****
There was a rustle of fabric, then a small orange flame appeared in the darkness. Jonathan held the lighter high, peering through the gloom. "Everyone all right?"
"Hey," Rick said. "I didn't know you smoked."
"Oh." Jonathan shrugged off the comment. "I don't. Think it's a dirty habit, actually. I only carry it for the ladies." He did not look at Evelyn as he said this.
Evelyn looked around, distinctly uneasy. "I don't care why you have it, Jonathan. I'm just glad you do."
The walls of the tunnel were of dark stone. Sand was heaped in little drifts against the base of the walls and the ceiling appeared to slope downward, further away; the flickering glow cast by Jonathan's lighter made it hard to tell.
"Should we sally forth?" asked Jonathan.
"Yes," Evelyn said, and a small shiver ran through her. Rick felt it, and had the sudden insane urge to sweep her into his arms and kiss her breathless.
Jonathan took a step forward, then stopped and turned to Ardeth. "Ah, maybe you should lead the way."
The Med-jai chieftain walked up to Jonathan, but shook his head at the offer of the lighter. "Hold onto that," he said. "It is a long walk to make in the dark."
"Oh, so you've, ah, you've done this before," Jonathan said, and it wasn't really a question.
"I have," Ardeth confirmed.
They began walking down the passageway. They could walk comfortably side by side, for which Rick was grateful. A few steps ahead Jonathan and Ardeth walked together. They were a strange sight, the tall Med-jai and the lanky Englishman, and Rick smiled to see it. He would have bet all his treasure from Hamunaptra that Ardeth Bay had never expected to be in this situation.
"Ardeth Bay," he said musingly. "That's not an Arabic name, is it?"
Evelyn reached up with her free hand and squeezed his arm, making a quick shushing sound, but it was too late.
The leader of the Med-jai half-turned, but did not stop walking. "No, it is not," he said, and did not elaborate.
Rick gave Evelyn a sardonic glance and rolled his eyes. Clearly their guide was not a conversationalist. He tried again. "So where will this take us?"
This question Ardeth was willing to answer. "To the sewers. From there we can re-enter the city at any point. I would suggest we get as far from the museum as possible before doing so."
"Makes sense," Rick agreed.
They walked for a while in silence. The sand beneath their feet was uneven and in some places his boots sank a little into the giving softness, and in others he could feel the hard stone of the floor under the sand. His leg was hurting badly, but the pain seemed to have reached its acme; at least it was not growing worse.
"I'm sorry," Evelyn said, surprising them all.
No one spoke. Rick looked down at her. "Sorry for what?"
"The museum is destroyed," she said. "And it's my fault. I insisted on being the curator, and now they've burnt it down."
He let his right arm go around her waist, relishing the closeness of their bodies. "It's not your fault," he said reassuringly.
"It is," Evelyn said.
"Tell her it's not her fault, would you?" Rick said to the two men in front of him.
Jonathan threw a strained glance over his shoulder, obviously unwilling to speak up. Ardeth Bay said, "If they meant to destroy the museum, no one person could have stopped them."
Rick blinked, then finally said, "There, you see? It's not your fault."
Ahead, Jonathan hunched his shoulders, waiting for someone to lay the blame at his feet. Rick, who might have done this very thing if it would not have hurt Evelyn, just looked at the man. He didn't know Jonathan Carnahan terribly well yet, but already he was beginning to realize that there were some things about the man that would never change: magically getting himself into tight situations was just one of them.
"You have actually done us a favor," Ardeth said.
Evelyn frowned. "I have?"
"The museum contained too many things that pertained to Hamunaptra. It was dangerous. That is why the curator was always a Med-jai. Now we no longer have to extend it our protection."
"And can just return to the desert," Rick said sarcastically, as though this was such a welcome option.
"Yes," said Ardeth.
"Hold on there," Jonathan said. "If you didn't want the artifacts in the museum, why did you let them end up there in the first place?"
Ardeth gave him a long look. "If it had been up to me, none of them would ever have found their way here. But most have been here for many years." He hesitated. "A few had been given back to the City of the Dead, but some had remained here in the museum. Now no one shall ever have them."
"That was you?" Evelyn cried. "We thought common thieves took those items!"
Rick gave her a puzzled frown. "What?"
"Last year," she explained, "there was a break-in, in the middle of the night. Some artifacts were stolen. I thought one was from Hamunaptra, but couldn't be sure. The curator didn't seem too upset, which I thought was strange at the time." She trailed off.
"There was no break-in," Ardeth said stiffly. "The curator removed the objects himself and made you believe there had been a theft. The artifacts were given to a Med-jai who brought them out to the City, where they belong." He sounded vaguely insulted to hear his people accused of common thievery.
"Boy, you really take your job seriously," breathed Jonathan.
"You have seen why," Ardeth said.
"Could—" Evelyn swallowed hard. "Could he be raised again?"
"Yes," Ardeth said curtly. "If someone was to find the Book."
Rick scowled. "Then why don't you send some guys out there to get the Book and make sure that doesn't happen?"
"Hamunaptra is buried," said the Med-jai. "It will take more than our efforts to reach it now." He raised a hand and pointed. "The passageway ends here. We must go down."
Directly ahead, a dark stone wall loomed into sight. Jonathan lowered his hand, and the glow from the lighter revealed a circular opening in the floor. Cooler air rose from this, carrying a thick odor of sewage and runoff. Remembering the stench from his frantic escape from Imhotep's mob, Rick grimaced. "Here we go again."
****
The sewers were every bit as nasty as Rick remembered them being. Granted, last time his mind had been on others things – like how to save Evelyn -- but he still recalled the horrible smell, the way things touched his boots as he walked, and the overall creepy sliminess of the tunnels.
Evelyn, who had been spared this disgusting little adventure the first time around, shuddered powerfully. "Oh, my God." They had told her that they had gone through the sewers to escape Imhotep's mob, but now for the first time she was realizing what that meant.
They splashed through the muck. The glow from Jonathan's lighter was woefully inadequate, nor would it last much longer. The metal had to be growing hot, and it surely wouldn't be long before Jonathan could no longer bear to hold it. Then they would walk in complete darkness.
This was not a pleasant thought. To divert himself, Rick asked, "So, uh, now that our old buddy Imhotep is gone, did you guys, uh, celebrate, or something?"
Ardeth made a sound that could have been a snort of contempt or an unamused laugh. "The Creature is an eternal evil. The Med-jai will never stop watching and guarding."
"But he's gone," Rick said. "And the Book is buried. You said yourself nobody can get to it now."
"Yeah, you ought to relax a little," Jonathan put in.
"I said the Med-jai could not reach the Book," said Ardeth. "I did not say nobody could." He stopped and turned around, glaring at Rick. "What will happen when some rich fool decides to unearth Hamunaptra? How long before trucks roll across the desert, carrying huge digging equipment and men? All of Cairo knows what happened out there. It is only a matter of time before others decide to follow in your footsteps."
This was the longest speech the Med-jai had made yet, and it had the effect of making Rick feel all of six years old. Small and grubby and good only for causing trouble. He had the sudden urge to hang his head in shame.
At his side, Evelyn bristled. "You can't blame that on us. It's not our fault if somebody tries to dig up the ruins of Hamunaptra." Her dark eyes reflected the small flame from Jonathan's lighter.
Ardeth Bay said nothing. Rick felt sorry for the Med-jai then. He knew Ardeth wanted to blame them, that it would make the chieftain's life easier to have someone like the Carnahans to blame for what had happened at Hamunaptra. But Ardeth could not do it. The things they had endured, the adventure they had shared, would not let him. He wondered suddenly if the Med-jai as a people blamed their leader for allowing the Creature to be raised. Had Ardeth, after riding away from them at Hamunaptra, encountered trouble among his own people?
With a muffled curse, Jonathan dropped the lighter. It fell into the sewage at their feet with a splash, and they were plunged into darkness.
Maybe it was the cover of that darkness that allowed to Rick to say what he did. "Those men on the boat. Did you know them well?"
"They were sent by the curator, not by me," Ardeth said. "But I knew them, yes. One of them had been the commander of his tribe, in his youth. Then he lost his hand in a battle and could no longer lead."
"Lost his hand?" He felt Evelyn's one-armed embrace tighten. "Did he have a hook for a hand?"
"He did."
Rick sighed. "Oh," Jonathan said.
"My men wished to kill you as you left Hamunaptra." Even in the dark, Rick knew the words were directed at him. "I stopped them."
"Why?" he asked. His heart beat a little faster as he remembered that of them all, Ardeth was the only one with a weapon.
"The Med-jai do whatever is necessary to protect Hamunaptra, and the Creature's resting place." Ardeth sighed, and now he sounded tired, a man cursed with a burden he could never lay down. "But it is never easy to kill another."
"No," Rick agreed. He would never forget the time he had spent with the Legion, the pointless battles and killing. He was too young to have fought in the Great War, and although some of his friends had lied about their age in order to enlist, he had never felt the desire to do so. There was more than enough death in the world; why should he hurry up to go meet it?
"So I spared your life. I am glad I did so," Ardeth said. "The Med-jai, and I as their leader, owe you a debt we will never be able to repay."
Rick had no answer to this.
"Come. We must keep going." Although the darkness did not lift, they heard the sounds of Ardeth walking down the tunnel, just ahead of them.
****
They emerged from the sewers in an older part of Cairo. At this hour of the night, there was nobody around but the homeless beggars who made their makeshift beds in the alleys of these streets. An old man goggled at them as they climbed out of the sewer, rubbed his eyes, then lay down and went back to sleep.
They gathered together at the end of an alley that opened onto a square that in daytime was filled with camel merchants and men who promised to sell you anything, or anyone, if the price was right. After the darkness of the sewer, the moonlight seemed blinding, and Rick felt strangely exposed.
"The men who did this will not linger. But I would not advise returning to the museum," Ardeth said. He stood next to Jonathan, leaning against the building on their right, arms crossed. "Do you have somewhere else to go?"
"We'll be fine," Rick said.
"And you have a doctor?"
"Yeah, sure." He kept his voice casual, but it was tough. Now that the adventure was almost over, the pain in his leg was starting to make itself known again, insisting that he pay attention to it.
Evelyn had let go of him for the climb up to the street, yet she stood close to him, taking her promise not to leave him very seriously. "I'm sorry," she said. "For the museum. For everything."
Ardeth shook his head and stood up straight. "Do not apologize." He glanced around. "I must be going." He peered out into the square, then looked at Rick. "O'Connell."
"I guess maybe we'll see you around," Rick said.
"I do not come to Cairo often. Only when there is trouble."
"I thought I told you to stay out of trouble," Rick said.
To his surprise, Ardeth smiled, and the Med-jai actually looked his age then, rather than the stern warrior he normally appeared to be. "Exactly." He bowed and said something in Arabic. "Go with God, my friends." Then he turned and disappeared into the night.
"Well!" Jonathan made a show of relief. "What are we supposed to do now?"
"Get out of this place, for starters," Rick said. "Then we can find a doctor and see what happened to the museum." He glared at the Englishman. "And I think you ought to stay out of bars for a little while."
"I'd agree with that," Jonathan said gravely.
Rick was not mollified. He knew within a week – at most – Jonathan would be back in high spirits, strolling into bars throughout the city, sitting down at card games and ordering drinks in the old fashion, without a care in the world. It was a lifestyle he had no wish to emulate, nor did he envy it. As far as he was concerned, there were more important things in life.
Shaking his head slightly, he turned away, and frowned. "Hey."
"What?" Evelyn took a step toward him. "What's wrong?"
He pointed at the wall. "Look."
Jonathan stepped aside. "I didn't do anything."
"No," he said impatiently. "Look." On the wall beside Jonathan was a patch of dark color, which stood out starkly against the light stone of the building. He walked over to the wall, rubbed his fingers against the stone, and held them up. The tips were red. "Ardeth. He was wounded."
"What?" Evelyn rushed over.
Rick looked out into the night, knowing the Med-jai was long gone by now. "Damn fool." He remembered now how he had seen blood on the wall of the museum as he had run inside, how he had puzzled over that crimson mark on the stone. "In the courtyard. Someone must have gotten off a lucky shot."
"What are we going to do?" Evelyn asked in consternation.
"Nothing," Rick said. Deliberately he wiped his fingers on his pants. "There's nothing we can do." He spared one last look out into the square, and silently thanked his new friend. Maybe one day they would even meet again, and he could say it in person.
He turned toward Evelyn, and she looked up at him. The moonlight shone in her eyes and on her hair, and turned her into an argent angel. He knew then that he would marry her, and love her for the rest of his life. He smiled. "Ready to go back?"
She nodded. "Are you going to be all right?"
He could not stop smiling. "Oh yeah. I'll be just fine."
*************
END