Author's note: [chapter revised in 2019] Merry Christmas and a happy new year! I can't believe I last updated this story two years and a few months [2019 note: *hopeless laughter*]. In the meantime, I finished my thesis (hurray!), got a job (in a primary school), got depressed about it, got angry, got better. Anyway, I said I'd be back, and there you go – I'm back :o) 16 pages for the 16th chapter, with a title – again! – courtesy of a song of the Who (the Tommy album – again!). I had the most fun I could with introspective stuff in this chapter, because the next ones are going to be more action-oriented, and I don't know if I'll be able to do that while retaining what little rhythm and pace I can write…
Disclaimer: Stephen Sommers owns and developed The Mummy and The Mummy Returns; the characters, places, some situations are his creation. Some things I did make up, but every character here is fictitious, and doesn't have anything to do with any person, living, dead, or in-between. Who knows.
FAIRY TALES AND HOKUM
Chapter 16: Underture
To say Evelyn O'Connell felt a little out of place would have been an understatement, albeit a small one.
She had helped Izzy land his dirigible in the middle of the Medjai camp, downed her supper without really stopping to appreciate the taste or even acknowledge what it was she was eating, and now she was left to her own devices while everyone got ready. This was a situation she was not at all accustomed to. She was a librarian, an Egyptologist, a scientist of ancient history, a problem-solver. Right now, though, she did not know exactly where she should be and what she should, or even could, do. This state of forced uncertainty was unbearable.
The sun was going down on Egypt in the truly spectacular way that was unique to the place. There was something both sharp and mellow to the light, the way it appeared to envelop everything in bright gold like gift wrap around a Christmas present. Of course, the fact that this particular present included gleaming scimitars and machine guns made the whole thing feel a little bit bizarre.
Nobody seemed to pay any mind to the rich light, despite the definite possibility that at least some of the Medjai in the camp would not live to see the sun come up again if Hamilton was even partly successful. Everyone was walking among or in and out of the tents, looking determined and purposeful.
This especially made Evelyn O'Connell feel out of place.
There was also the fact that, ever since sunrise, she had been unable to shake a lingering anxiety, as though lead was slowly but surely settling into the pit of her stomach. She wondered whether this was anything like the 'weird feeling' Rick claimed to have whenever she was about to read books she shouldn't read aloud or open chests she shouldn't open. If it was, then she made a note to listen to him a little bit more in the future. This kind of feeling certainly was difficult to ignore.
Maybe the sight – the sheer stench, rather – of the still-glowing remnants of the lorry they had found had brought this anxiety. It had been such a relief to hear Ardeth say that nobody had been inside when it blew up. Evy was not at all squeamish around thousand-years-old mummified corpses, but when it came down to facing the possible loss of one or two of the men she loved most and in such horrific circumstances… Well, suffice it to say that for a closer look she had waited until Ardeth was absolutely positive that there was no gory remains to stare her in the face and impress upon her how spectacularly she had failed them. If he was aware of her repugnance and the reason behind it, he tactfully avoided to mention it.
As for why that lorry had blown up, there were only three possibilities that held water: either the Chamber of Horus – as Sheikh al-Nazar had said the name of the organisation Thomas Ferguson worked for was – had set fire to their own vehicle, and that was illogic; or else Rick and Jonathan were the ones who somehow managed to blow it up, and that was probable; or else it had been an accident, which was not impossible (since nobody had been in it the lorry must have been stationary, thus not creating any spark) but improbable.
Whatever had happened, Charles Hamilton and his men had waltzed off, taking the two prisoners with them.
Needless to say, Alex had waited for his mother and Ardeth with barely concealed agitation. He was stamping his foot with impatience and almost shaking when they had got back on the dirigible. And had let out a suppressed but still perfectly audible 'Whew!' when Evelyn had told him that nobody appeared to have died in the explosion.
They had reached the Medjai camp by sunset.
Evy had not quite expected this. She had thought they were going to an appointed place where the leaders of the Twelve Tribes Ardeth had told her about could join them – a sort of war camp with a few tents and some poles to tie the camels to.
She frankly had not expected the children to be there.
The women had not been a surprise. The Medjai were warriors and scholars, often at the same time, men and women both. The descendants of the Pharaohs' personal guard, they had to use every set of arms they could get to protect Hamunaptra and other places, less well-known and only slightly less dangerous. As Evelyn had understood it, they had come close to dying down around the 4th Century; it was then, more or less, that they had created the position of High Commander, to bring all tribes together in an hour of need. About a third of those had been women, as were about half of the current Elders. This had surprised Evy at first. After all, in England women only obtained the right to vote about ten years ago – why, they still didn't have it in France, their nearest neighbour.
But war was not for children. And yet there they were, helping with menial work, taking care of the animals, or playing hide-and-seek among the tents.
Alex had gone off exploring after she had made him swear that he would not get into anyone's way or start any mischief. She knew her son to be fairly well-behaved around even relative strangers when he had a mind to, but she also was very much aware that, when nervous, he had something of a propensity to trigger catastrophes without the slightest malicious intent.
This had amused Rick to no end when Evy first pointed it out innocently. Of course, he had teased her mercilessly about this, pretending to wonder 'who he had gotten it from'. She had huffed, pointedly ignoring the memory of the mighty shambles their eight-year-old son had single-handedly caused at the temple where they had found the Bracelet of Anubis.
Of course, Jonathan had roared with laughter when Rick had told him about the whole pillar business. And, considering the way Alex had so quickly lost all remorse and had kept grinning at her afterwards, there was absolutely no doubt that his uncle had been sharing with him a story or two about Evelyn's frequent little bouts of clumsiness during her time as the librarian of the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. And she would willingly have bet her beloved small stone painting of Hatshepsut that stood on her bedside table that at least one of the stories Jonathan had told his nephew was about her accidentally knocking down all the bookshelves of the Cairo Museum library.
Honestly, those three…
The reality of the situation came back to her with such force it felt like being splashed in the face with icy water. She had to get them back. She just had to. The alternative was simply unimaginable.
Evy started when someone spoke to her and relaxed when she recognised the voice.
"We are ready to begin the meeting," Ardeth said, his tone serious but friendly. She nodded and stood up, dusting herself off and smoothing her rumpled clothes as best as she could. Although a few of the people she was about to meet knew her already, she thought it best to try to make a good impression – and, truth to be told, she did feel a little nervous. After all, it was up to the Council of Elders to decide what the Medjai's course of action was going to be in the next hours.
It was very considerate of Ardeth, really, to fetch her himself while as the High Commander he could, maybe even should, have sent someone.
Alex was currently engaged in lively discussion with a slightly younger girl Evelyn recognised as Maira, Ardeth's eldest. The conversation was in two languages and backed by a good deal of gestures, as neither exactly mastered the other's language. This did not seem to deter them, Evy noticed amusedly, and it was on this slightly cheerful note that she stepped into a large tent after Ardeth, who courteously drew back the canvas to let her pass.
The inside of the tent was well enough lit, with rich colours and comfortable-looking cushions strewn in a circle. The entire Council were seated there, all members looking up when Ardeth and Evelyn entered. She bowed respectfully, and many gave her an answering bow of their head in acknowledgement.
"Sit down, Evelyn O'Connell," said the oldest Elder, Fatheya, a deceptively frail-looking old woman sitting in front of the entrance. "We were just about to start."
Evy sat down on unoccupied cushions beside Ardeth, who cast a last sweeping glance at the people in the tent before joining her.
"First of all," he said, "let me remind all of you –" here he looked at everyone in turn, but Evelyn had the fleeting impression that he lingered half a second's time on her in particular "– that everything you have to say will be taken in consideration. Just remember that time is of the essence and we should make the most of the moments we have left. Elder Atef, I believe you have a suggestion."
Elder Atef's face was sharp, his eyes beady, and when he spoke there was a controlled sort of urgency in his voice. "Indeed I do. Commander, I know that the attack two days ago failed, and I believe I understand the reasons of this failure. But couldn't we organise another, maybe stealthier attack, that would strike down their leader and cancel the whole operation?"
Evelyn listened with rapt attention, grateful for the use of English – for her benefit, no doubt – and found herself rather in agreement with him. Anything that could stop the search party from entering the Pyramid sounded good in her book, especially since it was only a matter of hours before the complete and utter destruction of Ahm Shere.
But Ardeth shook his head.
"I have sent scouts ahead for the past two days, with instructions to look for any weakness. Unfortunately, Hamilton now constantly keeps men close, which means that we can't attack from afar. To get to him would mean first getting through them, and we've already tried just that."
There was a silence, during which Evelyn thought about the Medjai's last attempt to 'get to' Hamilton. Ardeth had parted very reluctantly with enough bits of information for her to put together the jigsaw of that night. The skirmish had abruptly ended when Rick – always one to grab an opportunity when he saw it, he'd been right in the middle of the fray – had failed to stop Hamilton from bringing down a gun on the side of his head. The Englishman had cocked his gun and stared at Ardeth, fully aware of who he was, what he was, and ready to gamble everything on the basis that the Medjai would not risk getting O'Connell killed.
And that gamble had proved successful. Evelyn wondered what had been Ardeth's thoughts after this, and wondered about the Elders and the Chieftains, as well. She had known, without a doubt, that Ardeth was the kind of man to lay down his life for the people he considered friends, and that thought very much humbled her. But what really shook her was the knowledge that he was also willing to risk the success of a mission and the responsibilities he had as the High Commander of the Medjai for the life of one of them.
That fact, when you knew Ardeth Bay as Evelyn knew him, was earth-shattering. Apparently his authority hadn't seemed to weaken since that night, but she kept a close watch on the interactions between Elders and Commander all the same.
The turn had come for Pyhia, one of the youngest Elders – barely fifty or fifty-five years old – to speak out.
"Yet there is surely something we can do – we must. As we speak Hamilton is entering Ahm Shere with his men, and within hours, he will have raised the Army of Anubis. Is there nothing the Medjai can do but stand tall against the jackals from the ancient hells?"
Pyhia was one of the Elders that Evelyn knew best. Despite being comparatively young, she often used a convoluted phrasing that was often confusing, both in Arabic and English. However, behind the formal words was a question bordering on insolence: in short, were the Medjai only good for battling against Anubis' Army and useless for any other, more elaborate, plan?
A whisper ran through the tent, but Ardeth raised his hands immediately. A hush fell despite some mild glares thrown in Pyhia's direction.
"Please, Elders, now is not the time for sterile arguing. Elder Pyhia, is there some action in particular you would suggest we take?"
"Indeed, Commander. Our topmost priority should be sending a party to overpower the men Hamilton might have left outside the pyramid to guard their camp. It would give us a mighty advantage should they come out again."
'Should they come out again'… Evelyn couldn't repress a shudder. She was fully aware that considering every possibility was the rational, reasonable thing to do, but for once she absolutely refused to think in the rational, reasonable way. There was only one outcome to consider seriously, and this was Rick and Jonathan both coming out of the pyramid alive. Unscathed as well would be absolutely splendid.
This made Evelyn shake her head at herself. Maybe not thinking in that blasted rational, reasonable way was a mistake on her part.
Thing was, try as she may to force herself to contemplate a grimmer alternative for logic's sake, it failed every time.
Ardeth nodded, and Evelyn wrenched her mind back to the situation at hand.
"This is a very sound proposition indeed, Elder Pyhia. I suggest Maher of the Fourth Tribe for this mission – he and his team are especially trained in stealth combat. Given the number of men Hamilton has placed there, Maher's men should overpower them without unnecessary bloodshed."
This everybody seemed to approve of, and if the way the Elders began shifting in their seats and gathering their things was anything to judge by, the meeting was nearly over. But Ardeth raised a hand, and everything stilled.
"Evelyn, I hope you are aware that you are absolutely free to make a suggestion. Is there anything you wish to say?"
Evy bit her lip, then cleared her throat. She didn't think she would sound entirely convincing if the first sound that came out of her mouth was a strangled squeak.
"Yes, there is," she said with as much calm and composure she could muster. "Commander, I know that the men you will send to Hamilton's camp are skilled fighters, and I am perfectly aware that the Medjai are undefeated on the battlefield, but –" Here she stopped for a second, because for all the respect she had for the Elders, she did not appreciate the two or three definite sniggers she guessed rather than heard. She let her face naturally assume the stern, scolding expression she often wore when Alex (or Jonathan, for that matter) clearly was not listening to a lecture. Just because most of these men and women knew just how aware she was, having faced and been defeated by the Medjai twice in her time, didn't mean they had to rub it in her face.
There was something of an awkward pause. Evelyn did not dare look at Ardeth, who if she knew him at all probably had an amused smile dancing in his eyes.
"– But if we want Hamilton's plan to fail, we should not be fighting only his men and the Army of Anubis if he does manage to raise it." She took a deep breath. "We need someone to go down into the Pyramid of Ahm Shere as well and try to stop him. I volunteer for this task."
The whispers that filled the tent made the stir caused by Pyhia's earlier remark sound like a mere ripple. Before Ardeth could react, Elder Raneb, a very fat man with hard features, stared at Evelyn full in the face and spoke to her. Both were sort of unusual for him.
"What on earth could make you believe that the Medjai would not be fit for this kind of mission? I know what you have in mind – you would take the glory for yourself and let the Medjai be slaughtered, when it is you and your kind who have brought danger back to the desert with the Diamond of Ahm Shere!"
This caused an uproar. Most of the Elders sprang, shuffled or waddled to their feet and hurled expletives at Raneb, who stuck out his three chins mulishly, his cold eyes fixed on Evelyn.
She felt every muscle in her body tense, but held out his stare silently.
This was nothing new. She'd had to deal with minds like that all her life. Whether it was because she was a woman or because of her Egyptian mother, some people made their contempt towards her very clear. 'The mongrel bitch' and 'that jumped-up little upstart' were some of the nicer nicknames she had heard herself referred as throughout her childhood and her university days. For these people, the world was arranged in a stricter classification than the Dewey system, and if you didn't belong in their category, you had better keep your mouth shut and your head down. Evelyn had long decided that crying herself to sleep every night probably would not help matters, and pointedly kept her back straight and her chin up as much as she could. She had followed her passion, she had learned and studied, and talked to anybody who would listen, mostly Jonathan, who occasionally dealt with nonsense of his own and always had an ear ready for her.
Being called 'your kind' in a tone of voice usually reserved for words like 'filth' or 'scum' is never pleasant. Someone insulting her English heritage turned out to be just as upsetting as someone insulting her Egyptian heritage.
The heated exchanges settled down to a tense hush when Ardeth finally silenced the tent, his eyes blazing.
"That is quite enough! Elder Raneb, I will not have Medjai Elders disrespecting a guest, particularly a guest as honoured as Evelyn O'Connell is. Besides, she and hers bear absolutely no responsibility in what is happening."
"Yet you cannot deny that the Diamond of Ahm Shere would not have been stolen if it hadn't been for those foreigners!" the old man snapped, still glaring at Evelyn.
"Raneb, you are acting just as some of the foreigners you hate so much," came the placid voice of Fatheya, the oldest Elder. "You know, those who cannot and will not be bothered to distinguish one Arab from another." She leaned towards him, exhaling smoke from her hookah as she said with the shadow of a very wrinkled smile, "In other words, you are an idiot."
Elder Raneb stiffened, but remained silent. Fatheya turned her startlingly green eyes on Evelyn, who gave a strained nod in acknowledgement.
"Thank you," Evelyn mouthed rather than said.
Then she straightened up, her head still held high. "I feel I cannot express upon you how much I don't care for glory," she said in slow, halting, but grammatically correct Arabic. Although she spoke at the entire Council she could see a few heads turn inconspicuously towards Elder Raneb. "If anyone here has doubts about my loyalties, they should do well to remember that Hamilton is keeping my husband and my brother hostage and will not hesitate to kill them if he feels it necessary."
She was proud that she managed to keep her voice from shaking and her pronunciation accurate, except for the last sentence, on which she couldn't help but trip. All eyes were on her. She turned to Ardeth.
Of course, she knew how she could plead her case. She could appeal to his feelings, say that she should be the one to enter the pyramid because it was nobody else's husband and brother down there… But she'd feel like betraying herself. Evelyn O'Connell did not appeal to anyone's feelings to obtain something. She did so by being the right person for the job.
So she bored into the jet-black eyes and said levelly, "I am the only person in this tent who has been inside the Pyramid of Ahm Shere. Nobody else would know what to expect or where to go."
Ardeth looked at her intently, and gave a serious nod.
"Has anyone got something else to say?" he asked in English. Nobody moved a muscle and jaws remained shut.
"All right. Then we are sending Maher's people to cover the ground around the Pyramid of Ahm Shere, I will lead the rest of the men nearby for the eventuality of a return of the Army of Anubis, and Evelyn will go inside for a direct stealth attack on Hamilton. Council dismissed."
He bowed where he stood and left the tent. Evelyn followed him.
When she was certain nobody was watching her except Ardeth, her muscles relaxed as one and she let out a sigh.
"I'm sorry," said Ardeth, "about Raneb. He never fails to make things… difficult."
"Don't be. I've heard far worse occasionally, growing up in England." A cool breeze made her shiver. "Do you think a mortal can really control the Army of Anubis?"
"No, I don't." In the quickly fading twilight, Ardeth looked tired, the tension and lack of sleep finally catching up with him. "Anubis does not like it when mortals meddle in the gods' affairs. That's why his gifts are double-edged swords. If Hamilton does what he intends to do, it will be Anubis who will control the creatures, not him. He will simply be a tool."
"What would it take to stop Anubis' army, then?" asked Evelyn, her heart plummeting in her chest.
Ardeth appeared pensive. "In theory, Hamilton's mind leaving his body. Nothing short of that would break the link."
"Death, then."
"My friend," said Ardeth gravely, "you and I both know there are fates worse than death."
He nodded at her and walked away to get ready, leaving her with a lot on her mind.
Night had fallen during the meeting, bringing a radical change in temperatures. Fires had been lit throughout the camp to light the way, and every square inch of it was buzzing with an anticipation such as Evelyn had seldom felt before. She had been young when the Great War had started, but there was something in the air that reminded her in a very striking way of the end of that particular summer. It was as though everything – what she was about to do, the choices she would have to make – everything could become a possibility to change History still about to unfold. At the same time, she felt that she and her actions were utterly insignificant, something trivial that was about to be ground by History in motion. The great big void that swallowed people, and spat out the names, as her father would say when he was feeling depressed (generally about the lack of knowledge about Ancient Egypt).
That's why we do what we do. So History remembers us as people, not names and dates.
But it's only people who properly remember people, had once pointed out a seven-year old Evelyn.
People.
Her father had laughed, closed the book he had been reading and ruffled her hair. Then he had changed the subject.
Evelyn shook her head, allowing some of the tension that had been piling up for the last few hours to ease suddenly as she smiled a little.
I'm doing this for Rick and Jonathan and Alex, she thought, and this is well enough for me.
History can have the rest.
Tom had never set foot in a jungle before, but he had read books about it. Most authors, he suspected, bragged and boasted and were oh-so-slightly untruthful about the reality of the situation. He had figured early on that, if there was really any truth in those pages, there would hardly be any tigers left in India, for one thing.
A few points all authors agreed on seemed to be rooted in truth: the stifling heat, made all the worse by the heavy dampness of the air, the impression that the very oxygen was getting rarer as you trudged on through the leaves… But the thing that came up most often was the ever-present sensation of being watched. Your every move, every word, every breath… Every single small thing you did seemed to be under careful, constant surveillance.
It was very unnerving.
Tom clearly wasn't the only one to feel that way, although the others' reactions were all different. Most agents huddled together, clutching their weapons and throwing nervous glances over their shoulders from time to time. Some tried to look relaxed, and failed.
The most interesting to watch was O'Connell. Tom could vaguely recall Jon telling him at one point that the American used to be in the Foreign Legion many years ago; now it was obvious in his stance, his walk, the way his eyes scanned every dark corner before taking a step… He didn't look all nervous and scared like so many agents did – well, truthfully, kind of like Tom himself felt – but rather wary and aware of his surroundings. There was something deceptively relaxed and calm as well. It seemed to stem directly from instinct, and was probably helped by the fact that, unlike everybody else (except Jon) he had actually already been in that pyramid – and got out alive. Even though the inside of it did not match Jon's description at all.
The atmosphere was damp, dark and thick. They literally had to hack their way through the enormous leaves and lianas sometimes. The plants were everywhere, creeping up the walls, intertwined around the columns, forming a thick, mostly dark green cocoon all around them. The condensation sometimes made droplets of what Tom hoped was water fall from the ceiling, wherever and whatever the ceiling was. It also made people jump out of their skin every time some tepid liquid dripped on their heads or shoulders, which made Tom wish very hard everybody would just take their fingers off the trigger of their guns before something horrible, definitive, and entirely non-supernatural happened.
At times they could make out in the light of the electric torches the sudden glint of gold through the foliage, or the hint of another, bigger room beyond the green wall. They passed it silently, without stopping. There was barely any conversation between the men apart from a few whispers.
They all followed Hamilton, who followed O'Connell. What O'Connell himself was following – his memory or his imagination – was anyone's guess.
Tom couldn't help but jump when he heard a mutter from somewhere to his immediate right, "Place has changed a bit, hasn't it."
Peering through the occasional holes in darkness created by the electric torches, he could make out Jon's face, his eyes resolutely staring in front of him at the black hole that was going to be their path in seconds. Even with the lack of light he could see that the usually slightly slanted eyes had gone a bit rounder, and his jaw was clenched a bit tight.
"I guess," he replied uncertainly, falling into step with him. "First-timer, remember? This looks more like the jungle around the pyramid you told me about. With the – dead soldiers and stuff."
"Yeah… Well. Did I tell you about other, er… stuff?"
"What? The blokes in red who wanted to grab the Bracelet of Anubis and kill your nephew?"
"N—no… The other other stuff. That could still be around. The – the pygmy mummies."
"What?!"
Tom stared and almost stopped in his tracks. Jon looked dead serious.
"You are joking, right?"
"Ha. I wish. Rotten little bastards."
"What are they?"
"Guardians of the jungle of some sort. They jump on you with no warning, with blowpipes and the sharpest, nastiest little knives – I even saw one spear a guy."
"Blimey! What with?"
"A spear, I think."
"Oh."
"Right."
Tom threw a somewhat nervous glance at the forest around them. Suddenly it seemed to rustle with malevolent life and odd noises. He was suddenly aware that his already clammy hands were starting to shake. "So… How d'you kill them?"
Jon jerked his head towards Tom's gun that he kept in a holster swung over his shoulder.
"Blowing them up with dynamite rather does the trick too," he added. "Oh, and a shotgun too, according to Rick. The results were just as messy, too."
"Anything else?"
"Well, Imhotep seemed to make them back away, but I don't know how much of that was him and how much was the Book of the Dead he was holding at the time. Other than that… well. No idea."
Tom shook his head with a grim smile he was pretty sure no-one could see.
"You wouldn't happen to know where that thing landed, now, would you? After all, you were one of the very last people to use – to – to know where it was."
He saw Jon's pointed look when his face caught the light of the torch the agent behind him – Becker, a hefty fellow with a bushy beard and a thorough mind – was holding. His friend hadn't talked in length about his first interview with Hamilton, but he had been clear about some specific things he had voluntarily left out.
Even though Tom wasn't sure he entirely believed that particular part of the story – the 'resurrection' part – he was not going to argue about keeping things from Hamilton. Not after he'd watched and listened to his own boss talk about killing thousands of people as collateral damage and asserting, in horrible calm honesty, that it was for the greater good.
Admittedly, Tom reasoned, having doubts about Evelyn O'Connell coming back from a deadly knife wound while not having problems with accepting a three-thousand-years-dead mummy being raised from the dead was a little bit inconsistent of him. Maybe it was because he had seen Mrs O'Connell, talked to her. The fact that this lively, smiling, essentially alive woman had actually been dead, even for a few minutes, was hard to process.
And this no matter what Jon said. It was a gut thing.
The Southerner shook his head wryly.
"To tell the truth, I completely forgot about it once we got Evy back. I guess it stayed wherever Alex left it and got lost somewhere in that jungle."
"You didn't find it on your way out? Because I thought, you know, someone could have picked it up then. After all, it is priceless. One of the most famous books in history – at least Egyptian history."
Jon actually stopped in his tracks and stared at him with an odd look on his face. Then he shook his head and walked on with a shrug.
"I don't know. I mean, I don't know whether we even would have picked it up on our way out. It got pretty frantic down there, we just wanted to get the hell out. Besides, that book is bad news, my friend."
"Thought you and your nephew resurrected your sister with it."
"That's beside the point. Of course I'm glad Evy didn't… Bloody hell, 'glad' doesn't even begin to cover it. But that book also brought old Imhotep back. Twice. Granted, the second time we didn't get the whole locusts, bugs and boils and sores business, but…"
Jon's voice trailed off, and Tom nodded. His point was a bit unclear, but the Liverpudlian reckoned he got it.
Still… It was a shame.
Lost in his musings, Tom didn't see that the party had stopped until he almost bumped into Agent Bennett's back. Being taller than him, he stared over his head at what had brought this sudden stop.
The two agents watching O'Connell (and protecting Hamilton, no doubt) had hacked a fork in the road clear of branches, and everyone was now peering through the darkness at the double path.
"Well?" Tom heard Hamilton mutter impatiently. Maybe the atmosphere was finally getting on his boss' cold steel nerves, after all. His voice came as a mere whisper. "Which way?"
"I don't know what you've been told about our last happy family trip to this place," O'Connell deadpanned, "but I wasn't particularly thinking of lining the path with white pebbles. I didn't even come in that way."
"I realise that. But do you have any idea as to the path we should take right now?"
In the crossed rays of the electric torches what little of O'Connell's face Tom could see looked grim and set.
"Yeah, we should turn around and get the hell out of here before we're all dead."
Tom could suddenly sense tension rise higher among the agents around him. The American's voice had been low, but firm and utterly devoid of any irony or jokey element. He was simply stating a fact.
There was no doubt that he had been aware of voicing some of the silent anxiety that had gripped most of the men since they had set foot in that pyramid. Granted, Tom hadn't known O'Connell for that long a time, but it was obvious that the guy was anything but dumb. The Englishman could easily assess the cleverness of the seemingly casual remark.
Whispers ran all through the back of the group, and they gradually travelled up to the front, one agent at a time. Even if O'Connell hadn't actually heard what they were about, he was smart enough to pick up on the atmosphere and encourage the doubts some of the men appeared to be having.
Of course, those doubts didn't fit Hamilton's plans at all. Tom caught his boss glancing briefly in Baine's direction, and the agent pushed back his jacket, leaving the butt of his gun exposed. He heard Jon gulp in the dark near him.
"Unfortunately for you," Hamilton growled, white teeth gleaming in the erratic light, "this has never been an option. What always has been, however, is the possibility that I might grow bored of your deplorable lack of manners. So either you help us onwards, or I may just ask Agent Baine here to –"
Tom felt someone brush past him and realised with a start that Jon had pushed his way to the front of the group. Jon stopped and just stood there, his hands in his pockets in a would-be casual fashion.
"You've got to go right," he said, his voice unsteady but standing his ground. Both Hamilton and O'Connell turned to him, both faces displaying different shades of surprise.
"How do you know that, pray tell?" Hamilton asked, not bothering to keep the disdain from his tone. It dripped like melting water from an icicle. Jon shrugged, apparently unfazed. Tom, who knew him, knew better.
"I've been inside that bloody pyramid too, if you've not forgotten. And it so happens we – I – this is the way we came in from. I mean, I recognise this corridor. I reckon that if you cut away the greenery on this wall here there'll be hieroglyphs that mean 'This way to the Scorpion King'."
The boss made a sign, and his two bodyguards raised their machetes and hacked at the vegetation covering the wall in front of them. When they had uncovered a few symbols, Hamilton turned back to Jon with something new on his face. Tom decided he didn't like at all the way his grey eyes started to gleam.
"Well! We may finally have found a use for you, mister 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'. I can't deny I'm somewhat surprised."
"You'd be even more surprised at the things I picked up," Jon retorted with what he probably thought was a sly grin. Actually, it came off more as a grim sort of wince. Tom had known that one for a very long time. It never fooled him, even back then.
Hamilton eyed him for a couple of seconds, then moved onwards, turning right; everybody followed, O'Connell muttering "Hey, quit that" when Bennett poked him in the small of the back with his gun. To Tom's surprise, the agent looked almost apologetic as he hastily put the gun away and, thankfully, took his finger off the trigger.
"So," Tom heard O'Connell whisper to Jon, who looked slightly green – unless it was a trick of the light, or lack thereof. "When'd you get the time to brush up on your Ancient Egyptian reading skills?"
"I was gonna ask the same question," Tom piped in, highly curious. "Does it really say 'That way to the –'"
"I didn't, and yes," Jon answered in a low, still slightly shaky voice, glancing uneasily at Bennett and Norton who were walking nearby, watching the three of them. "But I didn't translate that. Alex did – that time. The three of us walked past it, on our way to… You know."
"Yeah," O'Connell said, his low baritone a bit rough round the edges.
"The 'three' of – oh. Right." Tom cleared his throat and asked, a tiny bit awkwardly, "Well, is there anything you remember that might come in handy? Can you still read hieroglyphs?"
"Not as well as I used to," Jon replied with a shrug. Then he added fervently, "But I'll never forget that bloody Ahmenophus stork thing now. I'm likely to remember that one as long as I live."
"Why? What does it mean?"
Jon stood still for a second, then he stared at O'Connell and Tom, who stared back, puzzled. Then something passed into his eyes, and his face relaxed.
"Do you know," he said, with a shake of his head and a small but genuine smile this time, "I really haven't got a clue."
A low chuckle escaped O'Connell, and Tom let out something halfway between a sigh and a small, shaky laugh. There was something that he was missing here, clearly, but it didn't matter right now. Not really. Not when a tiny fraction of the cold, gripping apprehension that had been clutching at his gut ever since they entered the pyramid had been lifted, even for a second. He tugged at the straps of his rucksack and fell into step with the two brothers-in-law just as O'Connell asked, his voice almost normal, "You don't give a damn about the meaning of that symbol really, right?
"How did you know?"
"Look, lady, I'm not so sure about this."
"And you choose this precise moment to inform me?"
Not letting go of Dee's helm, Izzy turned his head towards Mrs O'Connell, a bit puzzled at the quiet laugh behind the seemingly biting remark. He had been expecting irony, or worse, sarcasm. But there was the hint of a smile on her lips.
"So… Remind me again. We are goin' under to – to do what, exactly? Apart from probably gettin' shot, I mean."
She threw him a pointed look, but didn't pick on the remark. Instead, she put down the whetstone and the short sword that the Medjai chief guy had given her and explained with a slow, deliberate voice.
"We are going down into the pyramid to stop a man named Charles Hamilton from summoning the Army of Anubis, because if he is successful in that, he will destroy the world."
"Right. Okay. I still don't get it."
He caught her disbelieving stare for a second, then her face kind of slackened a little bit and she rolled her eyes. "Honestly, this is not so hard to process, you just –"
"No, no – I get the 'The Earth is doomed and someone's got to save the world' part. But I still don't understand why we gotta do the saving. I mean, it's not like it's your fault or something, right?"
She didn't answer that right away and her gaze drifted off a little, and he wondered whether he'd blurted out exactly the wrong thing. Wouldn't be the first time.
"It isn't, right?"
Well, he'd heard stories. People talked, on long journeys. Most customers found the silence of the open desert sky so daunting and empty they quickly got the urge to fill it with words. And sometimes Izzy listened. If half the stories about Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell were true, the woman had – granted, with some help – had a hand in raising each and every single mummy buried in Egypt.
This was probably a cartload of bull, but after the nasty business with the wall of water and the desert swallowing that pyramid two years ago, Izzy felt more inclined to give some of those stories far more credit than he used to.
Mrs O'Connell suddenly looked back at him and stated, rather intently, "No. I mean no, it's not," she corrected, more gently. "It's just that we're the only people who stand any chance of success. And we need to do it quickly, because it all comes down to the new moon setting. At dawn tomorrow."
Izzy did not ask why they 'stood the only chance of success', because her earnestness and seriousness was so much more disturbing than O'Connell's laid-back 'mummies, pygmies, really big bugs' attitude. It meant that it was real, and that it was just the start. Worse, he was actually expected to take a part in the 'saving the world' party.
And he'd always thought himself a sidelines kind of guy, too. Ever since O'Connell had buggered off to the French Foreign Legion, that is. The odds of getting shot in the arse were much lower if you stood on the sidelines.
"Yeah, well," he muttered, going back to scrutinising the landscape, "no wonder you people never stop to look at the scenery."
Mrs O'Connell spared a brief, tense smile and returned to her whetstone and her sword. In the silence that followed, a tiny sound reached Izzy's ears. It would have gone completely unnoticed in the middle of the conversation between him and his passenger, but as it was, he could not ignore it. Blocking the helm with the autopilot – a simple jamming device – he tip-toed towards the sound as silently as he could, followed by Mrs O'Connell's curious gaze.
He did have a hunch about what, or who, could have made this sound. He was just wildly hoping to be wrong.
Sure enough, when he plunged his hand into one of the empty crates usually filled with supplies, his fingers caught something wriggly, warm, and emitting remarkably colourful language as he hauled it out into the night air.
Young Master Alex O'Connell's blue eyes, looking unnervingly like his father's, shot him a full glare that his blond fringe quite failed to soften.
Izzy let go of him before the collar of the jacket he was holding on to ripped for good. In a flash, the boy went from red-faced anger and shame at having been caught to dutifully wincing when he saw his mother advance on him. She did look quite formidable, much more so than a petite, slim librarian had any right to be.
"Oh, brother," Alex mumbled, his cheeks rapidly losing colour. In spite of his annoyance at finding a stowaway – not to mention the identity and especially pedigree of said stowaway – Izzy couldn't help but feel sorry for the kid.
"Mum, wait – I can explain everything."
This should be really interesting, then.
Jonathan was starting to hate pyramids with a passion.
His reasons for doing so seemed perfectly sound to him, too. For starters, pyramids were the place you buried dead people. Long-dead powerful people. People who had been dead for millennia, and who, when they had been alive, had made arrangements for a peaceful, undisturbed afterlife.
As the Pharaohs were for the most part fantabulously rich, they had no problem getting the best architects to design the most perfectly lethal booby traps to ward off intruders. Knowing this early on had somewhat quelled his enthusiasm for archaeological venture.
Not that he really agreed with angry people who claimed that digging out ancient artefacts and putting them on display for the world to see was grave-robbing and sacrilege, but… Pyramids were graves, after all. And Jonathan had never really been too fond of cemeteries in the first place.
But what he was now loathing with all his heart, what really riled him to no end were bloody pyramids filled with bloody jungle swarming with bloody creepy little pygmy mummies!
Keeping his mouth shut tightly against the terror-induced nausea, he walked with his eyes and ears wide open, peering and listening intently for any sign of the eerie hush that had suddenly fallen just before the nasty little buggers had attacked two years ago. It had seemed, then, that the only sound for a couple of miles around had been his own blood thumping in his eardrums and Evy's deep breathing.
It had been shockingly easy to stand on that ridge with Evy, telling himself over and over that if they didn't shoot these men in red, Alex and Rick and Ardeth didn't stand a chance down there. The old reflexes had come back as though they never left. Jonathan had slowed his breathing, pushed down his nausea, done his best to ignore his pounding heart, and got to work. The enemy's uniforms were red instead of grey, and thankfully Hafez's men were too busy trying to survive the jungle to shoot at them; but for those two differences, he might have been back in a trench, twenty years ago. Aim, shoot, reload; repeat ad nauseam.
It had been a sickening, exhausting business – not to mention the nightmares after that, both those where he missed and those where he hit the target – but at least he had not been part of the big action then.
This time, he'd been shoved unwilling in the middle of the fray, without any other purpose than just because he happened to be there, surrounded – with two noteworthy exceptions – by people who would kill him if he tried to escape, just as he'd killed those men two years and two decades ago.
Trying to escape would be a bloody stupid thing to do anyway, considering the lurking pygmy mummies that vied for everyone's blood, his and the agents'.
Equal shares of danger for all. Hurray for equality.
Except it wasn't really equality, now, was it? He and Rick were now in the exact same position Hafez's nutters had been at the jungle of Ahm Shere, hunted down and potentially shot at from two different parties at once. Not that he felt sorry for the blighters (not after they kidnapped Alex and threatened to cut his arm off to get the Bracelet), but suddenly finding himself in the same situation actually had something laughable about it.
Sometimes I hate irony.
He kept chewing on his grim thoughts as he walked, and since Hamilton wanted to keep an eye on him after his little remark earlier about the path to the Scorpion King, the company was not helping any. The only difference it made was that instead of having complete and utter darkness engulf everything behind him with each step that he made, he had complete and utter darkness ripping open before him, as though reluctantly.
It came as great relief when Rick quickened his own step and muttered right behind him, making him jump a little, "Recognise the place?"
Jonathan peered at the little he could see of the space around them with narrowed eyes.
"Well… Can't really say I do, old boy. Must've hurried past and not stopped to enjoy the view. Why?"
"Because I think we're getting close. See that gold… ish thing on your left?"
"That pointy thing that sticks out from behind the big ferns?" They probably were anything but ferns, but Jonathan couldn't for the life of him tell what kind of greenery the big dark leaves were supposed to be. Risking a glance behind him after making sure Hamilton wasn't looking, he saw Rick staring at it.
"Yeah… I guess. Well, that's where that nutcase Hafez stuck the bracelet. There's a statue somewhere that sucked his hand right off."
Jonathan winced. "Guess I won't be sticking my hand anywhere around there, then."
For some reason, Rick's four-hundred-tooth grin took on a sinister gleam in the torches' lights.
"Might be a good idea."
His round blue eyes hardened a great deal the second after that, and Jonathan looked around to see what had brought this sudden change. He was met with Agent Baine's equally cold and steely glare, and for a moment there he felt like having stepped into a less muddy no man's land.
After a few seconds of silent glowering, Jonathan cleared his throat and asked awkwardly, in the most normal voice he could muster in the circumstances, "Say, how come everybody got a bag and we didn't? Planning to do some archaeologing on the side, are you?"
Baine's cold eyes shifted their aim from Rick to him, and Jonathan had a fleeting but haunting sensation of being a butterfly pinned in one of those display boxes entomologists showed them off in. He gulped nervously.
Incidentally noticing that he seemed to be doing that a lot these days.
Baine's expression turned into one of grim amusement as he gestured at his own rucksack.
"Well, our thinking was, you probably won't make it out of this place alive, so what would be the use of giving you a bag? It's all first-aid kits and ammunition and other stuff you won't need anyway."
Jonathan knew he ought to have been more afraid of Baine's answer; it sounded more like a promise than like a remote possibility. But he just couldn't push the pygmy mummies out of his mind. His memories of them, though blurred (mostly with running like mad) and, truthfully, rather brief, were so much scarier than the seemingly more direct threat of Baine and his bunch.
He made a mental note to ask Tom what was in his rucksack. It hadn't looked like there had been much in the way of equipment.
As for Rick, threats of all kinds must have got so old by now that he just raised an eyebrow at the bloke, who-rang-your-bell style. Then his toothy grin came back and he walked past the agent with a shrug.
"I wouldn't think of depriving you of your first-aid kit, you probably will need it more than us," he drawled, throwing a derisive look over his shoulder at Baine. "By the way, how's your eye?"
Baine stiffened and automatically raised a hand to his two-days-old bruise. The angry red and purple was beginning to fade into yellow and green at the edges. It was not without a certain amount of satisfaction that Jonathan remembered having made this particular impression to the agent's face. The small victory over him in the scuffle two days ago was worth any amount of glaring he'd been subjected to since Monday.
And there had been a certain amount.
A sharp intake of breath made him turn his attention back to the front of the group, a few feet away. Hamilton and his two bodyguards had stopped on the first step of an enormous stairway and were pointing their torches down in the room they'd just entered.
This chamber was big. Even with the greenery that was invading everything, gripping the columns, covering the statues and crawling up the walls, you could feel the weight of thousands of years coming down on you like the Egyptian sun on your head at the height of the afternoon.
It wasn't just about the weight of the years, too. The entire room gave off an impression of malevolent watchfulness. It might have been just another demonstration of the theory that stated that the bigger the room was, the less you felt like talking, but there was something creepy in the air that you couldn't help but taste, something damp, heavy and… dark. Brownish, maybe. Something that didn't bode well at all, anyway.
As he walked carefully down the slippery steps, Jonathan noticed that his knees were having a heated debate about whether to start wobbling or not. He could hardly blame them, having just recognised the place as the chamber where he'd seen Anck-su-namun peering into a corridor, as though waiting, before she turned those cold black eyes on him and stared him up and down. As though he was something small, useless, and utterly out of place in the general order of things. When he had cleared his throat and raised his fists – feeling remarkably foolish in the process – the look in her eyes had changed, and in there he could now read, "Oh, does it want to play? Does it do tricks?"
Never, in his entire life, had he felt so much like a mouse stuck in a room with a cat in a playful mood. The woman had just murdered Evy, driven a knife into her stomach, up close and personal, and smiled. Seeing her had made cold sweat run down his neck and his back, and this was before she had toyed with him like a predator with its food. Jonathan was fully aware he didn't exactly have a lot going for him in terms of chest-beating, swinging-from-lianas manliness, but he still did have his pride, and being thrown and beaten around by someone who must weigh half as much as he did still stung. Super badass concubine fighter from Ancient Egypt – as Alex had once put it – or not.
The whole group stopped at the foot of the stairway, circling something on the floor, and Jonathan tried to peek through the mass of dark suits to get a look. When he finally sneaked a glance, he spotted Hamilton being helped into a set of large robes with a lot of gold stuff on them that Jonathan judged too gaudy to not be fake. Especially when it looked so much like a fancy bathrobe minus the belt.
"Gentlemen," Hamilton said, shaking the long sleeves to make the hem fall on his wrists, "this is the end of our journey. Here lies –" here he paused for effect, gesturing at the ground with the cloth of his sleeves giving an appropriate wave, "the Seal of Anubis."
The few agents who were standing too close to it took a hasty step back.
There was not a single root or leaf on that seal. The big scorpion figure was clearly visible, the different shades of gold gleaming where the light of a torch touched them. The total absence of dark green was unsettling. It also made it crystal-clear that this was what they had come for. The ominous, heavy feeling hanging in the room seemed to emanate from this very point.
Anyone could sense that this seal meant business.
And Hamilton, without any other form of ceremony, cool as anything, came to stand right on top of it.
Instinctively Jonathan tried to take a step back, but froze at the sudden touch of cold metal against his neck. From the rustle behind him, it appeared that he was not the only one with survival instincts. There was a collective intake of breath and a fifty man gasp –
And nothing happened.
The collective breath was released and the tension in the atmosphere seemed to dwindle. All things considered, the whole business felt anti-climatic, even something of a let-down.
But Jonathan had learned not to trust seemingly all-clear situations. He still had the soot behind the ears to prove it.
Most agents seemed to welcome the lull, and they all gave a start when Hamilton turned a strangely meaningful look at Baine and said, "You're in command now, ag—"
He never finished the word. Under his feet the seal sent a gradual shudder that shook the walls and eventually the entire pyramid. Golden light so bright those too close to it had to shield their eyes seeped – not unlike some sort of thick sticky syrup – from the gold parts of the seal and into Hamilton, who had gone stock-still, his eyes lost into the distance and his mouth slightly open.
He looked like any unfortunate bloke who had just walked rather violently into a lamppost, except for the very disturbing detail of thick yellow light pouring straight ahead from his eyes, his mouth and his nostrils. Then his feet left the ground.
It felt like watching a string puppet show done by someone who had only heard the theory of it. Hamilton's dark grey shoes floated aimlessly four or five inches off the ground, his head lolled at a weird angle on his neck, one shoulder was slumped when the other one remained rigid…
"Here we go again," Jonathan heard Rick mutter. The words fell in a stunned, shocked silence. Only Baine seemed to know exactly what was going on, and seemed very pleased by the turn of events so far.
Hamilton's body – obviously his mind was busy somewhere else, possibly a few planets away – began to drift off towards the passageway to another chamber, his feet still dangling a little off the floor. The leaves and lianas shuffled aside gently, as though self-consciously, where he went.
A small crowd of agents followed Baine, who kept a leisure pace behind Hamilton, looking calm and poised and as gleeful as if Christmas had come early. Not so Jonathan' and Rick's escorts, who hung their heads low and shuffled silently, occasionally treading on each other's feet. Once in a while they would glance grimly at the fantastic sight of their boss being dragged on as though by some sort of invisible string.
The supernatural does take some getting used to, gentlemen, Jonathan thought with an inner sarcastic grin which slipped abruptly when he bumped into a taller agent's back. The agent gave a start and whirled around, his hand – and gun – jerking nervously. Jonathan took a hurried step back, startled, only to knock another agent to a halt. His gun was out in a flash, too.
"Now, now, gents, no need to resort to extremes," Jonathan stammered, instinctively raising his hands. As the two men let out a trembling breath he made a show of straightening the creases in his jacket and added in a slightly steadier tone, "You know, you'd really better put those guns of yours away before one of you does something I'll regret very much."
"What?" the taller agent barked while the other shook his head and put his gun back into his holster. "Shoot one of our own?"
"No, I meant me."
The agent sniggered, but Jonathan did notice with great relief that he kept his finger off the trigger now.
When he tried to peek around the dark suits to get a sense of why they had all stopped, he was unceremoniously shoved in front, where Rick already was, standing beside Tom with his blue eyes fixed on something ahead of him. Hamilton's body had drifted to a halt.
His eyes still wide open and his mouth agape, his head still rolling on his neck like a ragdoll's, he went near the wall as though attracted by a giant magnet like in the cartoons from the moving pictures Alex loved. He stayed there, as though tied to a post, under a heavily-decorated gong of massive proportions that hung from the wall, too high for anyone normal to bang.
A sort of spasm ran through his whole body – even his fingertips jerked. Then he went completely still.
A shadow swept over the large chamber, and it felt hot and cold at the same time, and empty. Emptying, rather. Jonathan had a mad urge to dig his fingernails into his palms just to be able to feel something. The last time he had felt anything like it, he had thought the reason was the body of his dead sister lying in his arms. To say it had been unsettling would stretch the limits of even the most open-minded judge on English understatement.
Like last time, it lasted only a few seconds before everything went back to normal in a flash, leaving a trail of lit flambeaus and oil lamps, their light greenish and faintly sinister behind the trees, the lianas, and the giant ferns.
Except the Army of Anubis had just been raised again.
Jonathan let out a raspy breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. It fought briefly with what felt like his heart hammering inside his throat to get out.
Then Baine turned to him and Rick a look that made something churn in the region of his stomach. It wasn't the passing glare or occasional sneer Jonathan had got used to in the past few days. It was a straight, direct stare. The kind that made you wish you were being ignored.
"Kill them."
Oh, bollocks.
Notes:
Re. the Medjai warriors being men and women, here's what I had written in 2008: "The Medjai, while being mostly a warrior people, were a society where the position of man and woman was not about superiority or inferiority. Rather, they went through life having different tasks (the men were taught in the arts of war, the women generally took care of the breeding of camels and whatever farming there was to do) but came together when it came to raising children and making important decisions for the future of the tribe." But The Mummy (Returns) is such a mess of mythology and traditions anyway – they're Muslim but also acknowledge the existence of Ancient Egyptian gods and myths – that I decided, what the hell. They've had to survive three millennia guarding Hamunaptra and other cursed places and items, through constant invasions, conquests, and major religious and societal shifts. We didn't see women Medjai in battle in TMR but they were there.
"If half the stories about Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell were true, the woman had – granted, with some help – had a hand in raising each and every single mummy buried in Egypt": This amounts to a grand total of one, two if you count Anck-su-namun :3 I would like to state, in Evy's defence, that she was in no way responsible for the second time Imhotep was raised from the dead. (She just took the Bracelet of Anubis from its chest and Alex activated the Bracelet by putting it on.)
The reference to Looney Tunes cartoons around the end is cheating a little bit, because while Porky Pig cartoons were already pretty popular in 1937, Daffy Duck was only created that same year, and Bugs Bunny a year later.
This chapter is the longest of the story. In the old author's note at the end, I wrote "I promise I'll try not to let two years go by without an update" and I can't believe I stopped there for eleven bloody years. (Technically that's not two years, is it?) Still, sometimes we get lucky, and sometimes we don't, and I was lucky enough that the spark came back and I was able to finish this fic. I'm currently a page or so away from the end of the epilogue, posting this story a chapter a week on Archive Of Our Own, so you can expect chapter 17 sometime around the end of November.
Hope I'll see you there!