20. Dark Magic
Sara's brow furrowed as she turned the foreign word over in her mind, trying to make sense of what Yugi had just said as he spun on his heel and walked out through the French doors into the garden beyond, ending any further debate on the matter. Not that she had understood a word of it in the first place. His three friends—the blond who had been standing behind the couch, the MP, and the brunette girl—walked out behind him in show of solidarity.
She leaned over to Ryou Bakura. "What's 'aibou'? Do you know what that means?"
The Japanese-Englishman with hair as white as her own nodded. "It's Japanese. It more or less means partner."
Sara sat back in her seat. Partner. What an odd word to use in this context. She considered the Japanese word again alongside its English translation, examining it, trying to decipher how it connected Yugi to this situation. Whose partner?
The whole conversation between Yugi and Ishizu had been bizarre. Besides the whole interchange with Bakura that might as well have been in Japanese as well for all she understood of it, they had actually been talking about Atem's and Seto's spirits as if the ancient Egyptian beliefs were fact, that the mutilation of their bodies really had sent their souls to hell, or more correctly, to Duat. Although she had been the one to spell that out, she had meant it metaphorically, a description of the intent of whoever did this, not something that she believed actually happened. But then Yugi and Ishizu had discussed it as if it were real, and it was clear to her that the idea of their souls in Duat caused him so much pain he couldn't bear it.
Images from Seto's tomb as she found it that night flashed through her mind. The truth was, she couldn't bear it. Partner, she thought, and for some reason it made her think of the dragon and the man from her dreams, and it made a strange sort of sense to her.
Partner.
Before she realized what she was doing, she was on her feet and heading toward the garden.
"Sara?" asked a startled Professor Julius, who had just been getting ready to launch into one of his patented diatribes about scholarly objectivity. "Where are you going?"
"I'm going out there to offer to help them. I suspect not all of them can read hieroglyphics and hieratic texts, so Yugi could probably use additional help."
Her mentor stared at her, sputtering a moment. "You are my student, Sara! You have your own work to do here."
"I'm on holiday, Professor. If I choose to spend my holiday in California rather than Luxor, that is my choice to make. I shall be back at the start of the term."
Without waiting for his reply, she stepped out into the garden. She half expected him to come after her; he could be quite adamant and didn't like being challenged, she knew, but he did not follow her. Turning her attention away from the office, she traveled down the path that wound through the private garden until she found the four friends clustered together on a bench. She hesitated; the way they were gathered together around Yugi, they seemed like an impenetrable barrier, a city walled unto itself, closed to all outsiders. She stood for a moment, not sure what to do, until Yugi caught her eye. Even though she had only met him not an hour before, she could tell that he did not normally look this tired and worn, as if he were a mere shell from which anything vital and alive had been sucked out through a straw. But he gave her a smile, one that didn't quite look real or touch his eyes, but which seemed at least to come from a habit of being kind, and she took that as an invitation to approach them.
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to intrude, but I was wondering if… that is to say… I would like to help you if I could."
He raised his eyebrows. "Help me?"
She nodded. "I can help you look for a ritual that would bring their spirits back from Duat. I'm on holiday and I've always wanted to visit the United States." She suddenly felt self-conscious, realizing how presumptuous her offer was. Yugi's friends were all sort of scrutinizing her and exchanging glances as if trying to determine whether she was fit to join their exclusive club, which wasn't helping. "I just, well, I don't know how many of you can read ancient texts, but I thought maybe another pair of eyes would be useful."
Yugi tilted his head, studying her. "Why would you want to? You don't believe in this stuff, do you?"
"Yeah, your teacher seemed to think it was all pretty stupid," the tall one—the MP—said.
She wasn't sure what to say to that. "Of course I don't believe it, but that doesn't make it stupid. What you said, Yugi, it struck a nerve with me. Before, too, when you mentioned that you find it difficult to be dispassionate about this era. I feel the same way."
He frowned, then shook his head. "I really appreciate the offer, but I think we've got it covered between me and Professor Hawkins and his granddaughter."
"Didn't the professor say he was taking his granddaughter to Boston until the start of term? I'd need to be back in Cairo for my own spring term, but I could certainly fill the void until the professor returns."
"It's a lot more… complicated than it sounds, and I'd rather not get anyone new who isn't already mixed up in everything involved."
The girl beside Yugi nodded in agreement. "Trust me. You so don't want to get involved in anything to do with the Shadow Realm."
She raised her eyebrow. "Shadow Realm?"
"Duat, more or less," Yugi said.
She thought it odd that they had their own name for Duat, and even odder that the ancient Egyptian mythological hell would make them uneasy. But it was the word 'involved' that she kept coming back to. She sat down on a bench across from them and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees and her hands cupping her chin. "But I feel as if I already am involved, you see?"
His eyes narrowed and she felt like he was trying to decipher her the way he might a particularly difficult hieratic text. "What do you mean?"
She considered a moment how much she should tell them. "I'm not sure, really. I… I never intended to study Egyptology. When I started at Cambridge, I was on an Oriental Studies course, with a focus on Chinese Studies. But about halfway through my second year, I… developed an interest in ancient Egypt." She didn't tell them it was because she'd dreamt that she was a dragon flying about in ancient Egypt. No point in sharing that. "I attended a guest lecture by Professor Julius, and I was absolutely enthralled. It was a discourse on the pharaohs and their tombs and the mythology of ancient Egypt."
The blond, she couldn't remember his name, widened his eyes in surprise. "That guy did a lecture on Egyptian mythology?"
"I know it may have sounded like he didn't care about any of that, but that's just how he is. Very logical, very objective."
Yugi nodded. "He and Professor Hawkins used to bicker like an old married couple when we were on our dig. He's a great guy, Joey, he just… well, think Kaiba as an archaeologist."
The blond—Joey—curled his lip. "That's not exactly helping me get the 'great guy' part there, Yuge."
"I don't mean his personality, I mean the whole 'I don't believe this nonsense' thing."
"So his lecture made you want to study Egyptology?" The girl gently redirected the conversation back to Sara.
"That's right. Fortunately for me, Egyptology is also under the Oriental Studies faculty at Cambridge, so it didn't set me back to change course halfway through my undergraduate degree. But anyway, a year ago, I came out here on winter holiday. I'd hoped to meet with Professor Julius, whom I'd already arranged to study with in Cairo once I graduated, but he was on that expedition with you lot." She nodded to Yugi. "So instead I toured around a bit on my own. Found myself in Giza and saw that tablet, the one with the carving that resembles you. I… I don't know what it was, and Professor Julius would scoff at me for being a romantic like Professor Hawkins, but the only way I can describe it is that I fell in love. Something about that era spoke to me like no other era had. The two figures engaged in some sort of ritual battle, it was so powerful."
She paused, struggling to explain the experience she'd had when she'd first seen the stone carvings depicting a battle between a dragon and a wizard, eerily similar to her dreams. The dragon and the figure under it in particular had captivated her, reminding her so much of her dream-dragon-self and the boy and their connection, but that was something else she wasn't about to share. "Something about it was just… magical."
This seemed to cause a strange reaction among the group of friends, all of them starting and trading looks with each other that she couldn't interpret. She flushed, hearing Professor Julius's admonishment in her head: we are scholars, not romantics, Sara! "It sounds silly, I know—"
She wished she hadn't said so much, but Yugi suddenly narrowed his eyes with a look that seemed to go right through her. "Who are you?"
She frowned. "What do you mean, 'who am I?' I'm Sara Drake, master's student in Egyptology under—"
"I know that." He waved impatiently, and she was taken aback by the abrupt change in his manner. Where he'd seemed diffident, shy even, when they'd first been introduced, he now suddenly had adopted a lazy, almost arrogant demeanor. "I mean who are you? Do you have some connection to the Millennium Items?"
"The Millennium Items? Why do you keep going on about the Millennium Items?"
"Because they're key to everything that happened here. What do you know about them?"
"Just that they were talismans the pharaoh and his court wore or carried on their person during that era, and that they were believed to have magical properties."
"But you have no connection to them?"
"Connection to them? I'm not sure I understand." She shifted, uncomfortable under his intense scrutiny. "I just wanted to offer my help, but if you have a problem with that, I—"
"No, I'm sorry. You're right, I'm being rude," he said quickly, and as abruptly as it had come, the haughtiness was gone and he looked troubled instead. "It's just… you look familiar, and when it comes to these particular pharaohs, magic and the Millennium Items go hand-in-hand."
"I didn't mean magic in the literal sense. I'm just trying to explain why I want to help you. Why I… why I need to help you. This… these pharaohs mean something to me, even if I can't explain why. Why else would I end up in Seto's tomb when I had my bout of sleepwalking? And… it was rather horrifying. I… I don't know why someone would do this, but—" She looked at the MP. "I'm sorry, what was your name again?"
"Tristan."
"Yes, Tristan, thank you. What you said about revenge and 'hate crimes' so perfectly describes what I saw. What it felt like. So, I don't know. I want to do something. What you propose, Yugi, finding a way to make up for the desecration in a way that would have honored Seto and Atem and their beliefs, that just feels like the right thing to do, and I'd like to help if I may."
He regarded her with astonishingly wide round eyes, then gave her a short bow of the head that struck her as very Japanese. "But you need to understand about the Millennium Items first. And I'm not talking about history, I'm talking about really understanding. I used to own one of the Millennium Items."
"Really? I wasn't aware that any replicas had been made."
"Not a replica. An actual artifact from Atem's tomb. It was a Puzzle, or at least it was by the time I had it. Originally it was the Millennium Pyramid worn by the pharaoh. My grandfather found it in the sixties and gave it to me when I was a kid. I finished putting it together when I was fifteen."
She gaped at him, not sure what to say. "He… he took an artifact from a tomb?"
"Yeah, I know, technically he was a grave robber—"
"Technically?"
Yugi sighed. "I don't suppose it would help if I said Atem gave it to him."
She blinked. "I… how am I supposed to answer that?"
He shrugged, maddeningly impassive. "I don't have it anymore, so there's not much point in trying to rationalize it anyway. Three years ago, I collected all seven Millennium Items and returned them to a shrine in Kul Elna. The shrine collapsed and they were buried."
She narrowed her eyes. "You mentioned to Ms. Ishtar the possibility of digging them up if you found a ritual that required them."
"Hopefully not all of them, just the Puzzle and maybe the Rod. But if you're proposing to help me, then you need to know what you're actually offering to do. Certain Millennium Items, particularly the Puzzle and the Ring, were believed to have the ability to capture a person's soul, we think maybe the Ka specifically, and seal that soul within the Item. When those Items are then worn or possessed by someone with—" He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully "—with a connection to them, then the souls can be released here."
"Define 'here.'"
"Our world, as opposed to either the afterlife or Duat."
She shook her head. "I've never heard this myth before."
"I know. This is one of the things you'll find in Ishizu's library that you won't find anywhere else."
"Why would she hoard historical—?"
"Sara, we can debate the ethics of archaeology, or you can let me finish," he said in that authoritative, bordering-on-arrogant voice again. "Ishizu is Egyptian. This isn't just history for her, it's in her blood. The point is, I don't know if there exists a ritual that will send the spirit of a mutilated body back to the afterlife. That would be my first goal, but if I can't find that, then what I do hope to find is a ritual that will allow me to use the Millennium Puzzle to bring him… them back here."
He'd said something like this inside, too, she realized. "What does that mean, exactly?"
He took a deep breath, exchanging an odd glance with the brunette girl. "Not a whole lot for anyone but me."
The girl flashed him a look that gave Sara the distinct impression she was his girlfriend. It was an odd combination of hurt, worried, admonishing, and protective. She leaned toward him. "Yugi, what about the other Seto? He was never actually sealed in the Millennium Rod or anything. Do you think—?"
"I don't know, Téa. I don't know what sort of ritual we might find. I hope we can help them both."
Joey snorted. "You know Kaiba won't get involved anyway."
"I'll bet Mokuba could talk him into it," the girl—Téa—said.
"Maybe, but still, I—"
Sara coughed, cutting him off. "I'm sorry, but you lot lost me back at 'bring them back here.' Just what exactly are you trying to tell me about the Millennium Items?"
"Sorry." Yugi took another breath, looking tired once more. "The thing is, anything involving the Millennium Items tends to get ugly pretty fast."
"Ugly how?"
"Monsters, dark magic, side excursions into the Shadow Realm," Tristan said.
There was that strange term for Duat again. "And you lot believe this stuff?"
They didn't answer, neither confirming nor denying, which in and of itself spoke volumes. "You people are rather strange."
For some reason, this seemed to break the tension and they all actually cracked smiles. "Yeah, we get that a lot," Yugi said. Then the smile was gone again as if it had never been there. "Sara, if you really want to help, then maybe you should. I don't know how, but you seem to be a part of all this. But things will get strange, much stranger than just us talking about things that don't make any sense. The Millennium Items are dangerous, and dark. You have to understand before you get involved."
She thought of her dragon dreams and how they all led her here. "I woke up the other morning standing in a desecrated tomb. It doesn't get much darker than that."
They all traded looks again, this time more ominous ones, and she found herself shuddering. Yugi looked at her again with those wide, troubled eyes. "I wish that were true."