A WOMAN’S SCREAM PIERCED THECITY’S SILENCE

Duncan’s heart seemed to freeze at the sound, but not his feet. He was running even before the thought could form.

He ran toward the city gates that had been closed and barred against invasion. But no—one side stood open to the road. And in its frame played a scene from the mouth of Hell.

A girl, a creature of love and tenderness, struggled with a man. His upraised hand gripped an odd-shaped sword; even from the distance Duncan could see the blood on the blade. With all the strength of her slender body, the girl was holding against him. Duncan pushed his body to its limit and beyond, but they were so far away—too far away.

The man looked straight at Duncan. An odd smile twisted his face. Suddenly Duncan knew what was to come.

The cry began in the pit of his stomach. The war cry of his clan, a sound as untamed as the hills that gave it birth, poured from Duncan’s throat. Two hundred years of civilization fell away with the sound…

Also in the Highlander Series:

The Element of Fireby Jason Henderson

Scimitarby Ashley McConnell

Scotland the Braveby Jennifer Robertson

Measure of a Manby Nancy Holder

Copyright

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Copyright © 1997 by Warner Books, Inc.

All rights reserved.

“Highlander” is a protected trademark of Gaumont Television. © 1994 by Gaumont Television and © Davis Panzer Productions, Inc. 1985. Published by arrangement with Bohbot Entertainment, Inc.

Aspect is a registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc.

Warner Books, Inc.

Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

First eBook Edition: October 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-56563-9

Chapter One

Duncan MacLeod smiled as he raised a glass of orange juice toward his lips. Some mornings were better than others, and this had been one of the good ones.

He had begun his day with an hour of kata, both sword form and open hand, pushing himself through the stylized movements until his body warmed and his mind focused. For over two hundred years this had been his way of putting the mundane concerns of daily life into perspective; it was his path to the balance he needed to survive his Immortality.

Suddenly, the presence of another Immortal seared through MacLeod like the blare of a trumpet felt in the bones. His hand went to the hilt of his katana, the Japanese samurai sword that was never far from his side. His muscles tensed, ready to spring into the action of survival as his eyes swept across his familiar surroundings, automatically checking defensive positions and strategies.

A second later a voice reached him. “Hey, Mac—Mac, you home?”

As quickly as it had come, the tension drained from MacLeod’s body and he smiled again, not bothering to answer. By now Richie would have felt MacLeod’s presence the same way Duncan felt his, the way one Immortal always sensed another.

The old-fashioned freight elevator connecting the dojo and the apartment started to rattle; Richie was on his way up. From the sound of his voice he was excited about something. But then, MacLeod thought, Richie was always excited about something. That was his age, or rather, that was his youth.

Richie was a young Immortal, new to the Game, and his age still matched his physical appearance. He looked to be, and was, a well-built young man in his early twenties. MacLeod, on the other hand, looked in his thirties, maybe thirty-five, but the reality was quite different.

Duncan MacLeod was four hundred years old.

Whether thirty-five or four hundred, MacLeod looked good for his age. Some of his appearance—the thick dark hair he usually kept pulled back in a ponytail, the heavy-lidded dark eyes that flashed beneath thick lashes, the high cheekbones and strong chin—were genetics, and he could take no credit for them. But the sleek, well-toned body, the broad shoulders, muscular chest, stomach, and thighs, the balance and catlike grace were all things he worked hard to maintain. It was not vanity, it was survival—a sloppy Immortal lost his head.

The elevator stopped. Richie opened the slatted wooden door and stepped out into Duncan’s apartment. It was as though a wave of energy crested through the confined space, sparking out of his hazel eyes and the curls of his light reddish brown hair. MacLeod turned to look at the young man who was his student, and his friend.

“Hey, Mac,” Richie said, “I’ve got something you’re going to love.”

“And what’s that?” MacLeod asked, his smile not quite hiding the cynicism in his voice. Richie’s idea of fun was sometimes as far removed from MacLeod’s as, well, as their generations. Centuries apart.

“You know there’s this big rally down at the stadium tomorrow?” Richie walked over to the counter and poured himself a glass of juice from the pitcher MacLeod had left sitting there.

“I’ve heard about it,” Duncan replied.

“Well, I got us tickets.”

He looked at MacLeod, full of self-congratulatory smiles, obviously waiting for Duncan’s enthusiasm to match his own. But MacLeod just shook his head slightly and turned back to his half-finished breakfast.

“I don’t think so, Richie,” he said.

“Oh, come on, Mac—I thought this was just the sort of thing you’d love. You know, world peace, brotherhood of man…”

“Look, Richie,” MacLeod said as he forked up the last piece of egg on his plate. “I think it’s great that you want to go, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for me.”

MacLeod stood and carried his plate to the sink, trying to ignore Richie’s disappointed expression. Richie’s face was always expressive; it could go from one extreme to the other and back again in an instant. MacLeod had ceased letting himself be influenced by it. Most of the time, anyway. Seeing that, Richie changed his tactics.

“I don’t get it, Mac,” he said. “I mean, the Dalai Lama’s the main speaker at this rally, and even I know who he is.”

“Then you should definitely go hear him, but count me out.”

MacLeod headed for the elevator. Downstairs at the back of the dojo was his office and some paperwork he had promised himself he would finish today—and he had a new member due in an hour. It was days like today when he most missed Charlie’s deft hand at running the dojo. Duncan knew his friend was doing something he believed in, but in the three weeks since Charlie had left for the Balkans, the rhythm of the dojo had changed—and MacLeod found he missed Charlie’s style of in-your-face caring.

Richie followed MacLeod into the elevator. As soon as the door closed, he started in again.

“What am I missing here, Mac? You can’t mean it’s because of the Dalai Lama you won’t go to the peace rally?”

“That’s right.”

“But he’s one of the ‘Great Men of Our Time,’ isn’t he? I mean everyone respects him—except, maybe, the Chinese government that exiled him. Even living in exile he keeps working for world peace. I thought you’d want to go hear him. He talks about a lot of the same stuff you do.”

“If we talk about the same thing, why do I need to go hear him?” MacLeod countered with a smile as they stepped off the elevator. “Let it go, Richie.”

It was a vain hope, and MacLeod knew it even as he said it. Richie never let anything drop until his curiosity was satisfied—or he got his way.

MacLeod walked into his office and took the seat behind the desk. Again Richie followed him. He paced restlessly across the small area and back again. Then he stopped and leaned forward on the desk, looking into his mentor’s eyes.

“Talk to me, Mac. So far you haven’t given me a single reason that makes sense. Besides”—he straightened and gave MacLeod one of his best “trust-me” smiles—“I had to pull a lot of strings to get these seats—eight rows back, right on center aisle. They’re great seats, Mac, and expensive.”

Duncan leaned back in his chair and looked up at the young man, pleased in so many ways by what he saw. The Richie of today was very different from the seventeen-year-old petty criminal who had broken into MacLeod’s antique shop a few years ago. Oh, he still thought he could charm the bees out of their honey—and sometimes he could—but the old Richie Ryan would never have attended anything more serious than a rock concert, not unless there was a get-rich-quick scheme involved.

But the years with MacLeod had made quite a difference in the young man, and Duncan was proud of the changes. It was more than the martial arts and sword training, though MacLeod was a great advocate of the physical and mental discipline they accorded. By the time Richie “died” the first time and became aware of his own Immortality, he had already seen enough to know the Game was in deadly earnest. He had thrown himself into his training with the single-mindedness felt only by the young. It had paid off; MacLeod no longer worried about Richie meeting another Immortal each time he left the dojo.

While this physical training would help him stay alive, it was the internal changes that would in MacLeod’s opinion, make the years, perhaps centuries, ahead of the young man worth living. Under Duncan’s sometimes stern, sometimes amused tutelage, the street-wise opportunist that circumstances had forced Richie to become had given way to the man of honor Richie had always been beneath the veneer.

MacLeod knew he could not take all the credit. Much of it went to Tessa, the remarkable mortal woman with whom Duncan had been living when Richie first appeared. She had been a woman of rare beauty, beauty that began with her face and went all the way through to her soul. MacLeod had loved her as he had loved few others.

To Richie she had been a friend and, though perhaps he did not realize it, something of the mother for whom he had always been looking. She had known and accepted the truth about MacLeod. Her example had helped Richie do the same so that, in time, he was able to face his own Immortality without the terror and confusion that MacLeod, and so many others, had experienced.

The same act of random violence that had given birth to Richie’s Immortality had ended Tessa’s life. For her there was no awakening, no continuance except in the lives of those she had loved. MacLeod would have continued teaching Richie anyway—as Connor MacLeod had taught him; as the Immortal Ramirez had taught Connor; as Graham Ashe had taught Ramirez, on and on back through time—but in Tessa’s memory he did so with more understanding and patience than he might otherwise have offered.

Richie was still waiting for an answer. Now MacLeod was ready to give him one.

“You’re not going to give up on this, are you?” he asked, already certain of the answer.

Richie’s smile broadened. He lifted his hands in the familiar gesture that was half a shrug, half a brag. “Hey, you know me.”

“Yeah, I do,” MacLeod said.

He waited a moment longer, still studying Richie. Then, mentally, Duncan gave a small sigh; he might as well get this over with, he thought as he gestured toward the chair across from him.

“Have a seat, Richie,” he said, “and tell me what you know about the Dalai Lama.”

Richie sat in the office’s other chair and leaned back. “I know he’s some sort of religious leader from Tibet who’s been living in exile for, like, thirty years, since the Communists took over his government.”

“Thirty-seven now, since 1959. What do you know about how the Dalai Lama is chosen?”

“I suppose he’s the most holy dude in the temple or something. Wait a minute—isn’t there some sort of reincarnation thing involved?”

“That’s right,” Duncan answered. “The current Dalai Lama is the fourteenth incarnation in a line that goes back hundreds of years.”

“But you don’t believe that stuff, do you, Mac? I mean reincarnation—isn’t that, like—”

“Impossible? As impossible as, say, Immortality?”

“Good point,” Richie conceded with a quick grin. “But that still doesn’t explain why you won’t go to the peace rally.”

“Richie—it’s a long story.”

“Well, Mac,” Richie said with an expansive shrug, “you keep reminding me I have plenty of time.”

Duncan looked down at the papers in front of him. Again, he gave a silent sigh; he knew he would have no peace until Richie had his answer.

Still the words did not want to come. With four hundred years of memories, not all of them were pleasant ones. Some were filled with regrets and sorrows that he preferred to keep private. He stared for a moment more out of the windows of the office into the empty interior of the dojo, where everything was orderly and calm. A part of him wished life could be just as serene. But it was not; life was, well, life—full of all the twists and turns that made a man who he was.

Duncan looked at Richie’s expectant face and knew he would honor the young man’s friendship with honesty. “Richie, I knew the Dalai Lama once, a long time ago, and we didn’t part on the best of terms. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to attend this rally.”

“You knew him? When, Mac—before he left Tibet?”

MacLeod could not help the quick grin that quirked the corners of his mouth. “Yes, before he left Tibet. It wasn’t this Dalai Lama I knew. It was the eighth, two hundred years ago.”

“The eighth Dalai Lama,” Richie repeated. “And this guy’s like the fourteenth, right? Well then, Mac, where’s the problem? I mean, why would he even recognize you?”

“Because one of the ways the Dalai Lama is verified in each new incarnation is the ability to recognize the people and things from his past lives. I don’t want to be one of them. Now, I’ve got work to do. Go find a girl you can impress by your social consciousness and take her to the rally.”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind when I bought the tickets,” Richie said, nodding, “but it might work. See you later, Mac.”

“Yeah, later. Now get out of here.”

As the young Immortal left, MacLeod shook his head, amused. Richie would, no doubt, find a way to turn a rally for world peace and freedom into a night of romance.

Oh, to be that young again.

The door closed behind Richie, and, in the sudden silence, MacLeod once more stared at the papers in front of him. They were balance statements for the dojo’s expenses, minor bookkeeping that he had done hundreds of times in different jobs over the centuries, but today the words and numbers passed before his eyes without entering his brain. There were too many memories already there.

Damn Richie for bringing all this up, MacLeod thought a bit savagely, but part of him was grateful, too. It had been too long since he had thought about his time in Tibet two centuries ago—too long since he had thought about her.

In four hundred years there had been many women in his life. Some were no more than brief and pleasant encounters, some were passions lasting months or even years. But there was one whose name he rarely spoke. He kept her name and her memory locked away, guarded in his heart like a precious jewel.

Xiao-nan Choi—even now, two hundred years later, her name called up all that was best in him. Her love, given with such tenderness, had brought his heart back to life at a time when he was drowning in weariness.

MacLeod put down his pen, sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Immediately Xiao-nan’s features filled his mind. He smiled in his solitude as he saw again the softness of her skin, shining golden as polished amber washed in the roseate blush of dawn; her eyes, dark with all the mysteries of womanhood yet bright with the light of love and laughter; her lips, her smile, so artless and beguiling…

But memories are fickle things, not easily controlled, and with a sudden twist all the pain two centuries had not dulled came crashing in on MacLeod—the loss, the sorrow, the anger. He should have protected her better.

Nor was his own anger the only one he remembered. The eighth Dalai Lama, that gentle young man who for months had been Duncan’s teacher and friend, had been angry, too. He had banished Duncan from the holy city and from his company. And Duncan had fled back to Europe, only to find a world about to go mad with the Reign of Terror called the French Revolution.

Now, remembering that day from the safe distance of two hundred years, Duncan saw in the Dalai Lama’s face what he could not see at the time. Anger, yes—but hurt and disappointment as well.

Was there a chance their wounded friendship could be healed, even after so long a time? Duncan wondered. Or perhaps, as Richie had said, it was something for the past, something that would remain forever buried where not even an Immortal could resurrect it.

With that thought, Duncan knew he would go see the Dalai Lama; he did not want to carry this regret forever.