Chapter Nine
New Perspectives

Fort Brydon, 1926

The encounter with Akim Abdulaziz had afforded them extra time in their journey homewards and they were able to relax their punishing schedule. Rick had insisted they journey on for another hour or so, putting some distance between where they had met the merchant and where they set up camp, just in case.

After putting up the tent and settling Evelyn in it, the two men had attended to her and the hourly doses of water, the tent and some modicum of comfort had an amazing effect on her. She fell asleep again, but this time her sleep was peaceful. With their primary patient taken care of, Rick had helped Jonathan wash out his wound and they bound it up using some of Evelyn's new robe which had proven a good 2 sizes too big for her.

Following that Rick had taken off his shirt and let Jonathan have a look at the section of his ribs that were really troubling him now. Once Jonathan had stopped commenting humorously on the fact that Rick's entire torso was not only black and blue, but purple, yellow, green and some other colours that probably didn't have any names, he set down to properly examine the American.

They both concluded, while Jonathan was doing some poking and prodding that Rick felt, and very vocally indicated, was wholly unnecessary, that his ribs were bruised and not broken. By dinner time that night, Evelyn woke and felt well enough to try some of the yoghurt, which, she assured an aghast Jonathan tasted far better than it smelled.

With the extra blankets, a full belly and a fire, they'd all slept reasonably soundly that night, and awoke to the dawn, feeling better than they had done in a long time. Still, despite her assertion that she felt much better, Rick insisted on Evelyn wearing the new, albeit now torn robe and draped the blanket over her head, keeping her completely out of the sun. No longer pushing themselves, they reached had reached the Nile by afternoon the day after that.

The main topic for discussion, beyond Imhotep and their merchant saviour, had been what they were going to do with the contents of the saddle bags. It had been quickly agreed that they would split the contents three ways. Evelyn's assertion that really, to be fair, most of it should go to the Museum, didn't cut too much ice with her brother, who had actually started to laugh.

Knowing she wasn't going to win that argument, she had agreed to the division, with two provisos. She herself fully intended to donate a good chunk of what she chose and she requested that both of them contribute at least one item from their cut to the Museum.

The rest of her collection she would sell to reputable collectors who would not melt it down for bullion or sell on the jewels to jewellers, and she insisted that they do the same.

She had assured them that though they would not make as much as if they simply auctioned it off, they would both still earn a small fortune from selling to proper collectors, and they would ensure the pieces remained intact for posterity.

It was agreed, and also agreed that once they reached Cairo, the bags would remain in Evelyn's possession, so as to avoid any unwarranted 'borrowing' not to mention fights among the two men.

Upon reaching the river, and the trading post, they had sold an already agreed upon small piece to finance the final part of their trip home. While Jonathan got his shoulder wound attended to by an extremely ancient, but excellent local healer, Rick took the opportunity to begin rearming himself, buying a couple of Smith and Wesson's 38's and a rifle from a trader whose goods had probably hot footed it over from the latest massacre at a Legion fort in Algeria.

Not overly impressed with the oversized, striped, and now torn, robe they had selected for her from the merchant an embarrassed Evelyn had returned to the women who had sold her the rather fetching black dress she had purchased from them the first time she'd lost all her clothes. There she politely enquired whether they might have another dress for her, fully convinced that they must think she was either some kind of 'lady of the night' or completely deranged the way she kept showing up in her night gowns.

Clean, fully dressed, and feeling altogether much better in herself, she found out from one of the women that a boat was due to stop that evening and allow it's customers off to buy goods in the trading post. An expensive luxury tourist boat which was on it's way back up to Cairo, having shown it's well to do passengers the beauties of Luxor and Karnak. Telling the others, they decided to delay setting off and see whether there might be room aboard.

Slower than the ferry boat, it would take 5 days to get to Giza port, and with good music, good food and to Jonathan's great joy, good wine, cruising up the Nile it seemed to Rick to be the perfect opportunity to get better acquainted with Evelyn. In her new dress, hair pulled loosely back but down about her shoulders, and with her native done make up once again highlighting her incredible eyes, Rick had dragged himself from her side and spent the first hour or so after they got on board in his cabin, washing up and working out his plan of campaign.

Dinner and wine, they wouldn't be alone, but it meant he could pick up on the right things to do from the other guests on board. He remembered some stuff from his sojourn in Paris, but not all that much, as mostly the group he had been with had encouraged him to do all the 'wrong' things. Back then he hadn't given a damn, taking delight in thumbing his nose at convention...now though, he really wished he could remember more. Still, he was a quick study, and some mimicking would get him by.

There was a small band apparently, so a little dancing maybe, providing it was nothing more than a slow waltz. Anything faster than that and it would pretty much ensure he would trip over his own feet, or worse, stamp all over hers. He could out run hoards of voracious scarabs, skip across skeletal corpses to get over a moat, run down sheer stone staircases 4 and 5 steps at a time...just don't ask him to foxtrot.

That all going well, a nice stroll out on deck, into the moonlight. After that...well... he hoped that inspiration, verbal and otherwise would strike.

Unfortunately instead it was the captain, their clothes and his anatomy that took a hand.

With only the clothes on their backs, all of them were, in present company, a little underdressed to say the very least. Black tie was de rigeur at the dinner table aboard this boat. And while Evelyn's almost duplicate copy of her black dress, served her well enough, the two men, were in really bad shape, clothes wise.

Their clothes torn and stained with blood, the men "elected" at the Captain's "request" to eat in the cabin on the first night, so "as not to distress the ladies on board", until such time as suitable arrangements could be made for alternate clothing, at their next stop the following day.

To Rick's disappointment, the Captain had then invited Evelyn, as the daughter of the famed Howard Carnahan, and the only one suitably dressed, to dine with him at his table that evening. So Rick and Jonathan had been forced to eat dinner alone together in Rick's cabin. All through dinner, while Rick was trying to make the best of it and pumping Jonathan for information on Evy's likes and dislikes he could see Jonathan's pre-occupation with the saddle bags that were currently in the room with them while Evelyn was elsewhere.

Sure enough as soon as they had finished dessert, Jonathan made the suggestion that they should start looking at dividing up the treasure, and which point he made to get the bags. Rick, seeing that coming, and intent on making sure that Evelyn was there to mediate before anything like that would come to pass, made a dart to beat him to it. Only to find himself doubled over in agony.

Jonathan, startled out of his avarice, had run to fetch Evelyn, and as was invariably the case, it turned out one of her dinner companions at the captain's table was a doctor. Dr Phillips, had, after helping him onto his bed and ushering the worried Evelyn out of the room, undressed him, taken one look at the morass of cuts and bruises on his body, and grilled him thoroughly while treating him.

As he didn't want to be diagnosed as clinically insane as well as physically incapacitated, he'd lied of course, and told him he'd run into trouble with some locals who'd roughed him up a bit, though he was honest about the long nights in the saddle and sleeping out in the desert.

The doctor told him, that his back muscles had spasmed on him, having been so tense and tight for the past few days, all it had taken was one quick sudden movement, and his back, currently a hundred different shades of yellow and purple had decided enough was enough.

After his bruised ribs were tightly wrapped, which also helped his back, he was confined to bed for the duration, the doctor insisting he need plenty of R&R. This of course put paid to his plans for a romantic cruise home with Evelyn. As she was neither his wife nor his fiancee, and this was a "respectable" boat, as the Captain kept reminding him, there was no chance she was allowed to even spend more than 5 minutes alone with him, as one of the waiters was assigned to him for his needs, and was constantly on hand, and while she did come to visit him often, she was inevitably chaperoned by Jonathan, the doctor or one of the women on the boat, who were all just so helpful he could have throttled them.

So basically, instead of being able to seize the moment, and sweep Evelyn off her feet under the moonlight on the Nile, they had hardly seen each other alone. Their conversation mostly reduced to polite pleasantries, and brief hand holding whenever someone other than Jonathan was playing chaperone, and as bar privileges were included in the ticket price, Jonathan didn't play chaperone all that much.

The only good thing that had happened was not being hauled in for interrogation on their return, regarding recent events in the city, and discovering that the police had decided to write off the mysterious death's of a well known Egyptologist, 3 visiting Americans, and the curator of the Museum of Antiquities as an outcome of the city riots. The papers reported the riots themselves as due to a nervous population who had suffered a fire storm, an eclipse and an outbreak of infected boils in rapid succession and had broken under the strain, attacking the Museum and the adventuring party as some kind of retaliation for 'angering the ancients' through raiding their tombs and bringing all this upon them. The Cairo police, not exactly the most thorough of forces, had happily gone along with this assessment. Expediency tending to be their watchword.

For instance, the 'trial' that had resulted in his death sentence, had consisted of a pissed off captain, suffering from a hangover and sick of seeing his face in front of him, deciding to be rid of him once and for all. Frankly, for a man like that, it was easier to blame a mob than try and figure out how someone could be completely desiccated in the middle of your city. To top it, the locals in the mob, who had been killed by the group trying to escape them, conveniently became the culprits. All tied up in a nice neat package, thank you and good day. And when being spared a grilling over multiple deaths and riots was the best thing that happened to you, you knew life could do with some perking up.

Between her desert illness and his physical collapse and confinement a great deal of the romantic momentum they had built up on leaving Hamunaptra had dissipated. And so, now, here he was, 2 days after their return, standing alone in his hotel room, back in Fort Brydon, fiddling nervously with his tie in front of the mirror in his room.

It all meant he had to kick start it again, and this time the truly scary way. The civilised way.

Back in the big city now, he had to play it by the rules. Their trip home on the boat had proven that. No useful advantages like fighting off marauding Medjai, or making light of destroying a dozen or so mummies to impress the girl this time O'Connell, he thought as he tried to extract his finger from the Windsor knot he was trying to tie in his tie, without much success.

He had money now, or would have. Lot's of it too, but he couldn't use that to impress her, because, now so did she.

Still, the money solved one problem, in that he could show her a good time, and wine and dine her, but it also meant that now he had no excuse for not doing all the things he wasn't very good at doing. Starting with politely asking her out on a date. And then, alone with her, holding a civilised conversation, not making flip comments that she found offensive, being able to remember which fork went with which knife, and was it red or white wine with steak? He could do it. He knew he could. He was just really nervous about it. Really, really nervous.

He stared at himself in the mirror and briefly wondered was it too late to make a run for it?

He didn't even have time to respond to the brief business like knock on the door, when Evelyn walked briskly into the room, a notebook in her hand in which she was thoroughly absorbed, and a long cloth covered bundle tucked under her arm. He spun around, trying desperately to get his tie done up.

"Ah...aheh...Evelyn!" he managed weakly a rather goofy smile on his face, as she strode past him and sat herself on his bed, oblivious to his struggles to make himself look respectable in front of her.

"It's extraordinary." She said, still staring at the note book, and shaking her head. "Absolutely extraordinary."

"Umm...what...ahhk..." He choked as he pulled the tie knot up too quickly and nearly garrotted himself. He yanked at it and tried to tidy it, as she finally looked at him.

"What is?!" he said casually, eyes wide.

"What I've...." She stopped and raised an eyebrow. "....well, that Windsor knot, for one thing." She shook her head, and tut-tutted, placed the book and bundle on his bed and marched over to him. "Honestly," she commented in an almost maternal tone "you men and ties. Look at the state of you." She fussed, as she struggled to undo the damage he had done to it.

At first he felt somewhat embarrassed, but the feeling transmuted itself into amusement at her motherly fussing, and then to enjoyment at her unabashed closeness to him. He stood there in silence, a broad smile on his face as she continued to fuss with his tie, until she was happy with it. Who the hell wanted to run? He could definitely get used to this.

Finally she stood back, with a triumphant little smile of her own.

"There!" she nodded approvingly "Much better. You look very smart wearing a tie." Then something suddenly occurred to her, and she looked up at him curiously, and asked. "Why are you wearing a tie?"

"Excuse me?" he responded.

"Oh...no..." she said quickly, realising he might have taken it the wrong way. "I didn't mean to intimate...that is I never meant to suggest in anyway that you weren't the sort of man to wear a tie...or even own a tie...or...." She flapped "It's just that...well...I know I haven't known you all that long...and now that I think about it, of course you probably wear them all the time...it's just that I haven't seen you in one before, and certainly not since we've been back and....oooh..." she exhaled finally, annoyed at her own embarrassment, before looking at him again in that self same curious way and with the exact same tone as before. "....why are you wearing a tie?"

In a strange way her awkwardness emboldened him.

"Actually, I was thinking about going to ask you out to dinner." He said levelly.

"Really?!" she sounded astonished.

Slightly irritated by the surprise and astonishment he seemed to be eliciting from her for very ordinary things, he put his hands on his sides and leaned forward a little.

"Yeah! Really!" he assured her strongly.

"Oh...." She said softly, memories of the desert flooded back to her, accompanying the sudden flotilla of somewhat nervous butterflies in her stomach. Her wide eyed look of surprise, melted into a shy rather flattered look, "I think that might be very nice."

"You do?" he stated rather than asked.

She nodded, wondering whether it was ladylike for her to put her arms around him without him making the first move.

"You're sure now?" he teased. "Because, I wouldn't want to startle you or anything...."

"Rick...." She said in a sweetly plaintive tone of voice, that was meant to substitute for an apology for her reaction.

"Thank you." He smiled, and she frowned a little not understanding. He moved a little closer, and brushed his fingers over her cheek.

"For what?" she asked, a small shiver at that touch adding to her butterflies agitated state.

"That's the first time you've said my name...." He looked down into her eyes, and ladylike or not, she placed her arms around his waist and smiled up at him. "...without the benefit of a bender that is." He teased..

His boyish grin settled her butterflies a little, and she stuck her chin out a little defensively, a tiny smile tugging at her lips. "I like the name O'Connell."

"Do you?" he chuckled, enjoying this give and take. "Well that could prove very useful."

It took a moment before both of them took in the full implication of that half joking whole in earnest statement.

She flushed a little, as did he ,before he grew more serious, his fingers playing with the dark curls of her hair, which she had continued to wear down since their return.

With a woman like Evelyn, of course, marriage was something you had to think about, he thought to himself. He just hadn't realised he'd be thinking about it so soon. But there it was. Marriage. The word glowed like one of those new fangled neon advertising signs in his head. And rather than sending him screaming back into the night, he could feel it pulling him, enticing him to take a look. Sample the wares.

Sure he had his fears, and his misgivings about how this was going to work, but when she was here like this, close to him, happy in his company, none of them seemed to be remotely important. When he was here with her like this, he felt a happiness and contentment that he hadn't felt since his childhood. But there was more than that, there was a strange sense of completeness.

If you thought about it, in a certain way, all their differences, their different backgrounds, talents, outlooks, when you put them together they made up something more than the sum of their parts. Two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin. He just had to hope that she could look at it in that certain way.

"Evelyn?" He said softly, seriously. Trying to find a way to broach a subject which he had once swore he would never even think about. "I know that we've only....."

"Evy, if you don't hurry up I'll have to....oh good grief!!" Jonathan walked in through the open door, groaned and came to a stop. "What is it with you two? Can't I leave you alone in the same room for more than a moment without you falling into one another's arms? You're like a couple of geriatric camels, always leaning against other for support!" he marched past them and ensconced himself in the wicker armchair by Rick's bed, before pointing a finger at Rick. "I sincerely hope your intentions towards my baby sister are honourable, O'Connell!"

"Jonathan!" Evelyn hissed at her brother, highly embarrassed. Rick just smiled.

"Completely." He said quietly, in the same sincere voice from the heart that apparently was beginning to come naturally around her. Her eyes moved back to him, her look speculative and then touched. He thought about kissing her, but Jonathan would probably storm out in disgust, and useful as that would have been, he did dimly recall as he continued to look into Evy's eyes, that she came in here for a reason. A reason he hadn't heard yet.

Jonathan, the intense silence between them almost as irritating as their kissing, brought up the subject again.

"Have you even told him about what you've found, Evy?"

"What is it?" O'Connell looked over at Jonathan and then back at the woman in his arms.

"Well," she began, as she skipped away from him to fetch her notebook and the long bundle from the bed, her face taking on that expression of blissfully happy absorption that always accompanied any discussion of her work "Jonathan came rapping on my door," she looked at her brother, "again! Wanting to know when we were going to get cracking on dividing our little find. He's been at me repeatedly you know and..."

"Yes, yes, Evy." Jonathan interrupted her "I think we all know how eager I am, can we get on please?"

"...Jonathan, eager is one thing, but holding me off while you rummage through the saddle bags is quite another!"

Rick turned a glare on him, and Jonathan quickly sat up from his slouch in the chair, blew out some air and shrugged his shoulders in silent 'she's overreacting, old chap' mode, before correcting his sister. "I was just checking that everything was still there."

"I beg your pardon?!" Evelyn's hands went to her hips, outraged. "Just what are you implying, Jonathan Carnahan?" Rick rolled his eyes, here we go. "I would never...!"

"Did I say you would?!" her brother cut her off.

"You certainly implied it!"

"I did no such thing, I merely said I was checking..."

"Hey, HEY!!" Rick snapped. "Much as I enjoy these little family moments, could someone tell me why we're all here?"

"Evy's found something." Jonathan sighed rather impatiently, and settled back into the chair. "So be a good fellow and hear her out, so we can get started on sharing out the booty and on starting our new lives as the filthy rich, will you?"

Rick turned an expectant look back to Evy. Who, after giving her brother a daggers glare, flipped open her notebook again.

"Right, well...during Jonathan's 'checking'" and another glare was thrown in the direction of the male Carnahan. "and my attempts to stop him, some of the items were spilled out on the floor. Including what looked like 3 sceptres."

"Only two of them weren't." Jonathan hurried the story along looking bored, only to sit forward again animatedly "Dibs on the one that was though! Caught my eye when we were out in the desert. Smashing piece...make a great talking point with the ladies, heaps better than a gold cane. Shame the star on the top is broken."

Rick stared at him, wondering if it was possible that he might have been adopted, before looking back at Evelyn.

"And the other two?" he prompted.

She grinned excitedly. "I think they're papyri cases." She began to unwrap the bundle for him to see.

"Papyri cases." he repeated, feeling a little let down.

"Solid gold engraved papyri cases, from the reign of Rameses the second." Jonathan nodded wisely, which didn't really help, nearly everything they'd brought back with them was solid gold. "Oddest thing though," he said, chewing on a nail absently, "I was sure I had a mental check on everything in that bag when we were out in the desert...don't seem to remember those..." he sniffed. "Still, probably just over excitement...so many beautiful things...." He smiled serenely.

Displaying the items proudly, Evelyn picked up on Rick's wholly unimpressed face, "Don't you see?" she said taking a step or two towards him. He looked at the admittedly beautifully worked items, and then back at her a little apologetic.

"No," he shook his head "Not really."

Silly, she thought to herself, why should he know?! She nodded, the smile returning to her face, and went into full teacher mode.

"You see, papyri being paper of course, very rarely survives beyond a certain length of time, except in very favourable circumstances. Examples of scrolls from ancient Egypt are quite rare really, most, though not all, of what we know of the stories and legends comes from either later Greek or Roman Historians transcripts, like Plutarch, or from the stone inscriptions on monuments and tombs and pottery." He suppressed an affectionate smile as she got more and more animated. "What we do have, tends to have survived from the later dynasties through to the Ptolemies. There is very little from prior to that, and almost nothing more than scraps from the 19th Dynasty." She took a deep breath, and finished with a flourish, tapping her notebook. "Which, from the inscriptions on the outside of the cases, is almost certainly what we have here!"

"Wow..." he nodded slowly, looking suitably impressed. All in all it was quite hard not to get carried away by her enthusiasm. Unless you were Jonathan of course. "So then you think this could be a big find, historically speaking."

"Absolutely!" she agreed, hopping up onto his bed and looking down at the notebook, in which she'd been scribbling almost non stop since she got home. She'd already gathered more than enough material, along with some of the items she would donate to the museum, to "blast those Bembridge blighters out of the water", as Jonathan would say, with the destruction of the map to Hamunaptra in the river boat fire, this little find was the icing on the cake.

"So..." Rick said slowly, moving as he was through a scholarly subject, which was bandit country for him. "What do you think is on it? Have you opened them?"

"Heavens, no!" she looked up from her notes in abject horror. "I couldn't possibly. Not now at least."

Rick frowned a little. "Right, and that's because..." he ventured slowly, thinking hard, "...it says do not open until Christmas?" he finished lamely.

Jonathan snickered, she sighed and gave Rick the look she kept for when she thought he was being especially obtuse. In return he gave her his best scamp grin, the one he used to use on his teachers, and more recently on whatever woman he was seeing, when he knew he was in trouble after showing up late when he was supposed to be showing them a good time. It seemed to do the trick.

"No." she said slowly, as if he were an fool but the corners of her mouth turned up as she spoke. "Because, the design of the cases appears to be such that whatever is in side is sealed in tight. And if we open it after all this time, whatever is in there once exposed to the air, could easily crumble to dust if we touched it."

"That's assuming there's anything in there at all, old mum." Jonathan said brightly.

Evelyn's face fell.

"Yes, thank you for that Jonathan!" Her response was withering though it didn't phase him at all.

"Just pointing out the options, Evy. Don't want you to be disappointed." He grinned, delighting in tormenting her. Despite the childishness involved, Rick had to fight to stop a smile spreading to his face.

"Fine, thank you!" she stared at him, "Let's just 'assume', that there is something in there, shall we?" she dared her brother to speak again. His smile just became beatific. She waited until she was sure he wasn't going to interject again. "Good," she composed herself and continued, turning her attention back to Rick. "while I don't know for sure what is inside, the inscriptions do give me a good idea."

"Okay." Rick said, sitting down on the dressing table stool, and waited.

Evelyn looked from one man to the other, never happier than when she had an audience for her findings.

"To begin with," she started to pace "from their design and style, I'm sure they're a pair, done by the same Master craftsman, and the cartouche, as Jonathan says is definitely the seal of Rameses the second."

"The...." Rick drew on the little knowledge he had. "...son of Seti, the guy who had Hamunaptra built. The one that our friend Imhotep and his girlfriend..."

"...killed. Yes." Evelyn confirmed.

"So, then, this could be his bed time reading then?" Rick leaned back against the dresser. Evelyn smiled.

"In a funny way that's precisely what it could be." She nodded. "You see, from the inscriptions, one appears to be the tale of Osiris and Isis, a great favourite in the story telling lore of Egypt."

"A love story is it?" he grinned.

"Very much so." She nodded.

"So old Rameses was a romantic sort then."

"You have no idea, old man." Jonathan chimed in. "The chap had 112 children by all accounts."

"112!" O'Connell spluttered. "That's...that's..." he paused. "I'm not sure there is a word for that."

"Try, show off, old man." Jonathan helped out. "Especially when you consider that the average life expectancy of a man back then was somewhere between 32 and 35. If you take that he was about let's say 14 to begin with into account...."

Rick joined him in trying to do the math "....that's almost 5 and a half children a year!"

Jonathan grinned. "Good eh? And then there's the number of women he would have had to..."

Rick started to nod, a far away smile starting to form on his face.

"Good maybe, but not accurate." Evelyn arms folded, interrupted quickly from where she stood before the two men got too deeply into thoughts of the Pharaoh's harem. They looked at her. "It wasn't only up till 35." She explained. "You see it was one of the oddities of Rameses reign that, it lasted as long as it was purported to have done."

"How long was it supposed to have lasted?"

"Almost 67 years. He was supposedly in his late 80's when he died."

"Nice innings." Rick whistled, and spoke mock seriously to Jonathan. "They do say that having children can make you live longer."

"That should've done it I expect." Jonathan nodded. "But a bit drastic don't you think? How on earth would you remember all their names, never mind birthday presents!"

Evelyn coughed interrupting them again.. "I think you're both missing the point. If we were to transfer his age to the life expectancy of a man now, it would've meant that he lived to a modern equivalent of approximately 170 years of age."

Rick's eyebrows shot up. "What did he find the fountain of youth or something?"

She shook her head. "All kinds of myths abound about how he managed it. Magic elixirs, dark gods. But it's our belief..."

"That's the royal Egyptologist's 'our' by the way..." Jonathan informed Rick, teasing his sister.

"...it's our belief," she repeated. "That it had more to do with the fact that he was an intensely healthy man, very much into vigorous exercise." She sat down on the bed again. "Seti used to make him run 2 miles every morning before breakfast, you know."

"I see." Rick sniffed, in his current recuperative state je got tired just thinking about that.."2 miles? Every morning? Are we sure that Rameses didn't frame Imhotep for his father's murder?" he winked. She sighed again, but failed to hide her smile. "So, one's a little light bed time reading to stir the romantic in him...which by all accounts didn't need much more stirring." Rick continued. "Then what's the other one?"

Evelyn grew a little more reflective.

"I'm not so sure about that one." She admitted. "I've not had much time to really go over it. The inscription seems to indicate that it's also a story containing Set."

"Set?"

"The god of chaos." Jonathan informed him. "Nasty chap. Murdered Osiris."

"So maybe it's like the second volume of the first then. A sequel." Rick declared. "Where the lovers having got together, now face a tragic end?"

"Maybe..." Evelyn said softly, while looking again at the notes she had made. "No," her tone turning more definitive "It must be something else. The first story would've contained the murder of Osiris, it's integral to the love story."

"That he should be dead?" Rick queried. "Y'know, generally speaking that puts a serious crimp in a fella's style."

"I'll explain later." Jonathan assured him. "Let's just say death is only..."

"No. Let's not just say." Rick said quickly, all too willing to forget Imhotep's last rather ominous sounding words. "I know they say that love can transcend time but I think these ancient Egyptians took it just a little too literally."

"That's not very romantic of you, O'Connell." Jonathan raised an eyebrow, and glanced at his sister, who was nose deep in her notes again.

"Yeah, well, romance kind of loses it's gloss for me, when there are large numbers of excruciatingly painful deaths involved."

"You know," Evelyn spoke softly again "I think I was wrong, I don't think this is a love story after all.". "The prominence of this cartouche..." she tapped her notes "I didn't think about it at first...but in fact, unless my translations are very badly off, I don't believe this first one is the traditional story about Osiris and Isis at all. Or rather it is, but from a different perspective." She looked up once more "I think both it and the second one are actually about Set.

"A sort of set on Set, you might say." Jonathan laughed, and then stopped self consciously, when no one else shared his sense of humour.

Ignoring her brother, she announced. "The second is a continuation of the first. But it's not a story of eternal love...it's one of hate." She shook her head slowly "Incredible, everlasting hate."

There was silence. The two men looked at each other.

"Why doesn't this surprise me?" Rick sighed.

Jonathan coughed. "Erm....Good is it?"

She shook her head slowly eyes firmly on her notes. "I wouldn't know...I've never heard of it before."

Her brother shot her a look of mild disbelief. "You've never heard of it before?!"

She waved away the comment. "Don't be silly, Jonathan. I don't know everything!" still, she had to admit he had a point. This was a rather unusual occurrence. A little spark of excitement went through her.

It would appear, Evelyn old girl, she said to herself, that you might have found something entirely new, a new addition to the lore of ancient Egypt.

"So does it have a name?" Rick's voice interrupted her thoughts. With the new slant on what she was looking at her fingers traced the drawings of the inscriptions she made in her notebook from the second case once more.

"I think so." She murmured, "I believe it's called 'The Child of Set'."