Sorry. When I'm on break, I never get online, and when I do, AOL blows. You're all so patient. Thank you:) Love y'all to pieces:) I'm thinking about another epic romance, so that may be coming eventually. Maybe. Also, ever wonder how the ring and scepter made their way into Beni's bag to play their roles in 'Live and Let Die?' In this chapter you shall find the answer...;) ~Buff
So my theory, if Giles is in fact not really Giles but The First's evil manifestation of Giles, is that he told Annabelle to run. Also, take Buffy to the hospital. And knock off the psychological crap. Does anyone remember when Buffy was funny?
Chapter 29
And Then There Was One
Rick took several deep breaths, using the time to orient himself to his surroundings. Everything seemed so cold, hard, bland... Nothing seemed right. It was as if he'd been dropped into an unfamiliar house and been expected to know which cupboard the champagne flutes were in.
Yet, as his eyes wandered to the arm of the chair he sat in, the fabric snapped to life in his mind. A geometric pattern, blue and white against a backdrop of pale yellow. He remembered buying the chair, at Paine's. There had been a matching couch, but something had happened to it in the ensuing years. Early in the morning, they'd gone to the docks to the pick up the furniture they'd had sent from Boston. She'd hated the fabric when it had actually gotten here, but he'd convinced her...
Her. She. Evelyn. Evelyn. Evelyn...
Memories passed in and out of his mind in a confusing stream until they came so fast he could not register which was which. He tried to grab onto some thread of the story, but that just jumbled the scenes even more, scrambling two different lives into one confusing mass. Then, all at once, he was able to pick out a single moment...
...As soon as the words were formed, there also ripped from her lips a short, strangled cry. Her limbs slackened, her head dropped gracefully forward to lie on his shoulder. His hands were immediately covered in her blood...
No! No, it hadn't been real. Nefertiri was dead, yes, but then by all rights he should be, too...but...Evelyn was alive, Evelyn had to be...wasn't she? Had he lost her again? The more Rick tried to seize the answers, they floated further and further out of his reach...
...His limbs seemed tied to the ground as he saw her turn and look her killer in the eye as the woman slowly, agonizingly, pulled the long, sharp blade out of her stomach. The woman and the priest walked arrogantly away, leaving her all alone to sink miserably to the warm red sand...
Suddenly everything became quite clear, his mind flowed more lucidly, and two beings snapped neatly into place beside each other. Though three months of memories separated him from this life, Rick remembered this afternoon like it was playing right in front of him...
"Let me get this straight," Rick said, sarcasm dripping from every word. "You're suggesting that 3,000 years ago, I--being a Medjai and all--took a knife to Princess Nefertiri--you--whom he--sorry, I--supposedly loved beyond all reason?"
"That's pretty much it," mumbled Evelyn. "I hadn't actually said it all out loud yet, but--"
"No, no, it makes perfect sense. What is it you're accusing me of? Are you making a citizen's arrest for a murder that happened 3,000 years ago?"
"No! God, would you just listen to me for a second, Rick?"
"I just can't believe you'd say something like that! First of all, it's completely illogical, and second of all, how could think for a second that I would ever...do something like that to you?"
"I was just suggesting--"
"That I murdered my wife."
She gave him a look, conviction lighting her eyes, and he knew immediately he'd gone too far. "No," she said. "I'm not."
"Good."
"No." She shook her head, looking sadly at the floor, not at him. She started to cry. "They weren't married."
They'd fought for a long time. Ardeth had barged in. Nobody had won. And now, the truth, vivid, bright, almost more real than the fabric on the chair, glared at him in her absence. She was alive, he was sure now, but...had he lost her anyway?
It took all of Khalil's self control and the strong arms of several Medjai for their leader not to go flying at Hadamer with a scimitar when he entered the camp. What right did that man have to be here? If it had been up to Khalil, he would have been dead in an instant, but some of the more mature Medjai held him back with reason...and some cautionary words.
Hadamer walked up to the newly named Medjai leader very civilly and looked him up and down. His face was now marred by a long, thin scar running down the length of his face, his right eye swollen shut. "Hello, Khalil."
Khalil did not reply, only glared at the man from beneath lowered eyebrows.
Ignoring the lack of response, Hadamer continued. "Is she dead?" he asked, and for a moment something like real human emotion flickered across his face. The illusion, however, was quickly covered by the reality of what Hadamer really was.
Khalil suppressed the anger boiling inside his chest and replied, "So, what happened to your eye?"
He had no time to react before Hadamer was upon him, holding a knife to his throat. "Care to try that again, Medjai?" he spat. "Care to join your brother and his whore in the underworld?"
In a flash Khalil had freed himself and turned the weapon upon Hadamer. "You are already on thin ice," he growled, enjoying the look of shock on Hadamer's face. "Insult them one more time, and you will be dead. You're already a marked man, Hadamer, so I suggest you tread carefully in my presence. Now...do you have anything else you would like to say?"
Hadamer's smug expression returned, and he shrugged away from Khalil and the knife. "The pharaoh requests a audience with you, Medjai. Go."
Khalil pushed past him and followed his instructions without a word. Someday...the time for revenge would come.
The pharaoh was surrounded by palace guardsmen, none of them Medjai. Khalil himself had brought Et-nan and several others, and they entered the ballroom slowly. He forced his eyes to stay at the head of the room, on Ramses, his brother's killer. If he didn't concentrate, they would be drawn to the floor, to the red-tinted tile, to the spot where Achsu-rai's life had ended. Khalil could not help but feel, deep in his heart, that that single moment had forever altered the destiny of their people.
"Tell me where my sister is," said Ramses, when the group of Medjai had drawn near. "Tell me or I'll have you--"
"Two Medjai leaders in one week?" asked Khalil. "That would be impressive even for you, pharaoh."
"You flirt with treason, Medjai."
"And you tempt my sword."
Ramses narrowed his eyes, stepping down a stair. "You would break your sacred oath to have petty revenge? You are more immature than I had imagined, Khalil."
"And you are more vile than I ever thought a man could be." Khalil, too, stepped forward. "You sign a young girl's life away on a whim, then you're surprised when she has a will of her own? You give no regard to others' happiness, then stand by and watch as the people closest to you self-destruct. And then, when your own sister and her child are dead, you see fit to murder our leader, my brother, the one thing that ever made her happy. You take pleasure in other people's pain, Ramses. It takes the focus off of your own."
"If your brother stood before me today, he would see a fate worse than mere death. I would have seen to that."
"You would have cursed him as you cursed Imhotep? You would have unleashed another scourge on an innocent world? On an innocent man?"
"She's dead, isn't she?" Ramses almost laughed, turning away from the Medjai. "How is it that one family can have so much bad luck in so short a spell? First my father, now my sister..." He almost looked wistful now, but there was no trace of sadness in his voice. "She was a foolish girl. Used and abandoned... I thought she was smarter than that. I only tried to right her mistakes."
"You just don't get it, do you?"
"Oh, I get it." Ramses smiled then, a smile so disconcerting it rivaled even Hadamer's smirk. "You are hereby stripped of your command, Medjai. You have proved to be more trouble than you are worth."
"This is not the answer. You cannot just banish me and expect it to make everything right--"
"No." The grin became more sinister, delighting in the turmoil he would inflict with mere words. "All of you. I want you gone. I want you out of the palace; I want you off my lands."
Khalil took another angry step forward, but so did the guardsmen surrounding the pharaoh. "All right. We will obey you, but only this one last time. We will spend our lives cleaning up your mess, for the Medjai are an honorable people, and we will not let the innocents suffer. Not again."
"Get out of my sight, Medjai."
Khalil motioned to his men, and they began the walk to the door. "This isn't the end, Ramses," he said, joining them. "Petty revenge it may be, but...revenge is revenge. You can be certain of that."
They walked out of the throne room, and in their absence, victory somehow rang a little more hollow than Ramses had thought it would.
The light was barely enough to see by, but in the flicker of the few candles, Khalil was diligent in his work. His delicate brush strokes crisscrossed the paper over and over again, using page after page as he detailed tragedy, heartbreak, horror...and hope. A tale of a maiden and her prince, brought together by fate and torn apart by circumstance, but never truly gone.
As he carefully laced together the stack of papers, Khalil knew that it would always be true, as long as he remembered them. They had to hope for the future, otherwise...how could they ever redeem the past?
The cave had been cut into the cliff face by a thousand years of wind and sand. No one would think to look inside, for Khalil had deliberately chosen a most vacant corner of the desert, where no man would ever tread. Alone in an expanse of nothing, it was notable only for the jutting outline of stone that rose from the flatness of the wasteland around it. They would seal it with boulders, too, so as to make the blocked entrance look natural. He would have no thief disturbing their resting place, not ever.
Et-nan placed a hand on Khalil's shoulder as the young leader surveyed the landscape of sand from the entrance. "Khalil?" he said. "Would you like to go inside before we close it up?"
"Yes."
Khalil followed Et-nan down the winding hallway and under the uneven ceiling that forced them to duck sometimes to avoid hitting their heads. The outside of the cave hid its size, for nature had been helped along by centuries of Medjai slicing a labyrinth of passages and rooms into the stone. Khalil had chosen the burial chamber himself, tucked away past fake doorways and empty rooms. A secret resting place for two lovers who deserved everything, and had received nothing in return. At least he could do this for them, if nothing else.
Khalil peeked over the side of the sarcophagus, unable to resist the pull of curiosity and the desire to see his brother one last time. He choked back a scream as he made out the two bodies, unrecognizable in the dim light. He could just see the glints of gold that formed the headdresses they wore, the one gift of worldly goods that the Medjai been able to provide for their journey to the afterlife. Something, however, was missing...
"Where is the ring?"
Et-nan looked over the edge of the sarcophagus. "What ring?"
"Nefertiri wore my mother's ring, what have you done with it?"
"I don't know what you mean. They are as we found them."
"What about the scepter? That is missing, too."
"I don't remember seeing a scepter among their...possessions."
Khalil sighed. "Fine. It doesn't matter anymore. Seal the sarcophagus. And...place this in the back of the tomb." He handed the bundle of papers to Et-nan.
His leader's reverence for the seemingly innocuous documents made Et-nan nervous. "What is it?" he asked.
A small smile reached Khalil's face as he turned and began to make his way out of the burial chamber. "Their story. So that...somewhere, somehow...it will never be forgotten."
The blood had begun to soak through his robes soon after he'd set off, and eventually he could do nothing but try to ignore it. A ride through the desert had not been the best idea for a man in his condition, but it was all he could do. The last thing he could do, for them.
Tahir had always possessed a strange quality that made people trust him, even royals, which was rare. Before making his way into Nefertiri's confidence he had been the Queen's greatest friend, even as the Pharaoh and the court had turned from her in her dying days. Nefertiri had then rescued him from the dregs of the kitchens, and he had pledged to be forever faithful to his princess.
Though his thoughts had long become foggy with the blood he had lost, Tahir still managed to extract from his memory the correct path through the maze of corridors. Cold winds crept along his spine as he walked, and little skittering noises raced through the walls, but he paid them no mind.
The brightness of the room made him squint a bit as he stumbled past the heaps of wealth. He drew out of his pack two items and placed them on a random pile of trinkets. Then, sinking to the welcome blanket of soft sand, Tahir closed his eyes and succumbed to the darkness that had threatened for so long.
The ring lay there, sparkling merrily in the light of the dying torch, waiting for eternity to arrive. Nearby, the spear also waited patiently for its destiny. They waited....
~*~*~*~
Oh my, only one more chapter left. Tell me what y'all are thinking:)