Act Two

"As the dew is dried up by the morning sun

so are the sins of men dried up by the sight of the Himalaya . . .

There are no mountains like the Himalaya,

for in them are Kailas and Manasarovar."

From the Skanda Purana

"Ningma-ningma," said Mallison. "Meaning 'most ancient of the ancient'. It's the title of a Red-cap lama, that's what it is!"

"Right - the male equivalent of sang yum, 'secret mother'. Which is the title of a tantric sorceress, the wife of a Red-cap sorcerer." Methos was saying this for the fifth time. He said it patiently, with a hint of dogged weariness. "She meant Naro-Bonchung. Who else could she have meant?"

"Oh, I dunno. Seen any six-foot-seven assassins lurking in the arras round here?" His voice rose. "Or d'you think he's the interim abbot, padded and disguised?"

Methos shot him a nasty look. "No. I think she was dazed by sunlight, confused by fresh air after ninety-nine years walled up in a stuffy cell, and mistook the interim abbot's yellow cap for red. What d'you think I think?! I think she was talking to you, you yob!"

"In my dreams!" Mallison fired back. "How come you think she even knows this Naro guy?"

"Read their chronicles, find out for yourself!"

There were four other Watchers in the big colorful room, for these were the quarters assigned to Project Shangri-la. They were pleasant quarters, their walls painted brilliant red and then decorated with capering blue bull-demons and Buddhist saints. And their tables strewn with Watcher papers and books, with computers trailing cables, with half-empty tins of spam. An immensely fat Maine coon, the pet of one of the Watchers, ruled over the whole roost. Even now, this cat came waddling through the mess of electrical cables, and bumped its leonine head against Mallison's calf.

He reached down and rubbed its jaw. ". . . wasn't she a movie-star, though? Looked good enough to eat--"

"Who? Sang Yum?"

"You got it!" He smacked his lips. "Yum-yum!"

"I don't suggest you harbor any intentions in that direction, Mr Mallison." Chang had just appeared in the doorway. "And don't call her 'Yum-Yum'."

The other Watchers grinned.

"Back to work, all of you. Have we got the latest reports on Naro-Bonchung's movements? And Immortal Maiden's? Once the latest news from the lamasery works its way down to Tsawa, I expect the two of them to be on the move . . . Ah, very good." Chang moved through the room, speaking to the busy Watchers, stopping to discuss whatever work they had at hand. He had a satchel of postcards and letters which he had evidently just unearthed from his luggage. The Watchers of Sangnachos zong grabbed eagerly for their mail, which Chang handed over with an expression of benevolence; it was like watching Santa Claus at a children's party. Finally he strolled around to Methos and Mallison and the Maine coon cat, which was now prostrate at Mallison's feet, forepaws loosely linked round his ankle.

"How is your altitude sickness?" he inquired. "You both look indisposed."

"Don't ask," said Mallison darkly. "Thank God my room's on the ground floor, that's all I can say."

"And you, Mr Pierson? Very good. A word of warning: the lamas have already been dropping hints that the Incarnation wishes to interview an European. At any moment, expect an invitation to tea--"

Mallison piped up, "You mean, with her? - w-with Sang Yum?"

"Yes. With Sang Yum. But remember your disguise, Mr Mallison! And wait your chance. Perhaps you'll be able to speak with her later."

"I can't talk to her," said Methos. He let his eyes widen. "I don't speak Tibetan."

"She's an immortal. She speaks at least eleven languages that we know of . . . I caught a few words of yours from the doorway. You've read Naro-Bonchung's Chronicles?"

That was a trick question. "I know something about one volume," Methos said.

"One volume - yes. Which also contains references to Sang Yum. It doesn't surprise me, of course. How could a Methos historian neglect their connection to the infamous eighteen-ninety-eight sighting at Mount Kailas?"

"--and that's why I know about her and Naro-Bonchung." Methos sighed. "Christ, did you think I had forgotten? Part of the reason I came to Tibet was to see the Kailas Photograph!"

"What's this Kailas Photograph?" said Mallison, confused.

Chang answered, standing by the window. "In eighteen-ninety-eight, purely by chance, Naro-Bonchung's Watcher spotted Methos. The oldest immortal. Traveling as part of the suite of a noblewoman from Alexandria named - named--"

"Ayesha Quartermain," Methos said. "Her name was Ayesha Quartermain and she was an actress and stage singer who also dabbled in the occult and was making some sort of comic-opera pilgrimage up the Ganges. Anyway, Naro-Bonchung's Watcher heard her address her traveling priest as 'Methos' and of course he did the right thing, dropped his own immortal and spent the next several weeks shadowing the Quartermain party. He actually spoke to this priest. His report of the conversation includes a photograph of Methos, the only likeness ever captured. The original is here in this lamasery, in Naro-Bonchung's chronicles." He added, "Volume sixteen."

Chang turned and smiled. He pointed. "Yes, Mr Pierson. It's over there, on the third shelf. Do take it down."

Methos stood staring at the shelves of chronicles. Then he walked across and fumbled the small leatherbound volume down, letting it rest between his hands.

"I've seen facsimiles, of course," he said quietly.

"Do you know what page to look for?" Chang had crossed the room and was standing at his shoulder.

"One hundred and eight, I think." He let himself breath faster; it was not difficult to pin the right expression on his face. "Part of the reason I came to Tibet was to examine the original with my own eyes--"

He stroked the cracked leather cover.

"Well, go on!" said Mallison. "Open it!"

"It's the only photograph ever taken of my immortal," Methos repeated. "The only image existing. The drawings and descriptions we have are all contradictory, and he hasn't been sighted at all this century." He turned to them, eyes shining. "Imagine it--"

"--being assigned to an immortal who hasn't been sighted for a hundred years," Chang finished. "I can sympathize. But perhaps Methos, too, will surface soon." He put his hand over Methos' on the book's cover. "Don't open it yet. I need your undivided attention for a few moments. Perhaps in the hall?"

"Let me do it." Mallison grabbed the chronicle, leering.

"As long as you give it back to Adam when we're done." Chang took Methos by the arm. "Now come along, come along. I won't keep you long."

They left Mallison sitting there, paging through the book.

A step through the door found them in one of the lamasery hallways, in reasonable privacy. None of the lamas happened to be passing; Methos gathered that few ever did. No doubt they had better things to do. The hall itself was dim, vividly decorated, lined by double rows of brass prayer wheels greasy with butter and grime. Beyond the wheels, the walls were hung with embroidered banners, from which Chang averted his eyes. Methos glanced at them in mild curiosity: most of the embroidery depicted tantric gods and demons. Male and female. Entwined together. Graphically illustrating the mystic union of lingam and yoni or, in Tibetan terms, the yab and the yum. And he waited for Chang to speak.

"Sang Yum," said Chang at last. "So far as her opening words went, I myself find her question more intriguing. 'Has the Gathering arrived?' she asked - why was that, I ask in return? What sign did she receive?"

"Well." Methos shrugged. "Have you heard that many immortals used to believe this was the distant land to which they would be drawn in the final days of the Game? The far-away place, where the last battle would be fought. The most remote place on earth - Tibet."

"Yes, I've heard that."

"Well, maybe that's it. Maybe these communities of immortals are waiting on holy ground for the last days. For the Gathering."

"Mm. An interesting hypothesis. Perhaps Sang Yum herself, adroitly questioned . . . but we are getting ahead of ourselves here." Chang put out a hand and touched Methos, looking keenly at him. "She wants to talk with you. Adam, you're not a field agent, you're not trained for this. Now you will have to deal with an immortal. Speaking to her, you must weigh every sentence twice, never betray your knowledge of her nature. Not by a word, not by a glance. Pull down your sleeve and keep that cuff buttoned from this moment on. Are you afraid of immortals?"

"I . . . I've met one. One immortal. You know about Duncan MacLeod?"

"MacLeod. Ah yes. The other immortal in the Galati affair?"

"Yes, Joe Dawson's immortal . . . Joe's a friend."

"That one!" said Chang, and shook his head. "The Scottish saint. The reports coming out of the Paris bureau were unbelievable, the stuff of the wildest fiction . . . but I begin to see. I think I begin to see. You aren't afraid of immortals, because the only one you have ever known is MacLeod--"

"I told you, they make me nervous!"

"Nervousness is not fear. I've seen promising recruits soil themselves when first confronted by an immortal. As if they had been forced into proximity with live cobras. Tell me about MacLeod, then - about your impression of him."

"He's - he's very intimidating. He's abrupt, he moves and speaks quickly - loudly. It's strange, really. He's unpredictable. I never knew what he was going to do."

That was the truth.

"What does he look like?" Chang added slyly, "I have seen pictures, but all you Caucasians look alike to me. As, I'm told, all Chinese look alike to Tibetans."

"Well, he's dark-skinned, brown-eyed. Long curly hair. Muscles like Hercules, moves like a cat. You know the type of immortal: studies every known school of martial arts, practices day and night. The formidable type."

"Mmm. And his character? In the reports, he sounds quite intriguing."

"Very - Japanese."

Like a fiery god out of Japanese mythology. Methos thought of the Shinto pantheon; there was one of the brothers of Amaterasu - a storm-god, rude and intractable. One who stirred up trouble wherever he went. One whose reckless humors, in all the myths, drove his gracious sister wild. What had his name been? Ah, yes: Susano-O-no-Mikoto. Meaning, 'His Brave Swift Impetuous Male Augustness' . . .

Chang was waiting. He said, aloud, "Oh, not in any surface mannerisms, but in spirit. He has the samurai mindset, that kamikaze attitude: unable to give up, unafraid to die. Reluctant to accept defeat, but never from fear. I don't think he's really had much experience with surrender or pain."

. . . Or like one of the Shinto fire-gods: the Fire-Burning-Swift Male Spirit, perhaps - he who even in birth scorched his mother barren, killing her; so that his grieving father struck off his head with the sword named Heavenly Point Blade Extended? A very immortal story. A very immortal way to die. All those who drew too close to MacLeod should expect to get their fingers burnt. He was by nature a red-hot creature, hasty, impatient. That was exactly why Methos liked him.

"Rather like Mallison, really," he mused.

"Mr Mallison is not Japanese."

"No, of course not. Still in an odd way they're much the same - both of them very young. Oh, I know MacLeod's hundreds of years old, but he's still just like some of the students at Paris University. Immature. Passionately concerned with right and wrong. Convinced that he can change the world."

Chang was staring at him. He shook himself, lifted one hand, gave the senior Watcher a smile and a self-deprecating shrug.

"I know, I know, that sounds quite mad--"

"How old are you, Adam?"

"What?"

Chang put a hand on his wrist, over the hidden Watcher tattoo. He said, gently, "Your superiors in Europe are worried about you, you know. They've spoken to me. Twenty-six Watchers assigned to the Paris bureau have already resigned. You're the best young historian we've seen this generation. They don't want to lose you too."

Methos spoke to the dusty lamasery floor. "I don't know who I am anymore."

"You're one of us, Adam. Never doubt that you are valued." Chang pressed his wrist. "Now come back inside, and let's take a look at that photograph."

But when they stepped through the door, Mallison looked up and complained, "You got the wrong book, Adam, this has to be the wrong one - I've gone through the whole damn thing and there's not a single photograph in it! It's got to be one of the other chronicles." And there they stood, looking at the long rows of Naro-Bonchung chronicles. Over fifty volumes, in perhaps ten languages. Dusty, battered, handwritten books. "So which one is it?" demanded Mallison, crossly.

Methos said, mild as Clark Kent: "I thought it was sixteen."

Sang Yum arrived that afternoon.

At the time, Methos was sitting atop one of the long worktables, eating baked beans out of a can. He stiffened, feeling the warning of another immortal's approach, just as there was a commotion at the door. And in came a swirl of lamas in their long red robes, in their saffron felt hats with tall crests of yellow-dyed fleece. They carried tea-trays, braziers, small brass chests, rolled mats and folding chairs. Last of all was a small figure in robes whose colors reversed those of the yellow caps: a flowing yellow gown, a scarlet headdress. Her headdress was built up in a mohawk plume of stiffened horsehair, which added more than a foot to her height. Her hands were folded serenely into the sleeves of her robes. Across the length of the untidy room, her twinkling eyes looked for Methos.

The Watchers stood looking on all agape, while in a trice the invasion force of busy lamas whisked through the room. They cleared and set the longest table, magically producing little brass vases filled with nodding poppies whose color alone was a miracle: some were wine-purple, and some were blue, vivid as the sky. Incense was sprinkled on the braziers. Fragrant smoke drifted through the room, mingling with the reek of a dozen traditional lamps. Those lamps were engraved brass cups, in which wicks burned with a pale light, set upright in masses of butter. Yak butter.

Each of the Watchers was approached and presented with the gift of a white silk scarf. Chang bowed profoundly and came forward bearing his own scarf, which he laid down before Sang Yum. She accepted with a speech which Methos ignored, since Adam Pierson did not speak Tibetan; then with Chang to translate, she was moving around the room, stepping bemused over the electrical cables and touching the computers . . . whose screens, at her entrance, had been swiftly cleared by the Watchers. The Watchers had swept all their incriminating papers up, hiding them from Sang Yum. The Watchers, like good psychic researchers, watched Sang Yum with gimlet eyes; and Sang Yum, like a good immortal, was surely not about to raise the subject of her one-hundred-year-long entombment. Presumably she would pretend to be a fake, and they would pretend to be debunking her.

She spoke to every Watcher, and when it was his turn Mallison turned brick-red and stammered; and Sang Yum favored him with a smile. Then there she was before Methos, speaking in the musical voice he remembered. In fluent Manchu - an extinct tongue, which only a historian of language would understand. "Dear friend, I regret my blurted question in front of these mortals. But - I hope - you did come here to visit me?"

"It's a matter of the conscience and the heart." No one else present could eavesdrop on what they said; but they couldn't speak long here. "We can talk later."

"This century has passed me by like a single night's dreaming," she replied. Her gaze went to the computers. "But the whole world has changed. Remember me, and our old friend Lobon? And you were with your delightful wife."

"He lives. But she is dead, of course . . . I had a student, a child named Peach. My student killed her."

She touched his face with a fingertip. Then she had turned away, and the lamas were pouring tea for everyone. Methos sat down, holding his cup of greasy butter tea. He sipped, watching her question Chang about modern technology. While behind them was the wall of shelved chronicles, just out of her line of sight. With two of the junior Watchers poised to distract her the instant she glanced that way.

She didn't know about the Watchers; Darius had never told her. In the back of his mind, Methos devised three different ways to keep her from learning. While gazing down into his teacup, and remembering Ayesha . . .

In eighteen ninety-eight:

It was Muslim tea at Ayesha's table: lotus-seed tea, sweetened with crystals of rock sugar, and served in enameled cups with lids like the spires of mosques. There were sesame-seed fritters and candy biscuits, and half the low tin table had been cleared, to make way for her traveling chess set. She sat upon a cushion, her fingers sticky with sugar, and considered the chessboard.

Her hand hovered over the pieces. The set had been a wedding gift: the board was painted and embroidered silk, and the pieces were ivory and rosewood, hand-carved so that every red pawn was a sheep, every white pawn a greyhound. And every court piece was a small, perfect scene. The kings were Arab warriors mounted upon camels, depicted with rifles in their hands, with war-mares trotting alongside; the queens were veiled women, enthroned upon their own camels in litters like tall howdahs. As for the bishops, those were entire mosques crowned by prayer-towers. Each castle was a walled and fortified town. She was playing against Methos, and Methos was winning.

Not that Ayesha minded losing. Ayesha loved to play, and she attacked the game of chess as she attacked the game of life; not because she expected to win, but for the sake of the assault. Mingled in her veins was the blood of Roman conquerors, Bedouin nomads, Egyptian pharaohs and Ptolemaic princes. A thousand generations of victors had made her into a fighter.

Now she moved her rook, knocking over a tiny lamb-pawn with a decisive click. "There! Take that! . . . And this other immortal," she added, "have you discovered him yet?"

Methos moved his knight, which was an Arabic horseman plunging forward in a charge. "Not yet. Hence we are camped here on the shore of the lake."

"I thought the whole valley was holy ground?"

"Lake Manasarover is certainly holy. The rest of the valley is debatable. Of course a wise immortal always gives the benefit of the doubt where holy ground is concerned - but I've know people to make mistakes." He moved again. "And there are some immortals out there who'll attack anybody anywhere, anytime," he added. "For any excuse."

She moved, saying, "Check. And the mountain, too, is holy?"

"Most definitely holy."

"And you are determined to walk around it. I spoke to some monks this afternoon, you know. They come from that temple at the foot of the mountain: see there? Nyandi Gompa, it's called." She pointed straight up. "That's the start of the path round the mountain. Thirty miles all told, they said. Up there, across glaciers and snowfields. Old pilgrims die of it, they said. Two days in purgatory, even for a strong man."

"I've got time." He moved out of check.

"You're mad," said Ayesha, with conviction. "Check!"

Her pavilion, hung about with gay silk banners, had been pitched on the barren shore of Lake Manasarovar, upon a natural isthmus between these holy waters and those of the companion lake . . . Lakgal, bridegroom of Manasarovar. Both lakes were beautiful - clear and placid and shining under the crystal blue skies. Around them stretched a valley too high above sea level for life, too cold, too windswept to be anything but a desert; yet this blighted wasteland was jeweled with temples, teeming with monks and blissful pilgrims. And over all towered holy Mount Kailas.

Every fifteen years, the legend went, Manasarovar the bride and Lakgal the groom overflowed their shores and met in ecstatic union. However, this year the isthmus was bone dry. Methos sat cross-legged on the ground, his ochre pilgrim's robe bright against grey earth. He advanced his queen, taking a pawn which was a gamboling ivory greyhound. "Check and mate," he said.

"What?" She was incredulous; then she burst out laughing and swept up all the pieces together, rolling them up in their board. "You always win. Why do I stay with you? I could have had ambassadors, German princes for the snap of a finger--" she snapped her fingers "--yes, for the lifting of my finger - why did I marry you?"

"You married me because your father thought I argued the Koran more sensibly than any other infidel alive," said Methos. He ate a biscuit. "He wanted you to convert me - remember?"

"I should have stayed in Alexandria like my sisters. I could have married a rich merchant. I could have had twenty children by now!" Her lips thinned: he was not listening to her. "And you would not be burdened with an old woman in your bed."

Methos sighed dramatically. He lay back flat on the ground, and began to declaim in Arabic:

"Behold my mother!

A camel at her master's tomb

A demon's shadow

Starved to a witch's broom--"

"Thou ghulamiyeh!" exclaimed Ayesha. She picked up the teapot and hurled it. It bounced; tea splashed far and wide; and Methos twisted, rolling along one shoulder and landing crouched on his heels, well out of the range of fire. He was grinning. She grabbed for a cup. "Ghulamiyeh at a Turk's drinking party!"

"--Her only fortune: me

Five laying hens

One white goat

A scabby camel

And two gelded cocks--"

"Zerboun! Cochon! Son of a slave's camel--" She broke off. "What is it, my heart?"

"Another immortal. No, don't go for your gun, beloved." He had backed away and now stood, arms crossed, on the very edge of the water. He was looking at a file of people who were even now about to arrive at their camp.

Ayesha was also standing. She kicked the teapot aside and raised her eyebrows at the invasion: a ill-assorted lot of guards, Mongol and Indian and Nepalese, and in their midst a tiny Chinese woman. One of the guards was the Watcher Methos had spotted the day before. As for the woman, she was lavishly and wonderfully garbed, in a sable-edged hat studded with seed pearls, in shining necklaces of large pearls dangling over her fur-trimmed robe. She smiled and spoke, putting her hands together and bobbing her head in a bow. "Good day!"

"Is this the one, my love?" said Ayesha suspiciously, over her shoulder.

"Be polite, Ayesha. This is a friend." Methos walked forward. "Namaste . . . Good day, Lo-Tsen. Is it still Lo-Tsen?"

The tiny Manchu woman looked at him and laughed. "Ah! Weren't you calling yourself Ahaseurus, last time we met?"

"That was a long time ago. I'm Allan Quartermain now."

"Quartermain," she said, amused. "You make a most unlikely Englishman - but then, this is no country for the English. Here in Tibet, though, they call me Sang Yum."

"'Secret mother'? Well, well. This is my wife, Ayesha. You are welcome in our camp--"

"--so long as I am not headhunting?" She lifted her hands. "Behold me. I think you are somewhat over my weight, and in any case I have not carried a sword for over four hundred years. But I must warn you that there is another immortal here. His name is Lobon Naro-Bonchung and he will certainly try to take your head."

Ayesha was watching her like a hawk.

"Naro-Bonchung?" asked Methos. "A friend of yours?"

"He is my husband," said Sang Yum.

Ayesha relaxed. "Do sit down. Nain Singh! More tea."

And so in ten minutes they were all amiably drinking tea and munching on biscuits, reinforced by sweet rice balls and potent amber liquor which had come all the way from Ninghsia. Sang Yum had brought gifts along with these provisions: a phoenix-framed mirror, lengths of dragon brocade and Indian silk, and three or four Russian sables worth their weight in gold. "We were in Mongolia last year," she explained. "By autumn we must be at Samarkand. I heard, though, that in this other camp was a woman lovelier than Venus, a woman worthy of an emperor." She bowed again. "Or of an immortal."

Ayesha turned the mirror in her hands, and hissed, "Do you play chess?"

Again they were interrupted. Ayesha was familiar with the signs of one immortal recognizing another; when Methos rose to his feet, she set down her cup and retreated to the entrance of her tent. There she stayed, hovering. This newest arrival was very formidable! He came alone, and he was huge - a giant, swarthy and long-mustached, with dashing white teeth that gleamed in the sun. His clothes were Mongol sheepskins, with the fleece turned inside against the cold . . . but Mongol sheepskins worn under a brilliant red serge vest, under swags of silver chain studded with corals. Two ceremonial knives hung at his sides, and his leather boots were splendidly tooled. This was the garb of a wealthy man, a leader of other men. And in his bare fist he hefted an iron blade that must have weighed five pounds.

He had eyes only for Methos.

"So you're the one." He lifted the blade and leered. "Scrawny. No sword. Come, let's fight."

Methos took a step backward and stood still, quite composed, with his feet in the freezing cold water of the lake. "I don't think so," he said. "Have we been introduced?"

"Does that matter? I see you're disguised as a holy man. I see you brought your woman along with you, too." He looked Ayesha up and down, as one might look at a dancing girl in a wineshop. "Expensive merchandise, too much so for priests. Handsome."

Ayesha took a step forward and clapped her hands for her servants. "Too expensive for you, I fear. My husband, shall I have him whipped from your presence?"

"No, Ayesha. Please invite him to share our tea."

"I will not!" Ayesha's color was high. "You! Apologize."

"Heh." He waggled the sword, suggestively. "Perhaps when your man is dead, I'll take you for a second wife. Priest, holy ground won't save your neck - will you come along with me now, or wait for later?" He waited. "Hah. Wife! Come along now! And don't forget to say goodbye."

"Do come back later, Sang Yum," Ayesha said coldly. All her servants had come up, bearing an unlikely assortment of arms: rusty cutlasses, machetes, even a musket or two. "As for you, man, hear me now! Disturb my lord again, and you'll be sorry."

"I dealt well with that ruffian," she proclaimed, hours later, in the sanctuary of their tent. She had lit three braziers and a lamp, and the little tent was close and warm and snug; rugs from Bokhora glowed underfoot like jewels, heaped three deep, and their bed was a couch of thick supple bear pelts, with a tigerskin thrown atop. Her folding screen painted with a scene of dromedaries stood in one corner, her mahogany traveling chests were at the head and foot of the bed. Ayesha sat upon one of these chests. There was a book open on her knee, and she was brushing her hair.

"Throw that rag out the door," she added. "The lice are so thick upon it that you can brush them off in regiments."

"What, and you haven't got just as many?" Methos pulled the threadbare ochre robe over his head, and flung it away from him. He stretched.

"I washed in the lake. Come here. I want them out of your hair before you come to bed."

She washed his hair, using carbolic soap, and rubbed it dry. Then she made him sit between her knees while she combed it out with her special fine-toothed comb. "There, that's better. All warm?"

Methos fell back and lay sprawled in relaxation, on the tigerskin, arms spread and one knee raised. His hair, which was long and brown and very straight, now shone with cleanliness. He turned his head lazily, eyes glinting. "I'm your rag doll."

"My slave." Ayesha leaned over him, drawing strands of his hair through her fingers - much as, earlier, she had caressed Sang Yum's gift of sables. With her other hand she turned idly from page to page of her book. "The Dragonfly Skims the Surface," she murmured, playing with his hair. "No. Pushing the Boat Downstream . . . Letting the Bee Make Honey? No. The Starving Horse Races to the Trough--"

"What the hell are you reading?"

She read: "'Two Dragons Who Fight Till They Drop: this is a state of calm after furious activity. The woman's head rests beside the pillow and her hands droop in defeat, as soft as cotton floss. The man's head rests beside her neck, and his whole body droops also.' And look, there's a picture."

Methos sat bolt upright, looking at the picture. "That's a pillow book. That's a Chinese pillow book?"

"Sang Yum put it secretly in my hand. I read the whole thing while you were playing knucklebones with the servants - now lie still, I'm choosing an illustration. What about this one? Lowering the Yin to Meet the Yang."

He considered the illustration. "Actually that's just like Dousing the Candle. Except the woman needs thighs of steel, because--"

"You've read it already?" said Ayesha in indignation.

"Well, it looks familiar." He turned the cover back with a fingertip. "Yes, that's it: 'The Unofficial History of the Embroidered Couch'. I used to know the man who wrote it."

Ayesha scowled. "I can never surprise you. Those two other immortals - Sang Yum and her husband. An ill-assorted pair, aren't they?"

"Sang Yum is a student of Darius', and I suspect Naro-Bonchung is too. That could explain it. You can always expect the unexpected from Darius students."

"And I suppose you have known that woman, that woman Sang Yum - for a thousand years, or more?"

"Not as well as I know you." He turned a page of the book, looking up at her.

"But she's very beautiful, isn't she?" Suddenly Ayesha dropped the pillow book, cast herself into his arms, and began to cry stormy, beautiful tears: "Methos, she gave me a mirror - a mirror! - I looked in it and I have three grey hairs. My father wrote in his last letter that both my sisters were old and weary and of all his children, I was the one gifted with eternal youth. And I can't, can't surprise you anymore--"

He stared blankly at her.

"My sisters are younger than I and they are old women," Ayesha wept. "I'm forty-one years old."

"You're a kitten. A child. Christ, you make me feel ancient."

She lifted her face, which had not been marred by weeping but only made larger-eyed, more delectable. "I do?"

He began to speak. He broke off. He stiffened and his fingers dug into her arms. Ayesha turned her head just as the tent flap was ripped away. And Naro-Bonchung, roaring, shouldered his way in.

A blast of cold air came with him. Ayesha screamed and pulled the silk wrap she wore closed around her shoulders and breasts. In the flickering lamplight, the strange immortal was enormous, overwhelmingly loud, frightening. His sword thrust up toward the ceiling as he sprang forward, overturning her little table with a kick of one foot, tracking dirt across the carpets. "Quartermain! There you are!"

"You're drunk." Methos had flung himself sideways and now crouched next to one of the braziers, ready to fling hot coals at the other immortal's face. "Get out."

Ayesha knelt glaring on the tigerskin. Naro-Bonchung swaggered further into the tent, a smile touching his lips as he took in the picture she made: her brilliant eyes, her long black hair streaming down over her beautiful bare arms. "I won't make you wait long, woman. Tell your husband to come outside."

"Mannerless dog," she said. She stood up; he had eyes only for her now. "Go! Go now, or regret this."

"Or if he won't come, maybe you should." And he laughed uproariously when she strode across the tent and retired behind her folding screen. "You wouldn't regret it! You would scream and beg with pleasure. I know things your skinny boy won't learn for hundreds of years--"

"Oh, I don't think so," said Methos casually. He slid further sideways, toward the entrance. His sword was packed in Ayesha's chest, but there were weapons everywhere for those who knew: rugs, coals, the brazier's thin steel lances of legs, and of course Naro-Bonchung's own sword, for there were a hundred ways to take away the sword from an overconfident opponent - especially one who was drunk, and besotted with lust, and more interested in Ayesha behind her screen than in Methos himself--

And even now, Naro-Bonchung was twirling his mustache, a glint in his eye as he stepped toward the screen. "Or maybe he's taught you special skills. You have the sleek look of the contented wife about you, perhaps there's much I can learn from you--"

"No closer!" Ayesha ordered imperiously.

He dipped a hand into the pouch at his belt, and withdrew it dripping with light - filled to overflowing with a treasure of Korean pearls, turquoise and coral set in massy silver. He dangled this necklace, so long that it swung halfway to his knees, in front of Ayesha's screen. "Don't decide too hastily. I'm very rich."

"I said, no closer!"

He flung the chain with a musical jingle onto the tigerskin bed. "But you're too lovely to leave here," he explained, reasonably. "Too alluring by far. I shall put aside my Manchu bitch, and have you for my wife instead." And now his fist had closed upon the flimsy screen, making it shake and quiver and rattle. "Ah, you're a coy one. Let's get acquainted--"

The screen exploded.

Shot pointblank, the huge immortal was flung backward - a great patch of black char blasted across the gaudy front of his vest. He flew straight through the entrance of the tent, landing hard on the stony ground. Surrounded by an admiring crowd who had come running at the sound of the gunshot. An excited buzz of voices rose. Naro-Bonchung, lying sprawled just outside the tent, was quite dead.

Ayesha stepped across the burning ruin of the screen. Her long black curls streamed over her white shoulders and arms; her breasts heaved, her eyes flashed with excitement. In her hands she held her short-barreled carbine, its muzzle still smoking. The weapon, a wedding gift from her father, was older than she was; it had been looted from a French solder during the Napoleonic wars. It was one of her most prized possessions.

Haughtily, she called out the entrance: "Drag that offal to the nearest midden heap, and throw it in." She added, "Sala bahenchod!"

Methos secured the tent-flap, shutting out the eager eyes of the crowd. Ayesha tossed the carbine aside, shrugged off her wrapper and watched him watch the sheer fabric ripple to the ground, pooling in a shimmering heap at her feet. On his face was the expression that made her heart race: knowing, inviting, wellnigh depraved. That wicked expression.

"You eternal child," he purred. "And you think you don't surprise me?"

"He'll come back," Ayesha warned.

"Let him!" said Methos.

In the present day:

"Hey, Adam! Come here!"

Methos was crossing the lamasery courtyard. He glanced around, spotting Mallison by the dairy entrance - Mallison wearing the look of a conspirator, beckoning him over. Two Tibetans were hurrying off in the other direction. From the hides and furs they wore, from their wild and filthy hair, they would be dopkas, the nomadic herdsmen of the wilderness. They looked just like cavemen.

Mallison was jittering with excitement. "Look what I bought from those guys. They didn't give me trouble about my accent, they think Shigatze's like a foreign country anyway. And look at these!"

Proudly, he exhibited a pair of long straight local swords. They were obviously old and had seen hard use, from the dints and nicks. The backs of their fortes showed rough file-marks stained with rust, the edges too had been filed and the blades themselves were unhealthily narrow in proportion to their length. But they were made from good steel, and looked serviceable.

"All the country people carry weapons." He stroked one of the swords, hefted it, executed a mock thrust. "Look, Adam. You know the sword classes they make field Watchers take?"

"Of course!" Methos pretended to shy back, hands up. "Hey! Watch that thing!"

"Well, in New York we . . ." He came closer. "Listen. Some of us meet sometimes and practice real swordfighting. Like them."

"Hey, that is so against the rules--"

"Aw, field Watchers do it everywhere. Don't tell me they don't do it in Paris!"

"They do it in Paris," Methos admitted; it was the truth. Watchers everywhere were enjoined to learn the finer points of swordplay, for the sake of accurate reporting. And young Watchers everywhere took the sword classes, and sneaked off in secret to pretend they were Immortals.

"Don't tell me you never did it," Mallison insisted. He was grinning, now, from ear to ear. He struck a fairly good wheel, a novice's defensive posture: body sideways, fists up clenching the sword, left elbow out and weight on his forward knee. Then he screamed like Bruce Lee and tried to whirl the sword. "Come on!"

"Look, if Chang ever sees-- Think of the rules!"

"Old men's rules," said Mallison dismissively. "You know how they think."

"Yeah, yeah, but--"

"Come on, Adam! Screw the old men!"

Methos began to snicker. He scooped up the second sword and lunged forward, letting the point carry well wide. And off they went, prancing back and forth, shouting fake kaias and making Kung Fu howls. Mallison wasn't too bad, for a mortal with no experience. His style was pure kendo, but any New Yorker would of course learn Japanese swordfighting over European. And some of his moves looked like hwarangdo. So his instructor was probably a retired Army man. MacLeod had once remarked that the U. S. Special Forces based their martial-arts training on hwarangdo moves.

The second-rate swords clanged like pots being chivareed. The two men swiped sweat off their foreheads, yelped, posed like Errol Flynn. Methos took great delight in playing the fool, in a way he never could in a real fight. He made wildly inaccurate swipes and swings, almost fell over a dozen times, and soon enough he was laughing so hard that he couldn't have landed a serious blow anyway - even if he had needed to.

"Geez, but this altitude is hell on the lungs!" Puffing, Mallison got his sword in a passable yin position, shuffled to the left and made a downswing stroke - gyakufu, was it? Yes: Cross Wind, from the second set of basic katas, Shinkage school.

Methos put himself obligingly through the moves of the Cross Wind kata, playing the part of the opponent who gets to die at the end of the exercise. He staggered back, pretending like mad, screaming: "You've cut my arm off! You've cut my arm off!" Then he made a pratfall onto the ground, and lay rattling his heels in a death-tattoo. Finally he sat up, face straight, and saluted.

Mallison collapsed beside him, one hand pressed to his heaving ribs. They sat together, heaving deep breaths, on the flagstones at one corner of the courtyard.

"I am so out of shape here . . . it hurts to laugh."

"Uncle," said Methos faintly.

"Ah, quit your whining." He gave Methos a smack on the chest. "Down and out. What do you do with your time, anyway, when your immortal hasn't been seen for a hundred years?"

Methos answered absently. Once or twice, while they fought, he had felt the presence of an immortal: probably Sang Yum, observing their play from some hidden place. Watching him. That didn't matter, this being holy ground, and it was fun to show off for her. Or perhaps, given the way she had looked at him before, she was watching Mallison. He said, "Well, there are lots of things to do. Historical research, mainly. Trying to find Methos. Think of it as looking for a needle in a haystack, only the haystack's the size of the whole world and the needle may not even be in it anymore. Checking out pseudo-Methos sightings--"

"What the hell is a pseudo-Methos?"

"Not what, who. He's an immortal - birth name, Vincent Jacobson - who goes around pretending to be Methos. A Methos impersonator. Right now he's in Seattle, and of course he has his own Watcher, but whenever he sticks his nose out I get called to double-check the sighting."

"That sounds dumb."

"Tell me about it." Methos elbowed his companion. "Like playing with sharp pointy weapons?"

"Don't give me grief! I beat you fair and square." He confided, "You know, some of the other Watchers say, if you're ever cornered by an immortal and you can show you know a bit of martial arts - you know? prove yourself? - then he'll let you go." In a whisper: "And some of them say . . . if you can stand up to one of them - with a sword, you know, impress one of them - they'll make you their student and . . . and . . . they make you like them . . . immortal."

Methos sat up and stared; but Mallison's expression was quite serious. "That is such a crock of--"

"Hey, no one knows how young immortals are born, do they? It could be true."

"They know that young immortals are orphans, you yob! Fit that into your theory!"

"Okay, okay, so it's just a rumor. But nobody knows." Mallison shrugged. "Hey. I did you a favor, by the way. While Chang was giving you briefings on how to handle a live immortal, I started going through the Naro chronicles. I've done three volumes already. And I think I've got the ones from the right time period, but I haven't found any photographs yet."

This was hardly surprising, since the Kailas photograph was now in Methos' coat. Methos had stolen it earlier in the day, without looking at it; he didn't know if he wanted to actually look at the thing. Now, remembering, he patted his pocket and remarked, "That's nice of you."

"Gonna find that photo for you if I die trying." His face was filled with transparent, thoughtless good will. "Since you're going to have your hands full, talking with Sang Yum."

"You really like her, don't you?"

"You'd better believe it. Why, she's beautiful . . ." He sighed. The sword drooped in his hands. "You've got to tell me every word she says."

And there she was, like magic: Sang Yum herself, walking across the courtyard with her retinue of lamas trailing after. Mallison sat up straight, sucked in his stomach and thrust out his chest; Methos slouched back on his elbows, smiling inwardly.

She beckoned to them with a crooked finger, imperious. "Master - Pierson, is it?" Her English was old-fashioned, with an accent pretty as Queen Victoria's. "I would like to speak with you. Let us walk together?"

She ignored Mallison, and Mallison (being only a humble student from Shigatze) effaced himself meekly - sneaking in among the lamas, tucking the battered swords under his coat. With his eyes devouring her, every inch of her.

The two immortals walked along in silence at first. Finally Sang Yum said in Manchu, "It has been too long. We can converse in private now, Allan - or do you prefer Adam?"

"I'm Adam now. That identity died when my wife did. Decades ago." He glanced down at her. "But your husband is somewhere in Tsawa, I'm afraid."

"He is no longer my husband." Her face was calm. "And he will be coming here, soon. I'm told there has been more change in this past hundred years than in the previous thousand - but some things never change. Love never changes."

"I always used to say you knew more about love than any other immortal alive."

"So now you've come to me." And though her face remained serene, her voice had lit up with laughter. "Are you in love, Adam?"

"I would really rather have been in lust," Methos sighed.

The lamas, not understanding a word, smiled and nodded at everything they said. Mallison appeared bemused. Following Sang Yum, the whole party walked through the dairy entrance; on the other side of the door was a large earthen-floored room like a barn, full of sheep. Baaing sheep. They were currently tied up in a long double line, secured head to head along a rope, and two teenage lamas were squatting down to milk them.

"It's a long time since I drank sheep's milk," Methos remarked, looking at the fidgeting ewes (whose wool was matted with dung and twigs) and at the young lamas happily milking away with unwashed hands. The stench of livestock was pungent, sharp. "I saw a pair of dopkas outside. Were they asked in to slaughter a sheep or two?"

"Yes. There will be a feast tonight." Buddha had forbidden his followers to kill, but human nature being what it was, even otherwise devout priests sometimes found their way around the rule. If a beast died of old age or an accident, it could be eaten without guilt; peasants hunted on the sly, and even lamas craved meat. As for the dopkas, it was universally understood that nomads, who did not farm, must eat flesh to survive. Hence they could kill without sinning . . . and also be hired to work as slaughterers. And the lamas might eat the meat that dopkas butchered - provided they did not witness the act of killing. Sang Yum's face dimpled. "The lamas wanted to call on you, my friend. You're a layman and a foreigner - why shouldn't you kill sheep for them? But I persuaded them that a professor from Paris wouldn't kill his own meal."

"Well, thank God for that. But they didn't look as if they were thinking about food."

"I think my lamas took them to the main building for tea. They'll stay until they can get some of the mutton, of course."

They walked on. Here were the lamasery kitchens, complete with huge churns and tables smeared with barley flour and grease. Three ewes, skinned, hung on hooks to drain. One of the young lamas trotted past with two buckets of milk, which he dumped in a vat in the corner.

In a cleared area of the floor stood three seven-foot-tall armatures, built up out of wire and bits of wood. Great slabs of pale butter lay next to them, gleaming. Hunks and handfuls of butter had been scooped out of these slabs, and partially built onto the armatures: here they filled out a hand raised in blessing, and there a saint's face was almost completely molded. When the butter statues were finished, they would be decorated and carried in procession.

"Yak butter," Methos remarked. Sang Yum had gone to the hearth, where tea boiled perpetually in a huge kettle. She poured it out: dark, strong tea swirling with bits of tea-brick. There was one bowl for her, and one for Methos, and she strolled across to the incomplete statues and dug out two dabs of butter to plop in. She handed him a bowl. Methos said, "Where's the tsampa?"

Tsampa meal, added to the brew by handfuls and stirred with the fingers, made the tea a pleasant sort of porridge. Methos, knowing that Mallison was watching, let himself appear to be following Sang Yum's lead. He followed her to a sack of sugar, and helped himself.

They sat down on a mounting block just outside the dairy doors, to enjoy their tea. The lamas, used to sitting in assembly in this very courtyard for prayer sessions, knelt piously on the flagstones and chatted amongst themselves. One or two produced small portable prayer-wheels, and set them spinning. Mallison edged close to Sang Yum's knees, his face upturned, and she sipped her tea while gazing gently down upon him.

"Yak butter," she said in Manchu, and he blinked happily up at her, not understanding a single word. "I missed the taste, the smell of it. The butter in the tea and the butter in every lamp and the yak-butter images carried in parades honoring the Great Incarnation on his festival days in Lhasa. Do you know, as the abbot of a lamasery I am entitled to be committed to the eternal by boiling in a cauldron of butter? If I should die. I have instructed the monks to deny my corpse this honor, if they find me headless one morning. I asked them to treat me as any good Tibetan, and give me to the vultures."

Methos scooped a little tsampa porridge out of his bowl, and ate it. "Pretty morbid, Sang Yum. You're barely a day out of your cell, and already thinking of death? Are you that afraid of our Bon friend?"

"Anything might happen." She finished her tea, and began to wipe out her bowl with a dainty fingertip. "Tell me about your love."

Methos finished his tea. He looked into the bowl, and decided with regret against licking it clean - as Sang Yum was doing with hers even now. While Mallison beamed as if he was watching an angel at prayer. Methos set his bowl on the ground, and one of the lamas whisked it away.

"There's a group of mortals that knows about us," he said.

Sang Yum stopped licking her bowl.

"What?"

"I'm not going to tell you who they are. They know about immortals, Sang Yum. Part of what they know is the truth, and part is an absurd muddle of myths and hearsay - but they know."

She sat with the wooden bowl gripped between her hands, staring with wide black eyes.

"Mortals who know about us . . . Adam! Do they know how we die?"

"Oh, yes."

"And you love them? These are the ones you love?"

"Oh, yes," said Methos.

"But they know about us. Did you tell them? - no, you didn't, did you? Do they know about you? What will they do, if they find out what you are?"

He slouched forward, making a face. "Three guesses . . ."

Sang Yum was on her feet. She folded her little hands into the sleeves of her yellow robe, and stood looking gravely down; the high crest on her felt hat gave her the look of a judge in ancient times. "What sort of men are these, that know our secrets?"

"Like any men. Some good, some greedy, some ignorant. Some have taken the secrets they know, and used them to kill immortals. Some banded together, to hunt us. Some tried to wipe us off the face of the earth."

"The Gathering," she breathed. "Is that how it will finally come? Oh, I should never have hidden away so long-- And my teacher?" She meant Darius. "Why haven't you asked him about these things, what does he think?"

"He's dead. Some of them killed him. On holy ground, Sang Yum."

Her voice rose in an incredulous wail: "Darius is dead?"

The lamas looked upon her and began loudly, all together, to pray. Sang Yum had turned away in grief. Mallison whispered urgently to Methos, "What the hell did you say!?!" and Methos hissed back at him: "I told her the Dalai Lama was in exile!"

Sang Yum lowered her hands from her face. Her voice was again calm. "It was his fate to die. All of us do, in the end. Oh, but I'll miss him so!"

"Yes, Sang Yum. He's at peace now, and never craved vengeance. But mortals and immortals have died." Methos stood up. "And you understand what I feel. I love these mortals, I've lived among them, found shelter in their midst. But I am immortal. Who do I side with? Should I help them, or my own kind?"

"You've always loved mortals."

"Yes."

"When I knew you before, it seemed to me that you looked upon all men and women - even your fellow immortals - with infinite love. As if they were children to you. But you were never torn between mortals and immortals before . . . Even all your wives were mortal."

"Yes--?"

"Who else do you love now, that you feel so torn?"

Methos shrugged.

"Do what your heart tells you," she said. "Love where you can help. My koan is that love's sign is generosity; anything else is mere greed, the mark of lust." She bowed, putting her hands together. "I cannot help you. I can only give you solitude, so you can think. Until later, Adam."

She kissed him on the cheek, folded her hands back into her sleeves, and led her monks across the courtyard. Mallison hung behind, looking after. Then, surprisingly, he put an arm around Methos' shoulders, giving him a rough hug. Saying nothing, he trotted off after Sang Yum. Which only went to prove, one supposed, that someday every yob would have his yum.

Methos was left alone. He sat down again on the block, bowed his head into his hands. After a little while he fished a piece of paper out of his long coat, unfolded it and smoothed it out. It was a letter of resignation, unsigned. He read it, sighed, read it again . . . wishing that Sang Yum could make up his mind for him.

Yes, he thought - you had to love them, you had to love mortals, because they were ridiculous and helpless and young, so very young. As endearing as kittens. Cute as baby animals. Their lifespans were so short, they had no hope of ever growing out of infancy. Or so it seemed. And here he was, alone in a world filled to overflowing with eager children.

Even MacLeod - and yes, it been the right thing to do: to leave Mac alone, maybe for as long as a year or two, so that Mac could get over his well-intentioned pique with the Watchers. Poor Mac always saw the world in terms of black and white, us and them. Immortals and mortals. As if there was any real difference between the two.

Oh, yes. There was no way one could escape loving Mac.

He read over his resignation one more time. Then, smiling, he ripped it apart and watched it flutter across the courtyard. And it was then that the shouting started.

Methos jumped up. From the lamasery buildings, from the main temple itself, the voices shouted. They were the voices of lamas, shrieking in panic. They were rushing out of doors, crying in Tibetan: "Fire! Fire!" Smoke poured out under the eaves of the main temple. It was thick, black, smelly smoke, and Methos took one sniff and recognized it. It was the smell of an ancient hazard indigenous to Western Asia, of overturned lamps and burning grease . . . of burning yak butter.

The lamas milled around the courtyard, talking and pointing. Butter-lamp fires in these old log-framed structures were hazardous, but seldom cost lives; the monks would put it out. Anyway, this fire seemed nowhere near the Watcher quarters. Methos began to relax, and then he heard shouts in a language foreign to these walls. He saw Chinese men running between the buildings, heard guns stuttering, heard screams. What the--? These were soldiers. They were hurrying into the main temple, slinging their guns as they did so, gesturing the confused monks out of the way. As busy as firemen responding to a four-bell alarm. Methos swung around, and someone said, in Chinese, "There. That one. Take him!" and two Chinese soldiers laid hold of his arms.

He was Adam Pierson, humble Watcher, and didn't know how to defend himself. Methos put shock and indignation on his face, and obeyed his first rule in times of trouble: go limp, and see what happens. He didn't become alarmed until he felt the presence of another immortal.

They were hustling him off holy ground, out of the lamasery. Even then, he found himself unwilling to resist. They were only mortals; they didn't know what they did. And he couldn't bear to hurt them, because he knew how easily they could be killed.

Because he was paralyzed with helpless affection for everything around him.

Just without the walls, they flung him forward onto the ground. Methos broke his fall with his hands, hearing them burst out laughing. There were six of them, armed with machine guns. And there was the seventh: a Chinese woman in the drab clothes of an army bureaucrat, her hair drawn severely back and her face so prim that the lines across her brow seemed imprinted by paperclips. It was Comrade Immortal Maiden.

She came and squatted beside Methos, putting a hand upon his back when he would have risen. In a low voice, in sing-song English, she began to speak. "I'm afraid you can't go back there, Master. Regrettably, once news of Sang Yum's return reached the ears of the peasants of Tsawa, they rose in righteous indignation against this symbol of lamaist oppression. Brooking no restraint, they will certainly march against this lamasery and try to sack it, putting it to the torch - and to preserve the peace, the army will be forced to intervene. Ah, see the smoke now? Set, I think we shall find, by humble dopkas revolting against their former masters."

"Paid by you?" said Methos.

"That could never be proven. But once the army occupies the lamasery, we can begin to investigate the infringements of human rights reported to us. We hear that the lamas hold prisoners in cells in the mountain, walled up without light or medical help. We hear that these poor brainwashed folk go willingly into their holes, and stay buried until they die. We must find these victims, and set them free."

She frowned. "And once the immortals are taken off holy ground - weakened, disoriented, perhaps restrained so they may be transported down the mountain to receive medical care . . . why, then, I think that my partner Naro-Bonchung will be waiting to behead them. I hear there are dozens of them for him." And she stroked his back. "But don't fear, I've arranged everything, I would never let you go to that fate. Dearest Methos. Because I still love you."

She touched his face, tenderly. Her own face became serene, filled with peace; and the years fell away from her. Methos sat up, surrounded by her soldiers, and looked at her in disbelief.

"Peach?" he said.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

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