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Richie's brain felt like a large lump of mud as he trailed behind Connor through the bustling airport crowds. The myriad smells of the foreign land burned up his nostrils - exotic perfumes, unwashed bodies, Asian cigarettes. Echoing, static-filled announcements in the local language confused him, and the unfamiliar alphabet and symbols on signs didn't help his comprehension a single bit.

Suddenly afraid he might actually lose track of Connor, Richie fought the temptation to reach out and snag the Highlander's shirtsleeve. Connor strode through the airport as if he owned the place, looking alert and refreshed despite their long journey. After clearing Immigration they collected their bags from the luggage carousel and went through the lines at Customs. Once into the main terminal, Connor turned to him and asked, "You want some coffee?"

"No." Richie had gulped down two cups of coffee on the plane, and neither had produced much of an effect. "So what now? Are we going to get a cab?"

"Dayu should have sent a car."

"Who's Dayu?"

"Don't worry. You'll meet her."

"How far is it to this Ubad place?"

"Ubud, not Ubad. Say it like this: OO-bod."

"OO-bod," Richie repeated, although he felt like an idiot. "So how far, huh?"

"About an hour and a half."

"An hour and a half? How fast do they drive around here, anyway?"

"You'll see," Connor said, sounding a little irritated. Maybe he wasn't as alert and refreshed as he looked.

Connor led Richie out the sliding doors and into a mass of hot, humid, sticky air. Bamboo, palm and other trees shot up into the clear blue sky, weathered wooden carts displayed a hundred different tourist souvenirs, and all sizes of buses, vans and cars fought for parking space near the curb. Airport employees in blue vests tried to keep order as shouts of "Transport! Transport!" rang through the air. A half-dozen women descended on Richie and Connor like sharks, their arms full of cheap watches, silk scarves, silver bracelets and beaded necklaces.

"Don't encourage them," Connor said, stonily ignoring the women as he scanned the mayhem.

Richie remembered the street children that had surrounded them outside the Rome train station during a trip with Duncan and Tessa, begging for change with dirty hands and pleading faces. These merchants masked their aggression behind smiles and a dozen questions.

"Hello, welcome to Bali, what's your name - "

"Hello, you like to see jewelry, jewelry for your girlfriend - "

"Very cheap today, just for you, have you been to Bali?"

Richie couldn't mirror the cold indifference of Connor's display, but he intensely disliked being surrounded and set upon as a tourist mark. "No, thanks, nothing - excuse me - goodbye - "

He fought his way out of their circle and found Connor shaking hands with a tall, thin Balinese man standing beside a blue van.

"This is Nyoman. He'll drive us to Ubud and wherever else we need. Nyoman, this is Richie."

The other man's handshake was light and sweaty. "Selamat Pagi, Richie."

"He means 'hello,'" Connor supplied. "He doesn't speak English."

"Selamat Pagi," Richie said, stumbling a little over the syllables but at least making the effort. Nyoman couldn't have been more than a few years older than he was. He wore loose blue pants over stick-thin legs and a ragged white shirt with a coffee stain on it. The driver loaded Connor and Richie's luggage into the back and locked the rear doors. He slid open the side door for Richie, and a wave of chill air-conditioning swept down on the sidewalk.

"I love this guy," Richie said gratefully. Already it had to be ninety degrees out, and he'd been imagining an hour and a half worth of sweltering car heat.

Connor's attention swung back to the curb, and Richie followed his gaze to the two American women they'd first seen back in Seacouver. They emerged from the terminal bossing around the hapless porter who'd loaded their suitcases, laptops and other bags on his cart. He wheeled them toward a public bus just as the merchant women descended with their wares.

"Get away!" Gwen Tiller said sharply, batting at one woman's arm.

"They should outlaw this kind of harassment," her sister complained.

Connor said something to Nyoman, who just nodded.

"You really think those are our Watchers?" Richie asked doubtfully. "They don't exactly blend in with the scenery."

"Doesn't matter," Connor said. "We should be able to lose them easily."

Richie slid into the van. He settled on the back seat, with its worn but clean blue upholstery. Connor took the passenger seat. Nyoman started the engine and pulled the van out into the chaotic airport traffic. Richie's gaze fell on the small, intricate baskets of flowers and grass sitting on the dashboard. Richie had read about those. Ritual offerings to the gods. He was about to comment when Nyoman started asking Connor questions. Connor's replies were slow, a little halting, as he obviously tried to remember words and phrases.

Excluded from their conversation, Richie looked out the window and fought down an increasing onslaught of yawns. The road took them through the large city of Denpasar, with its traffic jams and office buildings and incredible amount of stray dogs. Jeeps, buses, vans, scooters, bicycles, motorcycles and private cars fought for space in the maze-like streets. Once they cleared the city, the road up through the hills began to twist and turn sharply. He saw wild flowers, deep ditches, and rice paddies. Rice paddies made him think of countless movies about Vietnam, where Joe Dawson had once fought and lost his legs in the process.

A short time later Nyoman was stopped by a policeman in the road. Their conversation seemed amiable enough, and after the exchange of a few dollars in the local currency the policeman waved them on.

"Just a little bribe," Connor explained. "Some things never change."

Nyoman couldn't have been going more than forty miles an hour at his fastest, but he drove with the deftness and confidence of an Indy 500 driver. Soon a series of villages on the mountainous road began to slow them down. Richie didn't realize they were villages at first. He thought the worn stone buildings, weathered by time and gray moss, might be abandoned houses. But Connor corrected him and added, "We'll come back along this way later. There are lots of things to see."

Richie rather doubted that. No offense to Bali, but it bore absolutely no resemblance to Paris, with its museums, monuments, shops and cafes. He'd hated the museums at first, having been dragged by the ear through at least a dozen by Tessa, but he'd been just an impatient kid then. He'd come a long way from that younger version of himself.

"How much longer?" he asked Connor.

"Just enjoy the scenery," the Highlander replied.

Richie leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. He dozed lightly, aware of occasional conversation between Nyoman and Connor, the low American rock'n'roll coming out of the van radio, the stop-and-go traffic on the road. He must have fallen fully asleep, though, because the next thing he knew a hand was shaking his shoulder and the van had stopped.

"We're here," Connor said. "Home."

Richie groggily left the van and followed Connor through a gate down a stone path. Thick, perfume-like fragrances filled the air, although it seemed cooler here in the mountains than it did at the airport. The sound of running water made him focus on a lily pond off to his left, where white petals floated in the gentle waves of a small stone water fountain. A garden of lush, colorful flowers spread out as far as he could see behind the fountain. Statues of guardian spirits stood in alcoves by the carved wooden door of the house. The wood and stone structure towered up into the trees for at least forty feet.

"This is your 'hut?'" he complained to Connor.

The Highlander laughed softly. "I may have exaggerated."

A young girl of twelve or thirteen opened the front door and ushered them into a room that seemed as much a part of the outdoors as a part of the indoors. Plants flourished in all corners beneath the high beams and thatched grass of the ceiling. Brilliantly-colored birds chattered from wrought-iron cages. Bamboo furniture stood on the hardwood floor - two sofas, three chairs, little coffee tables with delicate lamps and wooden carvings. Bright pillows made the room even more lively, and a mural of the sea took up one entire wall.

Rooms on the second and third floor opened into the large atrium above, and Richie peered up at a number of shy servants trying to get a peek at Connor.

"You're pretty popular," Richie observed.

"Rich European," Connor said. "Co-owner of the company that employs them."

The giggles and whispers from above fell silent at the sharp snap of a woman's voice. Richie turned to see a short, incredibly old woman standing in the doorway to another room. She might have been beautiful once, he thought, but those days had long since passed beneath decades of lines and wrinkles. Although one trembling hand held firmly to a sturdy cane, her shoulders retained the crisp bearing of a princess or noblewoman. Pearl combs held back her wispy white hair, and the stiffness of her long formal gown gave her an appearance of stability where there probably was little.

"Connor Davison," she said, her voice low and firm.

"Dayu MacLeod," he answered softly, bowing his head in deference.

And then he explained to Richie, in a voice only the two of them could hear, "She's my widow."

***

Perhaps he shouldn't have come.

Connor stood in his room overlooking the river and gorge, undecided and uncertain. The sun overhead reached its zenith and began to slip downward in the sky. The house had settled into its afternoon routine, the servants quietly deferential to their sleeping mistress and guests. Connor had stretched out on his four-poster bed in hopes of snatching a nap for an hour or so, just something to tide him over until his jet lag subsided, but found it impossible to relax. Being back on the island stirred too many memories he thought he'd forgotten, and the passage of years that had virtually ruined Denpasar made him hyper-aware of his own age and changes.

Denpasar was only a city, though. Dayu - well, once upon a time she'd been everything to him.

All mortals die, he reminded himself. Immortals, too, if they didn't watch their heads.

He peered through the leaves below and picked out the wooden structure she'd had constructed as his dojo. She'd sent him the blueprints of the house before having it constructed, since the money came out of their profits. Over the years she'd been careful to keep him updated on all aspects of their business - more frequently in the first few decades, less frequently later on. In any case, he usually had little input to give from his home in New York City. She'd always been the smart one in their relationship, except for the one fatal flaw that had kept them apart the last sixty years.

Something moved on the wall, and Connor's gaze flickered to the small outline of a baby gecko hanging near the lamp. He admitted to himself that 'flaw' was perhaps too harsh a word. He couldn't begrudge her the love of her homeland, the call and thrum of Bali in her veins. He'd felt the same way for centuries about the highlands of Scotland, and still did at times. She'd been only twenty-eight years old when she refused to follow him from the island. How could she have known that the world beyond could sometimes make up for a world abandoned?

Now it was too late. He saw that in the papery-thinness of her skin, the subtle wheeze in her breathing, the fading light in her eyes. She had called him to Bali for her death, and he was bound by old ties and old promises to stay through the very end.

Connor decided that exercise would clear his head. He slipped into a pair of loose pants, a light shirt, sandals. On his way down to the dojo he stopped in Richie's room to check on his friend's sleep. Richie lay in his own large bed, lost in a tangle of cream-colored sheets, his breathing deep and even. Connor fully expected him to sleep until at least midnight and be disconcerted for days about the time change.

The Highlander made his way through the gardens to the dojo and found an open-aired building perfect for his needs. Small statues of the gods lined the low wooden walls, and grass shades could be unfurled in case of rain. Connor started with a number of easy stretches, loosening up muscles from neck to toe. He'd almost forgotten the smell of frangipani flowers, but their sweet essence in the air threatened to tumble him back in time to his younger, more reckless days in the South Pacific.

He kept himself grounded in the present by a series of katas. It only took a few to work up a good sweat and make him feel looser, stronger, better. After an hour of steady movement he almost felt like his old self. The brush of footsteps on the path alerted him to the presence of an observer, but he waited until he'd completed all the moves before turning to see a Balinese woman watching him. She couldn't have been more than thirty years old, and in stark contrast to Dayu's traditional garb she wore modern slacks and a blouse over her woven sandals.

"You must be Mas," he said, recognizing her from photographs Dayu had sent.

"Mr. Davison," she smiled. "I'm happy to meet you."

"Call me Connor."

"Connor. If I may say so, you look remarkably like your great-uncle."

"So they tell me," Connor said easily. "Don't tell me they have his portrait hanging over the office."

Mas Sasilawati smiled even wider. She had a lovely smile, Connor thought. "No. Dayu would never let them put one up. But I've seen it in the old company records, back from the 1930's."

"I'd love to see those," Connor said. And burn them, he almost added.

"I trust your journey was pleasant?"

"It was long," he admitted. "Excuse my appearance. If you'll let me clean up, I'd love to sit down and chat with you for a bit."

She nodded and agreed to meet him in a few minutes. The house had a shower but Connor used the old-fashioned method of cleaning, scooping water with a ladle from the mandi in his room. In clean clothes, he descended the stairs and found Mas sitting in the living room, chatting amiably with one of the caged birds. Over the years Dayu had come to treat her like the daughter she'd never had, and he could see why.

Ten years earlier Mas had taken over the day-to-day running of the company, and Connor was interested to hear her experiences. One of the servants brought them fresh mango juice and fried banana to munch on while they talked. Mas told Connor about the rising export taxes, the surge in business during the last year, the problems they were having with their fabric dyers. She impressed him as being smart and practical. She had a husband and two children, which disappointed Connor. He'd been thinking of setting her up with Richie, despite the difference in their ages. A little fling might just be what the younger Immortal needed. At four o'clock Richie himself appeared, looking as lost and confused as any sleepwalker.

"What are you doing up?" Connor asked.

"Hungry," Richie complained.

Connor took him to the kitchen and the cook produced some lumpia for the younger Immortal. Richie poked at the fried rolls, decided he liked them, and ate a half-dozen before heading back to bed. Connor made sure he was settled and closed the door to his room. Mas came out of Dayu's room at the same time, her expression full of sadness.

"It won't be long now," she said. "You know her time has almost come?"

"I know."

"She wants to see you."

Connor nodded. The time had come to fully face the past. He opened Dayu's door and went inside, crossing the threshold of six decades, the gulf that pushed him and his love thousands of miles apart, the rift between the man he was now and the husband he'd once been.

***

Her room smelled of jasmine. Jasmine and lotus, and perfumes of ages past. The sun had dipped below the ridge, and diffused golden light spread over the low balcony wall with the warmth of honey. She kept photographs of people he didn't know in silver frames on her dresser. That surprised him. She'd always been the most unsentimental of women. The mosquito net around her bed had been pulled back to reveal her frail form, propped up on a thick wedge of pillows. A small brown monkey sat in her lap.

"He's mine," Dayu said, opening her eyes. "You can't have him."

Connor almost laughed. Not only unsentimental, but very possessive. "He's yours," he agreed, and sat on the hardwood chair at her bedside. The monkey nibbled on a nut and then swallowed it.

"You never did age," she observed.

"I told you I wouldn't."

"I didn't believe you."

He remembered that long ago night with painful clarity - stealing through the window, waking her from her tear-stained pillow, persuading her he was still alive despite his death in front of hundreds of people.

She must have been remembering the night also, for she said, "For years, I couldn't entirely convince myself you weren't an evil spirit."

"You don't believe in evil spirits."

"I do now. I've seen too much not to."

Connor thought of Duncan and his Dark Quickening. Perhaps she was right. Solemnly he said, "I am not now, nor have I ever been, an evil spirit."

He paused, then added, "It is true that I haven't always been the best of men."

A smile turned up the corner of her mouth. "Nice to hear you admit it."

Dayu stretched her hand toward him a few inches. He took it, feeling the fragile bones beneath her skin, life ebbing away with each pulse. The monkey watched them closely.

"Where did you go, when you left here?" she asked.

She knew; he had written to her from every place. But he indulged her anyway. "Europe, first. I wanted to see for myself what was happening. Then I went around the world, enlisting support from my friends, calling in favors where I could. I was in France when she fell." Connor skipped over the unpleasant details of his war years. "After that I traveled quite a bit, went to Africa for a while, lived in Norway and Finland. I finally settled in New York, and I've been there ever since."

Dayu closed her eyes. "Names on maps," she said bitterly. "They don't exist, because I've never seen them."

He couldn't argue with her on that point.

"This island is my home," she said. "You wanted me to leave it, and I couldn't."

"I needed you to leave it, because I couldn't stay." Connor brushed a wisp of white hair from her crinkled forehead. "You chose between us."

He wanted to hear her say she had chosen wrong. That she fully regretted staying in her homeland over staying with him, wherever the winds took them. But she would not give him that final satisfaction, and he had been foolish to expect it.

Connor couldn't tell if she had fallen asleep on him or was dying. He sat in the still, silent room at the end of day, holding her hand. The monkey looked at Dayu's face, then at Connor's. It made its own decision, and climbed into the Highlander's lap to curl up and wait for the inevitable.

***

When Richie woke up, the clock on his bedside read two o'clock. It took him a fuzzy moment to realize that the lack of sunlight meant it must be nighttime. Someone had left a lamp burning in the corner and rolled down the netting that kept moths beyond the half-wall separating his room from the jungle. Richie stayed in bed for several more minutes before he realized he wasn't truly tired anymore. He went to the window, his attention drawn as if by a magnet toward the northeast. He thought he could feel something out there, something huge and ancient, a beacon of some sort. But all he could see were the dark shapes of trees, the night-time jungle shifting in the breeze.

His stomach prompted him into action, as it often did. Richie tiptoed as quietly as he could down the stairs and through the unfamiliar, moonlit rooms of the house in search of something to eat. Not surprisingly, he was the only one awake. His quest ended in success in the kitchen, where the stainless steel sink lay nestled in a bed of plants and the modern refrigerator held a dozen different unfamiliar foods. Richie poked at a platter of noodles that had been wrapped in plastic film and grabbed a can of cheap soda. He sat on a stool at the kitchen island and ate until he was full. Crickets and other insects kept up a steady symphony of noise outside the house, but inside all remained still and quiet.

He decided to go back to his room to read more of that book about the guy kayaking around the islands. In a few hours it would be dawn, and maybe Connor would appear to show him the better parts of Bali. Richie still had trouble wrapping his thoughts around the idea he was in the middle of the South Pacific. The long journey on planes seemed like a fuzzy, faded ordeal. He only vaguely recalled the airport and trip to Ubud. He did remember Connor saying that the old lady of the house was his widow, an interesting choice of words. He imagined Immortals like Connor and Methos had tons of ex-wives and girlfriends all over the globe, waiting to come out of the woodwork.

Not Duncan, though. No, Mac had been a little more selective when giving away his heart. Tessa had been his love for twelve years. After her tragic death had come any number of one-night stands, beginning with Annie Devlin, which Richie had always thought disrespectful to Tessa's memory. None of them had meant anything, though. Then Anne Lindsey had succeeding in winning and breaking Mac's heart. Richie wondered if her rejection had anything to do with Mac's downward spiral into the depression, the Dark Quickening, and then the total collapse of believing some demon had set its sights on him and that he, Duncan MacLeod, was Champion of the World.

He told himself to stop speculating. Methos had told him it was useless - no one would ever know exactly why or how Mac had fallen into such an obsessive, guilt-ridden, bizarre fantasy of religious prophecy and ultimate evil. He supposed that was true, but Richie dearly wanted to know why Mac kept turning on him, why it was always his head his mentor always sought.

Richie washed the empty plate and put it on a rack to dry. He tidied up the kitchen, turned off the lights and started across the living room. Directly in front of him, a shape moved on the stairs, turning and raising a sword in his direction.

Shit. Not again.

Richie immediately stepped backwards, colliding with an end table, tripping over a Japanese-style lamp with thin paper shades. He landed heavily in the darkness and tried to scramble away, but the electrical cord wrapped around his ankle jerked him back. He let out a yelp and ripped it from the wall. An overhead light flicked on, flooding the room with glare, and Connor peered down at him from the second floor of the stairs.

"What are you doing down here?" Connor hissed.

A small monkey on the stairs, clutching Dayu's cane in one hand, jabbered its innocence.

Richie slumped back on the floor, too embarrassed to even begin explaining.

More lights came on as the servants appeared. He'd managed to wake the entire household, it seemed. Richie stayed exactly where he was until Connor came down the stairs and righted first the table, then the broken lamp. He climbed to his feet on his own, brushing off the helpful hands of one of the servants.

"I'm fine," he said, although he could feel the lump on the side of his head where he'd hit the floor. He could also feel the warmth of redness in his cheeks. "Thanks. Sorry, everyone."

Connor didn't ask him how he was, but reassured everyone and sent them all away. The Highlander didn't say a word of reprimand as he took Richie back upstairs to his room. Only when Connor closed the door on the hall did Richie try to explain.

"I'm sorry - I thought I saw something - I'm an idiot, okay?"

Connor pointed to the bed. Although Richie had slept enough for a week, he obediently climbed up and sat against the pillows. Connor took a seat in a large bamboo chair and rubbed his face.

He looked very tired. When he spoke, he said nothing Richie expected.

"She's dying."

"Dayu?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"It's to be expected. She's eighty-eight years old, and has been in poor health these last few years. But she only asked me to come last week."

Richie studied the older Immortal. "You didn't have to bring me. I don't want to be a burden or anything at a time like this."

Connor's gaze pierced him. "I came because of her," he said. "I brought you because I wanted family - my family - along. Not as a burden, as a support. And if you benefit as well, that's even better."

Richie's cheeks grew even warmer. When Connor referred to him as a nephew, he'd always taken it as a joke. Mac, to be certain, had never tried to identify himself as Richie's father - had even refuted it once, when they were arguing over who got to kill Haresh Clay.

"Thanks," Richie said to Connor. "But I'm not sure how much of a support I can be. If you haven't noticed, I'm kinda my own miniature basket case at the moment."

The self-admission surprised Richie. Where in the world had that come from? But he knew it was true. Since Paris he hadn't been eating or sleeping properly, he barely lifted his sword in practice anymore, and he'd taken to being afraid of towels and small animals.

Though to be fair, no one had told him there was a monkey in the house.

Connor gave him an appraising look. "You're not a 'basket case.' You just need some rest and relaxation."

"Still . . . " Richie was about to argue, but he held himself back. Dayu's imminent death deserved to be more of a topic of conversation than his own personal problems. She'd been Connor's wife, after all. "How long does she have?"

"Anywhere from a few hours to a few days."

"How did you meet her?"

"You don't have to humor me, Richie."

"I want to know."

Connor didn't answer immediately. He seemed to be searching deep within himself for somewhere to start. "After the Great War - that's the first World War for you - I was living in Australia. Living a little largely, in fact - too many girls, too many parties, too many debts. That lasted about ten years. Then I had a bad period - too many Immortals came knocking on my door, and the police were getting suspicious. I ended up moving here for a while for the peace and quiet. I got a job working for Dayu's father. I learned his business, married his daughter, and started my own company.

"We lived happily for five years. Then I started hearing about Hitler's rise in Germany. Letters from my Jewish friends there did not bode well. In the summer of 1937, the Japanese invaded China. Wars all over the world loomed closer and closer. I just couldn't stand by and do nothing."

"So you left her to fight in WWII and never came back?"

"Don't jump ahead, Richie. It wasn't like that. Before I could decide what to do, I died a very public death here at the end of 1937. It was a stupid way to die - a bar fight in Denpasar. The drunk son-of-a-bitch shot me dead in front of a hundred witnesses."

"Ouch."

"I couldn't stay here. The island was too small in those days, and I knew too many people. But Dayu wouldn't leave with me. She loved Bali too much to let it go. So ended our marriage."

Richie tried to imagine what it would be like, to be married to a woman who preferred a place over her husband. Some of his thoughts must have shown on his face, for Connor said, "It wasn't an easy decision for her. She faced a lot of pressure by remaining here. They used to burn widows, you know."

"Burn them? But that's murder!"

"Most of the time the widows went willingly. It was a guarantee of swift ascent into heaven."

"Dayu didn't believe in it, huh?"

"The Dutch outlawed it. But still . . . " Connor shook his head, dispersing old memories. "In any case, Dayu didn't burn. She never remarried or had children, either. She faced severe criticism for that."

"She loved you so much she never remarried, huh?"

"She was always stubborn - did exactly what she wanted to do. I don't know how much love for me had to do with it." Despite his denial, though, Connor looked a little uplifted at the idea of Dayu having loved him for so many decades despite her refusal to leave.

"Connor, when the time comes, I'll do whatever I can to help."

"All you have to do, Richie, is eat. Relax. Practice. Stop blaming yourself for Duncan's illness or decisions. He loves you like a son, and when I saw him he was worried sick about you."

"He was?"

"Yes. He's ashamed to have brought such pain to your life. I told him you were resilient enough and strong enough to overcome it."

"Oh." Richie didn't know quite what to say to that, and opted for silence.

"I'll see you in the morning," Connor said, and left. Richie lay back on the bed, the kayaking book in hand. After several minutes of reflection he searched the writing desk in the corner and found a pen and several pieces of paper. He sat down by the window and descending moon and began to tentatively compose a letter to Mac.

***

In the morning, Richie met Mas Sasilawati. He liked her immediately. He liked her sister Mayke even more. Mayke, twenty years old with a sunny disposition, also worked for Dayu and Connor's fabric business. Mayke drove him down into the village of Ubud, whose main street was lined with arts and crafts stores of every imaginable variety. Australian, American and Japanese tourists already crowded the shops, haggling over masks, baskets, furniture, jewelry and other local specialties. In the store that Dayu and Connor MacLeod had started - the business Connor "Davison" inherited - Richie learned all about ikat, the prized home-spun cotton that was dyed and woven into intricate designs.

"We use them in weddings, funerals and even circumcisions," Mayke told him.

Richie hadn't realized they even performed circumcisions in Bali. He preferred not to think about it. Mayke showed him all sizes and colors of ikat until his head started to spin. They watched a puppet show in the main plaza, and for lunch retired to a little cafe in the shade. She quizzed him on his food likes and dislikes and ordered several small dishes - little meatballs, stuffed pancake, mixed vegetables with peanut sauce, and even a bowl of chicken soup.

"I think I'm beginning to love this place," Richie said, just as the worst band he had ever heard began to play unfamiliar instruments in the street outside. "What the hell is that noise?"

"The gamelan orchestra," Mayke giggled. "Don't you like it?"

"It's certainly . . . unique," Richie said, opting for a diplomatic response. The drums, whistles and strange gamelan certainly lent the cafe an exotic air. He tried to imagine booking the act into Joe's bar - somehow, he didn't think Joe or the jazz enthusiasts of Seacouver would go for the idea.

Two loud voices complaining about their meal snapped his attention toward the next cafe on the street, where the obnoxious Tiller sisters sat at an outdoor table.

"This tastes like some kind of squirrel," Gwen Tiller said, pushing her soup bowl away. "Or maybe a rodent."

Clara relocated a glass of lemonade to the center of the table, away from her laptop computer. "This isn't bitter enough. It's too sweet."

"Oh, man," Richie sighed. "They're everywhere."

"Who are they?" Mayke asked.

"People with nothing better to do with their lives," he muttered. Apparently Connor's previous life in Bali wasn't a secret from the Watcher Chronicles. Coincidence couldn't explain the Watchers' presence in Ubud. He knew the Highlander would be unhappy to hear about it.

They toured the marketplace after lunch, with Richie being careful to keep out of the Tiller sisters' view. The searing midday heat began to bother him, and he felt a headache coming on. Mayke suggested a scenic stroll outside the village on a popular walk called the Monkey Forest Path.

"I've had enough monkeys already today," Richie admitted.

"You look tired. Would you like me to take you back?"

He hated to wimp out on her but yes, he did. They returned to a house silent and still in the afternoon sunlight. Dayu had not yet died, but her shadow hung heavy in the airy rooms. Connor's expression tightened at the news of the Tiller sisters' arrival and he immediately put through an overseas call to Joe Dawson.

"I can't believe you sent those women after us," Connor said angrily.

Joe feigned innocence. "What are you talking about?"

From the extension Richie said, "Joe, come on. They're loud, they're rude, they're obnoxious - "

"Clara and Gwen," Joe sighed. "Look, I'm sorry about that. But your regular Watchers couldn't drop everything and fly off to Bali at a moment's notice. Those two could. They're not actually field agents - they mostly do research. Okay, usually they only do research. They're not too bad once you get to know them."

"Joe Dawson, I'm going to get you back for this," Connor threatened.

"It's my job, Connor. What did you expect? Give a guy a break, will you?"

After the contentious phone call Richie took a nap, his body still trying to adjust to the time difference. That night Connor went with him to Ubud to see a ritual fire dance in the village's main meeting place. They saw no sign of the American Watchers. Over brown bottles of the local beer - strong and cheap, just the way Richie liked it - Connor vented his anger over Watchers in general.

"They have nothing better to do than to watch us?" he growled. "Their lives are so horribly boring they have to devote themselves to being voyeurs?"

Richie, who felt more charitable about Watchers in general even though he disliked their occupation, offered, "They think it's important to document history as we live it."

"Bullshit." Connor drank some more. "Clicking away endlessly on computer keyboards, living in the shadows or in the dusty aisles of libraries - probably placing bets on which of us will win the Game - commenting on affairs they have no business discussing - it's a pathetic way to live one's life. Look at Dawson. He's one of their leaders, and he doesn't even follow his own rules."

Richie shrugged. He'd never understood, personally, why Joe kept insisting that Watchers never interfered, when it had become patently obvious time and time again they did. "I know Mac would be still locked up in some cell if Joe didn't break the rules," he said.

Connor ignored that. "They're thieves, that's what they are."

"Thieves? What do you mean?"

"They track Immortals so that when one loses his head, they can swoop in with dirty lawyers and fraudulent wills to claim the abandoned estates. Where do you think they get their operating money? It must cost a small fortune to keep them all employed - plus benefits, plus computer and telephone costs, plus that nice fancy headquarters in France."

"I don't believe they're stealing - "

"Ask Joe sometime. Ask him where he gets his salary from."

Richie frowned but didn't provoke Connor into any further rants about Watchers. He hoped the Tiller sisters stayed out of the Highlander's way, for their own sakes.

Over the next two weeks Richie's days fell into a pattern - an early morning workout with Connor, sightseeing around the local villages, lunch, nap, dinner and more sightseeing. Dayu had a small pool in the back of the house, right next to the household temple. Richie floated for hours in the tranquil blue water, and for more vigorous swimming went down to the river. Mayke had several friends Richie's own age who took him in hand as one of their own. Sometimes he met American or Australian tourists in Ubud and spent time with them. Sometimes he spent the day by himself, walking through the fields and rice paddies or along the river, thinking about Mac and Tessa and his life back in Seacouver.

The early morning workouts frustrated him. He needed them desperately, and it felt good to be getting back into shape again. But every time Connor feinted toward his left shoulder - and he did so with alarming frequency - Richie lost his concentration and balance.

"You have to get past this," Connor told him one day, as they toweled off and drank water.

"I know," Richie replied, irritated. The phantom pain from Mac's savage cut didn't bother him as much as it had back in America, but he could still feel its twinges every now and then.

Dayu lingered near death with either Connor or Mas almost always at her side. Richie knew she had died the day he and Mayke returned from a tour of local temples and found the servants crying. Connor was dry-eyed and stoic, but Richie had learned a thing or two about the Highlander over the years and wasn't fooled. The local priests came to begin the funeral and celebration rites - death in Bali, Richie had learned, lasted a lot longer than it did in most other corners of the world.

First off, the proper ceremonies had to be performed with all of their intricate symbols and sacred rituals. It was immediately decided that Connor Davison, Dayu's foreign great-nephew, could not possibly be effective in that regard. Mas proposed to take over - an unusual dilemma because she was a woman and not even a blood relation. The offer caused the priests great distress until the ancestral spirits were consulted and agreed to the arrangement. The body was laid out in the room for several days while mourners came to pay their respects. Each visitor had to be fed and offered drink, which kept the servants busy enough.

Richie stayed out of the way, mostly. He didn't feel right about sightseeing every day while Connor and Mas dealt with the funeral arrangements, but Connor persuaded him to go anyway. It helped to get away from the house - Richie had grown accustomed to many facets of death since becoming Immortal, but he still felt squeamish knowing the wrapped corpse of a dead woman lay just a few rooms from his each night. So while Connor helped with the intricacies of satay stick invitations and the collection of holy water from sacred springs, Richie went with Mayke to the Hard Rock Cafe, reptile and zoological parks, a temple cockfight, and even an art museum or two.

On the last night Dayu's corpse would reside in the house, Richie found himself standing at his bedroom window and responding to the subtle call to the northeast. He felt its tug as surely as he felt the fragrant breeze on his face. Connor and Mas stopped by his room on their way out.

"What do you see out there?" Connor asked, looking and sounding tired.

"I don't know," Richie admitted. "Something that way keeps calling to me."

"Gunung Agung," Mas said.

"The mountain?" Richie asked skeptically.

Connor said, "Not just any mountain." He seemed disinclined to discuss the topic, though. "We'll be back at dawn."

"Can I come?" Richie asked.

The Highlander studied him for a moment. Richie had been doing all the things Connor prescribed for him. His sleep was not entirely restful each night, but he figured that came from having the corpse nearby. He'd put on ten pounds since their arrival in June, and felt stronger with each passing day.

"Are you sure?" Connor asked.

Richie nodded.

Nyoman drove them in the van to the outskirts of Ubud. Mas explained to Richie that Connor had volunteered to perform the ritual gathering of water from five streams by himself. The ritual had to be done at midnight without any lamps or torches for illumination, and although Connor had to do it alone, his friends could watch from afar. It was considered to be dangerous in that any dark magic during the ceremony could doom Dayu's soul to wander the earth for all eternity.

Richie looked for a moon that night, but saw only the twinkling stars and constellations of the Southern Hemisphere. He stood with Mas and some of Dayu's oldest friends as Connor collected the water, his back bent to the task. The gentle sounds of running water in the streams and the sound of insects cloaked the deep, encompassing quiet. Only Richie knew how far Connor had come for this task - a Scottish sixteenth-century warrior bending to the ritual gods of Bali. He quietly marveled at the sight. The next morning they buried Dayu's corpse in a shallow grave covered with flowers. On the fortieth day after her death they would dig her up again for the cremation ceremony, and her spirit would ascend.

The burial brought Richie a measure of relief, but he couldn't tell how Connor felt about it. The Highlander had withdrawn into himself. Richie wasn't sure sorrow had pushed him into the action. He thought, maybe, that Connor was regretting events and decisions that could never be undone. They resumed their practice in the dojo, but Connor's heart didn't seem to be in it. Richie tried for two days to think of some way to cheer up his honorary uncle. He settled for renting a motorcycle with a sidecar and inviting Connor along for a ride.

Connor eyed both the bike and Richie dubiously. "I'm afraid to ask."

"Come on," Richie said, climbing onto the seat and motioning toward the sidecar. His fingers brushed the ritual offering tied to the handlebars. Even motorcycles had gods to appease in Bali. "This belongs to Mayke's cousin, and I promised him I'd have it back to him after dinner."

After a moment of obvious doubt, Connor climbed carefully into the sidecar. Richie drove them down the twisting road toward the village of Petulu, and turned onto a country lane that ran clean and true to the east. The sun sat low in the sky, promising another beautiful sunset.

"Where are we going?" Connor shouted over the rush of wind.

"We're already there!" Richie answered, and pointed skyward.

Connor looked up. Richie divided his attention between the road and overhead as safely as he could. The air thickened, the sky darkened, and the cries of a hundred graceful white birds rose above the throb of the motorcycle engine. Another hundred herons followed. Hundreds more joined from the north. Soon thousands of birds filled the sky, a fluttering sea of white wings spread in joyous flight. They converged in a single perfect "V" before starting to take up residence in the tall trees that lined the road.

The Immortals raced along beneath them, part of the spectacle, and soon even Connor was laughing at the rush of birds, wind, speed and sunset.

When they reached the outskirts of Petulu, Richie pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine. He and Connor sat quietly in the gathering dusk as the last of the birds settled in for the night.

"Thanks," Connor finally said. "I needed that."

"I know." Richie didn't tell Connor that Mayke's cousin had taken him on the exact same trip a week earlier. Let Connor believe Richie had discovered the marvel on his own. Richie studied the lines in Connor's face and the weary set of his shoulders. "Can I say something?"

"Can I stop you?"

"I just think - and maybe I've got it all wrong - I just think it's okay to admit you stopped loving her a long time ago."

Any lingering amusement left Connor's face, warmth skittering away from icy coldness. "You do, eh?"

"Yeah." Richie knew that tone of voice. He shifted his gaze away from the mistake he'd just made and to the open road. But he refused to take the words back, no matter what sarcastic retort Connor might be mustering.

A full moment passed in silence before Connor said, "I suppose you're right."

Richie glanced back at him, surprised and relieved. "I am?"

"I feel like I have a duty to still love her," Connor admitted. "But behind that duty there's only emptiness. Perhaps I'm heartless."

"You're anything but heartless!" Richie protested swiftly. "Sixty years is just a really long time."

"I suppose."

Richie took another risk. "If we're on the subject of your failings, though, let's talk about that promise you made me that you haven't followed through on."

Connor gave him a suspicious look. "And which promise is that?"

"The one with white sandy beaches, lots of alcohol and naked girls."

"Oh. That promise," Connor said.

Two days later they set out east, toward the coast.

To Part Three