Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh or any Yugioh character portrayed in this fic!
Chapter 2
Mahad liked to think of himself as 'Royal Practitioner of Spells'. This did not stop those less enlightened from calling him a magician. Needless to say, the man had seen many strange things in his lifetime, especially considering the nature of his apprentice's 'expertise' in causing a variety of (unintended) magical phenomena. This, however, was beyond bizarre.
"What is he wearing?"
"I don't know, Mana. It looks . . . different."
"That's . . . an understatement, Master."
"Mana. What did you . . ."
"Nothing! I swear! I wasn't even thinking about him! Master, you have to believe me, I . . . "
"All right, quiet."
A sandaled foot stretched out and tentatively poked the recumbent figure, lying on its side in the sand. All that resulted was a dismissive grunt.
"Master, where did he get such clothes?"
"Those are like no clothes I've ever seen before. It must be the product of magic. Which raises the question, Mana . . . "
"Master, no! Why don't you believe me?"
So saying, his apprentice huffed and took on an extremely offended expression which involved a great deal of pouting. Mahado sighed.
"Still, Mana, you cannot deny that he appeared here at the precise moment you completed the incantation . . . "
She frowned and spun on her heel to face him, one finger tapping her chin thoughtfully. "But that's it. I did everything correctly Master. I'm sure, this time! But . . . I felt a disturbance."
"Indeed." Mahad had certainly felt it. A ripple in the shadow magic, .
"Master . . . " she began slowly "You don't think he was tampering . . . "
"Nonsense." He said it little more gruffly than he intended and Mana took to looking like a small, hurt animal. He sighed. "Mana, I apologise. But you cannot freely bandy about such thoughts. And besides, the High Priest would know better than to experiment in such a dangerous field. He is the Pharaoh's advisor, one of the wisest among us. You would do well to remember these things."
She shuffled her feet, a little subdued. "So . . . do you think he was attacked?"
"We'll have to take him back to the palace." Mahad knelt and placed his hands over the motionless figure at his feet. After a few moments' deep concentration he rose to his feet, shaking his head slightly.
"Well? Is he all right? Is he hurt?"
"No. He seems to be fine, other than unconscious."
"Master? Is something . . . "
"It's not right." Mahad shook his head, a slight furrow on his elegant brow that Mana was not accustomed to seeing.
"What's not right?" she asked timidly.
"There's something . . . wrong. A wrong feel . . . "
He raised his hands again, abruptly, and a shimmering haze, so light as to be almost invisible, appeared beneath the unconscious High Priest. He tipped a finger and the forcefield rose, lifting the man so that he floated horizontally in mid air. A few more moments of concentration and the entire ensemble of priest and shield were camouflaged perfectly against the rolling, golden dunes around them, the barely visible outline blending perfectly against the background wherever it moved. Mana, not exactly the star pupil, was watching with a profound sense of awe for a true master of spells.
"Mana, get your equipment. We're leaving."
She hurriedly sorted through the various practise items lying scattered about their training spot and followed. When the High Priest had first appeared, falling out of the sky from seemingly nowhere, dressed in that strange apparel, she had been completely unprepared. Mahad had reacted almost instinctively, staff out, cushioning the fall that would have done some extensive damage to the man floating ahead of them. She was still completely bewildered by his appearance.
Surely . . . surely it couldn't have been me?
She had made the thunderclouds morph into the face of that handsome grocer at the market once, and also made Isis's dress shrink to the size of a five-year old's in the presence of Shada and her master (thankfully Isis's natural self-confidence and poise had allowed her to gracefully rise and exit the room with minimal embarrassment). And there was that one time when Seth had woken up with a cow in his bed . . . but all those incidents had occurred because her too-vivid imagination had been entirely focused on those ridiculous scenarios while performing magic. This, she was entirely sure, had nothing to do with her. She had been (for once) entirely focused on the spell and not the High Priest falling unconscious from the sky wearing a weird white coat, trousers and a funny looking blue cloth knotted around his neck. Not to mention that strange smell coming from him, his oddly pale complexion and the rectangular metallic contraption that had fallen out of his pocket and made funny noises and displayed colourful pictures when she fiddled with it.
Needless to say, Mahad had confiscated the object before she hurt herself. But stranger than all these incidents, stranger even than the High Priest's clothes, was the sight that met the spellcaster and his apprentice when they reached the palace. Mahad stopped dead, eyes wide, breath momentarily leaving him, while Mana tripped over her own feet and gawked openly.
Standing before them, regal blue and gold robes robes sweeping the floor, issuing commands to the cohort of scribes that scuttled about him in a strident baritone, was the High Priest himself. Fully conscious and functioning. Bronze skinned and certainly with no funny odour or metallic, colourful objects falling from his person. He caught sight of the two dumbstruck observers and scowled.
"Nothing better to do than stare at your colleagues, Mahad?"
"But . . . but . . . " Mana was pointing between the High Priest and the shimmering haze to her master's left, bereft of words.
"What is it? I don't have all day," Seth snapped irritably.
Mahad, who had sufficiently composed himself, but still appeared a shade paler, cleared his throat. "High Priest? Could I speak to you in private?"
He was answered by an indignant huff. "Can it wait? I'm up to my neck in treasury security reports and . . . "
"NOW." Both Seth and Mana looked at him, startled. Mahad schooled his face into what he hoped was polite urgency. "Please."
Snorting, Seth tossed the sheaf of papyrus he held to one of his assistants and strode forward, beckoning for the two of them to follow. "This had better be worth it, " he grumbled.
"I . . . think you won't be disappointed then, Seth."
The door to Seth's private chamber slammed shut and he stood in the centre of the room, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised inquiringly. Mahad and Mana exchanged glances before Mahad wordlessly lifted the enchantment and deposited the still form into a nearby chair. A deafening silence filled the room as the tension grew to breaking point. Their reverie was shattered by the man in the chair stirring and sitting upright, blinking groggily around him. Mana noted that his eyes retained the same icy blue colour as the High Priest's. Even his demeanour, as he ran his fingers through his dusty hair and straightened that funny blue cloth around his neck, held a certain air of dignity and strength. He looked up, eyes regaining a horribly familiar sharpness as he looked from Mana to Mahad, missing Seth and his dangerous silence behind him. He frowned and Mana nearly gasped out loud at the similarities. And then he opened his mouth and the sounds that emerged were entirely unfamiliar. When nobody responded, he repeated his request, slowly and clearly, impatience and haughtiness creeping into his tone. Even Mahad was watching in silent amazement.
Finally, Seth spoke. His voice was a low, rumbling growl, disbelief and fury evident in every taut line of his body. "What is the meaning of this?"
The man in the chair turned his head at the sound of the voice, then shot out of the seat, his stance and expression a mirror reflection of the man before him. He pointed a trembling finger at the High Priest, his voice rising in complete outrage. And suddenly, they could understand him.
" . . . who the hell you are, or why you're all standing around dressed like this, but I demand that you explain yourselves immediately! Right now, or I call the authorities!"
"You speak our tongue?" Mahad stepped into the breach as the man paused in his rant, panting heavily. He nearly flinched at the twin beams of pure ire directed at him.
"What the heck are you babbling about?" And then the strange man obviously realised that he had switched to their dialect, because his hand rose to throat and clutched it convulsively, eyes widening in horror.
Seth took the opportunity to raise his hand and Mahad caught a flash of gold.
"Seth! NO!"
"Goddamit!"
Spitting sand and dusting out her hair and clothes, Mai stumbled to her feet for the hundreth time, having lost her footing on the shifting sand yet again. First she had tried taking off her shoes, but the ground was so hot that she had danced around yelping for a good couple of minutes before she managed to slip them on again. Then she tried walking and found that it was an even more fruitless exercise. Standing still for a couple of minutes, one hand raised above her brow in an ineffective attempt to block out the glare, she surveyed her surroundings for heaven knew what.
"Where the fuck am I?" Cursing, she spun in a full circle, the endless stretch of sweeping desert offering no answers. Finally, she resorted to snapping off the high heels, wincing as she did so. They had been one of her favourite designer pairs after all. Walking was still difficult, but just manageable, as long as she watched where she stepped.
Somehow, she had managed to retain a hold of her handbag when she had fallen through to wherever this was. Then she remembered her sunglasses. Hastily donning them, she uttered a small sigh as her vision instantly began to recover from the harsh refelection of sun on sand. Her clothes were already soaked with perspiration and she struggled out of her blouse, draping it over her head and shoulders for protection from the sun's fierce heat. Which was not much at all.
"Kaiba, where the hell are you?" she murmered as she crested yet another dune. It was then that she caught the movement on the horizon, a small motion, barely visible. Whipping off the glasses, she stood on tiptoe, stretching as far as her legs would allow her. There! Something . . . an animal? A camel! And a rider!
Whooping in exultation, she broke into a sprint, only to topple over and roll head first down the sand dune. Undaunted, she sprang to her feet once again, running in the direction of the vision, shouting till her voice was hoarse. Up ahead, the sound of distant voices traveled to her, and she scrambled over the next dune, muscles screaming in protest. Gasping and staggering with the effort of her exertion, sweat pouring from her face and body, she finally confronted the camel and its rider. And found herself staring at an entire caravan. The rider must have been bringing up the rear. A flattened expanse stretched out before the traveling party, some kind of primitive road, winding to ribbon width on the horizon.
She paused long enough to see that the entire caravan had drawn to a halt, the flanking riders standing stock still, facing her, and heads poking up above the raw-hide canvas sheltering the wagons. When nobody made any moves to initiate contact, she stepped forward hesitantly, hands automatically rising to either side in the universal gesture of peace. Some instinct told her to be cautious. Very much so. The moment she started to come forward, there was a collective movement amongst the riders. And in a few minutes, she was completely surrounded by wall of gleaming, nasty looking spear-heads.
"Hey, hey! Take it easy, will you?"
She tried to draw herself in as much as possible. Who knew what else had been stabbed with those spears? The riders were all swathed from head to foot in protective linen garb and they shifted, forming a gap as one of their number pushed his way forward. He pulled away the cloth covering his face and stared down at her. He had a nut-brown, weatherbeaten countenance, much lined and with a strangely luxuriant black moustache. There was something very calculating about his expression, something that spoke of shrewdness and veiled assessment. Mai was sure she didn't like it. Under other circumstances, she would have imagined him in an Armani suit and patent leather shoes, sipping Bourbon and cutting Cuban cigars with his teeth.
The man spoke, his tone low and gravelly. Okay, maybe not cigars, but he definitely sounded like he'd seen his fair share of hookahs. It was also a pity she didn't understand a word he said.
"I . . . speak . . . English," she enunciated slowly and carefully. "You . . . no . . . speak . . . English?"
She was rewarded by a series of blank stares. The man leaned forward off his saddle to look more closely at her. "Eeeng . . . liss?"
"ENGLISH," she repeated, nodding rapidly, "You speak?"
He paused for a moment, frowning at her mouth as if hoping to decipher what she was saying by lip-reading. He shook his head slowly. She almost screamed in exasperation. "I . . . need . . . water."
She mimed the act of drinking from a cup. He scrutinized her for another minute, a scanning head-to-toe look. She was suddenly aware of her lack of clothing. Dammit. Figures that she would end up half-naked in her finest Victoria's Secret amongst an apparently very conservative population who would likely not approve of such attire in the slightest. Mai was not one for inhibitions, but something about his look made her uneasy. It was not a lustful glance (and heaven knew, she could recognise those a mile away), it was more like he was assessing her value, like an animal at a slaughterhouse.
Her reverie was broken by him snapping his fingers. Immediately, five riders broke away and split up, each heading in a different direction. He then beckoned once and Mai found herself being nudged along, none to gently as the remaining riders circled her and herded her forward in the direction indicated. The tip of a spear scraped her shoulder and she turned, swatting it away angrily.
"Watch it, camel-breath!" she snapped, earning a slight widening of the eyes from the man in question.
A sharp command was issued from the leader and she found herself with a little more breathing space, the riders watching her askance from behind their veils. When they reached the second caravan, she was ushered up into the cool, shaded space, giving a small sigh of relief as the sun's vicious heat left her shoulders. A very soft rug covered the floor of the interior, not what she would have preferred in this heat, but definitely an improvement. The 'leader' was already seated, cross-legged on a wide embroidered cushion. She stared as he unfastened his long robe, allowing it to fall open and (thankfully) revealing some kind of uniform beneath. A semi-breastplate of some kind, delicately tooled and very expensive looking, and loose-fitting, cotton trousers. And a leather belt with a scabbard attached, the hilt of a sword protruding very visibly. A sword. A bloody sword.
With his stocky build, she had expected a pot-belly, but the armour said otherwise. A soldier or military man of some kind, then. Where on earth am I? Who the hell wears armour anymore? He had obviously noticed her gaze fix on his weapon, but chose not to comment. Instead, he reached behind him and retrieved a flask, unstoppering it and taking a deep draught. He paused, looked at her reflectively and offered the flask.
"Water? You were after a drink, weren't you?"
Nodding rapidly, she snatched the container from his grasp, gulping down its contents, cupping a hand beneath her chin as some of the precious liquid seeped from between her lips.
"Thank you." She took a few deep breaths, recovering herself, before freezing in the act of handing over the flask. Her eyes wide, she met his calculating glance with a bewildered one.
"You . . . you spoke! You spoke English!"
He shook his head, slowly.
"But . . . hey, hold on, why did you pretend you couldn't understand me before?" she demanded, "You can sure as hell understand me now!"
He shook his head again, a slight twitching of his moustache the indication of a small smile. She resisted the urge to reach across the narrow space and slap him. Mainly because of the sword hilt still clearly visible. He spoke again, his coarse voice clearly speaking words she understood.
"No, no. I don't believe I am using this language you speak of. In fact, quite the opposite. You suddenly switched to my dialect."
Her hand rose to her mouth instinctively, her eyes wide. "W . . . What . . . did you . . . say?" She finished her sentence weakly, fully aware that she was talking in the same tongue as the man opposite, one she knew she had never learnt.
"But . . . but how . . . ?"
"I was hoping you could tell me. You are quite interesting. Where did you come from?"
"I . . . I . . . far away. I come from far away."
"I can tell." He raised an eyebrow. "Can you be more specific?"
She gulped. Somewhere along the line, she had come to the conclusion that something was not right. Something about her entire situation. Although she had never directly acknowledged the strange, dare she say it, supernatural events that had occurred at their tournaments and that aways seemed to involve Yugi, his crew and those scary, hideously overdone 'Millenium Items', she was no fool. She was aware of the fact that some kind of spirit inhabited each of the items her friends possessed, apparently hailing from ancient Egypt. And she did remember the Items acting up and creating the current situation during the fight in the Champions' Box.
She chose not to answer and directed her eyes to the carpeted floor.
"Hm. Not talking?" His tone sent chills up her spine. "Perhaps your name, then?"
"Mai," she snapped quickly. "Mai Valentine."
"Huh." He grunted and leaned back. "Funny name. Although, it is how I can tell you aren't lying. Strange appearance, strange name."
Look whose talking, she thought, but didn't dare voice.
"Care to tell me where you were heading?" He took another swig from the flask.
"I . . . was lost."
"Lost, huh? Maybe you were traveling with someone else? Someone we should know about?"
She stared at him, completely confused. "What do you mean?"
And all the warning she had was the whisper of the blade being drawn from its sheath as he pressed the razor-sharp tip directly over her jugular. She jerked in shock, eyes widening in panic.
"Care to tell me now?" His eyes were dark, cold, and she knew, in that moment, that this man would not hesitate to slit her throat.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said clearly, the slightest waver in her voice.
"Oh, you don't?" His voice was soft, frightening. "So there aren't any of your band waiting just over the dunes ahead to perform a daring rescue? I can tell you're not a threat . . . if you were one if his, I'd have a dagger in my belly right now. And you carry yourself all wrong. So what are you? Did they send one of their whores for a diversion?"
"Listen, buddy, I don't know what the hell you're going on about . . . "
"Buddy?"
"Whatever, look, whoever is trying to rescue . . . I don't know, well, someone, I'm not with them. Got it? I'm just lost and alone and looking for my friend, Kaiba. You seen someone of that name? I swear, that's all I . . . "
"Silence, woman!"
The blade lowered, marginally. She let out a breath, gulping deeply. Somewhere, outside, someone began to laugh. Deep, hysterical, manic laughs. Laughs that almost drowned out the sound of the swish and crack of a striking whip. For some reason, the sound made her blood run cold.
"What . . . what is that? What's that noise?"
He considered her expressionlessly as the rasping, insane laughter rose in volume and showed no sign of ceasing. He rose, sheathing the sword and crooked a finger for her to follow.
"Come and see for yourself."
Outside, the laughter rose in a terrifying crescendo, wild, harsh, breaking after every crack of the whip.
A/N: Two cliffhangers! What more could one ask for? ;)