Imagine the usual disclaimers. What can be said, that hasn't already be said?

Warnings: Angst. Smarm. Violence. Foxhunting, philosophy, and love!

THE DEMON LOVER

". . . so pleasing is the sight that anyone who has ever seen her

tracked, found, chased, and caught

would forget whatever he loved most."

Xenophon, Cynegeticus

The sun shone upon Devonshire.

The vixen had kenneled on a bed of bluebells, in a copse of silvery springtime trees. While she napped with her head on her forepaws, the huntsman and his two whippers-in rode up from downwind; barely a jingle of the bit sounded to betray them, they came so quietly that the larks scarcely paused in their song. The huntsman led the way, his mount stepping soft through the thick grass. The hounds for which he was responsible thronged around his horse, and their ears were pricked high and their tails waved gently. They wore red collars, with long leashes. Three couples of hounds for the huntsman, three couples for each of the whippers-in. Eighteen foxhounds, quivering with eagerness.

They halted just outside the covert. The whippers-in waited, the foxhounds waited. The huntsman lifted a hand to keep them in check, and then stuck his finger into his mouth and held it up to the breeze. He cocked his head, seemed to listen. Then he nodded to the whippers-in.

Eighteen hounds were unleashed, loosed and thrown in, to draw the covert. They knew their job, and ran swiftly into the undergrowth--leaping and tumbling over each other, springing joyously onward, dead silent. Even the youngest of them had been well trained. Not one would give cry until they scented their prey.

In the copse, the vixen bounded to her feet.

She turned her head, lifting her slim elegant muzzle. She heard the hounds running through the bushes. She flashed away, down a low path between the uncurling green ferns; like a red streak she bounded amidst thick furze, over new sprigs of yarrow and through tangles of dead brown twigs. In places the bluebells bloomed so thickly that they seemed to enamel the ground with azure. Away to the far side of the covert she ran, and she did it so cunningly that not a single hound caught sight of her. There was plenty of space for her to dodge in, for the wood was seven acres or more in measure. Where the trees and the undergrowth ended, she paused in the shadow of an old drystone wall.

Beyond lay a primrose meadow, pearly with dew. She almost ran out then, along the shadow of the wall. Had she dared to take her chance, she might have escaped. But there were men and women on horseback stationed at the far side of the grove, and she turned when she saw this, and dashed back toward the hounds.

The hounds spread across the covert, questing beneath every leaf. They ran hungrily back and forth, back and forth, never uttering a yip. Outside the copse, the huntsman squinted sleepily at the sunrise; he was quite alone, his dogs all busy and his attendants spread to cover the edges of the wood. His ladies and gentlemen, all clad in red, waited on the far side. He struck a match, and lit a cigarette. And he kept watch for his prey.

Moments passed.

The larks stopped singing.

Moments passed.

A faint musical cry rose, like a bugle upon the wind.

It was the cry of a foxhound. Another voice was heard, baying in counterpoint. Another. The huntsman came to life, he crushed his cigarette out between gloved fingertips and tossed the butt aside, he put his hands to his mouth and hallooed. In the cover, the music of his hounds strengthened, it steadied, it swelled. Another halloo from the huntsman, and a great crash of branches signaled the sighting of the vixen.

She was running headlong through the furze, with the hounds hot on her heels. A halloo from somewhere told the huntsman that one of his whippers-in had seen and turned her; then an outbreak of shouting from the field, far distant on the other side of the copse, sounded as she was checked a second time. The baying of the hounds faltered.

The vixen broke out of covert, like a streak of running red pelt. Right under the huntsman's horse she dashed. Five hounds charged on her trail. The huntsman did nothing, merely turning his head to look; otherwise he sat his horse like a statue, and his horse stood patiently, one hoof pawing the turf, tail stirring in the breeze. Away they went, off across a meadow dappled with clover. He watched them go. Then he raised his horn, and winded it.

The ladies and gentlemen of the field shouted at the signal. They exploded into a gallop--some, in their eagerness, spurring headlong into the covert; the wiser turning their horses to skirt the edges. When they arrived at the far side, they saw the huntsman in his red cap riding over a distant hill, already three fields beyond them. The lead hounds plunged ahead of the huntsman. The whippers-in galloped breakneck after, with the rest of the hounds around them. The hunters charged in pursuit.

The wind blew in their faces. The quarters of their mounts rose and fell, pounding. The hooves of the horses cut the turf like knives, flinging clods and sticks in their wake. The horses snorted with excitement as they galloped over hill, over dale; the music of the fox-hounds was a mellow golden chorus. A woman with golden hair, riding a big grey thoroughbred, led the pack; her whip was tucked under her arm, the skirt of her black coat danced in the wind. A willow of a girl in a smart riding-helmet galloped in her wake. They ran across farmers' fields left fallow, beneath oaks and through stately alders, and off down a country lane paved only with flowers. Faintly, the sound of the huntsman's horn drifted back, and the baying of the hounds guided them on their way. The lane swerved, straightened, and swerved again.

Their path lay straight onward--right at a wire fence smothered in thorn-brake. The woman with the golden hair set the grey's head for the fence.

The rest of the field scattered behind her, wheeling to the left; they galloped away toward a nearby gate. The thoroughbred thundered headlong across primroses and clover. The other riders pulled up, looking back. Some pointed. Some shouted in excitement. The girl in the riding-helmet, turning to glance over her shoulder, called out in a silvery voice: "Gala, no!" More hunters appeared at the curve of the lane, pounding toward the barrier. Most them turned, too prudent to leap the wire. That big man on the chestnut steeplechaser, who rode breakneck after Gala--that was Duncan MacLeod.

He came level with her, and for a breathless moment they were neck and neck. MacLeod took a good look at the barrier, a frown upon his face. He all but turned to make for the gate . . . and then Gala of the golden hair tossed him a glance like a gauntlet thrown down.

He caught her look, shook himself, took stock of his mount's mettle and rode straight for the jump. Side by side they thundered across the turf. The thorn-brake rushed toward them. His chestnut, sensing confidence in its rider, shortened its stride just so. Foxgloves standing tall in the thorn-growth of the barrier caught his eyes, yellow, pink, white. The fence was five feet high, but more dangerous than the thorns were the steel wires buried in them; the thorns might cut and tear a horse's skin, but the wire--if the horse misjumped--could slash its chest and knees like a butcher's cleaver. Mac leaned back in the saddle, low over the cantle. And in a flash of memory he thought: foxgloves stand for wishes made.

They flew over the wall like birds.

On the far side, Mac had just one glimpse of a steep hill falling away before them, of a drop rather than level ground; then his chestnut gelding struck the ground with an impact that rattled every tooth in his jaw, and he was almost tossed right over the horse's head. Gala was laughing. Mac got himself back into the saddle, found his reins again; the wish he had made was that the mortal woman would not kill herself, and his wish had come true.

And now they were galloping down the hill, and there in the distance was a lovely, lovely sight . . . the fox running before the hound-pack, the hounds coursing behind the fox, the huntsman and his whippers-in following, far ahead. To the left and the right stretched long rolling parks of emerald-green pasture, upon which fluffy white sheep cropped. All the sheep had frozen, their roman-nosed heads turned to stare suspiciously after the hunt. Away went the fox into a ditch, vanishing like magic. On the far side of the ditch was a hedge, beyond which a country road could be glimpsed. The hounds poured like water into the ditch, ran up the far side, and plunged baying through the hedge.

The music of their cries broke up in confusion. Then back they all came through the hedge, and milled around, baffled.

"That's it," said Gala, beside Mac, "she's given them the slip, sly thing. The huntsman will have to cast 'em."

Wagging, sniffing hounds ran every which way, scenting the air and the ground. The huntsman and his assistants had halted their mounts beside the ditch, and seemed to be arguing. "Well," said Gala lightly, "no hurry now." She let her horse canter to a standstill and put its nose down to the grass. Then, to MacLeod's amusement, she pulled out a compact and flicked it open.

The slim girl in the helmet appeared upon her far side. "Auntie dearest, I swear you're the vainest thing on Earth."

"Nonsense," said Gala, employing her lipstick. "At my age, this is not vanity. It is a glorious battle against the forces of history."

MacLeod saluted gallantly, and then kissed his fingertips to her in homage.

"And I'm the loser," said the girl, swiftly, "I can see it now. Everywhere I go, all the most gorgeous men look at my aunt and not at me." She made eyes at MacLeod, fluttering her eyelashes. "Aunt Gala, have mercy! Introduce me."

"Haven't you met?" asked Gala in surprise.

The rest of the field was crossing the sheep-pasture, riding in twos and threes.

"Oh no, let me think . . ." She cast a swift glance at Mac' sunglassed visage, and then made a show of concentration--pressing her fingertips against her forehead and shutting her eyes. "Was the name Guido? Franco? Toni? A mysterious dark stranger shall come into my life, the gypsy said--"

"Diana! Stop clowning right now. Duncan, this is my niece, Diana Mayhew. Diana, your company manners for my old friend Duncan. Duncan MacLeod."

On the far side of the pasture, the huntsman seemed to have come to a decision. He waved to his whippers-in, who began to gather the hounds and take them across the road.

"My pleasure," said MacLeod politely.

Diana widened her eyes. "You're Scottish? Oh, dear. And I had you pegged for a member of the Italian Mafia."

Mac had to laugh. "What a low blow. Was it my sunglasses, or my riding that led you into error?"

"It was your style of jumping. As mad as my aunt's," said Diana. She blew a kiss toward Gala. "Please, auntie, change hats with me?"

Gala had put away her compact. She tipped her glossy black top-hat rakishly back, poising it just so. "Why?"

"Because the way you ride, you need a helmet. You're going to kill yourself some day."

"Nonsense. Charles would never allow it."

They cantered off to join the field. Gala soon spurred ahead, calling out to her friends; Mac found the girl Diana riding by his side. From time to time she cast him a speculative glance. He said, "It's my turn to mistake you for something you're not. Haven't I seen your face somewhere before? On a magazine cover, perhaps?"

She covered her mouth. "Oh, alas! My secret's found out!"

"All is laid bare," he said, smiling. "You're Dee Mayhew. The supermodel?"

"The model," she said, "just starting out in the business. Six feet tall in my stocking feet, weighing in at just one hundred and one pounds--I can say it without a blush, because it's none of my doing. All heredity, no skill involved whatsoever. How could I possibly not be a model? But you're not staying with Uncle and Aunt? You weren't at breakfast."

"No. Your uncle and I are . . . old friends. He happened to meet me in Exford market, and invited me to join the field." Mac patted his scarlet coat. "He was kind enough to find me a horse and hunt colors."

"I expect it's his own spare jacket, you're much the same size. I'm surprised he didn't ask you to stay at Herne Chase, though."

"He did. I said no. I'm hiking round Devon with a friend--"

Gala, somewhat ahead, slowed her horse and called back over her shoulder, "Nonsense, Mac! We told you--bring her along, whoever she is!"

"And must it inevitably be a she?" murmured Diana.

"Inevitably, darling!" Gala called. "A world-renowned female reporter, a gorgeous film actress, a glamorous Russian spy--wherever Mac goes, there's always a beautiful woman in the offing."

She went galloping away again.

"I'm blushing," remarked Mac.

"Well," Diana said, her eyes twinkling, "this I must see. I'll have to have Uncle repeat the invitation, this very minute. There he is--" She looked ahead; they were almost up to the road by now. In a moment, their horses pushed abreast through the hedge, and clattered across the tarmac--joining the other hunters on the far side. "Well, not this minute, maybe. Not while he's rating poor Mr Wynchbold, who had such a lot of champagne at the hunt breakfast this morning."

On the far side of the road, the huntsman in his cap had just struck out with the stock of his whip, knocking the hat off a red-faced gentleman. "--your last chance, Alfred. I saw you whipping Blue Glory just then. Across rocky ground, wasn't it? Lame the horse I lent you, and you'll never ride to my hounds again."

Mr Wynchbold was heard to bluster. The huntsman listened, and then said in an icy voice, "There's no excuse for brutalizing your mount. Save your choler for the fox, my friend. And if I catch you overriding the hounds, you'll regret it as long as you live."

He turned, leaving Mr Wynchbold scowling at the edge of the road. In a moment he was beside Gala, and his face had smoothed remarkably; she shook her head at him, but he kissed her hand and said, "Forgive me. Some necessary unpleasantness. I saw you jumping the thorn-brake, Gala--marvelous. Duncan, you were magnificent."

"Well, we're all here," said Gala merrily, "but where's the fox, Charles?"

He pointed. "Went down that culvert and exited on the other side of the road. The hounds are casting for her now. I think she's making for the moor."

She clapped her hands. "Oh, how wonderful!"

"Yes, we'll have a good run this morning. Enjoying yourself, Duncan?"

"Uncle Charles," said Diana, pushing her lower lip out and making a clownish face so that all three of her companions laughed, "I want you to have Mr MacLeod to stay. To entertain your female guests."

"To entertain you, you mean. No, Diana. Mr MacLeod is too old for you." Uncle Charles's gaze met Mac's. The two measured one another imperceptibly; then the huntsman repeated, "Much, much too old, my dear. And if he trifled with you, I'd have to challenge him and swop off his head."

Mac shrugged. "If you could, Herne."

"If I could." Somewhere, a foxhound suddenly bayed. And another, and another. Charles Herne turned his horse's head. "Yoicks," he said very softly. "My children have found the scent. Let's ride!"

Away they went, and Herne--who was the Master of the field, as well as its huntsman--rode in the van. His whippers-in stayed a length behind him, standing tall in their stirrups to keep an eye on the hounds. Few of the field were good enough riders to keep the pace, for now the pack was running in fine style . . . and Herne, who knew every dog and bitch by the note of its voice, muttered encouragement under his breath, flashed hand signals to guide his assistants left and right, and hung in behind the pack like the very magician of hunters.

There went Impulse--Herne owned no dog-hound more gallant--leading the chase, so faithful to the scent that even when the vixen ran in plain sight, he kept his nose to the ground. There went Raven and Snatcher, Bright-eye and Wolf-howl. Blue-grey Lycas, the best of Herne's bitches, leaped to the fore; Locris the white with the spotted red ears was hot on her heels. There! how Impulse carried the scent, never failing though all his pack-mates were foiled--there! when even he faltered, how swiftly he flung himself forward to catch it again! They mounted the hill, leaping gaily, with not a skirter or a shuffler among them. They hurled across a ditch, splashed through a rushing stream. A stone wall stood in their way. The hound pack swarmed over it, baying, and away they ran . . . off across the granite-strewn wasteland of wild Exmoor.

In an instant, they had crossed from emerald parkland into a world of soft grey. The heather of the moors gave way springily under the feet of the hounds, and the hilltops in the distance were crowned with granite tors, great boulders like castles--huge as houses, forbidding as fortresses. There were no farms here, there were no fields here. A few sheep grazed on the heather, and off on the horizon a herd of moor ponies was snorting at the sight of the hunt. There was no other living thing in sight. Only the vixen running far ahead, and the foxhounds hot on her trail.

Cunning as the devil, she made straight for the grazing sheep. They scattered, bleating, as she dashed through their midst--and then the hounds were among them. But Herne had trained his hounds to be steady against sheep. Not a single dog swerved from the scent--and behind them, the hunters raised a cheer at the sight. Off they went! Now Bugler led, now Snatcher, now Merrimaid and now Merriman. They had the vixen fair and square before them, running straight as a die across the moor, and they vied for the lead like racehorses. The vixen hurled across a gully, with the foxhounds flying on her heels. Two tumbled to grief, but the next instant they went scrambling up the far side and charged off to rejoin the pack.

The field of hunters leaped the gully in a thunder of hooves.

There was the vixen's refuge, a fine covert of hawthorn and May-trees. She vanished into it, and then there came the crash of whipping branches as the hounds hurled into the undergrowth. But they had lost her now, and the whippers-in rode breakneck for the far side of the covert. It was their job to halloo her back, if she tried to break out that way. Behind them, the field milled and jostled to a halt. Gala whipped out her compact again. MacLeod looked up into the sky: it was getting on to rain.

A few stinging raindrops fell like tears in his face. He turned his head, listening to the hounds, and saw that Herne was doing the same. The hounds had turned; Mac could hear it. They had divided into two streams. One was running back toward the hunters, and the other was pouring away, off to the northward covert-rim.

Mac watched Herne. Herne cocked his head, held up his whip to rally the field. He pointed, hallooed. Then he had wrenched his horse's head around, and was riding to the north.

There she went!--breaking out of the covert, running for her life. Before them, the riders saw the hounds spread out like a fan. They were too close, treading on the pack's heels, and Herne shouted out: "Ware hound! Ware hound! Damn you, Wynchbold, ware hound!" The vixen had vanished. The hounds were casting for the scent. Now Impulse found the line, and ran along it. The others flew to follow him. And behind Mac, Diana's silvery voice rang out: "View halloo! I see the prey!"

They all saw the vixen now. She was sinking visibly, on her last legs--but the hounds were also tiring. The horsemen closed the gap between themselves and the pack. Every eye was on the vixen. Every heart stood still. For the rain was beginning to fall heavily on every side . . . and once it set in, the scent would be lost and the hunt would end.

She made her stand in a covert of flowering furze. The hunters, galloping toward it, were placed to view every jink and trick of the chase: the swift red fox who could spin on a dime, and the hound-pack plunging after her. There!--with a crash, the whole pack dove into the furze. They turned when the vixen turned. They doubled where she doubled. They turned again, and the turn was very short; her time was almost up. They all gave tongue, overrunning her when she lay down flat without warning, hidden like a thief in the furze; but to see the tumble of legs and tails, as eighteen hounds reversed themselves in a heartbeat, was well worth the hard long ride. They pressed her, every hound baying in a golden clamor. The smash of the undergrowth as they made a final turn set the whole covert resounding.

And there. One great crash of music from the hounds, and it was over.

The ladies and gentlemen of the field all cheered, and pulled up their mounts. The huntsman cantered ahead, dismounted, and trod into the centre of the hound-pack, wielding his whip freely and calling them off. He stooped, and held up a limp red rag. Then his knife flashed as he cut off the vixen's brush, and he flung the remains to his foxhounds to break apart.

#

Ten minutes out of Exford was an old farmstead called St. Hubert's Well, that had been owned by Connor MacLeod for over two hundred years. At twilight that evening, Duncan MacLeod paid off his cab and came walking up from its gate, swinging his arms and whistling as he went. He turned off a little ways before reaching the farmhouse, climbed a stile and crossed a paddock. Beyond, a bridle path led through an oaken grove, dipping low and then climbing high; it emerged above the moor, gazing wide across many miles of rolling hill and bog. The view was beautiful.

The campsite was very simple, just a circle of stones and a lean-to. No one was there. Mac hunkered down and stirred up the ruins of the fire with a stick; banked beneath the warm ashes, he found a lidded kettle and an old tin pannikin. There was tea in the kettle, strong enough to strip paint with. In the pannikin was a stew of rabbits and wild garlic. In the stream that ran past the foot of the hill, a six-pack of beer was cooling.

He ate slowly, gazing across Exmoor.

Presently, the whole world vanished, lapped in a ghostly white mist. The quiet hilltop could have been the last island in Noah's flood, so lost in white it seemed; Mac could have been the last immortal alive. It was then that he felt the singing within him. He didn't bother to look around, only drained the last of his beer and snapped another pair of cans off the ring. He flicked a can open, and drank. He tossed the other to one side.

Methos caught it, and saluted with it.

"Did you find it?" Mac asked.

"Course I found it. Easy as pie. What, did you think I wouldn't?"

"Not for a moment. Got some with you?"

"Yeah." Methos patted the old sack he had dropped on the ground. "Did you like the stew? It's the fruits of wickedness . . . I've been teaching the farmer's son how we used to set snares for conies back in the bad old days."

"Don't tell me. You were a poacher?"

"Weren't we all? Time was, I could walk across a field in plain sight of the forester, drop ten snares from my sleeves and tread them into place right under his eye, and he'd never catch me at it." Methos snorted. "The funny thing is, later on I had a job as a forester myself. And I was a damn good one, too, because I knew every trick in the book."

MacLeod looked in the sack. There was a jumble of white-stained stone within: flints, dug up where they ran in veins through the chalk soil of the moor. A few nubbins of reddish material were also there. "Is this tin?"

"I couldn't resist picking it up," Methos admitted.

Flint and tin, both once worth more than gold. This had been tin-mining country, once; and long before that, flint-mining country. Now the tin and the flint alike were worthless pebbles. Mac ran his fingers through them, thinking of time.

"Merrymaze Hill," he said abruptly. "I found out who owns the land it's on. It's another immortal, a man named Herne."

"Herne? Charles Herne?"

"You know him?"

"Herne the hunter, yeh. What's he up to these days? Master of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds?"

"You do know him," said MacLeod.

"Oh, I've known him since we were both in Greece, maybe sixteen hundred years ago. Yes, around six hundred BC. Nice guy, nutty about sport. Never much for fighting other immortals, but he's always been mad on hunting. And women--he always loved women. Let's see, he called himself Kotys then, and I was using some name or other--let me think now . . ."

"But does he know who you really are?"

"Yeah. But I haven't seen him in centuries." Methos brooded. "Herodotus!" he said suddenly. "Herodotus. That was my name."

MacLeod stared at him. "You have got to be kidding."

"Would I lie to you?" Methos said, injured. He stood up, and dropped his beer-can; Mac collected it, tidying it away into a bag for recycling. He gave Methos a dark look from under his eyebrows, and all Methos did was grin. "C'mon. The Crown, or the Royal Oak?"

They walked to the Crown in Exford, enjoying the cool night air. The moor was quiet; no sounds broke the stillness--save the eerie clamor of lorries somewhere far away, the rush of wheels and squeal of brakes magnified by the mist. Neither man spoke. The pub was crowded, hot and noisy: a dart-match between locals warred with several tables of tourists cheering the soccer broadcast. MacLeod and Methos exchanged glances, got their drinks, and headed for the corner furthest from the scrum.

". . . youth hostels. It's a good way to put up while traveling, as long as you don't mind bunking with a bunch of American teenagers out to live Life on the cheap."

Mac shook his head. "They're too young."

"I doubt they'd let you in anyway. I hate to tell you this, but you don't look the sort who'd frequent youth hostels."

"Why, thank you . . . Besides, hostels are too much like squalor for me. I've been penniless; I don't need to repeat the experience."

"Right," Methos drawled, "and last night's rainfall wasn't enough like squalor for you? I seem to remember some pretty choice words in Gaelic emanating from your side of the lean-to--"

"That was different."

"Lying out in the rain without a tent or sleeping bag? Exactly how was it different?"

"It was optional," said MacLeod.

"Ah, so because we're playing Bronze Age, privation is fine. I ought to take away your matches and kettle. Not to mention your underwear. Why," said Methos, "I myself never wore underwear until I was more than three thousand years old--"

Mac raised his mug of ale. "Now there's a thought."

They clinked their mugs together. "Za vashe zdarovie," Methos drawled.

"Kaan-pie!"

"To civilization. To progress. To underwear!"

"To lion-hunting with the Masai in Africa," said MacLeod. "Armed with spears and cowhide shields. Two hundred years old, I was--but the immortal who was teaching me said, until I had taken my lion I had not left boyhood behind . . . That day, he said afterward, I became a man."

"Hawking after grey heron," said Methos. "In Afghanistan."

"Killing buffalo with bow and arrow," Mac said, "to help feed my woman's tribe."

"Hunting with the royal court of Assyria. With trained lions running before the king's chariot, and the wild bulls and ostriches of his hunting-park for our quarry. Three thousand years ago--Christ, I still remember the thrill."

"Sending Father's terriers down badger-holes," Mac murmured, "back home in Scotland, when I was a lad."

"To hare-hunting," Methos said, drinking a healthy swig of ale. "The greatest sport of all. Ask Herne, he'll tell you. Going out in the dawn air, with six couple of hounds and one servant for company, to drive the hares into the nets. In spring the ground was stained by flowers, in autumn by fallen fruit. We'd dress in our lightest chitons, wear high sandals and broad-brimmed sun-hats. And when we had started the hare out of cover, we'd let the dogs course, strip naked and wrap our chitons round our left arms, and run after the hounds on foot."

"To hunting."

"To hunting!"

When Diana from the hunt stepped into the crowded bar, she seemed to stand under a glare of production lights. The dart game broke off and the day-trippers forgot the soccer match. She was beautiful: her hair was a teased golden mane flowing wild to her waist, her clothes were the sort that only a model could pull off. Her black stretch overall clung to her like a second skin; it made the curves of her hips and round slender waist look as if they went on forever. Her sweater was short and loose, crocheted in heavy oat-colored cord, and entire watches with long leather bands had been woven horizontally across the material. Her jewelry matched her sweater, there were big clunky watches on both her wrists and chains of dismembered watch-faces trailing from her ears; ring-watches, enameled red and green and blue, weighed down her hands. When she walked past them, men gawked unashamedly, and even the voice of the telly seemed to hush. She crossed the room, straight to MacLeod's table, and she said, "Hey. Crowded in here tonight, isn't it? Do you have room for one more?"

"Make yourself welcome," said MacLeod. "Adam Pierson, meet Diana Mayhew."

"Come here often?" asked Methos.

A waiter appeared at Diana's elbow. She told him, "A pint of Cotleighs," and meanwhile, she never looked away from MacLeod; she never looked directly at him either. Instead she doodled with one finger in condensation rings on the glass tabletop, drawing happy faces while examining him from the corner of her eye. When she realized what she was doing, she sat bolt upright and knitted her hands together in her lap; fascinated, Mac watched her blush bright pink. The color spread over her smooth cheeks and then across her entire face and throat. Her skin seemed to glow with self-consciousness.

"I hoped I'd run across you," she said. "That is, Auntie Gala was so pleased to have you at the meet, that I thought we should invite you to her party on Saturday. Have you heard about Aunt Gala's famous parties? Very old-fashioned, she holds one every year and the whole neighborhood comes. It's a masquerade, and we all get into old clothes and waltz till cock-crow."

"I'm afraid we don't have any costumes--" Mac began.

"Oh, but we can rig you up something, I'm sure. Maybe one of Uncle's suits of armor? Last year he dressed as the Emperor Frederick, in full armor with a live falcon on his wrist. If you can fit his hunting jacket, you should be able to fit his armor. And your friend can come disguised as--as--"

"A prehistoric cattle-thief," said Mac lightly, and Methos started and then kicked him under the table.

"I'll pass," he said. "Three's a crowd."

"What?" said Diana, blankly. Her beer came, and she paid for it.

"I'm afraid we both have to decline," MacLeod said. "We wouldn't want to impose on your uncle."

"You wouldn't be imposing, everyone will be there. Are you worried about getting a ride home from Herne Chase afterward? But it's not far from where you're staying--that it, I hear you're staying at St. Hubert's Well farm?"

"You've been asking after us?" MacLeod inquired.

"Well--yes. I was curious, you see. That is, I grew up here. Mother's an actress on the stage, so Uncle Charles and Auntie Gala more or less had the raising of me. I've been to the saint's well, oh, a thousand times. All the local girls go there in the summer, to decorate the spring with fern pictures and wish for husbands. Did you know about that? Is that why you're staying at the farm? Hikers and walkers are hardly ever allowed on that property. Hardly anyone even knows it's historical."

"The owner's a kinsman of mine," Mac told her, gently. "We have his permission."

"Well--of course. I didn't mean to imply--" She broke off, shut her eyes. "Pardon me, I seem to be swallowing my foot here. May we start again? At the hunt meet, I couldn't help noticing that you and Uncle know one another quite well. And you seemed to want something from him, but weren't about to say what."

"You're very concerned about your uncle."

"Yes, I am. He's a wonderful man," Diana said, fiercely. She added, "I worry about him sometimes, because he just loves Gala to death and everyone can see-- Well, you've seen the way she rides. One day she'll kill herself going over some impossible jump, and then Uncle's life will end. Any distraction that might draw them off the hunting-field is a godsend. Don't you agree?"

MacLeod considered her. Then he said, "Yes, I do. We wanted to ask him about a piece of property he owns, a place called Merrymaze Hill--"

"That's right by the Chalk Horse!" she said at once. "Near the old barrows and the prehistoric fort. Oh, of course! But how did you know about tomorrow's scouring?"

"We didn't--"

"You didn't? But--"

"So they're scouring the Horse tomorrow?" Methos remarked. He looked at Mac. "The secret's out."

"It's not a secret," said Diana, "it's just that hardly anyone is ever interested these days, you know. Uncle gets a party together to scour the Horse every five years or so. Then we all drink lager and eat sandwiches and lie about telling the legends of Druidic England. It's like a picnic. I'm going. Would you like to go?"

She had set her mug down, and was leaning forward in excitement. As if by accident, her hand touched Mac's.

"Of course we would," said MacLeod.

She glowed with pleasure. "That's wonderful! We're meeting in front of The Staghunters at Brendon about seven o'clock--I'll pick you up at the farm and drive you over. I'll be waiting at six-twenty-five sharp. I'm always on time. You'd be amazed how punctual I am." Diana seemed to see her hand lying on MacLeod's--noticing it as if in surprise--and jumped up with a start. "I've got to go," she said. "Tomorrow, six-twenty-five am. Wear your toughest boots. And then we can talk more about the masquerade on Saturday. I'll find a good costume for your friend, I promise. You'll see!"

Methos watched her hurry toward the door, and whistled between his teeth.

"There's one who's hunting, all right," he said.

"She's so young," said MacLeod.

"Aren't they all?"

#

Merrymaze Hill was very high, sloping steep to the sky--almost a thousand feet straight up from the leat at its foot to the smooth cone of its pinnacle.

The chalk Horse, sprawled across the slope opposite, seemed to be eyeing the top of Merrymaze Hill--as if poised to leap the leat and gallop up. From the valley below, it looked as primitive and elegant as cave art: all crooked lines, with a hook of a tail and a round bead of an eye. It was twenty yards tall, thirty yards long, more than four hundred years old; the record of it went back before the first Elizabeth's reign, but it would never have survived if the local people had not gathered, every few years, to cut it anew. Today, it loomed over the ploughing party as they leaped, one by one, a path of granite stepping-stones through the swift, splashing leat; and they climbed the slope in silence, heads tilted far back, gazing up Those who had not seen it before, took in the Horse with awe.

The off hind hoof of the Horse, when they reached it, was a furrow half-obscured by dead grass and soil. The ploughers, breathing fast--for it had been a hard climb--plunked down their picnic hampers, broke into the beer and raised their cans in a salute. Someone passed around a bag of boiled sweets. The morning air was as clear as crystal, and they could gaze right across Devon: the heavens above were enormous, dappled silver with mackerel cloud, and the fields resembled bits of stained glass, bright green, set in drystone walls grey as lead. A puzzle of crooked walls, stretching off to the distant sea. They rested awhile, taking in the view. Then they got to work.

The ploughs were of the oldest kind, made to be guided by a woman and drawn by a man. They took turns at it, at first clumsily. Those who were not ploughing, walked along and sang rounds, and cheered when the furrows went straight. They ploughed the whole thing once, to turn the earth, and ploughed it a second time to scour it even. Chalk lay under the topsoil, just a few inches down--nothing but pure white chalk. And little by little, the lines of the Horse shone forth clean and true.

By the time they were done, it was afternoon. Curlews called, lapwings cried, larks sang in the long grass; high above, a circling buzzard uttered a kitten's mewl. Bees from some farmer's hive buzzed in the moor growth: in the heather and ling, the bracken and heath of England . . . which reminded MacLeod, irresistibly, of Scotland his home. A pair of moor ponies with a foal wandered through the valley, grazing as they went. A hare skipped across the hillside. Once, they had stopped the ploughing to watch a fox slipping past, and Herne had shaken his head at Gala and laughed.

Now the Horse, finished, gleamed forth in splendor. They put the ploughs down, and marveled over what they had done. Then they trooped off to sit in the sun and eat their sandwiches.

Diana sat down beside MacLeod.

"Too bad your friend couldn't make it."

"He had a previous engagement." Actually, Methos had claimed he was going to search for an anchorite's beehive hut, since he had noticed that after an immortal had reached the age of four thousand years or so, even monasteries became unsafe; the life of a hermit was best. But Mac thought it better not to mention this.

"Well, I've thought of just the right costume for him. With those cheekbones, that facial structure? Look." She reached into her pocket, and showed Mac a pair of pointed plastic ears. "Don't you think he'd make a perfect Vulcan?"

MacLeod burst out laughing. "I've never thought of him as the emotionless type. But it might work."

Beaming, Diana poked him. "As for you, I still see you in a svelte, stylish coat of plate mail, with knitted steel mitts and an extra-large sword . . . You'd be like Tristan! Every lady would swoon."

"So would I, if I tried to dance in any such thing."

"I'm sure you'd be equal to the challenge--"

"No. No, Diana. But thanks."

They sat quietly together for several moments. Diana, with her hands folded in her lap, seemed to be wishing on the clouds. Today her jewelry was all roses and mirrors: wreaths of pewter rosebuds in which were set bits of mirror-glass shaped like Cupid-hearts. Earrings and bracelets, the fastening of her black choker and the ring on her finger; even the buttons of her rose-red jacket were masked with mirrored button-covers. Presently she picked a daisy, and twirled it between her fingertips.

"He loves me, he loves me not," she sang. She began to pluck the flower, filling her lap with daisy-petals. "Oh, well," she said. "He loves me not. Let's try another."

Mac finished his sandwich, and looked around for more; silently, she jumped up and brought him some. But when he tried to thank her again, she held his hand.

"You're avoiding me," she said. "Why?"

"Diana, how old are you?"

"You're saying that I'm too young. Daisies for innocence." She made a face at him, throwing away the flower. "But age doesn't matter when you know what you want. I'm not a child, Duncan!"

"I never said you--"

"And I've always known exactly what I wanted. I've always done what I wanted to do, right on schedule--ever since as a little girl I finished potty-training just when the doctors said I should. Life by calendar, that's me." She held up another daisy and began to pick its petals, as if counting off points. "Never missed a day of school, finished university on my twenty-first birthday, first modeling job one day afterward. First magazine cover by twenty-two. First New York shoot by twenty-two and a half. International success, by twenty-four. And--" She blushed suddenly, pink as peppermint. She recited: "First kissed at thirteen, first boyfriend at fifteen, first lover upon the day I turned sixteen . . . innocence lost." And she dropped the plucked daisy and picked herself another. "Married by twenty-six and retired from modeling, if I get my way, and then the children can come. Two boys, two girls. Charles, Edward, Gala, and Sophie. Once they reach their teens, it's back to school for me, and a second career, teaching gymnastics and riding. No divorce, thank you, when I marry it'll be for life. I'll probably outlive him, whoever he is, because women live longer than men and I'm as healthy as a horse. But that doesn't matter." She ducked her head, smiling. "If I really love him, I won't outlive him long, you see."

MacLeod was speechless.

Diana snatched up one last daisy and made as if to hide her laughter behind it. Strewn petals littered the ground around her and lay in drifts across her knees. "Now you're probably asking yourself, where do you fit into this itinerary? Oh, don't look so frightened. You're not my husband-in-waiting. He's going to be blond, you see, and this tall, with grey eyes and a cleft in his chin."

He found his voice. "And me?"

"Oh, you?" Her eyes were dancing with glee. "Well now, I'm twenty-five and I have exactly one year left to sow wild oats. And you, my dark and handsome stranger, are just what the gypsy ordered." She patted his knee, blew him a kiss. And jumped to her feet--scattering daisy-petals all over him. "If you play your cards right, you can be my youthful fling."

At the expression on his face, she burst out laughing. Then she stooped and kissed his forehead, and without a backward look, off she went skipping down the hillside--clapping her hands and calling out, "Wake up, wake up! Who wants a game of tag?"

The ploughers played tag like children, all up and down the hill, while the chalk Horse gazed benignly upon their antics. And Diana and Gala were the champions of the game. Surefooted as goats, both of them! No one could touch them for speed. And while Gala was a generation older than her niece, she was also as agile as a fox; and what Diana lacked in agility, she made up for in style and dash. They sprang from tussock to stone, laughing like fools, and once Diana raised a cheer by turning handsprings all the way down the hill. MacLeod sat out the game, content to relax in the sunshine and sip his beer. While watching the mortals at play.

Presently Herne came and sat down beside him.

"How long have we known each other, MacLeod?"

"About two hundred and fifty years, give or take."

"Mm," said Herne. "That's about as long as I've known Gala and Diana's family. I've watched over them--fifteen generations of Mayhews--kept in touch with them, helped out when needed. There are Mayhews all over England, the family has always been famous for its beautiful and spirited women . . . I introduced my Gala's mother and father, did you know? And later, I introduced Diana's father to his wife. I'm Diana's godfather, even. In a way, the Mayhews are the children I'll never have."

He stroked the tan-and-black hound that came to lie at his knee, and the hound sighed and pressed close to him.

"Well, that's interesting," said MacLeod. "I have to ask a favor of you--"

"Diana's like my daughter," said Herne. His hand never paused, rubbing the hound's throat and ears, and the hound lay with its chin on his thigh, its eyes glazed with pleasure and its upper lip drawn back in an ecstatic grin. Its tail thumped and thumped upon the grass. "And do you see my dog here? His line, too, I have owned for fifteen generations or more. Of course when I breed my foxhounds, I can arrange their matings as I please and draft out the puppies that displease me. This one has the most select blood in England. His line springs from the great Weathergauge, prize sire of the Belvoir pack, crossed with a bitch hound named Dimple who was famous in her own right. All the hounds in my pack descend from Weathergauge and Dimple. Belvoir hounds have extraordinary heart, enormous strength and speed. Look at this gentleman here, at the bones of his legs and the depth of his chest. Breeding tells, you see. Breeding always tells. When my hound pack runs hot on the scent, there's no other in England can match them." He turned his head, gazing down the hill. There, the tag-players were taking a breather; his wife Gala and his niece Diana were leaning on one another, gasping with mirth. "Isn't that the most beautiful sight in life?" asked Herne.

"Your hound pack hot on the scent?"

"No. Two beautiful women with the sun in their hair."

"Get to the point, Herne," said MacLeod.

He sighed. "Very well. Stay away from my niece, MacLeod."

Mac was chewing on a grass stem. Now he spat it out, and threw it on the ground in disgust. "She's not a bitch from your pack, Herne. She's a grown woman."

"She's a child next to you and I. We're immortals, she's a mortal. You and I have had centuries of experience in pleasing women. We have a glamor beyond their comprehension, we fill them with a wild passion of love. They can't resist us." Herne half-shut his eyes, watching dreamily as the tag game started anew. "And you know how it is, Duncan. The more powerful the immortal, the stronger the aura we cast upon mortals. As if their instincts can sense our quickening . . . like a light they can't see, yet still they are drawn like moths to the flame. As Diana was drawn to you, the moment she met you. She has no chance against you."

"You're exaggerating."

Below them, Diana had tagged Gala.

"No? And women don't swoon over you, wherever you go? You know they do."

Gala tagged Diana, the tables were turned. And away they went, running headlong down the steep hill.

"And maybe they do, or maybe they don't," said MacLeod curtly, "but so what? I've been turned down by women in my day. Diana can make up her own mind."

The two women were springing from stone to stone across the leat.

"You mean, she's already fallen for you, and you've decided to enjoy her. But she's a woman, Duncan, not a vixen for your sport. Don't pursue her."

Gala's laughter pealed out, golden as hound music, as she fled with her niece on her heels.

"She's the one who's pursuing--"

Below, Gala sprang headlong from the top of a boulder. She landed upon a smooth wet rock, and her foot skidded out from under her. Behind her, Diana screamed.

Both immortals half-rose in alarm. Herne clenched his fist, saying beneath his breath, "Gala--!"

Then they relaxed, looking sheepishly at each other. The two mortal women now stood on dry boulders, safe and sound; Diana gripped her aunt's wrist, anchoring her, and Gala was giggling like a little girl in breathlessness and relief.

"Thank God," Herne whispered. The foxhound whimpered and pressed a cold nose into his hand.

"Thank God," Mac agreed. "You see, we both care about--"

"Stay away from her!" said Herne. He sprang to his feet, his hound jumping up immediately. His face was deathly pale. "If you ever want any favor from me, stay away. Or you're regret it, Duncan." And he turned and strode off, with the foxhound on his heels.

MacLeod stared after him in disbelief.

"The hell I will," he said.

#

It was well past midnight by the time Mac got back to the farm. He was whistling under his breath, with his coat slung over one shoulder; the waning moon looked upon him, and the path was as silver as a ley-line beneath his feet. Moths circled him on whisper-soft wings, an owl hooted in the trees. A mouse fled with a faint squeak and rustle. It was a beautiful night. A beautiful world. A beautiful universe, and life was good.

He could feel Methos' presence, echoing in his soul--like the singing of the whole ocean pent in up a seashell. As he walked through the wood, the sense of it was all around him. Like pagan chanting, like drumbeat rhythms. As if he and Methos were both instruments in some strange orchestra; whoever was playing them, MacLeod did not know, but they were tuned to the same key, they resonated to each other, they were possessed by the same demonic music . . . and that music, it was the quickening, it was the Game.

But when he reached their campsite, it was empty.

Methos was just been there. Instants ago. Intrigued, Mac looked around; moonlight showed him a curl of smoke from a snuffed candle--scented with sandalwood, it was incense--and something pale lay by his shoe. He picked it up, and it was dog-eared in his fingers, soft-edged and crumpled from much handling. It was a photograph. An old photograph, so faded that, in the moonlight, it was barely more than a vague square.

The candlewick was still warm. He fingered the photograph, wondering. Methos was in it, but that was all he saw; the rest was just a blur. And here was a huge book, left open and abandoned upon the ground. No great surprise, that. Methos lugged books along wherever he went, Methos was never far from paper and pens, and he always seemed to be writing things down. Whether he was jotting grocery lists or putting the great truths of the universe into words, no one could tell. It drove Joe Dawson mad with curiosity (Mac knew this for a fact) because Methos never showed anyone what he wrote.

So . . . Methos had been here, just a moment before Mac arrived, reading by candlelight or perhaps holding his photograph--just as Mac was holding it now. Whatever he had been doing, he had been so absorbed in it that MacLeod had been able to walk almost up to him unnoticed. Then, startled by the approach of another immortal, Methos had dropped everything and vanished. Where had he gone? Further up the hill, probably. To the saint's well, onto the sanctuary of holy ground.

This was one of Methos' old journals. Mac stood looking down at it; like the photograph, the open pages were silvered and blank, and though he could see writing, he could not read it. He had never read any of Methos' journals. Finally he crouched down, unable to resist laying his hand upon the open pages, and then he found the old tinder-box they had brought along, and he struck flint to steel and lit the candle.

In its flickering glow, he saw that the pages were covered with Greek and Cyrillic and even demotic Egyptian--the scripts all jumbled together, alternating from sentence to sentence and even from word to word. A pair of copulating moths, huge and soft and grey, crawled over the paper. Mac brushed them away, his fingers lingering upon the words. He could read them, he knew how to read these languages. Here in the candlelight, he could learn all of Methos' secret past.

Then he shut the book, with the photograph for a bookmark. He stowed journal and picture under his arm, and with the candle in his hand, walked toward St Hubert's Well.

It was a cave, half natural and half manmade, and the well within was a basin of mossy mortared stone. A flight of brick steps had been let into the hillside, leading toward this cave. There were hedges of yew, dense and dark, high as walls; and a single gigantic rose-tree had grown up rampant, entangling itself in the yew. Already, rose-petals strewed the ground. They were as black as pitch in the moonlight. The scent of flowers filled the air. The sense of another immortal's presence was overwhelming.

MacLeod knelt and crossed himself. "St Hubert bless me. Mary Mother of God, bless me." He set down the candle, and stepped forward, saying softly, "Methos?"

The presence was here, there, everywhere--all around him, like a threat of attack that could come from any side. It sang in his skull. He turned around. "Methos?" he said. "It's me--"

"I know."

A flashlight switched on. Methos, sword in hand, appeared behind him; he wore loose grey dungarees and a thin black t-shirt, and his skin gleamed damply with moisture. MacLeod shook his head, and sat down on the stone well-coping. He held up the journal, saying, "You dropped this."

Methos laid the flashlight in a niche in the rock. He leaned forward and snatched the book, staring coldly at Mac all the while.

"I didn't read it," said MacLeod.

Methos tucked the journal under one arm. The sword was in his other hand, and there was a hard wary look in his eye. Then he shrugged. "You've got lipstick on your cheek."

"And daisy-petals in my hair, no doubt. Is tonight an anniversary for you?"

"Mac, once you get to my age, every day is an anniversary of something . . . Did you see it?"

"Yes. It's there, on the hilltop just where you said it was. It looks like lynchets ploughed into the hill, but you can see there's something more . . . I still don't understand why Connor and Herne don't know it's there."

"Oh, I'm pretty sure Herne knows about it. Did you ask him?"

"I was about to." Mac looked away. "Then we got into an argument."

Methos raised one eyebrow. "Don't tell me you killed him, MacLeod."

"I didn't kill him! For pity's sake, he was my host. It would be a breach of hospitality."

"Did you challenge him? Bloody hell, Mac, once you get on your high horse--"

"It was nothing like that." MacLeod brooded. "Methos, tell me honestly. Do I inspire mortals to a wild passion of love?"

Methos stared at him, and then his shoulders went up and a sly grin appeared on his face. "All the time, Duncan, all the time, I'm sure. Is that what you were arguing about, your irresistible machismo?"

"He warned me to stay away from Diana."

"Because you inspired her to a wild passion of love? Well, well," said Methos. "I thought she looked smitten, back in the pub, but I obviously didn't know the full of it. And just think, once she sees you with your shirt off--"

Mac glared. "Methos! Be serious."

"All right, all right. Is it so bad, to evoke wild passions?" All the same, Methos shut his mouth (smirking) and listened to Mac's tale; when Mac was done, he remarked, "But he's right, you know."

"Methos, you can't be agreeing with that lout! I've always had luck with women. When I was mortal and after I became immortal, it made no difference. And to claim that--that I cast an irresistible glamor on them, some kind of magic spell--why, that's like saying I'm cheating!" Mac thrust out his chin, repeating stubbornly: "I've always been lucky with women."

"Yeah, well, it's your overpowering manliness that draws them . . . No," said Methos, "I mean, he does have a point, Mac. Take Diana, for example. She's what, twenty-three? So the men she dates have had maybe five or ten years' experience dealing with the opposite sex. Stacked up against you and your four hundred years--" He shrugged. "It's an unequal contest. And haven't you noticed that the older an immortal, the more himself he becomes? It's as if time refines us. We sharpen with age. The wicked ones become unbelievably evil, and the good ones end up just like saints. Think of Darius. A powerful immortal stands out anywhere he goes, put him in a crowd of mortals and you can pick him out at a glance--"

Mac was about to deny it. Then the words died in his mouth: he was looking at Methos, as Methos stood in the harsh glare of the flashlight's beam--his head high, his eyes bright, with the blade in his hand and the book under his arm. His skin shone white as marble, his hair was black as ink. He looked like a statue of himself. Not flesh and blood at all, but some unlikely Angel of History.

An angel with a sword.

"Well," Mac said slowly, "yes. But--"

Methos made a rude noise. "So you think mortals can't see what you see? Think again. Maybe they can't sense the quickening in us, but they're not blind, you know."

"But . . . if that's true," said Duncan, "if that's true, then Diana has no choice but to--" He thought about it. "Methos, this is terrible!"

"Suffer," said Methos dryly.

MacLeod bit back a nasty comment. Instead he leaned over the edge of the well, gazing into the round eye of the water; in the flashlight's beam, the water was just like a mirror. His own face looked back at him, ruddy and alive. And Methos' white face, peering over his shoulder, seemed to hang in midair like a ghost's.

He murmured, "Darius was like a saint, aye. Better than any mortal man could aspire to be. But I am no saint, Methos."

"Nor am I."

He reached down and stirred the water. Their reflections vanished, wavered, reappeared. "But you are as dear to me as Darius ever was, you know."

Methos said nothing. Only, his image gazed up at MacLeod from the magic well, and it was unnaturally solemn--as if fighting back gales of mirth.

"But Darius," said MacLeod with sudden affront, "Darius treated me with respect. He took me seriously. Darius never laughed at me!"

"That's the secret of my charm," Methos said.

#

The care of a hound-pack is an exact science, as precise as the training of racehorses. In order to hunt three times a week, a good Master needs to maintain forty couples of hounds, and these forty couples of hounds must be kenneled and fed and physicked, and--most importantly--walked. Walked two or three hours a day, week in and week out. A hound which hunts must be in tip-top condition, after all; a hound which lies about sleeping all day will never catch a fox.

The immortal known as Charles Herne had been caring for hounds all his life, and anyway he enjoyed walking. He employed a kennel staff of eight, but winter and summer, he helped exercise his pack. Morning walk was a good time to observe the hounds, and pick out which ones were ready to go out hunting the next day; besides, if he didn't keep a close eye on the kennel staff, who knew what they might get up to? Herne mistrusted modern dog-keepers. The instant he turned his back, they might lose his prize bitch on the moors. Or let the whole pack be infected with hookworm. Or (horror of horrors!) dare to switch to tinned dogfood!

Nor did the roster of Herne's kennel halt at forty couple. There were always a few retired hounds about, whom he kept as house-dogs. And every year, about a quarter of the adult hunters had to be replaced; thus, every year, about twenty puppies had to be bred and raised.

Today was the day after the scouring of the Horse, and Herne and his wife Gala were walking puppies. Nine puppies, to be precise, and two dams.

Nine puppies on leashes, running every which way.

Nine black-and-tan bundles of fuzz, with whippy tails and big, big feet. Bouncing and yipping and entangling themselves right and left.

Nine infant foxhounds rioting along the roadside.

Gala had the leashes of three puppies in her hands. She had Mr Wynchbold, to mind three more puppies and keep her company as he did. She kept an eye on her husband, who was stalking down the road, far ahead--with his back straight as a ramrod, and the remaining three puppies tumbling over his heels. Both mother dogs, unleashed, paced sedately next to their master. And her puppies, and Mr Wynchbold's lot, were straining at the ends of their leashes and whining to get closer to Herne; for all hounds adored Gala's husband beyond comprehension.

"--man's inhumanity to animals," said Mr Wynchbold, heavily.

"Be sensible, Alfred. You can't ride to hounds on Monday morning and condemn all foxhunting when Wednesday dawns."

"You know I have a point. The first foxes were hunted to rid the countryside of vermin, but no one can claim that's our motive now. And it's not just the foxes in question. Hares die to train young foxhounds, don't you see? Stags are bred for release, fox pups trapped for bag-hunting. Sheep are mauled when they riot--"

"The fox pups?"

"The foxhounds! Why, the horsemeat industry alone is a crime against animal-kind." Mr Wynchbold heaved a sigh. "Our furred and feathered brothers, Gala. We are animals too. Horses break their legs jumping impossible fences, hunters break their necks, hounds are overridden and killed--"

Herne shouted over his shoulder, "You almost killed a few yourself on Monday."

"Yes, yes, don't you see that makes my point?" Another sigh. "I weep for my own blindness. I've decided to return my cat Alphonse to the wilderness, Gala. He'll be happier that way. But--and this is a terrible dilemma--my goldfish! What am I to do with my prize goldfish?"

"Maybe you can mail them to China," said Gala feebly.

She escaped from Mr Wynchbold, and hurried--stifling her giggles--up the road to join her husband, who was now casting a gaze of loathing toward their companion. Herne demanded, "Why do I put up with that idiot?"

"Because he amuses me," Gala murmured, "and runs my errands, and makes me happy. And you like me to be happy. Because you love me beyond comprehension."

"Beyond comprehension, yes," Herne agreed.

She kissed him, there on the verge of the road.

"But," said Herne, stroking her hair, "once Alfred liberates his goldfish, he will still face a terrible dilemma. I know for a fact that he has had Alphonse fixed. How the hell is he supposed to atone for that?"

"I suppose he will find the poor cat a home in the countryside," Gala said, sensibly. She pretended to shudder. "Let's walk on. Or else he'll catch up and begin nattering again."

"God, yes."

The puppies gamboled around them. Mr Wynchbold had plucked a spray of bluebells and was dreamily sniffing at it, while his own three pups, chasing each other in circles, wound a Lacoon round his pant-legs. Gala found a stick in the hedge and began swinging it, for the pups to catch and tussle. "Beauty was off her feed this morning."

"She needs a good dose of sulphur and greens. I'll have it boiled up this afternoon. We can dose them all, it's been a week since last time. What do you think about taking Argus out next time we hunt? I think he's over that lameness."

"He looks a little mangy to me, actually."

"I once heard of a sure cure for the mange," said Herne thoughtfully. "A Mr Fox recommended it to me. About seventeen-ninety, that was. He transfused the blood of a mangy hound into as healthy and sound a young spaniel as he could find . . . you see, the spaniel didn't suffer a bit, but the mangy hound was cured within a fortnight. The quickest and surest remedy for the disease, he called it."

"Oh, it seems a bit hard on the spaniel . . . Charles? Charles, what's wrong?"

"Take the puppies," said Herne. "All of them, and the bitches too. Go back to Mr Wynchbold and wait there for me, Gala. Now, Gala!"

She looked into his face, and then she snatched the leashes out of his hand. "Come, Belle! Come, Lightly! Come, come!" And she ran toward Mr Wynchbold, with the excited hounds leaping and bounding around her, and her heart hammering with dread; as she cast a quick glance over her shoulder, she saw her husband vanish round the turn of the road. He was striding swiftly and purposefully, very lightly for such a large man; and he was drawing his sword from the folds of his long overcoat. She knew that the house was just a quarter-mile further on. Herne would be making for the privacy of the rose garden . . . the perfect place for an ambush.

She grabbed hold of Mr Wynchbold's sleeve, and shook it urgently. "Alfred, put those flowers down. You have to help me here, it's very important. Just do what I say, and don't ask questions . . . Unleash all the puppies as fast as you can."

Ahead, Herne strode down an avenue of rose-standards, linked by pillars and chains and moss-lined baskets solid with petunias--veined petunias, the color of pale blue ice. Everywhere around him, there were roses: the standards, pruned to resemble graceful trees, had been grafted with two colors so they bloomed both red and white; and the rose mundi and the musk rose and the apothecary rose filled the air with perfume. Ancient roses, and pink-and-white angel groundcover roses that were the most modern of varieties. Rockroses had been planted beneath the standards, amidst pinks and crown-imperials. A yew fox galloped forever at the further end of the flagged path; behind Herne, two yew hounds leashed in couple leaped forever in pursuit.

As he walked, he glanced constantly right and left, scanning every shadow as if wary for an ambush. Once he paused and shook his head in apparent confusion. When he had come almost to the yew fox, he halted. He called out: "Who is there?"

A voice answered, "Why, only the vaguest-fated of all men born to death."

A youth in shabby clothing was sitting cross-legged under the fox. He tilted his head, gazing up at Herne with wide innocent eyes, and his face was as young as the infancy of the world. There was a book open in his lap, and a naked sword laid across the pages.

"By Zeus and Cronos," breathed Herne.

"You're dating yourself, Kotys," said Methos lightly. He shut the book, laying an old photograph between the pages like a bookmark, and climbed to his feet. "Crossbred any hounds with tigers lately?"

"I thought you were dead." Herne suddenly threw back his head and let out a ringing laugh; he hurled his sword carelessly aside, and in two steps he was in front of Methos, grasping his arms, shaking him playfully. "I've thought you dead for centuries . . . By the eternal gods! There was a dolt in the Americas going around telling people he was you, I went and spoke to him and then, I thought, I knew you must really be dead--if you were letting that purblind fool sully your good name. Ah, Methos." He paused, looking fondly at Methos. "How long have you been hiding?"

"Since I became the oldest," said Methos. "Who wouldn't?"

"You were always the most cunning of us all. Put that sword away and come have a cup of tea. Or have you come for my head?"

"Don't be an idiot. No. I've come to ask you a favor."

Herne's eyes narrowed. "My god." He swung one hand and clouted Methos roughly on the side of the head. "You're here with that whelp MacLeod."

"He's not a whelp. He's a good man, Kotys."

"Does he know who you are? What you are?"

"Yep," said Methos. "Anyway, I came round to see why you're so dead-set against him."

"Once you meet my niece Diana, you won't have to ask. But forget that," said Herne, "we can thrash all that out later. You're coming up to the house now, and later this week you're coming to my masquerade--yes, and MacLeod too, damn him." He gripped Methos' hand, looking again at him in wonder. "This is the happiest day of the year for me. Yes, you must come to the masquerade. My wife has tricked me out as Svengali or some such thing, and she can find you a costume too. Come meet her, my Galatea. The most beautiful woman ever born--bloody hell!!"

It was a chorus of high-pitched yips that had attracted his attention; and he had glanced over his shoulder, perplexed. Even as he did so, the first of the foxhound puppies tumbled into the rose-garden.

Nine puppies, now unleashed. In a trice, there were puppies careening in every direction--small noses to the ground, as if mimicking the work of their elders. They worried the angel-roses, they christened the standards. They rolled in the pinks and pounced upon the crown-imperials. Then, true to their blood, they scented their quarry. They stiffened, and then raced joyously forward. Straight for Herne.

Nine infant foxhounds, barking excitedly.

Nine black-and-tan bundles of fuzz, swarming up Herne's legs and demolishing Methos' shoelaces with tiny needle-sharp teeth.

Two bitches ran behind them, swift and silent. They swerved round Herne, and leaped straight for Methos' throat. He yelled; then he was falling over backwards, warding them off, and one of the bitches shut her jaws around his arm, jerked her head and ripped his sleeve in two. Herne shouted, "Down!"

Both bitches hit the ground, groveling.

A woman was sprinting headlong in the wake of the hound pack. She ran toward the fray, her flyaway hair on fire with the golden sunlight, and her strides were as swift and sure as those of the foxhounds. As she came, she raised her arm; there was a stout stick gripped in her fist. Her lovely red mouth opened, and out came an Amazon's scream: "If you dare, if you dare to hurt my Charles--!"

Herne swung around. At the glower on his face, even the puppies abased themselves. Then they leaped instinctively up and began to kiss his hands with frantic lapping tongues. He lifted one fist, with a puppy dangling shame-faced from it, and asked frigidly, "Was this your idea, Gala?"

She stopped, and the stick fell from her hand.

"You're not in danger?" she said.

"Not in the least," said Herne. He dropped the puppy into the scrum at his feet, and turned to Methos. "Meet my wife," he said. "The most absurd woman on earth."

#

There were roses in the ballroom too: hothouse roses, long-stemmed and elegant and bright blood red, the roses of love. They were arranged by the dozens in great Chinese bowls, standing like spears in a froth of baby's-breath and asparagus fern. Against the deep cobalt glaze of the bowls, the flowers blazed like burning hearts.

All the colors of the flower garden were in the ballroom; they were the gowns of the women and the costumes of the men.

MacLeod, resplendent in tartan, wore his katana openly and with an air; it was very strange, he reflected, that a masquerade ball was the only place where he could dress as his true self. All he needed was a white horse to complete the ensemble. Beside him, Methos stood surveying the ballroom. He had ivy twined in his dark hair, and a fantastic medley of silk greenery was sewn over the tatters of his long patchwork tunic. "You look ridiculous!" Mac hissed in his ear.

"Shut up. Gala insisted I wear it. I think I'm supposed to be Peter Pan or something?"

"Or something. I think you're Puck."

"I think I'd rather be Dionysus. As soon as someone gives me something to drink, that is." Methos brightened. "What I really wanted to be was the Laughing Buddha, but Gala refused to donate her eyeshadow so I could paint myself blue all over. Fascinating man, the Buddha. Have I mentioned that I knew him?"

"Yes. Several times. Peter Pan, now," MacLeod remarked. "Isn't that a drag role--played by a girl?"

"Pedicabo ego uos et irrumabo," Methos hissed. "Behave! Here comes Diana."

If Methos was Puck, then Diana was Titania. She curtseyed before them, hiding behind an armful of flowers, and her dress was a cascade of white. It was snow-white silk, worked intricately all over with tiny darts of smocking, and covered by a bodice of ivory crochetwork; her face was framed in a misty veil, her long lace gloves were sparkling with seed pearls, and there was a crown of white roses upon her head. Her eyes were as bright as stars. She gave MacLeod her hand, and he kissed it gallantly.

"To the most beautiful blossom in the bouquet!" he said.

"It's my aunt's wedding dress," said Diana, blushing. "And isn't it wonderful? I feel like a little girl playing dress-up."

He took her arm, and together they walked forward into the ballroom. "I expected a Valkyrie, with spear and byrnie."

"Much too old-fashioned! Hasn't anyone told you that androgyny is passe? Femininity," said Diana, "femininity is the future, Duncan."

"And masculinity?"

"Oh, it's ancient history. But we love it anyway."

Behind Diana's back, Methos made a face at MacLeod. Then he snatched a flute of champagne from a passing waiter, and toasted them with it. "I'm off to find Herne. Be good!" he said.

"Or if we can't be good," Mac murmured, "we'll be great."

Diana watched Methos walk away from them. "Strange coincidence," she remarked. "Your old friend Mr Pierson just happening to be Uncle Charles' old friend Adam, that is--and none of you ever knowing it. May I give you a flower? They all have meanings, you know."

"In the language of flowers? Yes, I know. Which will you give me? You have so many."

"This one. And this, and this." She fussed with her flowers. "That's fennel. And daffodil. And amaranth. They signify--"

"Strength, force," said MacLeod mildly. "Chivalry. And immortality."

"You do know! Except that the amaranth is really 'unfading love'. A symbol of my infatuation, you see." Beaming, she tucked the little spray into the folds of his tartan. "There, sir. And a carnation: 'woman's love'. Though I feel I ought to give you a stalk of crown-imperial."

"Majesty and power?"

"How do you know these things?"

"Oh, I know a lot of old things . . . What I don't know," said Mac, "is why you're carting around a florist's shop."

"To decorate the punch-bowl." She halted in front of a long table, and gave her flowers to a waiter. "There, George. Use them wisely." To Mac she said, "Our duty has been done. Would you like a tour of the house?"

"Which part of the house were you thinking of?" he inquired.

"We could start with my bedroom?" suggested Diana.

#

It was night now. A million stars twinkled above, merry as Diana's eyes, and the moon of Artemis--goddess of the hunt--smiled a benediction upon Devonshire. The long row of French windows all down one side of the ballroom had been thrown open; the perfume of the gardens, the breeze of the night drifted in through these doors, and the guests drifted outside, by ones and twos. Tables had been set out on the lawn. A supper had been laid, lit by strings of Japanese paper lanterns, with peacocks strutting out of the undergrowth to investigate; the waiters shooed them away. There were vast bowls of flowers here too, from the glass-topped conservatory on the far side of the rose-gardens. And the shy red deer that ran free in the park came stealing, step by cautious step, to stretch out their furred necks and snatch cake from the dessert-table . . . until the band struck up a tune, and they fled in fear.

To amuse her guests, Gala had arranged for several million fireflies to be flown in from India. Now, she gave a signal, and they were released. The guests oohed and ahhed to see them fly up from their crates: they were like clouds of black gnats, until suddenly they began to sparkle and flare. Then the air became lively with soft silent fireworks--smudges of floating light, wandering against the black backdrop of the yew trees. Fireflies crawled flashing upon the gowns of the ladies and the masks of the gentlemen. They flew in circles around the Japanese lanterns. They drowned in the punchbowls, but no one cared; they were everywhere. In Herne's kennels, his drowsy foxhounds lifted their muzzles as if in wonderment, and snapped at the winking lights that drifted through the open window. It was the sensation of the season, Gala knew; she rejoiced in her heart, for she knew that this night would be the talk of Devonshire for months to come.

In the house above, two fireflies had just strayed in through the second-floor window of Diana's bedroom.

They went on and off like minute flashbulbs, like faerie photography. Someone looking from below could had glimpsed the girl at the window, as she doffed her bridal gown by firefly-light . . . some peeping Tom could have caught sight of the man who stood behind her, undoing the fastenings of her dress one by one. Until she twisted around, laughing, and lifted her mouth to his.

The window went dark as he kissed her.

There was an immortal standing on the edge of a rose-arbor, beneath Diana's window. He watched without moving.

The window lit upon the woman and the naked man--neither of them aware they could be seen from below.

The window darkened, and Diana and MacLeod's watcher moved a step, glancing down as if in amusement. He carried a sword.

When the window lit again, it was empty. But a faint sound as if of laughter and cries carried down to him.

At last, he shrugged. He turned away, wandering alone in the dark. But his kind were always alone, and their lives were led in secret--lest mortals should see the brilliant flashes as they snuffed each other out. Like fighting fireflies. He skirted the lawn, which was now a swirl of dancing couples: there hound matched himself with lioness, camel with sparrow and she-camel with leopard, and a fork was making plans to run away with a spoon. A purple Teletubbie capered in front of the buffet tables, and Marilyn Monroe was dancing with him, hand in hand. There was a lewd unicorn, and a Punch-and-Judy. As for the wandering immortal, he wore a hooded cloak, and could have been either a monk or a Jedi knight.

For an instant he paused under a green paper lantern, and the turn of his head showed a gleam of gaudy greasepaint within the hood. It was only stage makeup, and his costume had been rented from a theatrical concern. But his sword, now--his sword was splendidly real.

He crossed the gardens. He opened a gate, ducked through an arbor smothered in clematis, and descended a flight of mossy steps. Herne Chase loomed large upon his left hand, flaunting extravagantly curled gables. The fireflies were still winking at Diana's window. At the foot of the steps, he discovered a long low building; its door was open, but all within was shadows. He sensed his quarry somewhere ahead. He stepped through the door.

It was a greenhouse. He paused, knowing that other immortals were nearby. Soon they would sensed him, but they would mistake him for the fool bedding down with the woman; within the folds of his hood, he smiled at the trick. Then his hand darted out and closed--crushing the light out of a firefly that had been about to betray him.

"--playing at Troy-game."

The sound of voices came from somewhere ahead of him.

". . . know what lies upon that hill?"

"Of course I do!"

". . . older than England . . ."

"No. No, that's just not so--"

". . . oh, yes, some of them are recent, no doubt. This one isn't. Just because mortals forget, doesn't mean the labyrinths have lost their virtue."

"Well, I think . . . what's that?"

Much louder: "Mac?! Is that you?"

A sudden breath of wind gusted in through the door. The immortal who had been skulking there had no more warning than that. The air was filled with a swarm of tiny flies; in an instant they were all around him. He gasped silently, and flung up his sword. Then the fireflies all lit at once.

A thousand points of light showed him two men, halfway down the long aisle between the plant benches: one was Puck, and one wore tuxedo and cape, sword and half-mask, and was the Phantom of the Opera. They turned, and glared at him. Puck began silently to retreat into the shadows. The Phantom took one look, and jerked a step forward, ripping out his weapon.

"Name yourself!" he roared.

The monk shrugged. He lifted one hand and tossed back his hood. Fireflies danced around him, and his sneering features were marred by lurid streaks of red and black paint, a striped devil mask that covered his shaven scalp. His skull was studded with demon-horns. He was Darth Maul.

"Charles Herne?" he said. "I've come for you."

"Then have me!"

"Herne!" Puck cried. "Let's take this outside, this is a bad place to--"

"I'll fight Master Froggie here wherever I want to," said the Phantom, through his teeth.

"I'm a Sith Lord," said the interloper coldly. He advanced, en garde. "If you please."

"Whatever."

And now the conservatory was filled with fireflies. They swirled through the open door, more and more every moment; it was as if the auras of immortals attracted them. The long greenhouse benches were crowded with plant-pots, trays of seedlings and tender tropicals. Fireflies settled on every surface, bejewelled the glass ceiling and rimmed the leaves of plants with dewdrops of light. In the narrow aisle, the Phantom and the Sith Lord measured each other.

Neither one made a move to strike. Neither one gave way.

"Damn this lack of room," Herne growled. He shoved at a bench, but it was bolted to the floor and refused to give way.

His opponent grinned mirthlessly. The Darth Maul costume was complete--even his teeth were disguised by jagged black-spotted caps. Only his weapon was wrong. "I'd heard you were a man who likes fancy footwork, lots of space to fight in. As for me, this suits me very well." And he sprang to the attack.

A thousand fireflies swirled up, disturbed. Strobe-flashes of cold light went off around the two immortals as they fought--the quarters were so close that the fighters were forced to wrestle more than fence. They grappled, shoving each other, and the long steel benches rocked and grated. Pottery fell smashing. The floor was soon strewn with potsherds, slippery with soil and leaves. The Phantom barked out a laugh, bringing his sword-hilt up to smash Darth Maul's jaw; Darth Maul staggered away, head down, glaring out of his demon mask. There was red blood streaking the red greasepaint, livid and glistening.

He swiped it away with the back of one hand, licked his lips. "Get ready--to die--Herne!"

"What a shame," said Herne, "you didn't think to come as a fox."

They lunged simultaneously.

Flash: the fireflies strobed, lighting the strokes of the swords. Flash: Herne gasped, lurched back a step, pressed a hand to the flower of blood upon his snow-white shirt-front. Flash: the Sith Lord raised his sword; its blade was now scarlet from point to forte. Flash: Darth Maul struck.

And screamed, run through. He doubled up over the blade through his belly, coughing a gout of blood. Emotionlessly, Herne set a boot against his shoulder, and shoved him backward off the sword. Through yellow contact lenses with pinpoint lizard pupils, Darth Maul glared a final look of defiance.

"Finish--it!"

"I shall," said Herne. He swung his sword.

As he took the head, there in the firefly light, there was a sound of voices at the conservatory door. "--but Alfred, darling, releasing your goldfish in the Exe is not the answer. What will they do, except be swept out to sea?" Gala--a sprightly Eliza Doolittle, complete with a basket of violets--tripped in through the doorway. Mr Wynchbold was on her heels. "Charles? Dearest, are you--here--" As she took in the devastation within, her mouth opened in a silent O of shock. She froze, like a bride on the threshold.

The fireflies went on, off. Methos was a silent witness as the quickening began. First the floor trembled underfoot. A rumble like distant thunder sounded, the plant-pots all began to rattle and shudder and dance. A wave of pots jarred off the benches and crashed to the concrete. Sparkles ran through the air as the fireflies suddenly flared brighter than they ever had before. Mr Wynchbold gaped like a stranded fish. And blue lines of electricity crawled along the metal struts of the conservatory ceiling--so that for an instant, the entire glass house was outlined in St Elmo's fire.

A hundred pots leaped toward the ceiling, exploding like rifle-shots.

Herne screamed as he saw what was about to happen.

"Galatea--run!!"

And a sheet of lightning went through the conservatory, frying the fireflies so they fell in tiny black crisps upon Gala's golden hair. The dazzle of it snapshot the moment: her terrified face, Herne's appalled look, as the ceiling shattered and a thousand glass knives cascaded down.

#

In the darkened bedroom, Diana lunged upright--striking out blindly with her arms, fighting off MacLeod with a cry of woe. She cowered, covering her head, her hair flying. "Diana? Diana!" MacLeod took her in his arms, and she started and clung wildly to him. "Duncan, don't leave me!"

"Diana, what did you see?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I thought--I imagined--I heard--" She huddled against him, staring senselessly toward the window. The casement was shut, the curtains were drawn; yet she looked as if she saw horrors in the glass. "What was that noise?"

"All I can hear is the music," Mac said. He began to rock her. "What did you imagine?"

Little by little, she relaxed. "It was nothing. Only a goose walking over my grave." She lifted her face to his, summoned a smile. "Love me again. But this time, sweet heart, go slow."

Part Two

"The mystery of the flint is no less to be praised, both forasmuch as this is domesticall philosophy . . . for as the flint hath in it fire lying hid, which appears not but by moving and force: so there is a secret life in both kinds of man and woman, which by mutual conjunction comes forth to a loving birth."

Richard Eden, Of the North-East Frostie Seas and Kingdomes Lying that Way

"Each man kills the thing he loves."

Herne and Methos stood in a graveyard, talking. Herne was disheveled; his face was drawn with sorrow, and there were blue stains of sleeplessness under his eyes. He fidgeted with an unlit cigarette, rolling it between his fingers. Beside him, Methos stood with arms crossed, his shoulders slightly hunched--shivering as if in an unseasonable chill.

The graveyard was large, a field hedged with great unkempt thickets of greenery, Christmas thorn and mistletoe, and mourning cypress dark as death; it was situated on a remote corner of Herne's estate, and walled in with it was a chapel dating from Norman times. It was holy ground . . . and Galatea Herne, nee Mayhew, would be buried here.

Alfred Wynchbold was in hospital. His cat and his goldfish were being cared for by friends. When the conservatory had been destroyed, he had been slashed by the falling glass--so badly that he needed more than two hundred stitches. The two immortals had died and been reborn into the world, to continue their endless Game. But Gala had died and could not be reborn. She had gone on to an existence wherein there was no mourning.

Who could say which were luckier?

"I've had countless wives. I remember each one of them, and each was different--but whether they were Hera or Athene or Aphrodite, every one deserved a golden apple of her own. O God . . . why do they have to die?"

"It wasn't your fault," said Methos.

"But mortal women are such precious things," Herne whispered. "So fragile, so easily shattered. Such jewels of light."

Methos studied him. "If you had known what was about to happen, would you have taken the head?"

"No! I would have died first."

"Then remember your love for her, not your guilt over her death." Methos touched him. "You'll love again."

But Herne gazed blindly across the rain-washed graveyard. The wind rippling across the grass made it look like an ocean of tears. And the leaves sighed.

"Kotys?"

"Have you ever known me to not be in love, Methos?"

"Why . . . no."

"Never without a mortal woman at my side. My wives have been my treasure. Diamonds, every one. A necklace of perfect diamonds, set in claws of gold."

"They were women, Kotys. Flesh and blood, not stone."

"They were mine." He turned his face aside. "Dearest of all I possessed. What are our long lives worth, if not to cherish the mortals we love? You've married mortals many times . . . Tell me, could you forget any one of them?"

"No," said Methos. But his voice was troubled.

"I thought not. And if you could have saved any one from death, wouldn't you have sold your soul for the chance?"

"Yes," said Methos.

Charles Herne threw back his head and shouted a final question, so loud it seemed addressed to God Himself: "How the hell can I live without love?"

#

"I can't believe she's dead."

Diana's voice trembled. She stood with one hand raised toward the window, there in the library of Herne Chase, and her sweater was black and her jeans were black and her jewelry was bright black jet. Antique jet beads, twined three times round her throat. There were jet-and-brilliant earrings in her ears, and a black ribbon was tied in her thick blonde hair. She also wore a crucifix which had belonged to her aunt.

Her reflection watched her, from the mirror of the window. Her fingertips touched it, butterfly-light. As gently as--as a firefly alighting, she thought. But when she felt the pane beneath her hand, she shuddered all over and drew back.

And her imagination pictured falling blades of glass.

"It wasn't your fault, Diana."

"No, but . . . but . . . but what were we doing, while it was happening?! Oh, hell, I know I couldn't have done a thing. Just gone to the hospital with stitches like Frankenstein, if I'd been there. But that would almost be better!"

"I know," said MacLeod, "I know. It's the coincidence that hurts." He stepped forward, taking her hand and drawing it away from the windowpane. Her skin was deathly cold. So he folded both of his big hands around hers, and began to chafe it warm. "You must have loved her very much."

"She was like the most perfect flower of summer. Or maybe the best, most brilliant soap bubble in the bunch. Floating by in a flash of sunshine."

"Then remember your love for her, not the guilt you feel."

His hands were as tough as weapons, the palms callused along their outer edges and the fingertips ram-hard. Feeling this, she glanced down with a little perplexed blink. Then she shrugged and leaned against him.

"It was such a bizarre accident, though," she mused. "The insurance people said they had never seen anything like it. Why should a greenhouse explode? And who was the guest the police couldn't identify, the other man who died? What was he doing with Gala and Mr Wynchbold, why was he there?"

"We'll probably never know."

"No, probably not, poor guy . . . And what will Uncle Charles do? Why, everything in this house is a keepsake of hers, every stick of furniture is a memory--their wedding pictures are right there in the desk--why, just look at all these photo albums! Oh, well. I'm being morbid, I know . . . But I'm glad you and your friend were here to help." At last, she moved away from the window. "Did Uncle give you what you wanted?"

MacLeod started. "What we wanted?"

"On Merrymaze Hill. You said, you wanted to ask him about Merrymaze Hill."

"Oh, that was--that was nothing. Just a question Adam had."

"Oh."

There was a scratch at the library door. The door opened, and a hound padded stiffly through and stood gazing toward nothing in particular--as if groping to remember a goal forgotten. It was a bitch hound, very old, with a blunt whitened muzzle. "Why, Molossia!" said Diana, and the bitch started and hurried toward her, leaning against her to be scratched. "Poor Molossia. She's Gala's favorite," she added, to MacLeod. "Named after the bronze hound made by Hephaestus. It was a hound that could not be escaped. It was turned--"

"--it was turned to stone by the gods, because they could not allow it to chase the Teumessian vixen. Which was a fox which could not be caught. I know," said MacLeod; he had picked up the framed photograph from the library desk, and was looking at it.

"Oh," said Diana; she wondered why he knew. "Poor old thing, she's twelve now. That's eighty-four in dog years. And in gerbil years, well, I can't even imagine it. How can she understand that Gala's gone? What will my uncle do? . . . Oh, Uncle Charles--" She hurried toward the man who had just come in. "Uncle Charles, how are you? I--" Her voice faded away, her outstretched hand fell. She whispered, "Uncle Charles, you look so strange."

(He looked so young!)

"It's nothing, Diana." Herne averted his face. His cheeks were pale.

"But you . . ."

"Hush, child." To MacLeod, Herne added, "Duncan. Make yourself at home."

Mac nodded, curtly.

"We've just been walking round the gardens and the kennels," said Methos; he had entered in Herne's wake. "Catching up on old times, talking about life."

"And death," Herne agreed. "Diana? This is for you."

She stood looking down at the object he put into her hand. "But this is the magic ring! Duncan, look--Gala's ring." Mac leaned closer to her, intrigued, and then stopped as Herne made an abortive movement--as if about to interpose himself between the two of them. Diana went blithely on, "I always called it her magic ring. See, there's a secret catch behind the bezel. It swings open and here--" She held up the ring. "Oh, Uncle Charles."

"It's yours now," said Herne. "As is everything else of hers."

The ring was set with a solitaire ruby, smouldering red like the core of a volcano. This stone was cut in the shape of a heart, and behind it--concealed by the white-gold setting and the hollowed back of the jewel--was a tiny snippet of paper over which Diana exclaimed in rapture.

"Your wedding picture. How lovely. She was so beautiful--"

"She looked like you," Herne said gently. "But then, she was the age you are now."

"--and you, you don't look a day older."

(And then she looked up, thinking how strange that was--but no one else seemed to think so, and she said nothing.)

"This is terrible for everyone who knew Gala," MacLeod was saying, quietly. "Charles? If there's anything Adam or I can do to help, consider the offer made."

"I don't want your help, MacLeod," Herne growled.

"Uncle Charles! Be polite. I asked Duncan to be here with me--"

"It's all right." MacLeod turned, setting down the photograph he held. "Herne, this is your house. If I'm not welcome here, I'll leave; you need only say the word." He brushed a hand across the top of the photograph: here again was Gala, smiling radiantly out of a heart-shaped frame, with Mr Wynchbold at her side--both of them so much the younger that it was clear they must have grown up together. "Diana, would you like me to take you to the hospital? We can go together. And if you need anything else, or to go anywhere, I'd be glad to take you."

Her uncle said, "If Diana needs anything, she will come to me."

"Will she?" said MacLeod.

Again, Herne stepped between him and Diana. The two men stood looking at one another, a challenge seeming to pass between them; she was mystified. "Be bold, be bold, Duncan," said Herne softly. "But not too bold."

"Or her heart's blood will run cold? How much have you told her, anyway?"

(What were they talking about?)

"She'll soon know more than you would ever--"

"Both of you, behave!" Diana said this very loudly. "If I need anything, I can do for myself. If I want to go somewhere, I can drive--I'm not incapacitated by grief. You two are just like a pair of little boys." She moved away from them both, her heels hitting the floor with small decisive clicks; she was drawing a cell phone from her hip pocket. "I'm going out, actually. Last week I made plans for tonight, I was going to meet a group of friends and drive down to Cornwall--we were planning to make crop circles . . . And that's just what I'm going to do."

"But," said MacLeod gently.

"But," said Herne, between his teeth.

"But nothing." She walked toward the door; the old hound moved with her, falling in behind her as naturally as if they had always been together. "It's what," said Diana, "it's what Gala would want me to do."

#

"--not a maze, a labyrinth," said Methos.

"Thank you, I know the difference," said MacLeod. "Hand me that stick you made, will you? Mazes are made for children to play games in, labyrinths are for another purpose entirely. I've walked the Chartres Labyrinth--"

"Here you go."

"--Darius and I together."

"I'm sure you did," said Methos, glancing up from his book. "On your knees. Both of you uttering a prayer at every turn of the path."

He sat cross-legged, with his immense journal open in his lap. Nearby, Mac peered at a cylinder of stone: rough flint, which he held pinned between his feet as if in the vice of a carpenter's bench. The stick Methos had made him was a pole, one end flat and smooth, and the other set in a t-brace formed by another stick. Mac set the t-brace against his chest, and the other end against the stone. He gripped the stick in both hands, grunted--and pressed down, hard. And a knife-blade leaped off the surface of the flint, long and straight and perfectly edged, and as neat as if formed by machinery.

Ten other such knives already lay in a row at MacLeod's left hand.

"Mazes are made to get lost in," he said. "Labyrinths, to find yourself in."

"I can never tell," Methos said, "what you kids know or don't know these days. Sorry, Mac . . . You picked this up fast."

"I learned how to knapp flint in the Americas," said Mac. "But the old men of the tribe were the only ones who cared about the art of it. I had one teacher who could take a chunk of obsidian and make a perfect spear-blade, this long." He measured a length with his hand. "They had already forgotten most of the old ways. Steel blades from the white traders were what everyone wanted, not flint you could pick free from the ground . . ." He turned the stone blade to and fro, examining it with a critical eye. "We used to call them elf-shot in Scotland--"

"Faerie arrowheads, thunderstones, yeah. Everyone did."

"I used to have a fine necklace of elf-shot and St Cuthbert's beads," Mac said. "Connor took it away from me and told me not to be such a damn superstitious wee fool. I paid good money for those beads," he added, remembering.

"Tsk. Hungry?"

MacLeod set his tools aside while Methos served their simple meal. The campsite around them was lit by the dancing fire: there was the low shelter in which they slept, their springy bed of juniper boughs, and the litter of flint and stone chips from MacLeod's knapping. They had kindled the fire with a fire-bow, and experimented with copper and the native tin; they had smelted bronze, and forged a broad-bladed short-sword. That sword (now considerably dinted) lay abandoned to one side. Only the beer cans and Methos' journal struck a jarring note.

This was Mac's goal, to learn how life had been when his friend was young. Tonight, they had goat's milk to drink, and to eat they had fish, wrapped in wild onion greens and baked in the hot ashes. Tomorrow, Methos had promised to show Mac how to make dried cream.

"Thank you."

"Welcome. The fish were caught using the oldest method I know."

"Tickling? Spearing?"

"Powdered chalk kneaded into paste and mixed with poison mullein," said Methos, biting into his fish. "We used to scatter it on the water, and cook whatever came up. Good, isn't it?"

MacLeod had lowered his leaf-wrapped fish, looking upon it with sudden distaste. Then he shrugged and went on eating. "Is this really how you used to live?"

"Here, in old Devon? Yes. You know, there were hundreds of people living here then--here on this Godforsaken wasteland. Because of the flint. We mined the chalk strata and became rich, and the flint was carried away by donkey-load and traded all over Britain." Methos broke off to spit a fish bone into the fire. "We painted ourselves white with chalk and red with the red Devon soil, and went to war over the flint; we laid our dead to rest in stone tombs painted red and white. In later centuries, tin was our treasure--we dug the tin in a hundred places, and the red tailings of our mineworks are still to be seen on the moor. And we went to war over the tin, and forgot the flint."

"I thought the Bronze Age was already well under way five thousand years ago."

"Maybe in the south it was. Didn't reach northern Europe for millennia. We were still hacking each other's heads off with stone axes when the Sumerians and the Egyptians and the Minoans were lolling around in palaces. With plumbing and honey cakes and barley beer. And bronze swords with hilts inlaid with electrum." Methos ate fish. "I think the plumbing would have been the advance on civilization I missed the most," he added.

MacLeod shrugged. He said thoughtfully, "Methos, have you ever been in love?"

Methos sat bolt upright. "Oh, not you too," he said. "You're as bad as he is. No, Mac. I've never known real love. Tell me about the tragedy that is your life."

"I didn't mean that! Christ, I know how many times you've been married--"

"You just want the wisdom of the ages," said Methos. He yawned. He licked his fingers, wiped his hands on his sleeves, and scrubbed his palms over his face. Then he settled himself flat on the bed of boughs, pillowing his head on his crossed arms.

Through sleepy eyes, he continued to watch MacLeod.

"No," said MacLeod. "I'm not in love. Is Diana in love with me?"

"A guy she met only last week? Not bloody likely, Mac. Is it so unbelievable that she's merely having a good time? But," said Methos, "maybe you're clouding her mind with your mysterious charismatic powers--" He flinched as MacLeod made as if to cuff him, and went on, "And don't give me that line about how you've always been lucky with women--I've read your Chronicles, remember. All immortals get smoother with age. You know how to make women love you--"

"Oh, do I."

"--and maybe you don't love the girl, but I think Herne does. Maybe he's trying to protect her from you. Any good father would. He's not the most diplomatic chap in the world, but his heart is in the right place."

"I don't think you believe that."

"I don't. I think he wants Diana for himself."

"With his wife not yet laid in her grave," said MacLeod. "Well, this is scarcely Odysseus and Penelope."

"Should it be? Anyway, he could be as faithful as Saint Helen of Kiev and it wouldn't make Gala any less dead. As for Diana, Herne will give her a good life if he gets her. It's not as if his intentions aren't honorable." He opened one eye. "More honorable than yours, probably. He'll marry her--would you do as much?" Getting no answer, he remarked, "I thought so."

MacLeod merely sighed. He rubbed his scalp, made a face, kicked off his shoes and socks. His shirt went next. The night was heavily overcast, clammy as if coming on for rain; the very air seemed thick with heat and darkness, and the embers of their fire barely lit the small campsite. When Mac stretched, the fire's glow was a sheen of sweat, a light playing over the planes of his bare chest; he gleamed with it, damp all over. He crawled into the shelter and lay down--stretching out with his shirt for a pillow, leaning on one elbow and gazing down upon Methos' prone form.

He said, "Fate's always seemed to prevent me from wedlock. I met a gypsy wisewoman once who said I'd have a hundred women, but never a wife. Whenever I found a girl I wanted to marry--" He broke off. His face was intent; his voice was deep, melodious, mournful. "When Tessa died, it was as she had stepped outside the world I lived in, and left my walls crumbling to dust in her wake. The hole she left in my life seemed insurmountable. She went on, Methos. Where we can't follow her. I sometimes think that our mortal lovers are luckier than we are, because they have the hope of Heaven and we--our immortality is an endless bereavement from them."

Methos stared at him. He took a deep breath. Then he smacked his own forehead with the back of his hand, and began to recite.

"The blessed damozel leaned out / From the gold bar of Heaven / Her eyes were deeper than the depth / Of waters stilled at even / She had three lilies in her hand / And the stars in her hair were seven--"

"Oh, for God's sake," said MacLeod, sitting up.

"Herseemed she scarce had been a day / One of God's choristers," said Methos in a thrilling whisper. "Albeit, to them she left, her day / Had counted as ten years!"

MacLeod put his hands over his ears.

"Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song / Strove not her accents there? / Strove not her steps to reach my side / Down all the echoing stair?"

MacLeod lifted his hands fractionally, and clapped them down again.

Methos smote his chest. "Alas! we two, we two, thou say'st! / Yea, one was thou with me / That once of old. But shall God lift / To endless unity / The soul whose likeness with thy soul / was but its love for thee?"

"Are you quite finished?" inquired MacLeod.

"Just wait, I think there's something else here--" He was flipping through the pages of his journal now. "Dammit, where's that flashlight?"

MacLeod had covered his ears again. He rose without a word, abandoning his shirt, his shoes, his socks--stiff-backed as a cat that knows someone is laughing at it. He turned, his hands over his ears, to walk away into the dark.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Methos loudly.

A growl: "Why the hell not?"

"Because," Methos said, "you can't hear that it's going to--"

To rain. It did.

It had come as a hissing in the dark--and Methos had heard it, but Mac had had his fingers stuck in his ears. Now the rain came down, straight and heavy and hard, so that their campfire vanished in a heartbeat and the ground became a splatter of leaping mud. The rain blotted out the world. MacLeod--soaked to the skin in a snap of the fingers--made a mad dive for the shelter; Methos shied back, hiding behind his book. Then they were both scrambling for open air, as the boughs of the shelter-top gave way and buckets of water poured down upon them.

They ran together, barefoot, jostling in the dark, and before he was halfway to the cave Methos had his open journal held over his head, like an umbrella of words. The photograph fluttered out of the pages, a pale square in the night; Mac grabbed it before it fell to earth. Methos was laughing, breathlessly, skidding ahead through the mud. And the rain was a hammering, a drumroll, a whole percussion section. He looked back and shouted, "You know the simple life isn't what it used to be!"--and slipped, and almost went down. MacLeod hauled him onto his feet by main force.

Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked. Methos yelped. "If this keeps up, it'll ruin the eclipse. Bloody hell, I think my journal's wrecked."

"--You deserve it!" Mac shouted, above the roll of thunder.

There was the cave.

They skidded through the rustic entrance, slumped side by side onto the well-coping. "Heaven's literary comment," gasped MacLeod, out of breath. And Methos grinned, opened his journal, and began to read.

"'My old friend, I know you still mourn for her, as you have mourned for all your wives. Mortals by their nature are perfect, more perfect than we are; closer to the Divine, by reason of their mortality . . . You asked me yesterday if I really believed in God. How could I claim immortals are His creatures too? My answer is: the mortals we love are fire from heaven. Like gleams of sunlight, that slide past and are gone. And indeed, we immortals are like the grass, too rooted in this world--but, Methos, grass lives by the light that falls upon it. We endure by finding God reflected in their faces.'"

By lightning-light, by muttering thunder-growls, Mac gaped at him.

"Darius. Darius wrote that, didn't he? I'd know his words anywhere-- Methos! Darius wrote in your journal?"

"Sure did," said Methos. "Well, you knew Darius--show him a book, and he would never rest until he got his hands on it and was scrawling annotations all over the margins."

"You let him read your journals . . . ? You let him . . . ?"

Methos held out the open book; a flash of light showed MacLeod many colors of ink on the pages, and illumined a single sentence in Methos' hand. The superiority of Ayesha over all other women is as the superiority of bread over all other food. Methos said, "It was while we were both in Shanghai in the twenties. My wife--my beloved wife had been killed. He wrote down what was in my heart, more clearly than I could say it--but it was thirty-six years before I thought to turn this page again, and found his words waiting for me." He put the journal into MacLeod's hands. "Time flies even for us, Duncan. Never hesitate to ask for what you want."

#

When Diana returned to Herne Chase, it was with a flash of scarlet and a screech of brakes, as her sports coupe swerved round the curves of the drive and hurled to a halt at the door. Her blonde hair was bundled inside a knitted cap and her borrowed anorak was zipped all the way up, for the air was unseasonably cold. She had been driving all morning, battling traffic at walking-pace; every road in Cornwall was bumper-to-bumper, with tourists pouring in to view the total eclipse. The only moment of cheer all day had been sighting a squad of the local Druids, dolled up in white homespun and dancing at the crossroads--casting a curse upon all and sundry.

She smiled at the memory, even through her sorrow, as she hurried through the rose garden. Molossia the hound trotted at her heels. She was searching for her Uncle Charles, and the first place she looked in at, was the old graveyard. But Herne was not there.

Every grave was well-known to Diana, for she had played here as a child. It had always been well-tended, clipped and mowed at her uncle's orders, planted with flowers that spoke of love. Red roses and red chrysanthemums, and silver-leafed geraniums which meant Recall, and forget-me-nots in tiny vivid clusters. Here was the gravestone of Angel Herne, the toast of all London in Regency days; here the memorial marker for Mary Eloise Faulkland-Herne, who had gone down with the Titanic and lay in Canada, swept by the storms of a strange sea. This sepulcher in white marble, its twin urns bleeding amaranth, was the final resting place of Juliette Mayhew Herne, once the most beautiful woman in Devonshire. Here were graves going back twenty generations or more, and every one was a woman's grave; no men were buried in this graveyard. Only Herne wives slept here.

This was the legend of Herne Chase. In every generation, the succeeding heir brought home a bride of astonishing beauty, a woman worthy of a king. Often, this bride was a Mayhew woman, for the Mayhews had always intermarried with the Hernes; sometimes it was not, but always she was lovely beyond all other women. Everything that was his, he gave to her, and he reigned with her in wealth and joy--until her dying day. For Herne women always predeceased their men. And when his wife died, each Herne husband was doomed to go mad from a broken heart. Each one in turn had vanished from Devon, dying in foreign climes. Each one left nothing behind but a young heir, who would return to claim Herne Chase and reenact the myth.

Diana turned to leave the empty graveyard. To her left lay the gate that opened upon the rose gardens and beyond them, the house; to her right, the grounds-keeper's lane running to the waste space back of the ruined conservatory. A rope had been strung across this, barring the way. When she glanced at it, she felt a chill creep over her skin. She shivered and pulled her anorak tighter, and then jumped--as if she had seen a ghost.

But it was only the housekeeper, whom she had known all her life. "Oh! Mrs Matthews."

"Miss Diana. Did I give you a turn? I've only come out to put some flowers where your poor aunt will lie."

Impulsively, Diana hugged her. "Thank you so much. Would you know where I can find Mr Herne?"

"In the library, last I saw. How are you keeping, dear?"

"As well as can--not very well," Diana whispered. She dashed a hand across her face, and then kissed Mrs Matthews' rosy cheek, and hurried away.

The house, when she stepped indoors, was as quiet as the graveyard. She left her cap and anorak in the front hall, walked up one flight of steps. The library was deserted, but she stood in the doorway of the silent room, and found that the traces of Gala's perfume still lingered in the air. Nothing here was different, though everything had changed. Her aunt's writing-desk stood open, bills and correspondence arranged upon it in neat piles; Gala's favorite sweater hung over the back of her chair; the book she had been reading lay ready for her. Diana wandered around the room, touching this and that, straightening a picture frame. Lovingly, she stroked the cover of a photo album, opened another and marveled at snapshots of a very young Gala, skinny as a fork, with a gymkhana uniform and a grey Arab pony.

What was this? Here was the young Gala again, arm in arm with a man who must be Robert Herne--Uncle Charles' father, that was who. Dark rather than fair, but his son's spitting image. And the fondness with which he gazed down on Gala was Uncle Charles to the life. Frowning a little, she paged further, blinking at picture after picture . . . it was eerie, how much the two men were alike. She tucked the album under her arm, and then on impulse went to the window and looked out.

The library looked east. The grounds of Herne Chase lay spread below, like a fabulous kingdom in her mind's eye--the playground of her childhood. There were the kennels, a collection of white cob buildings whose footings had been lined with pitch; there was the puppies' orchard and the hound yard, the feeding shed and the sick-shed, and the small square building which Diana, in adolescence, had taken joy in calling the "hot bitch shed". There were the kennelmen's cottages, buried in piles of clematis. There was the edge of the rose gardens; there, the knot garden, the herb garden, the yew maze. (She remembered losing herself in that maze a thousand times, never quite fathoming the trick of it--till at last Herne had stood her at this very window and made her trace every turn from above. Then she had discovered the secret: all one had to do, was always turn leftwards, and then one never got lost.) There were the croquet greens, lit by the flash of a strutting peacock's tail; she had used to call them Alice-in-Wonderland ground. And there was the conservatory.

Diana stood staring down at it, as if she would fathom its secrets now--unravel the mystery, like finding her way out of a maze. Every pane of its roof was gone, but the steel superstructure rose like twisted bones out of the foundation, and through the shattered windows she could see the plant-benches thick with dead and blackened flowers. What the fire had not destroyed, the cold night had withered. And how could her uncle and his friend have been in there when the roof came down, and managed to come out alive?

"Uncle Charles, what are you hiding?"

"Miss Mayhew?"

She jumped. She blushed--caught talking to herself like that! But it was only Lizzie from the village, who obliged three times a week, and Diana didn't mind looking like a fool in front of Lizzie, for they had grown up together. Now Lizzie came into the library, setting down the great bouquet of flowers in her arms. Her eyes were swollen, Diana saw, and the tip of her nose was shiny and red. She delved shyly in her apron pocket, and held out a card of condolence.

Diana thanked her, stumbling over the words. "Lizzie, where is my uncle?"

"I was just helping him put some things in your room." Lizzie turned scarlet, and came to hiss in Diana's ear: "All of Mrs Gala's jewelry boxes--he says they're yours now--is it true, is it true that Mrs Gala really owned the whole estate, and she left everything to you--"

"Of course not." Diana thanked her again. She tucked the card inside the album she still held, and slipped past into the hall.

The mansion spread in two wings from a central tower; her bedroom was on the same floor, but the opposite wing. To reach it, one crossed through the tower, which held nothing but a great staircase leading up. And as she walked across the landing of this stair, ribbed masonry rose heaven-high above her head. It had been built from the same stone as the exterior of Herne Chase: Growan limestone which when first cut was yellow, but which aged to a wonderful soft silver, and Purbeck marble which, new-quarried, is grey, but which blackens with the gloss of polishing. All silver and black, it was. Molossia followed her, stiff and slow, and wagged her tail hopefully whenever Diana paused. And Diana imagined a voice calling her upward, just beyond the turn of the stair.

Wondering, she went on.

In her bedroom, she found that Gala's jewelry-boxes had been brought in and carefully lined up on the dresser; the mirror reflected their mirrored lids, throwing colored flashes across the room so that prisms streaked the bed-quilts and points of brilliance starred the wallpaper. Sprays of white and purple lilac filled the air with their sweet scent. In the old-fashioned wardrobe, Gala's wedding-gown hung as if waiting for a wearer. Diana opened a jewelry-box, and shivered as the bright contents shimmered with rainbows. Every necklace and earring came with its own ghosts, which were memories. Another box; she picked it up, and put it down. At the lifting of its lid, a waltz-tune had begun to tinkle while the figures of a bride and groom lifted into view, turning and turning in the endless circle of their dance.

A dead firefly lay on the windowsill. Diana shuddered over it; she threw the casement open, and flicked the thing out of the window. From this . . . from this window, if she had cared to look, she could have counted every guest at Gala's masquerade. She might have seen the mystery man, who had died along with Gala. She might have seen a clue--if she had not been too busy to look.

She slammed the casement shut, she flung the album down. The book fell open, and there were Gala and Herne united forever, immortalized in photographs thirty-three years old. Gala was in the wedding-gown, and a wreath of snowdrops was on her head. Tucked in the crook of her arm was her bouquet, all maiden-blush roses; Diana's lips moved, murmuring the meaning in the language of flowers. "If you love me, you will discover all." The ring on Gala's finger, bright as a firefly, was the same ring now on Diana's hand. She looked so young that it brought tears to Diana's eyes.

But Herne in the photographs seemed exactly as old as the Herne she had seen yesterday.

(What was going on?)

The room spun round, Diana's heart thudded. With a trembling hand she closed the album. Molossia nosed at her knee. She was out in the hall, shouting at the top of her lungs. "Is anybody home? Anybody? Oy! Anyone at all!"

"Why, Miss Diana." Her uncle's man looked out of a door at the end of the hall. "Where's the fire?"

"Mollow, oh Mollow." She hurried toward him. "I'm so sorry I frightened you. Please, could you tell me something? How long have you known Uncle Charles?"

"Master Herne? Why, since I was a boy, child." His mild white-whiskered face was as gentle as a mouse's. As a small child, she had called him her fairy-tale footman. "I've served him all my days, just as my father did before me, and his father before him."

". . . What?" (No!)

He patted her arm. "Mrs Gala's death has been very hard on him. We're all glad you're here, young Diana. Mistress of Herne Chase. Now go find him. He left word he'll be waiting for you on the roof."

As if in a dream, she walked back along the silent hall. At the door of the central tower, light burst against her face and blinded her. She stumbled up the stairs, and at every turn, a new view of Herne Chase was revealed--through the tall windows which looked every direction of the compass. Here the blackened wreckage of the conservatory. Here, the cemetery full of women's graves. Here, the yew maze--child's-play compared to the labyrinth she trod now. She had no string, she did not know the secret. Here, just north of the mansion, a river leaped and rushed, hurrying away to join the Exe on its way to the sea.

Grecian vases, red and black, stood ranked like armies upon each landing. The flowers spoke to her like written messages. Honeyflowers, signifying secrets. Moss roses: confessions. Tulips red and yellow: hopeless declaration of love. Cypress sprays, for mourning. Cedar boughs: I live for thee. And amaranth, which meant both immortality and unfading love.

Herne was on the roof, waiting for her.

She ran toward him, crying his name. Last week his hair had been streaked with silver, so subtly that only one who loved him would notice; that silver was gone now. Where were the lines on his face? Wiped out, wiped out, as if the hand of time had written backward. Year by year, like other men, he had aged in step with his beloved wife. Now Gala's death seemed to have reduced him to his youth.

The view behind him was of an abyss: five storeys straight down, to a sheer granite cliff, and at the foot of the cliff was the tumbling, foaming river.

"What's happening to us?" she wept.

"I have always loved you," he said, and his face was the face of a boy her own age. He was blond, and just tall enough, with his blue eyes grey with sorrow, with a perfect cleft in his chin. "If you love me, then come find me, Diana!"

"Who are you?"

"This is the way out," said Herne. He turned, and stepped over the edge.

Part Three

Mark well the wanton females of thy pack,

That curl their taper tails, and frisking court

Their pyebald mates enamour'd : their red eyes

Flash fires impure ; nor rest nor food they take,

Goaded by furious love.

Somerville (on the care of foxhounds)

At midmorning that day, Duncan MacLeod hiked up the leat beneath Merrymaze Hill, under the eye of the chalk Horse. On his back he carried a bulky pack, in his hand was a stout pole borrowed from the farmer at St Hubert's Well. Ravens croaked, picking a carrion pony clean somewhere on Merrymaze; sheep bleated, bees hummed in the heather, and the ceaseless larksong, the keening of buzzards, surrounded him with the jazz music of England's moors - the sound of life itself. He had been walking since dawn, cross-country through Exmoor, like a modern pilgrim.

He sat down on a boulder, pulled off his boots, and cooled his heels in the chuckling leat. Then he uncapped his canteen and drank deep. From his pack, he withdrew a greasy packet wrapped in leaves, which contained rabbit meat. And Methos' journal, which he opened. The old photograph was his bookmark. He handled the journal with great care, to avoid fingerprinting the pages.

Chewing cold rabbit, paying no attention to the taste, he ate while reading.

The Horse shone down, bright as fresh-scrubbed. Such chalk drawings were scattered across England - other horses which might have been dragons, kings with swords and giants with clubs, and one mounted rider; and the country folk fetched out every few years to maintain them. Just as megaliths and stone circles were scattered across England, and people made up new fables about them. And there were yew mazes in the public gardens, and if you crossed the Atlantic to the New World there were corn mazes; if you crossed the Channel to Europe, you'd find medieval churches with circular labyrinths incised in the walls and inlaid in the floors. It was an old thing, older than MacLeod, dating from a more pious time; people unable to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land had consoled themselves by walking these labyrinths, imagining the sufferings of Christ upon the Cross. The heart of each labyrinth was always called ciel: Heaven.

Stone circles. Circular labyrinths in cathedrals. And all over the world, modern people went out in secret and made crop circles. The names of the legends changed, but the legend-making went on.

There were more than a dozen rustic labyrinths in England; they lay outdoors, always near holy ground, and the English called them turf mazes. They were ploughed out of the living earth. There was one named Gilling Bore, whose heart was Jerusalem; there was a Round Tabill and a Julian's Bower, there had been a maze called Wing and another called Robin Hood's Race. There had been a Troy Town, and a Troy Game that schoolboys had once played in it.

What lay upon Merrymaze Hill was a forgotten labyrinth.

MacLeod finished his lunch. He shut Methos' journal, and hid it under the pack. The pack itself held a pair of heavy gloves, a sickle, pruning shears, and a shovel-head. Once the shovel-head was fitted to the pole and rammed down a few times to fix it on, he had a tolerable tool. He shouldered it and climbed the hill.

The hilltop was a tumble of gorse, alive with bees. Mac found the first furrow by stumbling over it: a knee-deep trench, a raised ridge beyond it, the whole hidden in dead grass and undergrowth. The trench cut away along the side of the hill, but just a few yards onward it doubled back and ran parallel to itself. As for the ridge, it was as round and as green as a snake. If you bent over and peered, you could see other snakes and other trenches, all the way to the crown of the hill. MacLeod hefted his sickle, grasped the first handful of wild grass. He bent his back, swung the sickle, and began to mow.

By noon, he had fallen into a rhythm. He worked in a trance, humming the hymns of his youth, stooping and mowing, cutting the gorse down and collecting it in heaps to carry away. The hot sun beat down on his head, sweat rolled over his face; he felt like a peasant in a strange Book of Hours, laboring for the harvest of a sacred sowing. Time passed. Time passed. And yard by yard, the labyrinth emerged from concealment.

He finished cleaning it in the early afternoon. Gathering his tools, Mac carried them back to where his pack lay, wiped his sweaty brow and rested for several minutes. At last, he sighed. Returning to the entrance of the labyrinth, he stood there, breathed deeply, meditated.

He stepped into the Merrymaze and began to walk it.

There were seventeen concentric rings to it, circling the summit of the hill; its entrance pointed to the chalk Horse, and once you set foot upon it, there was no way you could go wrong--for its entire course was a single path, from the entrance to the central ciel. A serpentine path, but one without forks to choose between; for this was a labyrinth, not a maze. You could go forward or you could turn back, but if you went forward you would always reach Heaven in the end.

He remembered his mother and father.

With every step, he summoned a memory. Each memory was of a person, either someone he had killed or someone he had loved. Kalas. Kronos. Xavier. Three great spirals lay in his path, where three times, the labyrinth wound around itself, doubled back, and wound outward again. MacLeod walked them, one by one. He thought of the labyrinth at Chartres; that labyrinth had been one of twelve courses, and its ciel was a six-petaled flower symbolizing the six elements of Heaven and Earth.

He remembered Darius.

At the center of each of the three spirals on Merrymaze Hill, there was an empty space. In turn, he halted in each one. And he thought of Fitzcairn and Connor, friends and teachers and a hundred lost loves. Tessa. Richie. All his life, hadn't he been doing this? Blundering forward, like a boy lost in a maze; treading the spirals of time, all he seemed to arrive at were more empty spaces. All this while, had he been treading a labyrinth? He shook the thought off; in a sense, love was always that way. The maze, which became the labyrinth.

He thought of Methos.

In the space at the heart of the maze was a menhir.

It was a bluestone, like those found at Stonehenge. A fallen stone, which if set upright would have stood waist-high; there was a great crack across one edge, and blurred spirals engraved upon its sides. He had cleared it off before, but that was all. Now he bent, worked his fingers under it and heaved it up.

His pulse hammered, his shirt stretched taut across his back. Spots wandered in front of his eyes. MacLeod lurched, and the stone slid into an indentation in the earth, rocked once or twice, and stood firm. He staggered back, feeling every muscle scream, and put his head down until the dizziness passed. An image as stylized and enigmatic as the Horse on the hill looked out at him. It had been cut into the fallen side of the bluestone: a long wavering line whose top curved round to suggest a head; two staring holes for eyes; nothing more. As old as history. It was a human figure.

Mac shook his head in amazement. Methos' presence sang in his mind, as it had for some time now; from the corner of his eye, he had seen someone come up the hill. And now Methos sat beside the labyrinth's entrance. He had Mac's pack, he had eaten the last shreds of the rabbit and licked the paper wrappings clean. Then he had settled down to wait--reading his journal, while sitting at ease in the sun.

MacLeod walked over and stood looking at him. "Comfortable?" he asked, coldly.

Methos only grinned.

"You'll never change . . . Methos? This is as impressive as you said it was. How old is it?"

"Mm, comparatively new, I think. Fifteen hundred years. It's modern religion, Duncan."

"Right," said the four-hundred-year-old MacLeod. He crouched down, took the open book away from its owner, and made a show of leafing through the pages. (Methos held his tongue; but there were laugh-lines round his eyes.) After a few moments Mac said, "The photograph." (It was in Methos' hands.) "That was your wife?"

"Yeah."

"You must have loved her very much."

Methos frowned at him.

"Yeah . . . Funny thing, though. Here she is, center stage. But I can't remember which of these men I was."

Mac put his finger on the picture. "That's you. You have a distinctive way of standing, I could spot you anywhere." And when Methos glanced around in surprise, he added, "And besides, that's the one she's looking at. Isn't it all in the eye of love?"

And Methos smiled at him.

"Duncan!!"

Mac started. He turned.

Her hair flying, her clothes disheveled, Diana hurled up the hill. Mac had just enough time to clap the journal shut, and then she was in his arms. Methos had effaced himself, the book lay forgotten on the ground. Diana was weeping like a summer storm; she shook MacLeod, she shook against him, she all but knocked him over. She dripped angry, confused tears on his shoulder.

She gasped out her story.

Mac listened with growing confusion. (What was Herne playing at?) And meanwhile Diana was gulping, "They say everything's mine now--b-but I don't want it, I don't understand--"

"Shh, Diana. Shh."

". . . And worst of all, there's no body. We'll have to postpone the funeral now--s-so we can bury them together--"

MacLeod caught Methos' eye, but Methos merely looked blank.

Diana trailed off. She wiped her tear-stained face. "I don't even know what's happening," she finished, dolefully; and for the first time, she looked around her, at the sunny hillside and the two men. And what lay behind them.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "This is . . . how did you find this? How did you know?" The labyrinth, living green, circled the hilltop like a sleeping snake. The menhir in its ciel gleamed blue-grey. She stared at it, at the windblown men standing at its entrance; she glanced down at the book at her feet. A huge leatherbound book. Men and book and maze made a picture like an illustration in a fairytale. Before anyone could stop her, she had dropped to her knees and opened the book.

Mac's big hands were shutting it before she had time for more than a single glance. His hands--strong, cold, hard--took her by the arms, lifted her to her feet, turned her away from the book. "Don't look, Diana." And his voice, low in her ear, was the voice of a stranger.

She ripped herself out of his grasp. "Don't touch me!" And he didn't try to stop her, merely stood looking at her, with his face ruthless and rueful at once. He said, "I'm sorry, Diana. But--" There was something in her hand. An old photo. Perplexed beyond endurance, Diana held it up in the light.

"Give me that, Diana, it's not yours."

A sepia photograph. Too faded to make out. How old was it, anyway? She turned it over and there was fresh new ballpoint writing on the back: This was us in 1898. Why do we outlive the ones we love?

The photograph fluttered away on the breeze; Mac caught it before it had gone too far. He handed it to Methos. Then he and Methos watched the golden girl flee--as if the Hound of Heaven was on her heels.

#

At that moment, Herne was catching his dinner.

He was on Exmoor--scarcely five miles from Merrymaze, as it happened. The south-country skies above him were soft blue, dappled with vague cloud; the shadows of these clouds slid fleeting over the moor, all Cornwall and Devon lay kissed by this variable cloud cover. In Cornwall, eclipse-hunters were checking into hotels, staking out viewpoints, dialing up the BBC news and holding their breaths as they listened. The announcers, their voices excited, were discussing the recent spate of crop circles; given the date, could these have some hidden meaning? But finally they turned to the weather forecast. Cloudy overnight, with chances of rain.

Herne had no radio. He was crouched behind a hedge, a denim cap pulled down low to shade his face; in his shabby jacket and jeans, he looked like a student playing hide-and-seek. What could be seen of his hair was a faded mouse-brown, for he had rubbed dust into it to conceal its color. As for his face, none of his friends would have known him now.

He looked like a boy in his early twenties, no older than his niece Diana. Except that his eyes were calm and grave, holding an expression far beyond their years.

He was Herne the hunter. A creature of legend. Even here in staid south England, didn't the old farmers tell of Old Herthe--Herthe the devil, leader of the Wild Hunt, who galloped over the downs and out to sea every dark of the moon? And in his day, he had hunted every creature that ran: man and beast, mortal and immortal. He had studied every breed of animal, knew their ways, knew how to stalk them. In every quarter of the globe, he had hunted, for the hunt was the oldest of all arts. As old as history itself.

On the far side of the hedge was a meadow. There, hares lay snug in their forms, basking in the sun; one who was canny in their ways could spot them from a distance, for they reclined with their forelegs stretched out and their silvery heads laid upon them--like grey, velvety cats. And Herne the hunter knew a thousand ways to catch them. If he wished, he could simply stroll out onto the field, walk by a hidden hare as she lay, imagining herself safely hidden--and pouncing, catch her before she knew it. But then all the other hares would be up and gone in an instant, and he wanted several of them, because he was very hungry. Dying always left him with an empty stomach.

After pulling himself out of the river, he had walked away across the moor. A dead man. As he wandered, he had picked up bits of stray twine and knotted them together. Now he had a purse net, not very big but serviceable. Here was the smoot in the hedge--the hole to which, when startled, the hares would run. He rigged his net over the smoot, and weighed it with a few stones.

A strip torn from his jacket served as a sling. Herne dropped another stone into this, swung it twice round his head, rose briefly to look over the top of the hedge--and sent the rock flying. Crash it went, into a bush on the far side of the meadow. Leaves flew, and a hare started up and hurried away in wary zigzag leaps, looking every which way for danger. Herne waited, still as a statue.

What passed between men and women was another kind of hunt. It was domestical philosophy, plain as the striking of flint on steel--from which sprang the spark to the tinder, and from which, love's fire was kindled. Hearths were lit, homes built. And he had studied it too, learning this art, until loving mortal women became as natural as breathing and when his lovers died, he choked as if deprived of air--dying of it, until the fire was rekindled and he could breath again. This too was older than history.

The hare had halted halfway across the meadow. Amidst pale yellow cowslips, she stood upright and gazed about. When she faced away, Herne rose and hurled another stone, which landed behind her. She leaped away, paused, pretended to nibble the bluebells, and took fright again at the sound of flies droning in the grass. Little by little, obliquely, she hopped toward the hole in the hedge.

Herne crouched concealed, listening to her come. The instant she got close enough to the smoot, she would swerve and dash through at full speed. And then he would have to be quick, for if she screamed, it would be so loudly that she would be heard in the next parish.

There she came! Straight through the hole, headfirst into the net. She tumbled over, kicking. Before she could make a squeak, Herne moved. He took her by the hind legs and the scruff of the neck, and broke her back across his knee.

Then he took her out of the net and rigged it anew, and picked up another rock for his sling.

. . . He was Herne the hunter, older than history. He had hunted all things: beasts, immortals, men. And women. He was the king of hunters, and knew a mystery--that there was a time when the hunter must become the hunted. Such was love. If you did not give everything away--even offering your very heart up in sacrifice--you were doomed; the women would turn on you like Maenads and rip you apart in a trice.

For women were not jewels, not treasure, not hounds to be bred and tamed. Women were hunters too--and the most dangerous prey.

#

"What are we going to do?" Mac asked Methos.

"Do? Why, do we have to do something?"

"Yes! About Herne. Even you can see--"

"I can't see that it's any business of ours."

"Methos. Methos. Look at me. Look me in the eye and tell me Herne hasn't been doing what I think he's doing."

There was a pause.

Finally Methos nodded his head. "Yes, he's been breeding mortal women up like foxhounds, to be his wives. But--but, Mac!--this may not be as bad a thing as you think it is. Any more than it's wicked to keep pets, and care for them--"

A roar: "You have got to be kidding!"

"--and if you really think it's evil, then think of Gala! She was a grown woman! She knew what was happening, and did she leave Herne? No she did not! Are you going to unmake all her choices for her--as if she was no better than a hound?"

"And what about Diana, then?" Mac demanded.

"Diana's not a pet either. Mac, last I looked, animals get to flee or fight. They don't have the option of marrying and living happily ever after."

"I don't believe this," said MacLeod furiously. "I'm going to Herne Chase. She'll probably go back there. And if Herne shows up . . ." He swung about, and then glanced back suddenly. "And anyway, it doesn't make any sense. What the hell is he trying to do?"

"Maybe he's giving her a choice," Methos said.

#

All this happened upon Tuesday, August the tenth, the day before the total eclipse. And now it was evening.

Diana had driven all afternoon, scarcely aware of where she went. Up and down Exmoor she had gone. Then, finally, she stopped in at a shop and purchased a pair of shears. A get-well card decorated with cats and goldfish caught her eye; she bought that too. She would cut a bouquet from the roadside, because no florist stocked the flowers she had in mind: hawthorn and hazel and white heather.

Hope. Peace. Good luck. No one else would understand, but the message would still be there.

She felt like Ophelia.

Anyone who looked could have found her roaming the wayside, her fingers stained and her face distraught. Crushed leaves and cut greenery dripped from her hands, she left a trail of flowers strewn behind her. Poor old Molossia cringed at her side, pressing her white muzzle against Diana's thigh. And then Diana stopped short, with her hand stretched out toward a weed of black henbane that grew in a ditch, its arching stems thick with pale bells. Those henbane bells were beautiful and enticing: large, papery, almost white, veined throughout with the darkest of purples. They were deadly poison, bearing a dark meaning. As did the other flowers that flourished nearby: more henbane, thorny nettles, and wild wormwood.

Fault. Cruelty. Absence.

(Everything in her world was a lie.)

Diana thrust her hand into her hair, raking it wildly and pulling at it. Her face twisted. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and made a low choking sound, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. Like woman wailing for her demon-lover.

She stood that way for a long moment, bent over and stiff with pain. Molossia licked her face. Then she hurried toward her car. She clutched her bouquet to her breast, as she drove to the nearby hospital. Soon enough, she was at Alfred Wynchbold's bedside.

"Uncle Alfred," she said. She set her burden of green branches down, curled her fingers round his wrist. His bandaged face turned toward her, and Diana leant close to him and spoke gently, with love and determination. "Uncle Alfred, I need your help. You knew Gala all her life. Tell me," she said, "everything you know about Uncle Charles."

#

Night fell.

On Exmoor, Methos sat up sleepless, feeding twigs to a campfire and thinking about choices. Herne, who knew the whole moor like the back of his hand, lay under a projecting tor and wrapped himself close in his jacket for warmth. It was the dark of the moon.

At Herne Chase, Mac was phoning around, trying to locate Diana. The servants there were worried for her; they had helped Mac call all her friends, with no luck. After they had gone through her entire address book, MacLeod thought of trying the hospital.

He dialed them up, and hit the jackpot.

"Diana? It's Duncan. Are you--"

Her voice interrupted him--a strange low voice, a voice that sounded as unlike hers as dark from day. "Duncan MacLeod?"

"Yes, yes. We've been checking everywhere--"

"What? Oh . . . I've been here all evening. Forget that. Just answer me something, and make it the truth, can you do that?"

Mac took the phone away from his ear and looked at it. Then he said into it, "What?"

"Are you immortal?"

This question took longer to answer. Finally he said, simply, "Yes."

"If your head is cut off, will you die?"

"Yes. I--"

"Do you carry a sword everywhere?"

"No. I--"

"Do you have a sword with you now?"

"I . . . Yes. I do. Diana, I--"

"Just stay right there," Diana ordered, and cut the connection.

The housekeeper let him wait on a chair in the hall. He phoned Methos, and then dozed off, to wake with a start and a crick in his neck. It was morning. It was six o'clock on Wednesday the eleventh of August--the day of the eclipse--and out in the rose garden, nightingales were singing of love. In the graveyard, the peacocks were screeching like wild animals of the jungle.

Outside, the skies were overcast.

The door slammed open and there she was: a bundle of affronted womanhood, with an upset hound slinking along behind her. Her hair was a disheveled mess. Her anorak listed off one shoulder, her cotton shirt was creased and wrinkled, and she had one earring on and one earring off; even the ruby ring on her finger was smudged. For the first time in Mac's acquaintance with her, she wore no makeup. And she glared at Mac as if she barely knew him, chewing a bitten lip, and her eyes were enormous, swollen, red-rimmed and bloodshot.

"Diana?"

"You come with me." She grasped his wrist, did an about-face, and towed Duncan MacLeod straight out the door.

All the way to the kennels, she dragged him. He tried to stop her, and gave up when she snapped him a glance; he tried to talk to her, and Diana ordered: "Shut up!" In the kennel yard, she released him, whirled round, and gave him a shove; he sat down on the bale of hay against which the hounds polished their coats. A circle of curious dogs closed in on him. "Diana!" he said.

A tan-and-black hound rose on its hind legs, planting its forefeet on his knee, and thrust a bristling muzzle into MacLeod's face. "Down Merriman!" said Diana with a snap of her fingers, and then, "Guard, Merriman! Molossia, heel." She stormed across to a door, ripped it open. Here was the hounds' feeding-shed, where their barley and horsemeat was cooked; here was their feeder sitting on a stool, reading all about the latest Royal scandal. Behind him in the big copper cauldron, a mess of pig's trotters was stewing.

"Get out here, Jimmy," Diana commanded. "I want two couple of hounds leashed. I want Impulse and Lycas, Bugler and Snatcher. I want them ready to go out in five minutes. I want you to take care of Molossia here, while I'm gone. And I want that." She darted into the shed and snatched down a cap hung on the wall.

Jimmy goggled at her. "Mr Herne's old cap? Miss Mayhew, w-what--"

"You come with me, Duncan!" And off she went, dragging Mac to the stables.

She moved like a whirlwind. In a trice she had two horses bridled, saddled, and led out--her uncle's two best hunters. By the time she (and Mac) arrived back at the kennels, two couple of hounds were ready to take out. "Good work, Jimmy!" said Diana, put her toe in her horse's stirrup, swung up into the saddle. She had her riding-helmet on already. She held out her hand imperiously for the hounds' leashes, wrenched her mount's head around, and rode.

Mac caught up with her in the lane. "Diana, wait. Think. You can't track him this way, his trail's a day old--"

"I know, I know the scent's stale." They cantered past the graveyard, turned off the lane onto a bridle-path. There was the river, running at their right. "But I know him, Duncan, nobody except Gala knew him as I do. He jumped into the river, right? And let it carry him downstream. Look. There. There, at the turn of the bank. That's where his b-body--"

Mac swerved closer, put a hand on her arm. But Diana shook off his touch and moved proudly away. "The police don't know this estate the way I do. There's where the body would come to shore," she finished. "He'd climb up the bank, arrive right here. His shoes would be squelching, he'd have to take them off." She looked about. "It hasn't rained since night before yesternight, the ground would still be muddy. Ah! See there, Duncan--"

There was a spider-web like a tiny labyrinth, stretched between two twigs. It was a perfect orb web, outlined in sparkling dew, and the spider was a dot at its heart. Through the web, outlined clearly on the damp earth, was a mark. "I see it," said MacLeod grimly. It was the print of a bare foot.

They found a bag under a bush, and in the bag was a bundle of wet clothes. The hounds pawed eagerly at these clothes, sniffed and nosed at them. "He had fresh clothes waiting," Diana hissed. "He planned it all . . . ?" Her fists clenched. "God damn him to Hell. I'm going to get him, Duncan. I'm going to get him if it's the last thing I do. Bugler! Snatcher! Lycas, Impulse! And you, Duncan! Let's go!"

They rode. She led the way. Soon enough they left Herne Chase, and struck out cross-country; Diana seemed to know just where to go. "He'd have turned away from the river. Away from villages and roads. This way--deeper into the moor." Walkers out on the moor turned to wave and point as they went by: the two hunters on horseback, with their foxhounds trotting springily behind them. On and on they rode. They passed landmarks--Withypool Hill with its circle of standing stones, the neolithic fort at Cow Castle and the old Wheal Eliza copper mine. They crossed roads; forced to wait for breaks in the traffic, Diana fretted angrily at every passing car. They crossed unfenced common land, and freehold fenced with hedges and old fieldstone walls. There were no tracks to follow, but Diana led the way. She wrung the reins between her fists, she shouted at MacLeod when he tried to reason with her.

MacLeod rode behind her, keeping his mouth shut and thinking hard.

The sun inched toward the zenith.

On Merrymaze Hill, Methos stood at the entrance of the labyrinth. The sky above him was clearing. There was the sun, moving toward noon; there was the new moon, moving toward the sun. Methos shut his eyes, and felt other immortals moving across the moor--moving toward one another, as the moon moved toward the sun. Herne was very old, MacLeod was very powerful. If they met . . . if they fought . . . the quickening would darken the skies like an eclipse.

"Here's where he hid last night," said Diana. They were at the overhang of the tor. She leaned over to peer at the ground, noting a few bones, tufts of hare-fur, the remnants of a fire. "Now." She swung out of the saddle, called her hounds. She showed them Herne's old cap. The hounds snuffled over it, puzzled. "This may not work. They've only ever been entered against foxes before. But they're as cunning as weasels, every one--the very best in Uncle Charles' pack."

She uncoupled them, and said, "Do it. Go. Go!"

Impulse and Lycas, Bugler and Snatcher wrinkled their brows and peered anxiously up at her. Their tails wafted to and fro. They whined. Finally, doubtfully, Impulse ran in a small circle round the tor, his nose to the ground. Halfway around, he stopped short.

He lifted his muzzle, breathed deeply, froze. Lycas ran toward him, excited. As she caught the scent, she too halted and drank it in; her muzzle was creased with concentration, her brown eyes shut to slits. Abruptly, she yelped.

She bounded away. Impulse bounced after her. Bugler and Snatcher were on their heels.

They sprang briskly along, heads lifted, searching the wind. Diana turned her head and an electric thrill seemed to run through her. She gathered the reins into her hands. Her horse cantered after the hounds. "Better hope it isn't a fox," said MacLeod; but no one heard him. He clucked to his mount, and followed.

The hounds were running now, the horses picked up their pace. Diana fanned her mount's side with her whip. "Godolphin, go!" She glanced up briefly, thinking of the eclipse. And it seemed to her that she was riding right out of the workaday world.

Out of the everyday, into the here. Into a secret existence, full of mysteries: hidden labyrinths, magic rings, supernatural beings. She was no more than mortal, but an immortal rode at her side; she knew the secrets of crop circles, and the language of flowers had been her key. A Game she had never imagined was being played out around her, and now she was part of this Game. There would be no turning back.

And there, on the horizon. A lone man, walking away from her across the moor.

She halloed, called in her hounds, threw them in that direction. The wind had turned in her favor. Impulse took the freshened scent first, and began to follow. Straight toward the lone walker he coursed. She saw the walker pause, and turn.

The hounds streaked across heath and heather. Diana rode in their wake. A drystone wall appeared before her, the dogs swarmed up it and over. Godolphin leaped. Another wall. Another leap. Her seat was faultless, she never even noticed; her heart was a maze of warring emotions. Ahead, the lone man had begun to run.

Impulse was the first to bay, and then Lycas took up the song, and Snatcher and Bugler joined in; their voices were high and low, sounding four distinct notes. They ran like the champions they were: tough-footed, deep-chested, long-legged, strong-boned. Diana shouted, "Ware rider! Ware rider!" to warn them as Godolphin stretched into a gallop, and then she was among them. The hounds fanned out to either side. Her gaze was fixed on her quarry. Duncan MacLeod rode last. But she had forgotten MacLeod.

All her world had narrowed down, to the single image of a running man.

She was drawing ahead of the pack. Her glossy black helmet gleamed like armor, her golden hair rippled in the wind; she rode like Artemis of the hunt. A wrathful Artemis, baulked of her prey. Bugler and Snatcher, Lycas and Impulse charged headlong behind her. And the picture they made was a beautiful thing: the moor, the quarry, the huntress and her hounds.

Overhead, the sun stood at its zenith.

MacLeod tested the draw of his katana in its sheath, felt the music of Herne's presence resound in his mind. He laid one rein along his horse's neck, guiding it to swerve sideways. One thump of his heels along its flanks, and it began to stretch its stride. It took hold of the bit, and remembered that it came from thoroughbred stock; it came even with Diana's Godolphin, and even nudged a nose into the lead. Now MacLeod had a clear view of Herne. He slid a hand into his coat-pocket, and withdrew six finger-long flint knives.

He threw them like shuriken. Thock thock thock they went. Herne flung out his arms, and fell.

Clouds closed over the sun just as the moon reached it. A wave of darkness passed over Exmoor. It swept across hill and coombe, tor and leat, and like the aftermath of a beheading it laid a supernatural shadow upon the earth. Herne lay flat on his face. The hounds were leaping, barking in excitement, stymied by the smell of blood; their rightful quarry and their beloved master were one, and this was a problem beyond their solving. Diana was there too, looking wildly at Herne's still body: no longer the goddess of the hunt, but only a confused mortal woman.

And the darkness lay upon them all.

MacLeod pulled his mount up. He dismounted and drew his katana. "Come here Diana," he said. She was staring, staring at him with huge appalled eyes, and he beckoned her to come closer. "Come." She wavered a step toward him. Mac took her hand, and folded her fingers round the katana's hilt. He adjusted her grip on the sword. "Strike," he said.

Dark as night it was. Herne's body convulsed suddenly, leaping back to life. Electricity crawled across his back and the mark of his immortality was there, plain to see.

"One cut," said MacLeod quietly. "The choice is yours."

Diana wailed aloud. The katana dropped from her hand. Then she had flung herself toward Herne. "I thought there were a thousand roads waiting for me, but there was, but it was--only one path--and you were always there at the end--"

The skies opened and there was light: midnight had become noon again. The eclipse was over. The sun shone down on the two lovers in each other's arms, with the foxhounds running riot from sheer doggy joy. "I think I love you." Diana was babbling, and Herne stroked her hair, lifted her chin, wiped the tears from her cheeks. "I do love you." Over her head, he cast an annoyed glance at Mac.

Mac shrugged. He turned his back, smiling, and began to walk toward his horse. He heard a fresh outbreak of yipping from the foxhounds, and then the unmistakable sound of a kiss.

#

Methos watched the eclipse from the summit of Merrymaze Hill, and it seemed like a quickening to him.

He was still sitting there, arms wrapped around himself and the journal lying forgotten in his lap, when a hunter on horseback came cantering across Exmoor. Methos looked up and the world became a little brighter. He stood. Mac dismounted at the entrance and walked straight across the labyrinth--stepping over lines and trenches, disregarding the serpentine path.

His hands were in his pockets and he was whistling. He grinned at Methos, and nudged the upright bluestone with one toe.

"Mazes become labyrinths," he said.

Note: about twenty 'turf-mazes' existed or existed in England. They are called mazes, but seem to be labyrinths modeled after those in churches on the Continent. The English turf-mazes are all found near holy ground, and are of various ages. There is an Aukborough Maze in Lincolnshire, believed to have been cut by Benedictine monks in the twelfth century; it is locally known as 'Gilling Bore' and its center is called Jerusalem. A maze at Hilton in Huntingdonshire has a stone pillar in its center, which gives the date of construction as 1660. A maze in Comberton, Cambridgeshire, is fifty feet in diameter; its paths are trenches two feet wide, the whole surface being gradually hollowed towards the center. There was one at Appleby, eight miles from the Aukborough Maze; games were played in it, while spectators sat watching on the slopes of the hill around. Wing labyrinth is in Rutland, Broughton Green was in Northants; the mazes of Robin Hood's Race at Sneinton (near which stood a holy well) and Troy Town near Guildford have both been destroyed. The Round Tabill (also called King's Knot maze) was a geometrical terrace maze near Stirling Castle. Some sort of game was supposed to be played in these mazes, a sport known as 'Troy Game'. This game, according to one Rev. G. S. Tynack, arose in classic times, and the idea for it was to be found in Virgil's Aenid.

The labyrinth of Julian's Bower (ie, the 'house of Julian or Julius') was on the Lincolnshire Wolds, overlooking the town of Louth. It was formerly planted with trees, and served as a landmark for ships on the North Sea. The Blue Stone, a dolerite boulder which stood for four centuries in Mercer Row, Louth, was brought there from Julian's Bower.

All this comes from a book called Folk-Memory, by Walter Johnson.

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Last Updated August 22th, 1999