"And so you know of me--and from her--she who will not bear speaking of--what do you want with me?" Methos asked. He could only imagine--he remembered her well. He knew what she would want--he thought. He had been her favorite--knew her the best. There was not one of the men who ever knew her who came close to knowing all she could teach--but then, she had loved him.
"She--I won't talk of her. She said I should find you--and the others. That was all. But I know what we could be."
Methos' mind pondered that. *The others*. He knew what that could mean. Her last family. And what did that make this talented stranger?
He could not be--the boy.
"Have we ever met?" Methos asked, as if innocent of the answer. Kronos might well have seen him before--it was not out of the question.
"I think we may have." Kronos could remember. He was the one who had carried her away when she had died in Uruk. He had been the one--one of the many odd visitors to her temple chamber--he could remember. And he knew--he could easily see--he had been her right arm. She had trusted Methos--there could be no other reason why she rode with him for those twenty years. Looking at him, he could remember what he once thought, when he first realized what they were. Himself. Anath-Sin. Methos. "Uruk. Nippur. Do not try to draw the story out of me. You know what I was."
Methos pulled up his steed. He took a long look at the man who rode ahead, now. He couldn't be--he was. The man's horse was bred from mountain stock--wild. He had trained it himself; there could be no other way for it to be trained to the bridle. His attire was the armor of an Easterner. His tongue--the tongue in which he chose to converse--was the Sumerian of an educated man--he could be none other.
The foundling she had made a king. The fond hope she wagered her life upon. Her death--in the flesh. He may not have even known he was the cause of her death--but Methos knew.
He hated him, even as he pitied him.
"I know--but I would know of her--she is no more?"
"She died. Left dead by the Euphrates, where she had first laid eyes on me. In my beginning...I buried her there, leaving a stone in her honor. She would have been burned--I knew her! I also knew the fatherless one ho killed her, but she laid her curse on him. You know of her--the words?"
"She would speak the words and the thing would come to pass," Methos responded, wryly. He knew that to be her way. It was a thing he never could question. He had seen it himself--too often to wonder.
Kronos nodded. "She said the revenge would be hers--and I believed her. I still do. She said we were her revenge because we would endure--I believe that, too. She said I should find you, because you would lead me to the others...and then, we would be what she dreamed of."
Methos' could not fathom what the m,an meant by these things. *what she dreamed of*. He knew the dreams of Anath-Sin--they were of war. Always of war. She knew no other life.
"Of what did she dream?"
"Her family--together. Riding. A legend that made other legends pale. Not her name--but ours. So long as one of us could carry the tale, she said, she lived. I mean to hold to that. I've lost everything--for her. Because of her. But I'll carry her name--damn her!"
His eyes were the eyes of a man who had seen visions too terrible to speak of. Methos saw those eyes, and did not imagine himself in the presence of a younger man--but a man who had ridden alongside Anath-Sin.
That were maturity enough for anyone.
Posted on Mar 18, 2000, 9:45 PM from IP address 171.208.229.205