Imhotep lay there for a moment, still feeling the aftereffects of his incantation. It hadn't taken him long to find the right one, since as a High Priest he had memorized nearly everything from the Book of the Dead. It gave him great pleasure to think that his 'host' was now in Hell, where he himself had been a moment before. Almost certainly the Med-jai would not know how to work the Spear of Osiris, and so he would never escape. Imhotep smiled, then stopped, suppressing a shiver. Smiling with different lips- what a strange sensation. He sat up slowly. This Med-jai was the same height as him, more muscular, to be sure, and he had- hair. He reached up and touched the silky strands, shuddering. How disgusting. He looked at his hands, feeling the skin rub against skin, and remembered that all Med-jai had ritualistic tattoos. They were surely on his face as well. He got to his feet a bit unsteadily and hunched down a bit to avoid hitting the tent's ceiling. Then he realized that he was unclothed, and took a blanket from the ground, tying it in the Egyptian style.
Remembering his last touch with the Spear, Imhotep recalled that the O'Connell boy and his father were sleeping to his right, and Nefertiri was next to them. He slipped out of the tent, marveling at how quietly the Med-jai chief moved. Everyone was asleep save one young warrior, who was tending a dying fire. The warrior looked up at Imhotep, taking in his dress and manner. "My chief?" he asked, puzzled. "Go to bed, Iseah," he said quietly in Arabic. "The fire needs no more tending." The boy nodded, still confused, and made his way down the row of tents. If Imhotep had been a different sort of man, he might have been interested in the fact that he knew Arabic and who Iseah was. He might have been stunned at the implications, that the body holds residual memories of the soul. But Imhotep was not that sort of man. He was the sort of man who wanted revenge, and who was about to get it.
Ardeth opened his mouth to scream, to shout for help, to tell someone that his body was lying there and he wasn't in it, but the instant his mouth opened he was jerked backwards, as a fish on a hook. Winded, he was shocked out of screaming as he was pulled through the tent wall and dragged, hovering a few inches off the ground as he sailed past Iseah, who didn't notice him at all. He tried to call, but his voice was lost on the wind whistling past him. He tried to turn around, but whatever held him was too strong, and he could only watch in horror as the Med-jai camp disappeared and he continued to fly over sand dunes and cliffs.
All of a sudden it stopped, and he was standing in a huge, shallow depression in the sand. Gasping for breath, he looked around, and realized with awful certainty that he knew where he was. He was in Ahm Shere. He had no time to process that thought as he was wrenched downwards with no warning. He passed through the sand, shivering violently as the grains slid through his body, down, down, until he was passing through rock, and he could feel a strange heat coming closer. He was traveling towards the warmth, and he organized his thoughts enough to wonder why. With a faint pop, he was there, screaming, unable to help it, because there was pain everywhere.
He was in Hell.
Evy was having trouble sleeping. Her old visions of Egypt were resurfacing, and she was reliving them all, down to the moment her father died. She was asleep, but her eyelids were fluttering uneasily, eyes caught in her visions. She moaned softly in her sleep as she saw Imhotep and Anck-su-namun stab her father once more, and then the visions started again. Flashes of her childhood, glimpses of her adolescent years, her fight with Anck-su-namun… A hand on her cheek brought her mind gently awake. Eyes still closed, she closed her hand over the other's. "Rick, you'll wake Alex," she mumbled unclearly, still very sleepy. "Not Rick…" The whisper was so soft she almost didn't hear it. "What?" she asked quietly. She opened her eyes as the man's head descended and she felt his firm kiss. In the dark she couldn't see a thing, but her free hand groped for the man's face and found his long hair. She pushed his shoulder away, breaking their contact.
"Ardeth?" she whispered, frightened. "Ardeth, what are you doing?" He didn't answer, but began to stroke her cheek with his thumb. "Stop-" she said out loud, but she had barely finished the word before his hand snapped over her mouth. "Quiet," he whispered calmly. She bit his fingers, but he didn't even flinch. Terrified, she began to struggle, twisting out of his grasp. She backed into the corner of her tent. "What are you doing?" she asked again, her voice shaking. Ardeth shook his head, laughing softly. "I'm taking my revenge," he whispered, and she could hear the hate in his voice. "What-" she began, but he interrupted her. "I've been waiting…" he said intensely. "And finally, I'm going to do it. I've been waiting for more than ten years, Evy…" he stopped. "Evy." Eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see his pale smile. "Your name…" He's insane, she thought, what am I going to do?
"Rick?" she called in normal tones. Ardeth laughed again, and she shivered violently at the sound. "Yes, call for Rick," he said. "Rick!" he shouted. "Rick, come and rescue your wife!" They both waited in silence. Ardeth looked at Evy, eyebrows raised. "He's not waking up." "That's what you think, bastard." Ardeth spun tightly to see Rick in the tent doorway with a knife. He looked furious. "Well," Ardeth said quietly. "It appears the Med-jai chief is not the only one who can move quietly." Rick looked at him incredulously. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Ardeth didn't answer right away. Evy thought that he was actually thinking of a reply. He must have lost his mind, she thought. Poor Ardeth. But she could only say that now that Rick was here, now that there was no danger.
"You'll never see her again, Rick," he said, voice rising into a crazy, high-pitched tone. "What?" Rick said, clutching his knife tighter. "You heard me!" Ardeth was breathing hard now. "Look at her while you can, Med-jai, because she is gone. She left me," he said suddenly, in a completely different tone of voice. "where she would not leave you…" he stabbed his finger at Evy. "Why?" he cried. Evy thought with horror that she saw a tear roll from his eye. "It doesn't matter," he said abruptly, "because she's leaving you now." And he began to speak in Ancient Egyptian. Evy stared at him, shocked. Ardeth didn't know Ancient Egyptian. Then she noticed that he was wearing an Egyptian-style robe. A terrible suspicion began to form in her mind, strengthened by the words she could understand. "Rick," she said fearfully as the incantation- for that was what it was- continued. "Heart of crocodile, tears of stone, from flesh to spirit, no longer one…" Rick stepped forward in alarm, but he was already beginning to swim before her eyes. "Rick," she said, starting to weep, as she understood what was happening now. She reached for him vainly, but he disappeared and was replaced by a wall. Still sobbing, she knew without looking that she was in the temple sacrificing room, in the City of the Dead.
