"Now this is more like it," Richie said as he surveyed the view from their rented townhouse. The two-story bungalow looked out onto the lush garden from Connor's room, and beyond the terraced flowers stood Gunung Agung, the holiest of the island's volcanic mountains. Richie's windows offered an even better view - that of a gorgeous split-level swimming pool and, beyond that, the shimmering blue of the Bali Sea. The dark paneling, bamboo furniture, ceiling fans and colorful decorations marked the bungalow as part of a first-class luxury resort. The living room even had a large television that carried CNN and a movie channel. Richie, who hadn't watched TV in over a month, immediately claimed the sofa as his own and didn't move for three hours.

Later that day they went snorkeling with a group from the hotel. Richie had snorkeled in Mexico once, but he didn't remember nearly as many bright fish on that trip. The wreck of an American cargo ship lay just off the reef, and he found it a little eerie to watch squid and barracuda darting in and out of the metal hulk. Connor managed to strike up a conversation with two lovely young women from New Zealand named Cynthia and Katherine. The four of them ate by torchlight that night in the hotel's outdoor restaurant, feasting on fresh seafood, thick steaks and very expensive wine.

Richie knew from previous vacations with Connor that sooner or later the Highlander would seduce some lovely and bring her back to his room. He didn't exactly share the Highlander's enthusiasm for casual sex - he liked to actually date a girl for a while before undressing in front of her. One notable exception to that rule had been Kristen Gilles, who had tried to kill him in the end. But, he figured, he was twenty-three years old, on vacation in a foreign country, he hadn't had a date since Marina LeMartin had dumped him in France, and how could a guy go wrong following the lead of Connor MacLeod?

That night he made love to a woman for the first time since France. He hadn't forgotten how to do it, but he found himself fumbling awkwardly in the darkness. She took his trembling hands and guided him to her favorite places. Richie fell into a dreamless sleep after they finished, and he woke at dawn convinced the mountain was calling him. He slipped away from the bungalow and sat in the hotel gardens, staring up at the mammoth shape. Connor found him there an hour later, just as the sun started to burn away the mountain mists.

"You have a calling to climb that mountain, don't you?" Connor asked, offered him half of a peeled orange as he sat down on the bench. The Highlander looked bedraggled in his shorts and thin shirt. He also looked enormously pleased with himself, as he usually did after a conquest.

"I guess," Richie said. "I never had a calling or anything before."

"Sometimes places call to you from far away. Places you've never even seen or heard of."

"This, from the man who doesn't believe in visions or dreams or any of that psychic mumbo-jumbo?"

Connor ate a slice of orange. "I don't believe in most 'psychic mumbo-jumbo.' But occasionally, every once in a while, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief."

"Will you climb it with me?"

"Yes. But not today. I have plans for today." Connor smiled that sly smile of his and popped the last wedge of fruit into his mouth.

On the way back to the bungalow they detoured toward the main desk to inquire about hiking tours. A familiar whining voice stopped them before they even reached the lobby.

"This is a Four Seasons Hotel," Clara Tiller complained to a bewildered Balinese clerk. "Isn't there someone who speaks better English than you do?"

"Just sign the damn form and get our keys," her sister advised. "They have to be around here someplace. We'll find them."

"How'd they find us?" Richie asked, as the two Immortals ducked for cover near a bank of payphones.

"Someone at Dayu's house must have told," Connor said. "I had to leave an address in case Mas had problems with the ceremony."

"What do we do?"

"We do whatever we want to do," Connor said decisively. "We're the Immortals here."

Nonetheless, the Tiller sisters' arrival put a slight damper on Richie's mood. Maybe Connor was right when he said Watchers were useless and bothersome. Connor didn't brood on the issue, but instead settled in for a pleasant day of making love to Katherine at the bungalow. Richie and Cynthia went snorkeling and swimming, and ended up sunbathing in a secluded cove. In the late afternoon the four of them hired a driver to show them a nearby palace and water garden. The sisters tried to follow, but Connor had already bribed the next driver to take the women on a long, circuitous ride to nowhere and claim to have gotten lost.

"The poor man doesn't know what he's in for," Richie said ruefully.

Over the next few days it became obvious that Joe must have told his Watchers to be more subtle in their activities. Richie saw them trying to camouflage their observation from behind shady trees, hedges and statues. Nancy Drew and Bess they were not. Connor studiously ignored them until a group of German salesman arrived at the resort, and then he started sending the sisters large tropical drinks with German love sonnets attached.

Richie noticed Clara and Gwen both took pains to improve their appearances after that, and would sit out by the pool for hours with their laptops and giggle whenever new drinks arrived. Connor sent notes to the ugliest of the German men and put Gwen and Clara's room numbers on them.

"How long do you think you can tease them like that?" Richie asked.

"We'll just have to see," Connor replied.

Cynthia and Katherine had to return to New Zealand and their jobs. Richie hated to see them go. The Immortals walked the women out to their waiting taxi and gave them lingering kisses. Just as they drove off a van from Denpasar arrived carrying a dozen tourists. The buzz of a new Immortal hit both Connor and Richie at the same time, and they turned in wary apprehension to locate the stranger.

Not the Japanese newlyweds, not the middle-aged Americans with two whining children, not the giggling Australian teenage girls - though they certainly were cute, Richie noted - but there, the Balinese driver wearing a blue checked shirt and a straw hat.

The driver returned their stare for a few seconds, sizing them up as competition, and then went to unload the luggage from his van.

Connor and Richie waited until he finished before coming within striking distance.

"I don't want any trouble," the driver said, his face stony cold.

"Neither do we," Connor agreed.

The chance encounter unsettled Richie. He hadn't sensed an Immortal other than Connor since their arrival. The reminder of the Game and the outside world brought the phantom pain twinging through his shoulder again. Connor made some discreet inquiries and found out the driver's name was Wayan, which didn't help. Wayan was the traditional name for a first-born child, just as Nyoman was the name for third-born.

"What are we going to do about him?" Richie asked.

"We're going to do nothing," Connor asked. "Like the man said, he doesn't want any trouble."

They made plans to start up Gunung Agung the next day. A guide would take them to the highest village on the route to register with the police for the climb. At Sebudi, seven thousand feet or so below the rim of the crater, they would catch a few hours of sleep in a peasant household. Shortly after midnight another guide would start them up the twisting mountain paths. The goal was to reach the summit by sunrise.

"You sure you want to do this?" Connor asked as they sunbathed on the resort's beach.

"Yes. You?"

"It's been a long time since I've climbed a volcano," the Highlander admitted.

Richie lowered his sunglasses. "I know you're getting on in your years, so if it's too arduous or something, just let me know."

Connor answered with a fistful of sand flung through the air.

Shortly thereafter Connor announced his intention to go find an afternoon snack to eat. Richie remained where he was, happy to be soaking in the sun's hot rays. Around four p.m. Richie walked back up to the resort. He found no sign of Connor in the restaurant, the lobby or their bungalow. He realized, with a sudden and not unwarranted chill, that Connor's sword and sheath had disappeared from his room.

A missing Connor and a missing sword could only mean trouble.

***

Richie waited for hours in the bungalow, anticipating Connor's imminent return, ready to chide the older Immortal for disappearing so suddenly. Sunset brought red and gold to the sky, and the hotel's gamelan band started playing by the pool. Richie had grown no fonder of the strange music during his island stay, and he ended up slamming the windows shut against the noise.

He tried watching CNN and doing sit-ups to distract himself. He ordered dinner from room service, but the food tray remained untouched in the living room. Richie's anxiety grew worse and worse by the hour, but he tried to tell himself he was over-reacting. Finally, in a fit of frustration, he stomped down to the pool and confronted the Watchers.

They sat at a secluded table, their faces eerily illuminated by the blue screens of their laptop computers, dressed in identical ikat dresses in the hopes a German admirer might wander by.

"Where's Connor?" Richie demanded.

The two sisters blinked at him, startled.

"What do you mean?" Gwen asked. "We don't know anyone named Connor."

Clara added, "We're just tourists. Go away."

"You're not tourists, you're the worst Watchers a guy could ask for," Richie said, struggling with his temper. "Where did Connor go? I know you must have seen him. All you do is follow us around, day and night."

The two women looked at each other, obviously stumped at what to do. Richie wondered if they taught confrontational tactics at the Watcher Academy. Clara started typing into her laptop, and that pushed Richie right over the edge.

"Stop doing that!" he said, and in a fit that surprised even himself, he picked up her computer and threw it into the shimmering blue pool. The laptop sank swiftly to the bottom.

"That was my baby!" Clara screeched.

Richie wrestled the second laptop from Gwen's sharp fingers.

"This one is next," he threatened. "Right into the pool. All that valuable data, lost to chlorine forever."

"Animal," Gwen hissed.

Two large German men appeared out of the shadows. "Was ist los?" one asked.

"Going once . . . " Richie threatened. "Going twice . . . "

"All right!" Gwen surrendered. "He came up from the beach at 2:35 p.m. and was confronted by one of the van drivers. They went to your bungalow and then walked off into the jungle, down that path over there."

Richie turned his head in the indicated direction. Gwen tried to snatch the laptop from him. He let it go, and she stumbled backward over her chair with the prized computer wrapped in both arms. The Germans moved to help, Clara started yelling, the gamelan band launched into another awful tune, and at that very moment a sheet of hot-white light lit up the sky.

Richie stood rock-still, paralyzed at the sight.

"Connor," he breathed.

No, no, no. Not now. Not ever. He couldn't deal with Connor dying on him, losing his head, leaving his life. Connor had brought him far and wide from the pain and emptiness of his life after Paris, but he felt its black teeth start to bite at the edge of awareness, ready to make an awful, staggering comeback.

Thunder rolled down on him, the rumble rocking his bones.

Another sheet of light.

Lightning.

Thunder.

"I think it's going to rain," Connor said, choosing that moment to stumble out of the jungle with one hand clutching a wine bottle and the other wrapped around Wayan, apparently his new best friend in the world.

Wayan agreed in his native tongue and reached for the wine bottle.

"No, no, no," Connor said, keeping the liquor away. "Not until you memorize the rules."

Richie didn't know whether to be furious with Connor or just be relieved he still had his head. Before the poolside scene got completely out of hand he ushered them back to the bungalow. Sheets of rain began to pour from the sky, and wind sucked the linen curtains in and out the window.

"Wayan here had no idea what it meant to be an Immortal," Connor explained as he draped himself on a chair and began to pick at Richie's room-service tray. Cheerfully inebriated, he seemed to have no idea that Richie had been worried. "All he knew is that whenever he got that tingling sensation - and you know the one I mean - men tried to kill him."

"You don't have a teacher?" Richie asked the Balinese man.

Wayan shook his head ruefully. "I died almost six months ago. Died - such a strange thing to say. What does this mean for my wife? For my ancestors, for the descendants I'll never have?" He shook his head forcefully, as if to dispel nasty thoughts. Quietly he said, "I thought the gods wanted me to live. But now I learn they want me to kill. My spirit is doomed."

"It's not quite that way," Richie said, but he didn't know quite the way to put it, either. Wayan came from a culture rooted in hundreds of gods, spirits, rituals, ceremonies and superstitions. His interpretation of the Game would be framed in the beliefs he'd held all his life. Just as Connor had once had to overcome accusations of being the devil himself, Wayan would have to find a way to live his life around the expectations of his upbringing.

They stayed up for most of the night discussing Immortals and the Game. Richie gave in to Connor's urging to at least try the wine. Things got a little blurry after that. The younger Immortal finally dragged Connor off to bed, chastising him all the way about going off and scaring him the way he had.

"But I left a note," Connor protested. "With the front desk clerk. Didn't you check?"

Richie thought back to the anxious afternoon. No, he had to admit sheepishly, he hadn't checked. "Why did you take your sword, though?"

"My sword? Who took my sword?" Connor lurched over the side of the bed and peered underneath. "No, it's still there."

"You were keeping it in the closet the other day," Richie said, exasperated.

"I moved it," Connor said, falling back on to his pillows. "I got lonely without it."

Richie draped a blanket over Wayan, who had passed out on the sofa, and then he turned the lights off in the bungalow. The rainstorm had moved entirely inland, leaving stars again twinkling over the ocean. He climbed into his own bed, feeling just a little guilty about throwing Clara Tiller's laptop into the pool. Finally he decided she could just write the damn thing off as a business expense and went to sleep.

***

Moonlit clouds stretched out across the valleys beneath them as they hiked up the mountain. Connor pulled his jacket tighter around him and burrowed his ice-cold fingers as deep as possible in his pockets. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other on the steep, wide trail that had been plowed through the eucalyptus trees and wild brush. Their hired guide Ketut, who spoke only Bahasa Bali, led the way. An uncharacteristically quiet Richie followed at Ketut's heels. The countryside fell away in receding levels of silver light toward the distant and dark sea.

"You know what sucks?" Richie asked in a low voice, pausing at one point.

"No. Why don't you tell me?" Connor fought to keep irritation out of his voice. This climb had been Richie's idea, after all - his own personal calling, his unidentifiable quest. Connor would have much rather been stretched out in his own bed back at the hotel, preferably with a warm woman beside him. The days when he'd enjoyed roaming the cold, dark countryside at all hours of the night had long since passed into history, leaving him a more sensible and well-rested man.

"Getting huge blisters and then having them heal up, and getting more blisters and having them heal up. The back of my foot itches like you wouldn't believe."

Connor thought about pitching Richie over the side of the mountain to give him something worthy of worrying over, but the sheer ordinariness of the complaint made him pause. And, to be truthful, his own feet tingled madly beneath the ill-fitting contours of a borrowed pair of leather boots.

Still, he couldn't help but chastise, "I thought you were going to complain about something serious."

Richie looked out at the farms, fields, paddies and streams stretched beneath them on Gunung Agung's slopes. The moonlight made his features look hard and chiseled, and the breeze moved a stray curl just above his right ear. "At this minute, I can't think of single serious thing to worry about," he offered.

Connor clapped him on the shoulder and they resumed their climb.

A short time later the last of the mountain temples materialized out of the mist and darkness, a simple structure perched on the edge of the sky. Ketut busied himself setting out flower baskets to the gods. Richie and Connor tried to light the incense, and it took several attempts before the tiny flame flourished in the thin atmosphere. They sat for several minutes in the cold air, listening to the deep silence.

"It's hard to believe there's a whole world out there," Richie finally said. "Highways and traffic jams - bills to pay, appointments to keep, deadlines and hassles - none of it seems real from here."

Connor nodded. He slowly chewed on some dried figs, his concession to breakfast. "Maybe none of it is real."

Richie's gaze narrowed. "No. It's real. It's just . . . not important, really."

"You have to find those things in the world that are important, Richie, and cling to them for all you're worth."

"What things are most important to you?" Richie asked.

Centuries of life and love had solidified the answers in Connor's heart. "Family and friends," he said, without hesitation. "The love of good women. Keeping my head."

Richie looked away. "Mac would say 'honor.'"

"Honor's on my list, too," Connor reassured him. He had wondered if and when the topic of Duncan would arise during the climb. "It's just not in the top three."

The solid trail to the summit ceased at the temple, and they set out on a far narrower and more slippery path in the blanketing darkness. Tree roots and volcanic rock blocked the way in several places. Under the flashlight's beam the black earth turned red with rusting minerals, and the trail abruptly vanished into a smooth slope of barren rock.

"It looks like the moon or something," Richie said.

"This is part of the lava flow from the last eruption," Connor replied. "Back in 1963."

"You didn't mention anything about erupting volcanoes." Richie sounded a little nervous.

Connor grinned. "You didn't ask."

Everything holy on Bali pointed toward the top of Gunung Agung. Connor remembered that much at least from his years as Dayu's husband. From the temple to the peak was the most sacred of ground. As they continued to climb he wondered what would happen if the last two Immortals in the Game found themselves trapped on these same steep slopes, waging battle on the hard and unforgiving paths of nature's fury. Did the rules of holy ground apply at the very end of the Game? Would he live long enough to ever find out?

Soon the exertion of the climb drove the puzzles from his head, and he let his mind fall open. His memories spiraled back through time to the long-ago day in battle when the Kurgan had ripped his mortal life away. He was half a world away from the Highlands, but he thought he could very faintly hear the chaos and thunder of battle, the forceful clash of steel, the cries of dying men. The eastern sky grew gold beyond the mist as the island spun inexorably toward daybreak, and he felt as if he was being pushed backwards in time.

"Richie," he said, stopping.

The younger Immortal turned on the path. "Is something wrong?"

The Highlands fled from the edge of some unnamed sense and instead he felt only the mountain, the looming presence of something with awesome power. "Nothing," Connor said, unnerved. "I just thought I heard something."

"Me, too," Richie said. "I thought - I thought I heard Tessa. I was remembering the night we were killed."

They shared a long look, and then gazed up toward the peak now visible above them. Ketut had paused halfway up the slope and now called back to them in his native tongue.

"Maybe we should go back," Richie suggested.

"Do you want to?"

"Not really, I guess. We're so close. Let's keep going."

Richie's voice trembled a little, but he began climbing again. Connor listened as hard as he could but heard no more sounds of battle as they navigated the last few hundred yards to the peak. Instead he heard the soft, pleasant song Heather would hum to herself while she watched him practice swordfighting with Ramirez. He heard the sound of Dayu's laughter on those rare occasions he had managed to delight her, and the voices of Methos and Darius as they sat on a church roof in Paris, swapping tall tales over a shared bottle of wine.

The voices fell away to the wind. Connor stood at the peak of the mother mountain with Richie at his side, and together they gazed at the world unfolding from night in the glow of sunrise. They had come very far and very high, and the magnificent view made Connor's blood rush.

"Immortality gives, and then she takes away," he said suddenly. "This is one of the times she gives. By all rights, both of us should be dead in our graves."

Richie nodded slightly, but he seemed caught up in his own interior view, a landscape to which Connor was not privileged.

In a distant voice he said, "I'm not afraid of new places, you know. Just new pain."

"All wounds heal, if we let them," Connor supplied. "Like those blisters on your feet."

"What about Mac's wounds?" Richie turned to him, some unresolved emotion carried in the clear blue of his gaze.

"No one knows why people fall sick, whether it be in body or in mind. It's not Duncan's fault that he's ill. His only responsibility is to try and get well with our help."

"Do you think he will? Will he ever be well again?"

Connor hesitated, reluctant to confuse his own desire with a medical opinion. "I hope so."

"Yeah," Richie said. "Me too."

The younger Immortal took a piece of paper from his pocket. It had been folded and unfolded, ripped up and taped together again. The words on it had been scratched out, rewritten and revised again with blue and black ink.

"This is a letter to Mac," he said, turning the paper over and over in his hand.

"I have his address. We can get it to him."

"I was thinking I'd like to deliver it in person."

Connor didn't answer. Richie amended, quickly, "When he's ready, that is."

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah. I think I am." Richie dropped his attention back to the letter and the words in it. "I know he loves me, and that he never meant to hurt me. Even if it did happen three times."

Connor asked, "What made you finally realize the truth?"

"I guess I already knew, way deep down. I just needed you to remind me."

Connor put his arm around Richie's shoulder and squeezed him close. "Consider yourself reminded," he said. "Mac's not the only one who loves you."

"Thanks," Richie said, twin pink dots rising on his cheeks. His boots scuffed the dirt beneath them. "Likewise, you know?"

"I know."

The full disk of the sun rose above the eastern horizon, sending a long trail of light across the shimmering ocean and burning away the morning mist. The sound of birds singing far below lifted up on the breeze. Mortals live and mortals die, Connor thought to himself, but Immortals survived and moved on. He knew they would have to return to Ubud to see Dayu cremated. He wanted and needed to see to that final duty. Afterward, perhaps he could persuade Richie to go knock about Australia with him, visit his old favorite spots in Sydney and the Blue Mountains. And after that, if Duncan was strong enough, they could visit a monastery in remote Nepal and see to the healing of hearts.

Connor and Richie stood for a long time looking at the world Immortality had given them, then turned and followed their guide back down the mountain.

The End

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