent, shadow clad figure to her left a sharp glance.

"You might have warned me" she protested mildly.  Ari-El merely shouldered a pack that had rested between them and deftly exited the craft.  She slammed the door as her own temper flared.  Ari-El wheeled the moonlight glinting oddly off his face.  The setting moon framed him, casting his face in shadows as he crossed his arms over his chest in an uncharacteristic stance "Is there a problem?"

"What is the matter with you?" she rebutted, exasperated, furious.  "Where have you BEEN?"

Ari-El's mirthless little chuckle sent more shivers down her spine than all of Caspian's howling

"What's right would be a much briefer list."  As he turned a bit in the direction of the camp the moonlight glinted again off his face.

He sighed heavily, shoulders sagging as Eveshka cried out a joyous "PAPA!"  He caught her effortlessly, swinging her lightly in a tight circle before returning to her feet.  Rivkah's frown deepened at the metallic flickers and glints that his face and hands had cast.  He kissed her lightly on the forehead

"Who said you could get so tall, Vesh?"

"Papa" she admonished playfully "you give me butterfly kisses."

There was a thickness in his voice "I can not, Vesh.  I am sorry."  At that moment Rikard and several of the young man of the camp arrived armed to the teeth and carrying blazing torches.  Ari-El visibly steeled himself as he turned toward the light.  The flickering torchlight caught the slotted silver band across his eyes.  Eveshka's brow puckered as she reached up to run her fingers over the mechanism.   Ari-El was as still as death as she removed the visor.  One of the young men dropped his torch.  It rolled down the embankment to extinguish itself in the brook below.   Eveshka dropped the visor and ran both hands across the ruin of Ari-El's face.  Rivkah was frozen in appalled consternation.  Eveshka blinked back tears as she leaned into the circle of her father's arms "Oh, Papa, your eyes, your beautiful, beautiful eyes."

"'Veshka" he whispered into her hair "I need my visor to see."  It was Rivkah who knelt and retrieved the visor with tears in her own eyes as she tried not to gawk at Ari-El's disfigurement.  It wasn't just that his eyes were missing though that would have been enough.  The flesh of his brows had been melted like candle wax and had covered the sockets leaving sunken hollows of thick, rippling scar tissue.  The bridge of his once aristocratic nose was completely gone and what remained was misshapen.  His jaw and lips alone had escaped intact and their aesthetic perfection only accentuated the horror of the rest.  Wordlessly she slipped the visor back into place.  He extricated himself from Eveshka's clinging arms and held a mechanical hand out to Rivkah

"I need a set of hands more dexterous than these, if we are to be prepared before dawn."

She gazed back at him her eyes full of sorrow and questions.

"There is no time for explanations, Rivkah, only actions."

"Yours, in life and death" she intoned.  Ari-El's attention turned to Rykyrd and his companions as Rivkah began removing an assortment of odd devices from the knapsack.  She attached one of the flat disks expertly to the rough rock wall while Ari-El commanded in a tone that allowed no questions

"Fetch me the horse that dishes right and its foal, the pony with the misshapen frog, the two lame goats, the sheep with the inturned foot and its lambs, and the sow with the extra toes and at least two of her piglets."

Three of the young men began to move in unthinking obedience until Rykyrd's sharp "Wait"

They hesitated as the full weight of Ari-El's displeasure settled on Rykyrd "And the bay with the crocked blaze and one white stocking."

"That's my horse" Rykyrd bellowed.

Ari-El's reply was like glacial ice and several of young men quivered as Ari-El's potent presence suddenly seemed to fill the Deep, "Yes, and he is a fine animal indeed.  Directly descended from my own stock."  He struck so swiftly that none of them had an opportunity to react as Rykyrd abruptly found his throat cradled in cold iron.  "There is no time for games, whelp.  You were ordered to leave the stock and the harvest, if you had obeyed I would have replaced all that you lost ten-fold and not a single life would have been wasted.  Your defiance has already cost three lives, it could easily have cost them all.  If I thought I could convince my wife and daughter to depart I would relinquish you to your fate as it is I must put my own life at risk by luring the Horsemen away.  Will you yet begrudge me a mount worthy of the task?"

Rykyrd's bluster and bravado collapsed under the blast of Ari-El's frigid rage.  The whole village stood in awestruck amazement as the machine rose into the air and vanished into the pre-dawn darkness.  The young men scrambled to do Ari-El's bidding as his visored head turned in their direction.  Eveshka took a stride towards the thin defile through which they had entered the gap.  She raised her torch.  The flickering light revealed seamless stone, to even the careful eye the narrow trail was gone.  When she reached out with her free hand her fingers vanished into the stone.  She jerked them back.

"An illusion only" was Ari-El's calm explanation "and one that will not long fool anyone who has walked the Road to Aratta, unless there is a more obvious trail to follow."

A very subdued Rykyrd presented Ari-El with the bay's reigns as Rivkah laid a hand on his forearm

"I'm coming with you."

"Riv, there is no time to quarrel…" Ari-El began only to have Rivkah swing a leg over her own horse and urge it into the rift ahead of him.  Ari-El merely commanded the assembly behind him

"Keep six archers on the crest of the ridge and eight in the village on watch at all times.  Have no concern for honor, if they come shoot them full of arrows and remove their heads where they lie." 

Rykyrd stopped him as he began to mount "Take a change of horses and these supplies, please."

Ari-El merely inclined his head in silent acknowledgement of the gesture and took up the reigns in pursuit of Rivkah.  She was waiting quietly for him at the far end of the rocks.

"Go back, Riv"

"Tell me, can you even hold a sword with those clumsy things?"

"I manage, Riv.  I can take care of myself."

"Really?" she rebutted calmly "I can see how well you've taken care of yourself."

She paled as several muscles jumped in Ari-El's jaw and she discovered he did not need eyes to glare.

His tone was level but cool, "We've a three day ride before us.  We will be placing the remaining three discs at one mile intervals and diverting from the trail at the twisted oak.  We have to stay far enough ahead of the Horsemen that we are not seen.  It will begin raining tomorrow night at dusk.  We will then abandon the stock and ride with all haste into the hill country where the chopper is waiting to return us here."

He rode past her without waiting for a reply and set a punishing pace…

                Amanda reached into the chest and removed the photo of the Blades.  She traced the outline of Ari-El's smiling face before looking back at Rebecca "This beautiful face is ruined?"

"No" Rebecca answered "Ari-El is the master of many hidden and wondrous arts within a hundred years you would never know it had ever occurred.  At least not physically, but he was never quite the same man I knew again."

"They broke him?"

"No, no I don't believe so but they did something to him.  He would never really speak of what happened.  He gave a very brief account when I confronted him upon our return to the Deep…"

                She laid a hand on his arm as he closed one metallic hand awkwardly around one of the controls.

"That's it?!  You're leaving like a thief in the night without a word of explanation after a three hundred year absence.  I deserve more than that.  Eveshka deserves better than that."

"I would prefer to stay Riv, but I should not" he leaned back into the rough hemp webbing that served as a seat and sighed wearily.

"Then stay.  You're exhausted.  You've not slept in three days" she protested.

"It has been longer than that Riv, far longer" he whispered.

"How long?"

"Too long, not nearly long enough" he replied his normally precise dictation blurring slightly around the edges with fatigue.

She reached up to brush his smooth, perfect jaw "Even Immortals need rest."

He leaned into the touch as if hungry for contact. 

"Please stay."

Instead of replying he reached under his seat and presented her with her sword.

"How did you get it back from them?" she breathed astonished.

"I do still have some skill" his words were biting as he stiffened. He continued in an acerbic tone "They will wreak enough havoc armed only with bronze I do not want them armed with mingalai."

She ducked as the blades began whirling.  "I suggest you get down before I lift off."

"Au'Brey, please stay, just for the night.  Please rest."

"Do you think I'm not competent enough to reach my destination?"

"No, I don't think there is anything you can not do.  Don't leave us, again, not so soon."

"There are a hundred excellent reasons for me to leave, Riv."

"To go where?  I do not recall anything like this in Aratta."

"I have not yet been back to Aratta.  I would never have survived the trip, not with the Horsemen, the Kindred, and Enmerkar's Watchers all hunting me across a thousand miles of lonely roads and that is of coarse ignoring the more mundane dangers that can beset a blind and handless man.  Aratta is merely the largest of my veiled retreats.  Long ago, before Methos, I crafted a network of small havens that are currently inhabited only by stock."

"How long have you been alone?"

He started to reach out with one of his unwieldy hands but withdrew without actually touching her and turned toward the camp.  Eveshka and Rykyrd were clear in the waning twilight light.  Ari-El shut down the chopper with an air of resignation and leapt lightly to the frosty ground.  He gently brushed his lips over Eveshka's golden tresses.  The tips of his own hair mingled perfectly with hers as she burrowed into the circle of his arms.

"Rykyrd" her voice was muffled by Ari-El's chest "Have Rizpah warm and prepare a generous trencher."  She leaned back without leaving the circle of his arms. 

"You are too thin by half, Papa" she admonished gently.

"Rykyrd, if you please, I would prefer a bit of privacy with my wife and daughter this night."

Rivkah and Eveshka laced their arms through his as they set a more sedate pace after Rykyrd.  He made a contented sound deep in his throat not unlike that of a cat that has just found a full bowl of cream.

"Afraid I'm going to disappear on you ladies?" he asked playfully.

Eveshka clutched is arm tighter in response "You can't leave again, Papa, not for years and years."

She whirled on him when he failed to reply.  Her fury was palatable "You can't, Papa.  You hear me.  You can't just reappear after all these years and flit away again just as quickly.  You…"

"'Veshka" Ari-El reached one mechanical hand out but stopped short of touching her "please, please 'Veshka since the day I left Ebla every hand has been against me.  I have heard no voice that did not wish me ill.  Naught but harm has been done me.  Please Vesh, hear me out before we argue.  I have my reasons.  It was my intention that I would not return until I could stay but… events" he sighed heavily and swayed a bit "have not transpired as I might have wished."  A flicker of a smile played around the corners of his prefect lips and tugged at the edges of his mutilated cheeks, "Truth told I think the only thing that has gone right since Enmerkar's challenge stands before me."

Eveshka nodded once before walking quietly at her father's side "Alright Papa."

"He betrayed you didn't he?" Rivkah demanded from behind them.

Ari-El's reply was as leaden and soul-weary "Yes."

They walked in each wrapped in their own silence toward the tents…

"You aren't finished are you?" Rivkah asked in that certain tone that every mother has. Ari-El leaned back against one of the sacks of grain that served as furnishings and smiled.

"Whatever happened to that frightened little slave girl from Kanish?  Do you remember her?  The one who wouldn't dare defy me?"

"You claimed you had much to teach me" she reminded him lightly

"Clearly, I did far too fine a job."
"Would you have accepted anything less?"

Ari-El's smile widened "Never."

"Where have you been?" she asked gently "What happened to you?"  Her questions leeched every speck of merriment from his features.

"I was for 286 years a captive in the city of Sodom."

"That's not possible" Rivkah protested vehemently.  She continued into Ari-El's expectant silence "When you didn't return I went to Chedorlaomer.  He was old then and ready to turn the city over to his son.  He remembered you fondly.  He, his honor guard, and I sacked the city looking for you.  We searched everywhere.  We couldn't have missed you."

"You sacked Sodom on midsummer's day 254 years ago" he chuckled bitterly when she started in surprise "I knew you where there but I could not reach you."

"We found Moshe's body" she whispered into his lengthy pause.  Ari-El remained silent.  "He … he was intact.  I thought that decapitation was the only way for one of us to find final death?"
Ari-El removed his visor and gave what sounded like a gasp of relief.  He swept the glimmering metal contacts that were set into the edge of his ruined eye sockets against the threadbare cloth that covered his shoulders.

"What are you doing?"

He laid the visor down in the flattened grass.  "They hurt, both the hands and the visor, they are clumsy improvisions at best.  I am working on better but…" he shrugged "One endures what one must.  But that does not answer your questions.  You are too young to have encountered the mindless ones.  I can still see them.  They moved across the world we knew bringing terror and death.  They were without mercy.  They were without fear.  They were called demons but in truth they carried a deadly illness of the brain.  One that destroyed all higher thought, all logic, all fear, all ability to feel pain.  They existed as mere vectors of transmission.  Their sole remaining desire to slay anything in their grasp.  Their disregard for pain made them far harder to kill than any normal man and the slightest scratch condemned the victor to the same fate.  They were appallingly contagious any contact with blood, sweat, saliva, even the air near them seemed permeated with the virus.  Even the dead were contagious for weeks.  The only safe method of disposal was to have an Immortal burn the bodies far from any dwellings.  My own first death was at the hands of a mindless one.  My mother was our tribe's medicine woman.  It was my task to gather her supplies.  I had taken my youngest siblings up into the hill country to teach them the way of the mountain.  We were three days into the trip when it happened.  They struck at dawn and they slaughtered every living soul from old men to the babes in arms, all save one.  My first Vision was the sharing of my mother's death.  She was torn asunder by her own mate and her eldest son.  Several days before the Horde had slaughtered one of our hunting parties.  There is a period between initial infection and complete madness during which they retain their memories but without any emotion but bloodlust.  My step-father brought the Horde down on his parents, his mate, his children.  He was finally destroyed by his younger brother who himself was slain moments later.  When they were … finished the Horde moved on all except one.  Fer-a'Tue and I were of an age.  We were constant companions from the cradle.  I his bright sun, he my dark shadow.   That moon was the first time we had ever been separated.  He had chosen to go with the hunters.  He was still cognizant enough then to remember that the three of us were in the hills and to pursue us.   I tried to evade him but he was already an expert tracker and Seth and Sari were only seven.  They could not keep the pace necessary even though I carried them often.  In the end I had no choice but to conceal them on the trail and ambush Fer' a-Tue.  I could have killed him cleanly before he even realized I was there but he was … I hesitated.  It was a brief, bloody battle that cumulated in both our deaths.  I knew even then that I would be Immortal.  I had even planned the day of my First Death" he smiled humorlessly "though I had not planned to die quite so young.    I was born knowing … more than any man has even dreamed of.  I had expected to outlive them all.  What I had not anticipated was that Fer-a'Tue rose as well." He paused and sipped out of the horn in his hand "but not as one of us."  He drew a deep breath and pressed one of the contacts into his shoulder.  Rivkah watched him for a breath before rising and moving behind him.  He flinched and twitched as she sat on the grain sack before settling into a tense stillness.  He visibly forced himself to relax as she began to gently knead his temples.  After a few minutes he melted back against her and continued

"I burned with curiosity to know what he was, to know what form this new creature would take but I could not stay.  Seth and Seri were too young for me to leave alone for long and … someone had to take care of the bodies.  I encountered Fer' a-Tue and his descendents for the first time nearly a century later while following a rumor of mindless ones.  The Nos Fer-a'Tue are a hideous race, twisted and misshapen.   So gruesome and repugnant that they are the substance of legends and tales of terror.  They are named demons and they live their … lives hidden in subterranean chambers far from the fearful sun.  They settled long ago under the Cities of the Plains."

"So that's why we never ventured out onto the Plains."

"I never tempt a parasite beyond his mettle." Ari-El quipped.

"I don't understand" she frowned "the Plains were not forbidden."

  "Of course not" Ari-El smiled sardonically "there is nothing more intriguing to the human psyche than the forbidden.  Better to merely let the Plains appear too insignificant to even be noticed."  He rolled his shoulders under her ministration before continuing "Methos eventually strayed there."  He shrugged "I presume because it was the one place we had never gone.  The gods know it had little to offer and less appeal.  The Cities had been for nearly a millennia a haven for lawless men fleeing the justice of the surrounding kingdoms.  I can fathom no place on earth including the heart of Enmerkar's Ur that would be less friendly to a Blade.  Methos made the mistake of reviving before a less than genial crowd.  They were discussing possible ways to … silence him permanently when Fer-a'Tue offered him an alternative."  He took a long draught of his mead before going on "The Nos Fer'a-Tue share my ability to Command obedience."

"Then it wasn't really Methos' fault." Eveshka inserted into Ari-El's prolonged silence.  Rivkah's hand tightened on Ari-El's shoulder.

"No" his smile was derisive and self-mocking "I made sure long ago that no one could use compulsion on my Blades but Fer-a'Tue did not know that so he set Methos free expecting him to deliver me into their hands."    You could hear the ache in his voice when he continued "which he did but not because he was under any form of compulsion."  He shook himself as if throwing off the memory "The contagion deprived Fer-a'Tue of all memory before his 'death' but he knew that I was the reason that he was unlike the other mindless ones.  That, coupled with my reputation as a miracle worker made him determined to possess me.  With Methos' assistance they overpowered me, put out my eyes, and cut off my hands to keep me from escaping.  There was a dispute as to whether or not Methos should be released as promised and he was held with me for a time before he was finally set free as payment for his betrayal."  Ari-El was silent so long that the women wondered if he had fallen asleep.

"But why didn't you summon us to save you?"

Ari-El started before replying "Just as the Nos Fer-a'Tue can Command they can also block my Touch."

He tucked his knees up against his chest, wrapped his arms around them, and rested his chin on them

"When they set Methos free he rode for Aratta but I had closed the Road" Ari-El raised his head, his tone was colored with a distant amusement  "He was lost for nearly four years.  Once he found finally found his way out of the Zygros he headed more slowly to the rendezvous."

"Rendezvous?" Rivkah queried.

"I had planned a reunion of the Blades in Urgarit a few weeks after 'Veshka's fifteenth birthday.  I had already contacted everyone but Ashe and Salim.  Imhotep was not certain if he could attend.  Methos arrived early with a woeful tale of my captivity."  Disdain crept into voice "At which time the entire group rode willy-nilly to my rescue." He lowered his head into the circle of his arms "They were captured.  Moshe, Nahor, Ja'Rel, Drev, and Bran died one by one."  Rivkah rose.  She stood gazing down at his golden crown before kneeling at his feet and lifting his head.  "How?" she whispered starring at the scars where his eyes should have been.  He swallowed "Fer-a'Tue wanted to create a new kind of creature.  One that wasn't quite so hideous, one with more … options in life.  He attempted to recreate the circumstances of his own genesis with limited success."  He shrugged "Every time he succeeded with one of the others they never revived."

"And how often did they succeed with you?" she asked gently as she ran a hand through his hair.  She grimaced as her fingers discovered scars that his hair had hidden.

"If you include Fer-a'Tue, himself seven times"  he whispered and then continued more vigor "There is a new kind of Immortal now, so different from us to be our antithesis.  They call themselves the Kindred."

"What happened to Kronos and Methos?"

"They have caught the same plague that gave birth to the Horde."

She rocked back oh her heels, stunned "You said we could not be infected."

"Apparently I was mistaken.  Given massive doses , under conditions of extreme deprivation, infection at the moment of a little death and … it is possible.  They still heal and so they are caught in that halfway place possessed by the bloodlust but with all their faculties intact.  There is nothing alive more dangerous than the Horsemen."

"Then why did you leave them alive?" Eveshka cried.

"Two reasons" he replied as he turned his melted visage towards her "I told you that there was one survivor from my village."  He reached out and brushed her lightly with his cold, silver hands "When your mother demanded that I name you I told her that I called you Eve in honor of my mother and the Ka was to acknowledge her as was the custom of my mother's people.  While these things are true there is a reason why I call you Vesh" his voice thickened.  My mother bore three sets of twins.  My sister Veshra was the lone survivor of the slaughter.  She was four years younger than I.  She was the only sibling with whom I shared our mother's golden hair" He brushed her own golden tresses.  A single strand pulled free as it snagged on the metallic joints of his hands.  "I taught her to weave and to swim.  She was one of those gentle children who tried to save every broken creature" he smiled.  It was bittersweet expression full of equal measures of fondness and pain.  "I spent many hours with abandoned fledglings and orphaned kits and cubs of every kind.  I could never deny her anything she asked of me."  He tilted his head back "She never harmed a single living thing, never ate a piece of meat once she understood what it was.  As I bound her wounds I could see the changes sweepings through her."  He dropped his head again "She knew, I could see it dawning in her eyes, I could taste her desperation.  She asked if I could save her."  He shivered "I had the knowledge but not the tools."  His voice wavered thick with rage or perhaps tears "What good is it to know when one can not act?  What exquisite torment to have understanding without ability to use it.  To build the required tools would have taken more than a mortal lifetime."  He raised his head and stated numbly "I killed her.  I put my little sister down like a mad dog and burned her with the others.  I will not do it again.  Not ever again.  It is …ironic really" he continued "You see with mortals there is so little time in which to even attempt to salvage them and I had so many other pressing tasks I never bothered"  There was anguish in his tone "I am no better prepared today than I was nearly 5,000 years ago" He balled his silver fists "If  I believed in fate I would curse her for playing so cruel a jest." 

"How long?" Rivkah asked quietly.

"If I had no other interest or labor it would still be a work of decades, at least a century, perhaps more."

"You can not allow them to ride unopposed for so long" Rivkah protest "How many lives will they destroy?  How many deaths?  How much devastation? You should have helped me kill them."

"I dare not" he replied.  He plunged into her aghast silence "I am hardly so callus as to allow this atrocity to continue with out a better reason than sentiment."  He pursed his lips and took a nervous swallow of mead.

"There is a reason why the others never roused." He crossed his arms across his breast as if to hold something in.  "To endure it is to endure being rent asunder, to survive is to live without a piece of one's… soul, to heal from it…" he shrugged "Well, that remains to be, if you will pardon the phrase, to be seen." 

She could feel a stare that pierced through her soul in spite of his eyelessness "They have done nothing to my flesh that I can not restore but I have more scars that you can see Rivkah and wounds that are still bleeding."  He curled up tighter "And I am besieged by the man I once called brother.  He wants me at his side sharing his madness as I once shared my brilliance.  There are gaps in my defenses that I haven't the Power to close.  I lead him a merry chase through shadows and mists.  If he knew how to use that which I freely gave him he would hold me already.  My freedom is as fragile as deer hard run and trapped in the bracken."  He rose suddenly to pace the confines of the tent. "I dare not rest until fatigue sinks me far beyond the level of though or dreams.  The balance of power in our relationship has shifted."  He stumbled and caught himself against the central post.  He leaned against it heavily shoulders slumped "I can't kill Methos, Rivkah.  Win or lose the battle itself it would make no difference Methos would survive in either body." He turned to face her and slid down the pole "And I can not allow that, not in his present state.  You have, dear Rivkah, no idea, no idea at all, the horror that one can wreck with the Quickening.   Did you know you could slay a star with it?  Or the sun?  I can destroy every living thing on earth with … a thought, Rivkah.  I could cast mankind into an eternity of darkness from which it would never recover.  That knowledge and power can not be allowed to fall into the grasp of the Horsemen.  I am no longer fighting for myself but for humanity's and rest of this galaxy's right to have their own future and I am tired, Riv, so terribly, terribly weary."

"Poor, brave, Papa." Eveshka made a move as if to comfort him but he held up a restraining hand.

"No" he replied "No 'Vesh, if I was brave I would send your mother out of the Deep and have Rykyrd take my head." His sigh was a ragged sound bordering on hopelessness "But I want to live.  I always have I still do."

"So what will you do?" Rivkah asked.

"I can not stay.  It is not safe, not for me and not for you."

"But you have a plan?"

Ari-El's lips twitched in rictus of a smile "Of course, don't I always?  Methos' and I's Quickenings are linked the swiftest and cleanest way to break that connection is to" he shook his head "take a few Quickenings.  To create a rift between what was and what is.  If it is done properly Methos will believe that I am dead after all how could a blind and handless man win a challenge?"

"Who will you kill?"

"Enmerkar has been hunting me for centuries.  Even battered as I am he is not my equal.  He has lived by my sufferance and unfortunately circumstances dictate that that clemency must end.  All I have to do is let him catch me and stay alive long enough to do it." 

"Stay alive?" Rivkah's confusion was clear.

"Enmerkar's Watchers have orders the kill me on site and bear me bound to their master in Ur.  In addition the Kindred seek me for the destruction of the Cities of the Plain.  I have been too long and too hard pressed a little death will serve as a Final Death in my current state."

"But there would be no Quickening, all that you are would be lost."

"Perhaps it would be better so"  Rivkah's head snapped up at that battered, beaten tone "I am the Firstborn without my Quickening there can be no Prize, perhaps if my Quickening were lost this whole imprudent Game will merely fade away."

Rivkah readied herself to protest but Ari-El smoothly overrode her "Don't worry, I am not truly suicidal, merely weary, depressed and disgustingly maudlin.  Besides I am too much of a coward to sacrifice myself that heroically.  Enmerkar will finally get the battle he craves and he will die of it."

"How bad was it, in the Cities?"

Ari-El did not answer.

"Was it worse than Kanish?"

Ari-El gave another piercing eyeless stare "There were times when I would have traded Aratta itself to have been so fortunate."  He slumped a bit further down the pole and rested his chin on his shoulder.

"You're many things, Mountain King, but you are no coward." Rivkah objected but Ari-El did not answer.

She brushed his single, rebellious lock back but he did not stir.  She placed a tender kiss on his unresponsive lips and turned to Eveshka with a hint of a smile "Whatever happened to the peacock I wed?"  She ran a hand over the much-mended cloth of his tunic.  The green had faded to a sickly gray and had worn to transparency in more than one place.  She covered him with his equally frayed cloak.

"Could you fetch Daudum's things out of my tent.  They'll be much too big as thin as he is but anything is better than these rags."  As Eveshka left Rivkah pulled Ari-El's unresisting form against her.  His head lolled bonelessly as she cradled him to her.  She tried to pull his tunic over his head but it unraveled in her hands.  She just stared at his wasted frame.  She ran a hand over the deep hollows between each rib then she raised his remaining forearm and stared at the sharply outlined bones.  She laid her head against his lank and lifeless hair and wept softly "Oh, love, love what have they done to you?"  

Rebecca blew on her hands to warm them "He didn't stir for nearly three days.  He sank into a coma so deep that more than once I feared he had slipped away from us forever.  I can not convey how great my relief was when he finally stirred.  I tried to convince him to stay or at least to take me with him but he merely faded into the night."

"But I don't understand" Amanda protested her breath hanging in the chill air "that man downstairs is no rabid dog, no mad killer."

"Perhaps, perhaps not" Rivkah mused pensively "The Horsemen rode for nearly 1800 yrs.  They were Death on horseback.  The raped and pillaged across two continents in a reign of terror so brutal they were know as the end of the world.  They were the nightmare kept children from Anatolia to India awake at night." She paused to let Amanda absorb the full weight of her words "Some of that time was spent under the influence of the miasma, but not all, not even most.  The centuries following Ari-El's return were quiet ones for Eveshka and I but Ari-El himself was busier than I have ever seen him before of since.  With the fall of Enerkar and the brood of Ur their mortal agents had to be taken in hand and the newly formed Kindred's berserk rampage had to be kept in check."  She rose and paced, an echo of old but unforgotten frustrations in her movements "He was a will'o'whisp appearing suddenly in our lives for a month or two and then vanishing just as abruptly.   I yearned to help him.  Every time I saw him he look more weary.  He was decades regaining the weight he lost in the Cities."  Her smile was sad "It was the first breech in our relationship and it was not the last to be caused by Ari-El's decisions concerning the Horsemen.  I was a harpy.  He would appear, haggard and worn and I would descend on him with both tears and fury demanding to accompany him when he left again.  When what he most needed peace and rest I allowed him neither in my campaign of words and recriminations.   I was hurt and angry at his refusal.  Hurt because I felt he no longer trusted me, angry because I felt betrayed.  Ari-El was the only man I'd ever known that never questioned a woman's right to any role she chose.  He assigned us as our talents warranted.  If a woman was suited to lead she led, to rule she ruled and if she was not she did not.  I thought he had changed that he had finally become like every other man I'd ever known outside the Blades, eager to bind a woman to home and hearth away from 'men's work'.  Ari-El defended himself ably from my accusations but I was only willing to hear myself."  She flushed a little "It wasn't until Imhotep visited and received just as adamant refusal that I finally heard what he'd been saying to me all along."  She gazed at the floor shamefaced "I still remember him laughing.  I can't recall what Imhotep said but that laugh pierced me like an arrow.  The guilt took my breath away when I realized I hadn't heard him laugh, really laugh since before the debacle in Arrata and I was ashamed that in my eagerness to have my own way I had ignored his own desolation."  She glanced up at Amanda "The heart is a strange thing, Methos and I were instantly jealous of one another but Ari-El loved Imhotep as well if not more than either of us yet neither of us was ever jealous of Imhotep.  I suppose it was a measure of the man Imhotep was that we never felt threatened by him but I digress." She straightened "It would be almost seven centuries before Ari-El finally chose to deal with the Horsemen.  He summoned Imhotep and I to join him in what would eventually become Macedonia…"

1170 BC

                The scarlet crowned woman on the blood bay palfrey drew to a sudden halt as her eyes scanned the surrounding trees.  She relaxed as she spotted the man on the golden dun as he emerged from the forest.

"Imhotep!" she exclaimed in delight as she set her heels to her mount.   A ravishing smile brightened his handsome Egyptian features as he greeted her with an elated "Rivkah."  He enfolded her hand with a gentle strength and gave her a empathetic smile "It is good to see you again."  He gave her a fortifying smile and heartening glance out of brown-black eyes that seemed to glow with their own inner light "Courage, little sister, courage."

"Have you seen him?"

He shook his head "No, I thought you might like some moral support."

She gave him a grateful look "Our last parting was not as I might have wished.  I said some things that…"

"He is more understanding and more forgiving than most of us give him credit for."  His look was gentle

"It was a difficult time, he will not hold it against you."

She sighed heavily "I said nothing false and yet I am ashamed."

Imhotep smiled fondly "He is not an easy man, I doubt very much you said anything that every student has not thought, often."

"But did any other say it?"

Imhotep chuckled "Come, little sister, where's your courage, woman? If you were bold enough to speak the truth than be bold enough to stand by it.   He respects both courage and honesty."

"And reviles a fool" she countered morosely.

A bit of long-suffering frustration threaded its way into his tone, "For many lifetimes we have asked him to act on the matter of the" he spat out the next word in a mix of disgust and sorrow "Horsemen, now when he moves we dwandle upon the trail" with that he kicked the dun into a swift canter.  She  paused a moment before following swiftly through the trees.

                They slid to a halt at the crest of the hill blinking in surprise at the company of archers awaiting them.  The tableau held for several minutes.  The only motion was the ruffling of the sparse vegetation in the rising wind.  Rivkah's eyes searched frantically for the Immortal whose Presence jangled against her own awareness.   She followed Imhotep's eyes to a gray boulder overhang.  Her eyes widened as what she had assumed was a boulder resolved itself into a cloaked and hooded man.  He rose slowly.  The tips of his arrow straight black hair was all the voluminous folds of his garments revealed.  As he turned toward them Rivkah whispered "Methos" into the tension ridden silence.

"There is not need to be insulting, Riv" Ari-El's quipped from within the cloak.  "Stand down.  Ajax, see to their mounts."

Rivkah blushed to a shade of scarlet that nearly matched her hair.

"Ar" Imhotep faltered as Ari-El held up a quelling hand.

"Aganesthes of Tiryns" he replied coolly "Ari-El of Arrata, Ta'am of Elam, ect. ect. died 686 years ago in a stinking alley in Ugurit when he was set upon by three of his erstwhile students."

"Three?" Imhotep jibed as he tried to lighten the mood "Seems hardly fair."

Ari-El's voice grew even colder "I was using ungainly implants and I was hardly in prime condition"  He raised his pale hands and flipped back his shrouding cloak.  They both gaped at the transformation before them.  Gone were the flowing, golden curls banished by a mirror bright, arrow-straight cap of jet black hair.  His signature elegant royal blue garments had been traded for utilitarian mist gray and black.  His stance, expression, and body language were all utterly different.  Even the smooth panes of his face appeared transformed, the cheekbones seemed higher the jaw and chin longer.  While he remained striking to the eye the greater part of his former ethereal beauty had been sacrificed for a more mundane handsomeness.  When he continued even his voice, tone, and cadence where altered "I gave them an opportunity.  They failed."  He turned away from them to stare out over the broken, mountainous horizon "The Horsemen are even now riding south toward pelopenesis.  It is my intention to intercept them and remove them while still bound by the little death to Olum for treatment.  Imhotep do you still wish to be of service in this matter?"

"Yours, in life and death."

Ari-El was as still and silent as the stone he stood upon for many long minutes. "It has begun" he whispered into the lengthy hush startling them both.

"What has begun?"  Rivkah asked with a sinking dread in her gut.

"The village of Lydra once stood six leagues to the north-east.  Imhotep, take the archers now and follow the smoke."  Both their eyes tracked the horizon until they fixed on the first small tendrils of smoke began spiraling into the clear blue sky.  "By the time you arrive they will be weary from their labors and stated from the carnage.  They will be…"  He stopped abruptly as Rivkah grasped the bracer on his forearm.  "How can you do this?  How can you stand here and calmly plan the slaughter of those people?"

He did not alter his stance "I am neither the instrument or the architect of their demise."  As he deftly extracted his arm from her hand she tried to catch his gaze.  She swallowed bile at what wasn't in his eyes.  They were cold, cold and gray, a pale gray the color of the mid-winter sky and just as warm.   There was no anger in them, no hate, there was nothing in them, nothing at all.  She shivered, if the eyes were the windows of the soul then Ari-El was in dire trouble because no one was home.

"I am simply" he continued in the same level, academic tone "no longer their savoir."

 He turned toward her, grimacing as if he'd forgotten how to smile "And I haven't enough friends left to squander them.  Between this mad Game of Enmerkar's  and the misery of the Plains…"  For just a moment the shadow of the man she knew seemed to hover about him "No man and no Immortal can stand against the Horsemen and if the deaths of a few mortals can give Imhotep and my Spartans the edge they need to survive than so be it."

"There was a time when you would not have been so complacent" Imhotep challenged.

"There was a time when you would have cheered." Ari-El made one of his lightening fast moves so that he was suddenly so close that both of them stumbled in surprise "There was a time when the foreigner within your gate was either a slave to your flesh or a sacrifice to your gods.   When you would have slaughtered a neighboring tribe to the last babe in arms and you would have reveled in it for no more than a few head of cattle and the right to their hunting grounds.  When only those whom you considered blood kin rated the distinction of humanity and all others were demons to be butchered or abused on a whim.  Do you really think you have the right to judge me?"

"No" Imhotep replied quietly "I haven't the right to judge you but I remember a man.  A man who taught me respect for every living thing.  A man of such passion and fire that he glowed with it.  A man who believed that all men were equal.  A man who brought the concepts of law and justice and democracy to world that knew only anarchy and bigotry and tyranny.   He brought unity to chaos and when the law was too harsh he tempered it with mercy.  A man of compassion who saved a world at grave risk to himself.  A man who brought mankind knowledge, wisdom, and healing.  A man who spread art, literature, and music in his wake.  I followed that man through wind and rain, battle and blood, and peace and plenty.  Tell me Aganesthes do you know my liege for I can not find him."

Every speck of color leeched from Ari-El's face before he replied in the same bland voice "To everything there is a season and a purpose to every time."  For just an instant anger flickered across his features before they returned to a state of smooth abstraction.  "Beginnings are fragile things" he plucked a spindly sapling out of a crevice in the rock "so easily destroyed, and yet from such meager foundations might oaks grow and whole forests are born.  For better and worse I have changed the world.  I have set humanity's feet upon a new path.  My days of boldly making history as the demi-god have passed.   The mindless are long since gone and with them my need for open warfare.  Now is the season of shadow wars and subtle intrigues" he turned away from them "I am no one's hero."

"That is no answer and well you know it."

"What answer would you have me give then?" Ari-El replied in that same dead, calm voice "What would appease you?"

"We don't want to be appeased."

"Then go" he replied levelly "I only involved you in this to appease you.  I would prefer that you were well away from anything involving the Horsemen.  Do as you are bid or go…"

Amanda prodded "What did you do?"

Rebecca shrugged "We did as we were bid.  Imhotep  led the Spartans to what remained of  Lydra while I rode with Ari-El to Olum to await their arrival…

"You misplaced Caspian?" Ari-El's tone was somewhere between exasperated and sarcastic "How do you misplace a full grown, highly unstable, Immortal?  Never mind" Ari-El threw up a forestalling hand "I do not think I actually want to know.  Just help me get them in position."  Ari-El slid Methos' limp, dead, and bound body off his gray mount and onto his shoulder while Imhotep did the same for Kronos.  As the two manhandled their charges' deadweight onto the austere tables in the center of the equally sanitized chamber Imhotep cleared his throat nervously "The archers are camped in the crooked glen.  They refused to set foot on the mountain."

Ari-El shrugged clear of Methos before replying "I did not expect that they would.  This is after all the abode of the Gods."

Neither Imhotep nor Rivkah flinched as the plain walls suddenly flared into brilliant life.  Ari-El's eyes swept intently across the displays before he abruptly sliced both men's bonds and removed the daggers from their hearts.

"Was that wise?"

Both of them swallowed audibly as those icy gray eyes bore into them.  Suddenly both beds were enveloped in fields of scintillating blue and violet "They will not awaken unless I allow it.  The procedure will take several hours.  Olum's few amenities are open to you." He gave them both a brief salute before disappearing through the opposite doorway.

Imhotep moved to stand at the foot of Methos' bed.  He flinched a bit as Rivkah brushed his arm.

"What's wrong?"

He gave her a somber look "What is right?"

"Imhotep" she chided "If you don't stop you're going to chew a hole in your lip that even the Quickening can not heal."  

The fluttering panic in Imhotep's eyes was as disconcerting as the shift in Ari-El's personality. 

"This" he gestured at Methos' still form "is what is wrong.  I have known these men since before my First Death over two and a half millennia ago and neither is the man I know.  I can remember when Methos was nothing but Ari-El's well trained hound.  I was there when he slew Tral'tris."  A frown creased Imhotep's hansom face at the memory "Enmerkar would have put Methos down that day the way you destroy a mad dog but Ari wouldn't let him."

"Enmerkar!" Rivkah sputtered "but Enmerkar hated Ari-El why would they have ridden together?"

"Not always, Enmerkar thought he loved Ari-El once, maybe he even did in his own twisted way."  Imhotep replied heavily as he leaned wearily against one of the vivid displays "Methos was the first of us that Ari-El found but Enmerkar was his first student.  Have you watched a wolf pack, Riv?"

Her only response was a bemuse look.

"You can not have two alpha males, eventually they'll tear the pack apart" he shrugged "that's what happened between Ari-El and Enmerkar .  For centuries Ari-El let Enmerkar believe that he was in command while Ari cleverly manipulated circumstances to his own objectives.  They say that Methos is the most calculating sob among us"  he gave her a parody of a smile "Methos is an amateur compared to Ari and most of us don't even know it.  Enmerkar certainly never realized until the day he crossed one of Ari's few lines and then well… Enmerkar left the Horsemen after that"

"The Horsemen?" Rivkah placed her palm on Imhotep's chest.  He grasped it before continuing "Before the Blades Enmerkar, Methos, Ari-El and I were known as the Horsemen.  We rode out of the sun bringing salvation on the point of a sword.  We were the most glorious thing they had ever seen.  We were their weapons and their gods."  He took a deep breath and visibly pulled himself out of that past.  "Enmerkar departed and using the skills he learned from Ari-El he established Ur vowing that it would surpass El-am.  And when it didn't his rage and his envy grew until they devoured him" tears glittered in his dark mocha brown eyes "All that he was all that he might have been, and he did have great potential once, was consumed by his burning need to annihilate his only rival.  I think Ari knew, even in the beginning how it would end but he needed Enmerkar and Enmerkar wanted him and so they used each other for a very long time.  How fragile even Immortal life is." He observed heavily as he brushed her hair back from her face

"Poor Riv, born just in time for war" he smoothed a few stray tendrils back into his own neat queue before continuing "While Ari was willing to destroy his relationship with Enmerkar for Methos' sake he was left with a quandary of his own.  Tral'tris' death was needless.  It was painfully clear that something had to be done.  And, as always, Ari had a plan" he smiled stiffly "In all the years I've known Ari, it was the only time I've seen him nervous.   Ari's not a gambler and he never fights a battle he can't win and he never plays against the odds.  I've no idea how long he'd hesitated, shying away from dangers…"

"What dangers?" Rivkah snapped in exasperation.

Imhotep folded his arms "Has Ari ever told you anything about his relationship with Methos?"

"A little" she snapped back with growing frustration.

 "Did he tell you that the connection runs both ways?  Did he tell you that just as he influenced Methos, Methos can influence him?"

"Yes, but he's also too cunning to let himself be trapped."

He grasped her by the chin "Look at him and tell me which personality is dominating both of them.  Ari-El in gray Rivkah, I'd sooner expect the sun to rise in the west.  The wardrobe, the attitude, even the stance, Rivkah, Ari-El is no longer the dominate personality." He turned her to face him "I'm afraid, Rivkah.  Ari didn't need me to lead the Spartans and he didn't need you to setup all this did he?"

"No" she whispered.

"He didn't bring us here for our peace of mind" tears glittered in his ebony lashes.

"Why do you think he summoned us?"

"I think he isn't certain that all this is going to work and if it doesn't there are two possibilities." He drew a deep breath before continuing "One, since he can not kill them himself we're here tidy up."

"And two?"

"And two" he echoed "Ari doesn't fight when he can't win Riv."

"No" she barked vehemently "he wouldn't.  How can you even suggest such a thing."

"I never said I wanted it to be true, Riv."

He staggered as her fist caught him solidly in the chest "Then why bring it up?"

He caught her hand "Think, Riv, if he is lost, s-sh, then we are loose ends and Ari-El is nothing if not tidy.  If he can not beat them he will join them and he will cast mankind into an eternity of darkness from which it will never recover."

"If I desired your death, 'Tep, you would already be dead."  Both of them flushed as they turned toward the man in the doorway.  "Get some sleep" he ordered "if my word is still worth anything to you I swear I will not slay you in your beds."  His eyes were still that cold, silent gray but there were faint lines of tension around his mouth "If you would feel safer you may even share accommodations, for safety's sake."

Rivkah raised her head and boldly met Ari-El's frozen eyes "If I share anyone's bed tonight husband it will be yours."  She left Imhotep to stand before Ari-El. 

He studied her a moment "I thought I was out of your favor wife."

She slid her hands into his black hair and drew him into a tender kiss "I've missed you."

He pulled her closer "And I you" he replied as he rested his cheek against her red-gold hair.  He shifted his eyes to Imhotep without breaking his contact with Rivkah.  Imhotep knelt, eyes downcast

"I am sorry, Master, please forgive…" he stopped as Ari-El extended a hand.

"How could I blame you for being what I have encouraged you to become?"  He raised Imhotep to his feet while still holding Rivkah with his other hand.  "If there is one thing I have striven to teach you these many years it is the discernment of the hearts of men."  His eyes dropped "I am a … practical man.  Both possibilities have crossed my mind, more than once."  He ran a soothing hand down Rivkah's back at her startled gasp.  "There are still other options; I am not yet so desperate."  His eyes remained flat and calm but she could feel faint tremors coursing through him.  "Besides they say the darkest hour is the one before the dawn, no?  Perhaps this all will prove a fading nightmare dispelled by the morning light."

"If you really believed that, Au'Brey, we would not be here." Imhotep rebutted "What have you seen?  What has disturbed you so?"

Ari-El's smile was formed of equal parts chagrin and satisfaction "I see that I've taught you too well." 

The smile faded to be replaced by another expression.  It took Rivkah several breaths to place it, partly because nothing reached his eyes and because it was an expression she'd never seen on Ari-El before, confusion.

"It will work" his tone bordered on the edge of whining "it will destroy the contagion, completely, and yet I see the Horsemen's reign of terror continuing."  His hand tightened around her "It should work" he mumbled, sounding more than a little lost and a bit forlorn "it should all be over tomorrow." He swallowed "this charade" he gestured to himself "their insanity.  It might even be over.  The future is divided and I can not find the pivot point."  He almost snarled "There is no reason for it, at least none that I can find."  He shook his head slowly as if to clear it "I can not find the schism, without that knowledge I can not resolve the situation, there's got to be a pivot point, something that can force the situation back the way I want it to go…"

Imhotep grasped his arm and shook him gently out of his unfocused rambling "Au'Brey get some rest.  For once let the morning take care of itself."

Ari-El nodded listlessly before leading them deeper into the sheltered valley of Olum…

                Both Imhotep and Rivkah started like frightened rabbits as Ari-El's left hand hit a display hard enough to shatter it.  Both of them blinked in shock as he let loose a stream of profanities that would make a bordello mistress blush.  As the tirade wound down Imhotep chided weakly "I didn't know you knew how to do that."

"Of course I know how to curse" Ari-El snapped "any street urchin or half-wit can curse.  I simply prefer a more dignified approach to interpersonal relations."

"Would you mind sharing the problem?"

He pointed at one of the undamaged displays "This is what is wrong."

The other two merely blinked uncomprehendingly at the brightly colored screen.

He tapped his forefinger against a deep blue area "If men have souls"

"They do" Imhotep cut in firmly.

"Then this is where they reside.   The brighter the color the more active that portion of the brain is and as you can see nothing is active here." He pointed to another region "if that is the origin of altruism than this is the seat of sadism and as you can see" on both displays the area he was pointing at was blazing, scarlet red.  It was far, far brighter than any other "we have a problem it does not matter what scenario I create in their minds the response is inevitably dark and dire even when I stimulate the area directly" a mote of light appeared abruptly in the center of the blue area.  "It scatters like dust before a gale without altering the situation one wit."  There was confusion and perhaps fear in his face "There is no reason for it.  This makes no sense."

"You can think of nothing else to do can you?"

Ari-El shook his head, wordlessly.

"Then you know what must be done."

"I can not 'Tep, I.." he leaned into the wall with his arms crossed over his chest drew one long ragged breath before shoving away from the wall and fleeing the sterile chamber…

                Imhotep wrapped a hand around hers and steadied her on the tiny ledge Ari-El was perched on.

"You have not killed them" he turned toward them "I would not have expected either of you to hesitate once I withdrew my own objections."

Imhotep moved gingerly across the narrow ledge.  He swallowed audibly while eyeing the distance to the valley floor "Is there truly no hope for them?"

"As long as there is life there is hope." He moved with a negligent grace, heedless of the height "The future is always in motion, always changing."  He sighed and cast a stone over the edge and watched it clatter down the mountain side "The Universe obeys certain laws.  They do not change, they are not alterable, and I know them, I know them all, I was born knowing them.  Set this in motion and that will result, not once I the four thousand years of my life have I ever been uncertain in matters of physics or chemistry.  Is there no hope for them? I do not know.  Four little words 'Tep and yet I have I have never had to say them before."  His hand shook as he ran it in a nervous gesture through his short black hair. "There is no reason, Imhotep.  They could awaken and be the men we knew or they could be the monsters they are for another ten thousand years.  I only know I haven't the heart to kill them.  Do as you will, I shall not hinder you."

Imhotep put a comforting hand on Ari-El's shoulder "I can't do it either.  I could not slay them, as they lay insensate."

"If we release them, more people will die" Ari-El reminded them both with a steady, dead glare "Are you ready to live with that?"

"Are you?"

"If I was not they would have long since been dead."

"Then you have a plan" Imhotep observed. 

Ari-El chuckled mirthlessly "I always have a plan."

Imhotep gave the drop another glance before continuing "Care to share?"

"They are, to a limited extent, feeding off each other.  Separating them can only improve matters.  Menelaus owes me a favor for my assistance with Helen.  He has the resources to keep Methos confined." His attention shifted to Rivkah "The Spartans will accompany you since you will be returning to Agememnon I presume?"

She flushed.  Ari-El smiled in wry amusement "Did you think I would begrudge you any happiness, Riv?" He paused "and I will warn you as I warned Ashe, in Ilion.  Enjoy the peace while it lasts, war is brewing, the slightest affront will be sufficient excuse.  I will drop Kronos in Cheng-chou.  The Shang emperor also owes me a favor.  Even if Kronos escapes the day after tomorrow, it will take him at least a decade to find the others again.  'Tep take Tasyad and Cupha and see if you can find Caspian's trail." He grasped Imhotep's forearm "Be careful.  I will join you as soon as I have deposited Kronos.  Do not close with him.  Do not even let him know he is pursued.  I will rejoin you soon."  He frowned as he swept a hand through his short, dark hair "And you are correct, the Ta'am of El-Am would never have allowed this" he glanced away "therefore as long as there are Horsemen, Ari-El will remain dead.  There are only four people who know Ari-El lives.  Word of my survival is never to reach any of the Horsemen.  Live, my friends, live and grow."

                Rebecca blew on her hands to warm them "I should have never told you Ari-El's true name or that he is still alive.  I've never told any of my other students."

"Only me?" Amanda asked, surprised.

"Yes, only you.  All four of us have sent students to Blade for polishing but none have ever known the truth.  Please don't make me the one to betray him to Methos" her eyes begged.

"Of course, I swear he will never learn the truth from me."  She shifted into a more comfortable position "But what happened to the Horsemen?"

"It took over sixty years for the Horsemen to reunite but reunite they did and the terror began again.  Ari-El never let them stay together for more than a decade or so before mercenaries or armies to drive them apart.  He worked them like a herding dog works sheep until finally in 190 BC Methos faked his own death and left the Horsemen of his own volition."

"190BC!!!" MacLeod roared.  He started to rise but Amanda planted a hand on his chest.

"Are you going to let me finish this or what?  Then sit down and shut up.  OK? Good.  Now where was I?  Oh yes…"

"But that was almost a thousand years ago, Rebecca.  Couldn't he have changed, truly changed?  Hugh the Abbot is known as a good man and he speaks well of him."

Rebecca shrugged "He may have.  I do not know and I do not care."

"But, I thought you said it is always best to forgive."

Rebecca's eyes flashed "There is a difference between forgiveness and offering one's head on a platter.   Methos is wily and devious.  Like Ari-El he never fights a battle he can not win.  He prefers to circle his quarry and hamstring it rather than a direct confrontation.  His own survival is always his primary goal and he will do anything to preserve his own life.  Never trust him or rely on him.  And no I can not forgive him for the destruction he brought down on the Blades or for the harm he visited on my husband.  And I fear for Ari " she blew on her hands again " with no one but Methos have I ever known Ari's heart to rule his head.  What if this, repentance, is all a sham?  Methos has done Ari more than enough harm."  Her eyes hardened "He is the only living thing I hate and if I had my way he would have died outside the Deep.  If there is a God he alone knows why Ari-El favors him."  She shook herself as a cry of alarm came from the battlements.  Both women hurried from the room…