Author's Note:
To those who wait for Ardeth - he comes. Things become slightly clearer -those who wonder about Severige, well, the answer comes.
Chapter 13: Black Betrayal
For a moment it seemed as if she were a mere traveller who wandered through the cold of the nocturnal desert. Evelyn Carnahan relished greatly this fleeting anonymity that dwarfed her in the unfeeling barrenness, the smallness and insignificance of the self that thankfully dragged her mind away from the task at hand.
Something within itched; it was a festering sore to which no solution could yet be found for its cure and a puzzle that had not quite yet fallen into place, despite the satisfactory explanations she had received.
She hoped that Jonathan was safe -his leisure wanderings in the city that seemed to seek nothing but pleasure surely put him in that ignorant bliss that would hopefully shelter his hide.
The trot of the horse was silent save for her occasional shift atop it; it was not long before she would find herself on the route that joined Cairo to Deir al-Bahri. The whimsicality of the moment had to be taken advantage of, she decided. Readying her tongue, Evelyn Carnahan cried out invocations she thought she had discarded and forgotten from her days as the librarian at the Museum of Antiquities, ancient prayers that had rotted safely in the tombs of the Kings now took shape and revived and with great effort that paralleled her recitations, grew wings once more as they soared toward the open, starry sky, not noticing the different pairs of eyes that watched her gradual progress through the sand.
Black-clad figures in the distance, with the soft whines of their horses. From her vantage atop the cliff, it appeared as if they plodded along irrevocably, frozen in what looked like a certain pedantic obstinacy -
Evy wished that she were an unfettered student of the stars; the order of the ancients had certainly included the feared worship of the mysteriously lit night sky, an instituted worship borne of generations' wonder and thirst for the supernatural.
A swath of black cloth crossed her eyes, and the peaceful vigils of the near silent desert night broke when a lone, black-clad rider masked to his eyes stood before her.
"Ardeth!"
"Evelyn," He acknowledged solemnly and there were questions that he had deliberately left unasked, waiting instead for her offering, choosing to revert to formalities. "It has been a while. I pray to the most High that you have been well...since the last time." He recalled the battle that they had found themselves on the fringe of and grimaced in remembrance.
"How did you know I was here? How did you" She gestured. "How did you see me from afar?"
He laughed shortly. "We watch. Do the sleeping Pharaohs not require sharp eyes and a keen hunting sense for their protection? Sometimes however we fail. I heard your recitation of the ancient texts and prayers...beautiful."
"I am not able to stay away," Evy told him seriously - there was no half-truths that she shielded, no lie built upon yet that would surely pour a poisoned guilt on her. "Egypt, did I not tell you, is in my blood."
"I know. There is great evidence of such," he admitted knowingly, perhaps even wryly in the heavily accented English that was uniquely his, but the awkward moment had broken and he smiled, pulling down wearily the cloth that covered his face.
He finally asked, "Is that why you are here? Surely you know of the outrage that has been dealt to Deir al- Bahri"
"Ardeth," she said in measured tones, "I have been staying with some relations of my mother." His face remained expressionless, yet his demeanour suddenly cooler. "They belong to the Wafd - and I cannot begin to say how much has transpired in the course of the weeks -" She did not finish all that she had been commissioned to do when his hand stopped her.
Ardeth Bay frowned with deep lines, as the unfailing instinct within him cried out a strident warning which he had learned to heed in spite of how in place a situation seemed - there seemed something rotten, a foulness that spreads, now permeating the air. He was still weak, much sicker than he thought, suffering from a particularly virulent strain that brought fevered deliriums that had struck merely a week ago, where awareness had all but been constrained to his cot and the sliding between alternate realities and worried whispers.
There were chants, prayers, lulling and the sound of wailing, pushing and piercing through a state that hovered between the realm of angels and the pits of agony; he had finally awakened with the Qu-ran by his side and the Ankh around his neck -who had placed it upon him was immaterial; it was the unmistakable sign that he almost stepped into paradise.
Right now, Ardeth halted her speech, his frail condition masked by forbidding black robes; it was the only reason he sat solitary atop the cliff watching his men tie up loose ends at the royal enclosure only to discover the sign of another presence nearby.
Evelyn Carnahan.
"Come with me."
He turned around and she felt the heavy tug of her horse's reins that brought both horses - his midnight black and her ordinary brown mare - away from the lip of the cliff and alongside each other in an abruptly faster gallop that she was unaccustomed to and that he revelled in, but the sudden gunshot that reverberated through the stillness and sudden, savage collapse of her horse on its own legs had flung her rolling, pressed upon the soft sand that smeared itself on her face, in her eyes and on her clothes.
Unmoving, stunned, she resisted the unyielding arms that tried to force her to her feet, and the loud, spitting voice that cursed fiercely in Arabic when she did not. Whipping around, all that Evelyn Carnahan faced was a pair of merciless grey eyes rendered hideous by long-standing hardness. A figureclad fully in white just as Ardeth Bay was clad in black -
Her horse now lay a mangled, bloodied mess - but there were other white-clad riders who seemed conceived in darkness, who trampled the horse that had to be dead by now, encircling the Medjai chief in a slowly constricting circle some distance away - even a man skilfully armed with a scimitar could pray merely for a miracle.
Ardeth registered merely the rushing wind and then the fearful sensation of captivity as his hunters bore down on him - it spoke of all things ill-dimly he realised that Evy had fallen behind -
He was too far from the trail that his men were taking, nearly a mile above the ground for them to rush to him - with a flicker of movement in the wrist, the scimitar was immediately in his hands as he turned his horse deftly around to face the oncoming riders but this turn had cost him the much-needed speed; the ghoulish predators still rode, terrifyingly near. The illness had yet to leave him - its ghost was wading through his body and his halting breath now came in gasps, a tumble downwards into certain oblivion, strength flowing out of him as quickly as it had briefly reappeared, a taunt that he knew was his undoing.
Bewildered, Evy struggled and twisted from her captor, taking off in a sprint in Ardeth Bay's direction when the hurtful pressure on her arms lifted temporarily, a run within eternity as it had felt when it was merely a few excruciating seconds.
"Ardeth!"
They were engaged in a scuffle that consisted of awkward moves and out-flung arms, and now that she neared them, she was uncertain how to act in this unexpected outrage -but a voice called to her, and she turned to see Severige hurrying towards her, relaxing immediately under his reassuring presence, yet turning back in horror to see that Ardeth Bay had fallen noiselessly from his perch atop the horse. Strangely silent, he felt around him the different, pulsating rhythms of drawn breaths.
In the enveloping darkness, action and reaction were reduced to mere sensory movements created from jangled instinct and flagging intuition. Ardeth opened his arms, spread-eagle upon the hard ground, whispering a silent prayer of gratitude for the brief, sharp pain and the anaesthetic unconsciousness it brought, not feeling, not knowing the hurried motions of his looming captors thereafter, carrying his form towards an unknown destination in that twinkling of the eye.
There were running figures and madly galloping horses, distortedly comic and slow in the sudden disorder; the Medjai had seen the collapse of their chief and had scattered below the cliff face, charging towards them taking a hidden, upward route, yet Evy knew, that they had already lost this round.
"Search for Ardeth!"
Faint, hoarse commands from below reached her ears, frantic hollers that spurred the simultaneous draw of scimitars.
Silvery squeals of metal, hair-raising in their yet bloodless wail.
"Evy!" Dimly, she heard her name called, but it came from a source behind her - Severige!
Hands had reached for her again, firmly but gentler this time around, turning her around, his body shielding her eyes, hurrying her into a vehicle concealed behind craggy cliffs, yet her hungry eyes were sightless when there was no sense that could be registered. She was highly confused, to say the least - she had come to Ardeth, under the instructions of Severige, yet it could be no mistake that the riders who had surrounded Ardeth were of the Wafd.
She heard riders approach from all sides, a mixed army of white and black that broke the strange, enduring silence as sure as the crack of dawn appeared, drowning in rapturous battles cries.
The vehicle that Evy found herself thrust into sputtered to life and plunged into a rough, rocking motion, veering a sharp right away from the frenzy of horses and swords; it was not empty as she thought it had been. The hands - Severige's hands - that were on her had lifted at some point in time without her realisation and now she was again alone, sprawled along its tattered leather seats, the passenger compartment boarded up so she caught no sight of the driver.
"The chief is nowhere to be found!" Faintly, there were repeated shouts, although receding.
Oh God, she needed to ask questions she needed clarifications, she needed to fling herself awake, away from this dreamlike state that was now turning into a nightmare, trapped in a sea of bewilderment and perpetual perplexity in which she could not swim!
There was a faint scurry of desert creatures, the slinking back of the nocturnals into holes and borrows that heralded the crowning of dawn by the first fingers of emerging sunlight.
Perhaps lost battles and futile fights were raised to the sky in everlasting mourns, Severige mused, now miles away as he watched the car that carried Evelyn Carnahan back to the Mahadeva residence fading into distance. The desert was quiet once again, the only hint of disturbance were dark, transient drops of blood that stained the ground- he was now the solitary figure that apparently walked its treacherous paths aimlessly.
The Medjai were weak, spineless, without their chief; they had disappeared as fast as they had appeared, their fearsome visages crumpling earning another drawback. Severige allowed himself a smile - Ardeth Bay now lay in Wafd captivity.
There was trust - but just not enough, to be placed in Evelyn Carnahan. She had been instrumental in determining that Ardeth Bay was indeed at Deir al-Bahri; he was initially doubtful of the degree to which her presence might be a magnet for Ardeth Bay, or whether she could sing songs of a lark sweetly enough to pour poison in his ear. Such doubt had driven him to act recklessly, folding backwards upon his original plan, and layering this sudden attack above Evy's advance and yet, the night's events had displayed a wild success beyond his imagination.
Evelyn Carnahan - he admitted now, freely to himself, was a face that neither he nor Ardeth Bay could resist, their joined weakness, their only capitulation.
They both wanted her badly; they wanted to fully possess her extraordinary capacities and the lively spirit that bloomed within. She would be demanding of answers and full explanations, he thought, when she calmed down; he hoped that Najya would be able to placate the fiery passion that had been fanned into blazing flames.
He could only hope, that her allegiance to her family and now to the Wafd remained strong, and perhaps in time, a full acceptance of him would as well, come to pass. Until then, he could be contentto wait, a predatory wait in the shadows of duplicity and politics from which he watched and yearned keenly, from afar. She needed to be wooed with flowers of ever increasing knowledge, kept sated with adventure, and made content with the touch of one who breathed Egypt.
The day was done, Severige nodded to himself in grim satisfaction; there did not seem to be anything that was, at present, beyond his power and reach.
Invincibility - ah, its heady, invigorating scent!