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The Truth Hidden in the Lion’s Claws
“Why did you bring him here?”
Rick’s voice, and Ardeth breathes out a small sigh of relief. When he’s hearing Rick’s voice like this, confused and worried but not stressed and screaming, things aren’t so terribly bad. He’ll be able to relax for a little bit, to let himself just drift as fire continues to claim him body and soul.
“Because he’s dying, Rick O’Connell, and all he talks about as he does so is you.” Nasir’s voice clips his English more than usual, a sure sign that he’s very upset.
Ardeth isn’t sure if he’s upset about the dying thing or about the fact that Ardeth is currently as useful as a sack of sugar. Less useful, really, since no one is going to trade for a half-dead medjai who doesn’t know where he is in time and space. Though in desperate circumstances Ardeth supposes his body could be used as food rations?
These aren’t desperate situations right now, though. He prevented a desperate situation, and if the only cost of that prevention is himself then so be it.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Rick’s voice climbs up half an octave and increases in speed.
Ardeth forces his eyes open when a hand lands on his shoulder, trying and failing to reach up and grab the wrist of the person assaulting him.
Rick grabs Ardeth’s fingers when the faltering strike goes incredibly wide. “Hey, buddy.”
Buddy . One of Rick’s common ways of referring to people, and it can mean so many things—it can truly mean friend , as Ardeth thinks it does now; but it can also mean wary ally , or bastard I expect to backstab me.
“My friend.” Ardeth swallows, trying to make his voice work despite how desperately, pathetically hot and parched he feels. “It’s good… to see you.”
“I’d say the same, but it feels like you’ve got a fever of a hundred and four at least. What the hell are you people doing, dragging him halfway around the world in this condition?” Rick’s eyes move away from Ardeth, their bright, piercing gaze seeming to take Ardeth’s grounding with them.
“No.” Ardeth grabs at Rick’s clothes, knowing he looks pathetic but unable to help himself. He can feel the visions and dreams moving in again, ready to pounce. Had he managed to stay quiet on the plane ride? He’d tried so very hard, and no one arrested them, so perhaps he succeeded. He’s going to pay the price for that now, though. “Don’t look away. Please. Please. I need—I—”
“Hey, shhh, hey, it’s all right.” Rick turns back to him, though the look in his eyes is anything but calm. “Ardeth, it’s all right. You’re safe here.”
He is not.
He isn’t safe anywhere.
He isn’t safe anywhen.
Something rushes at him from the left, something dark and shadowy, made of teeth and claw. It clamps onto his right hand, and he screams despite himself.
He thought—he hoped—
What? That being with Rick would make things better? Rick barely tolerated the thought of their fates being bound together when Ardeth was helping him to save his child; why should he be able to save Ardeth from millenia’s worth of suffering?
The creature gnawing on him shifts from a shadow-lion’s form to that of a crocodile, and Ardeth knows that he brought this on himself. Foolish, to go near the Nile when everyone said not to, that it was dangerous, but Ardeth was young and certain of his skills. Sami practically dared him to, promising Ardeth that if Ardeth didn’t prove his manhood Sami would tell the others of how Ardeth watches him.
If Ardeth survives, he will be maimed; if he doesn’t… he has so many more things he is supposed to do. He has his brother-in-arms to find, the lost medjai who will change history. He has a place to make for himself in the clan. He’s just barely seventeen, and it’s all going to end because—
“Ardeth!” Rick’s voice pierces through the memory-vision, a jagged piece that doesn’t belong but that Ardeth can’t ignore.
He can never ignore Rick—can never do anything other than what Rick needs of him, even if those needs endanger the rest of the medjai.
Arms are wrapped around him, holding him upright.
No—one arm is wrapped around him, holding him tight to Rick’s body. The other is putting pressure on the bite wounds in Ardeth’s arm that are spurting blood.
“Thank you, Rick.” Ardeth allows himself the privilege of using Rick’s given name, since he doesn’t know how many more times he’ll have the chance to do so. “I owe you my life. Again.”
Laying his head down on Rick’s shoulder, Ardeth allows his eyes to close.
This time when the darkness takes him, there are no shadow-monsters waiting to destroy him in it.
***
“Ardeth! Ardeth!” Rick knows that screaming the man’s name in an increasingly loud way isn’t going to fix his unconsciousness—it certainly isn’t going to stop him from dying in Rick’s arms, if that’s what he’s doing. He can’t seem to make himself stop screaming anyway.
It does summon Evy, at least, meaning Rick has some back-up to deal with this incredibly stupid and shitty situation that has walked in his front door.
“Ardeth!” Evy’s hands fly up to cover her mouth for just a moment before she’s kneeling at Rick’s side, tearing off a strip of Ardeth’s beautiful, ornate black traveling clothes to fasten a bandage for his the wounds on his wrist that Rick is currently trying to keep closed only with his blood-slicked fingers.
“A little help here?” Rick shouts the words up at the older medjai standing sullen and silent just inside the door.
“I do not know if there is anything that can be done that will be more helpful than allowing the soldier the final dignity of death.” The old man’s eyes pass over Ardeth’s body.
Ardeth’s too-lean, too-hot body, and Rick waits for Evy to get a firm enough bandage on Ardeth’s wrist before beginning to look for other wounds. The buttons and laces on the traveling clothes are too much for his trembling fingers—why are they trembling? He never trembles when going into battle.
This isn’t a battle, though. This is coming in to the end of a war in progress, and seeing that his side has already taken desperate losses.
Ripping the laces, Rick opens Ardeth’s clothes to reveal a patchwork collage of bandages that seem to be holding the medjai’s body together. Up both arms, around his chest, over his abdomen, on his neck—all of them touched with a bit of blood-seep, the ones on his chest the worst of all.
Rick looks up, meeting Evy’s eyes and seeing the horror he feels reflected there. Then he spins to face the other medjai. “What is this?”
“Ardeth suffered a grave injury preventing a cultist from raising Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of war and disease.” The old man’s lip curls, a clear snarl of disgust that Rick desperately hopes is directed solely at the cultist and their god.
If it’s not—Rick doesn’t think killing a secret desert-dwelling warrior will even start a diplomatic incident. “Why isn’t he with a doctor, then?”
“Because our doctors have done all that they can, and it is not enough.” The old man’s shoulders droop. “The wound is cursed, oozing with Sekhmet’s vile influence. Ardeth wanders in dreams, and the injuries he sustains there appear on his physical form. We cannot stop it, and he refused to let us grant him a clean death.”
“A clean death—” Rick is on his feet before his mouth has finished parroting the phrase, his hands reaching for the medjai’s robes.
“Rick!” Evy intercepts him. “No. This isn’t our place, not our culture, and they respected his wishes. They brought him here.”
So that Rick can watch him die? It’s not like he’ll be the first ally that Rick has watched die.
Ally . Such a distant word, but he doesn’t know if friend is a fair one to use, either. Not when every interaction he’s had with Ardeth has been a pulse-pounding, death-defying mess of emotions.
Not when seeing Ardeth like this makes something in Rick’s chest ache, a deep, maddening pain that he doesn’t know how to name.
(Except he does. He held Evy as she died. He knows what it means to lose a piece of his heart. The fact that he doesn’t want Ardeth to be a piece of his heart—the fact he has run after every adventure rather than seeing where their friendship will go—doesn’t change that.)
“Help me get him upstairs.” Evy drags one of Ardeth’s limp arms over her shoulder, summoning Rick with both her words and her simple no-nonsense approach to the problem. “We’re taking him up to our bed.”
Ardeth looks strange nestled in their bed, his skin sallow where it doesn’t gleam with fever. Rick starts undressing the various bandages, revealing and then re-wrapping the wounds beneath. None of them are too terribly bad until he gets to the deep gouges on Ardeth’s chest.
Four wounds, in parallel lines, deep enough that bone shows in multiple places through the tissue. Rick places the fingers of his left hand over the wounds, knowing that they come from a human hand even as the part of his mind that never has accepted mummies walking argues it isn’t physically possible for human fingers to carve flesh like a lion’s claws.
Ardeth’s eyes flutter, and he squints up at Rick’s face. The dark tattoos on his cheeks scrunch as he offers a hesitant smile. “Sadiqaa…”
“Yeah. You’re among friends, buddy.” Taking Ardeth’s blood-striped right hand in his, Rick squeezes his fingers gently. “How can I help?”
Ardeth frowns, a slow, clearly carefully coordinated shifting of his muscles. “You do not… owe me… anything.”
“Maybe not.” Though that’s debatable, Rick remembering how very quickly Ardeth agreed to help Rick track down his child instead of going to his people. “But can I help you?”
Ardeth strains to lift his head, managing just enough motion that he can look past Rick to where the other medjai stands, a silent shadow that Rick still half-suspects of being disapproving.
Then Ardeth lays his head back down, closes his eyes, and starts to weep silently.
***
Ardeth shouldn’t have asked for this.
He hadn’t expected anyone in the medjai to agree to it. He’d half expected them to kill him despite his requests that they not—to use it as a teaching moment for the younger medjai, to show them that even heroes are only mortal and fallible, and that sometimes the kindest thing to do is to allow God’s will be done and mortal flesh to fall away.
“Ardeth? Ardeth, are you still with me?”
This is probably the most Rick has ever said his name, and it shouldn’t make Ardeth’s chest feel warm in a way that’s immediately distinguishable from fever. “I’m here. I’m sorry. I have no right to ask anything of you, let alone this. I just wanted to see you one last time before—”
“You’re not dying, all right?” Rick uses the same tone he does with Alex, certain and just slightly too strident—willing them both to believe. “We’re going to figure this out and you’re going to be fine.”
Nasir, bless him, steps in to explain what Ardeth is too tired to manage. “If Ardeth were able to fight the curse on his own, he would have done so by now. Our options at this point are to watch him die, or to find someone who is able to be taw’am alruwh for him. Someone whose soul knows how to resonate with Ardeth’s, and help him fight the curse.”
“There is… risk.” Since when did breathing become a chore as difficult as decapitating a warrior of Anubis, or destroying one of the beings that the Creature summons? “Too much risk. You have… a family. I just… I wanted… to say goodbye.”
Ardeth’s fingers brush over the wrist guard that hides Rick’s tattoo—the proof that Ardeth’s feeling of knowing Rick, from the first time they met, was more than just idle appreciation of a talented and handsome man.
How many lifetimes has he spent looking for Rick?
How many more have they spent together?
The fire flares up hot across his chest, and Ardeth hisses out a breath of pain even as a British soldier shimmers into being across the room from him.
The man’s uniform is old, several decades out of date, but it is crisp and pristine on his body, not even sweat-stained. “You! What’s with the tattoos on your face, eh? What do they mean?”
Ardeth doesn’t bother answering. This will end in violence—all the visions and memories end in violence.
Rick turns to Nasir. “You’ve got nobody in all the twelve tribes of the medjai willing to step forward and help a hero of your people?”
“Many did. Ardeth’s is a singular soul.” Nasir’s voice trembles, whether in frustration or disdain Ardeth can’t say. “I was unable to forge a connection.”
“Then how do you think I can help?” Rick tries to draw his hand away.
Ardeth’s fingers tighten of their own accord. The soldier is moving closer, his voice rising in threatening anger. The pain will come soon, and the blood-letting.
Rick stills, the fingers of his left hand moving to hover over Ardeth’s hand—over the tattoo.
When Rick speaks again, his voice is hoarse. “Can you test it?”
“Yes.” Nasir steps up by Rick’s side. “Give me one of your hands.”
Rick offers his left hand.
Before Rick can realize his mistake, Nasir flicks a small ceremonial dagger from his sleeve and slices it across Rick’s palm.
“Ow!” Rick dances away from Ardeth, leaving Ardeth’s fingers feeling bitterly cold as the soldier closes from the other side.
Closing his eyes, Ardeth waits for the pain, intent on keeping himself from screaming or otherwise betraying what is happening.
“Press your palm to his chest, where the wounds are worst.” Nasir’s voice seems to come from a very long way away as the British soldier grabs Ardeth’s left hand and begins bending his second and third fingers back.
Something cool splashes against Ardeth’s skin, and he opens his eyes with a gasp.
The soldier is gone.
Rick stands over him, Rick’s hand bleeding onto Ardeth’s ravaged chest.
It feels… oh, there is not a word for how good it feels to have the fire cooled, even if only for a moment.
Then Rick pulls his hand back.
Nasir’s face hovers into view. “See how the edges of the wound look cleaner already? I don’t know why, but Ardeth was right. You could help him, Rick O’Connell. The question now is will you, when you risk death alongside him if you fail to break the curse.”
Ardeth turns his head, finding and holding Rick’s gaze for long seconds.
Rick presses the fingers of his right hand against the wound in his left. “Give me a few minutes to talk to Evy, all right?”
It’s more than a fair request, and Ardeth nods before closing his eyes again, hoping that no more visions will come while Rick decides what he’s willing to risk for a man who has only ever appeared in his life in times of crisis.
***
“You want to do it.”
“No!” Rick responds to Evy’s words as though they were an accusation, shaking his head. “I mean—I don’t—I don’t want to watch him die, but I know where I owe my loyalty. I know I have to take care of my family.”
“Oh, Rick.” Evy moves forward, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tight as she pulls him down for a firm, steady kiss.
They’ve done this so many times before, to the point where Alex sometimes calls the book-lined hallway outside their bedroom the Kissing Corridor. It feels good to do it again now, to have Evy firm and solid against him after the nightmare that the last thirty minutes have been.
Evy pulls away too soon, though, looking up into his eyes with strong, steady resolve. “Tell me what you really want to do, hero man.”
Rick could lie. Perhaps he should lie. That’s what a good father and husband would do, right?
Except Evy doesn’t lie to him, and he doesn’t lie to her. Sometimes she’ll withhold information if she knows it’ll be upsetting, and sometimes he’ll skew the odds a little more in his favor than they really are when he tells her about a plan, but overall they’re honest. And the honest truth is, “I want to save him if I can.”
Evy smiles, reaching up to touch his lips. “I know. Like I said, you’re a hero. Heroes don’t let their friends die horrible painful deaths if they can save them.”
“Right.” Rick leans in, resting his forehead against Evy’s. “And I’m strong, yeah? Chances are this’ll be a piece of cake. How hard can it be to face down some stupid curse with him? We faced Imhotep and the Scorpion King without flinching; we can take down something that isn’t even sentient.”
“Oooh, using the big words I taught you. I like that.” Evy kisses him again, but there’s something hesitant in her eyes, something held back in the way her lips press to his. “And that’s the only reason? That he’s our friend and he’s helped us before?”
Rick’s blood turns to ice in his veins.
“Because I remember a conversation, when we were both very drunk, after the first time we defeated Imhotep… after the first time you and I made love…” Evy’s fingers splay against his cheek, trailing down to his neck.
“I was very, very drunk at the time. I don’t think I should be held responsible for anything I said then.” Rick swallows, his throat feeling parched, his chest aching.
“I was drunk, too. Drunk and thrilled to be alive, and thrilled to be with you, and thrilled to be sharing myself with you.” Evy moves onto her tip-toes, her face a breath away from his, her arms moving to encircle his neck and hold him close. “I meant it when I said that I kissed my best friend Jane and loved every moment of it… and when I agreed with you that Ardeth is an absolutely gorgeous man whose muscles I would love to touch.”
Closing his eyes, Rick tries to breathe through the instinctive panic her words engender. He knows some men sleep with men. Sometimes it’s not even that big a deal—on campaigns, when there are no women to be found, people tolerate what they otherwise wouldn’t.
But when there’s no extenuating excuse to be had—
“He’s never liked women. Not in any of the dreams I’ve had about our… our past lives.” Rick forces himself to open his eyes, to look into Evy’s. “He’s always either celibate or… or into me, or another man in the little groups that tend to form around us.”
Evy goes very still, her eyes distant as she considers this new information he’s given her. “We’ll put aside, for now, the fact that you’ve had dreams of past lives and decided not to share them with me.”
“I didn’t see how it would matter or do anything good.” Rick wraps the fingers of his left hand around the wrist guard that hides his tattoo. “You heard Ardeth going on about my mark back with the whole Scorpion King fiasco, and then… what, was I supposed to send letters to Egypt postmarked for ‘one of the crazy people who lives in the desert and keeps mummies from rising’?”
“You were supposed to tell your loving wife about anything that was bothering you.” Evy takes both his hands in hers, giving them a squeeze. “But like I said, we’ll talk about that later. Right now… in those dreams… do you love him back?”
“Sometimes.” The admission is a barely breathed whisper.
Leaning in, Evy rests her head against his chest. “It’s all right, Rick. I wouldn’t have brought it up if it wasn’t.”
It’s all right.
The words soothe something inside him, and Rick allows his arms to close around Evy, to hold her just as tightly as she’s holding him.
“It will make it harder to share him, if it’s the same in this life.” Evy tilts her head so that they’re looking eye to eye again. “But what’ll make things really hard is if he’s dead. If you think you can save him, and you want to—don’t you dare die on me, Rick O’Connell.”
Grabbing his head between both her hands, Evy pulls him into the fiercest kiss they’ve shared in a long, long time.
Releasing him, Evy lifts her right hand, the first two fingers resting under his chin. “If you die on me, I’ll find a Book of the Dead just so I can have the pleasure of telling you how very angry I am at you. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lifting Evy, Rick spins her in a circle before kissing her one more time.
Then he takes her right hand in his left, and leads her back into the room where he’s going to try something very, very stupid for all the right reasons.
***
Ardeth stifles a groan of agony as the knife slides between the bones of his lower left arm, fracturing the more-fragile ulna.
“Tell us where Lord Imhotep rests.” The cultist’s voice rumbles, echoing deep in Ardeth’s chest.
Ardeth doesn’t say anything. He will never betray his people. He has lived a good life—forty-six years, longer than any wifeless, childless warrior who throws himself into danger so that others don’t have to has a right to ask. If this is to be how he ends this life, so be it.
There will be another one. He doesn’t ever remember his past lives clearly, but he is old enough to recognize that the little flashes he sees are true.
Maybe in his next life, he will have the opportunity to ask someone if they are a traveler, come from afar to slot into Ardeth’s life like the missing piece of a puzzle.
“If you don’t tell me where Lord Imhotep lies, I will send you home piece by piece to your family.”
Ardeth stares up into the face of the man torturing him, and smiles before spitting a bloody wad towards his eye.
The knife yanks itself free of Ardeth’s arm. The killing blow will be coming now. Ardeth knows that, somehow, though precognition has never been a part of his skill set. He closes his eyes, whispering a prayer to God to take care of his soul before the next time he is needed.
Except.
This time, someone grabs his injured arm, holding it tight.
This time he is not forty-six, has not even lived forty years yet, and he doesn’t want to die yet.
“Ardeth, it’s me. It’s Rick, and I’m going to make this stop, I promise.”
Opening his eyes, Ardeth stares up at Rick O’Connell. “R-r-r-rick…” When did Ardeth’s teeth start chattering? Is it because of the fire in his chest, or because of the cool, welcoming pleasure that flows out from Rick’s touch?
“Yeah.” Rick draws in a deep breath, his nostrils flaring in that perfect way they do before he commits himself to something foolish and heroic and wondrous. “If you’re all right with being tal’am alrud with me, then I’m going to save your damn life, all right?”
Ardeth smiles, a soft chuckle rising up his throat despite how parched he feels. “Taw’am alruwh. And I am always… p-p-pleased… to fight… beside you, brother.”
“Uh uh, no brother. That might make the future weirder than it’s already going to be.” Rick removes his hand, and instead of the torrent of blood Ardeth expected the shadow-wound only leaks slightly, red blood that would have been hidden by Ardeth’s usual black clothes but which stains Rick’s cream sheets in stark crimson.
Ardeth doesn’t have time to question Rick about what he means by that. Nasir steps forward, his eyes drawn together in a fierce frown. “This is what you want, Ardeth?”
There are so many facets to that question, and Ardeth is too tired and drained to think through all of them, but the fire has burned away his ability to lie to himself or others right now. Whether Nasir means does Ardeth want to be bound to an outsider, does Ardeth want to be bound to Rick, does Ardeth want Rick, the answer is always the same. “Yes. If he... will have me.”
“I’m honored and whatever other jazz I need to say, so can we please get on with making Ardeth stop bleeding all over my bed?” Rick holds out his hands, the slice across his left palm standing out stark still to Ardeth’s blurring vision.
Nasir sighs, the tiniest movement of his chest. “Take off your shirt, Rick O’Connell.”
Rick hesitates, glances at Ardeth’s blood on his right hand and his own on his left, and then complies.
Nasir starts by marking Ardeth’s chest, the simple tattoo joining a myriad of others that attempted and failed to contain the curse. “The Eye of Horus—a request for healing, for health… a conduit for the sacrifices that have been made and will be made.”
Once the symbol is etched onto Ardeth, Nasir turns to Rick and begins tattooing it just beneath Rick’s left clavicle.
Ardeth gasps in a breath as soon as the symbol is done. It burns, but this burning is different from the fires that have consumed him for the last days. This leaves him feeling clean rather than sweat-drenched and heart-sick.
“The Djed.” Nasir returns to Ardeth’s side, and the prick of needle and ink begins again. “For stability. For rebirth and regeneration, and maintaining your soul through every age and all trials that may come.”
Clenching his fingers in the bedding, Ardeth waits for the snap of connection that will come with Rick’s symbol being completed.
It comes, and Ardeth can’t quite keep his mouth from opening in… is this pleasure? It’s certainly not pain, or at least not only pain. Ardeth has experience enough with that in his life.
“The Ajet, that which is neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow. The time between, in the underworld, the dreamland. The time that you must master, or both be lost.”
The fire burns high, seeming infuriated by the influx of power. Visions try to push forward, snippets of a hundred different people who all wish—wished, it is important to remember that these visions are not truth anymore—Ardeth dead.
Rick’s hand closes around Ardeth’s. “Hang on, buddy. Not much more, I don’t think.”
The Ankh, Ardeth tries and fails to say.
Nasir explains that most famous of symbols for him, and Ardeth clings tight to Rick’s hand, his grasp of English slipping so that only a few key words—rebirth , immortality , eternity—make any kind of sense.
He shouldn’t need this comfort, but he cherishes it anyway—the feeling of an anchor holding him in the midst of the inferno sandstorm that the curse would see him lost in.
“And finally.” Nasir’s hand feels like a leaden weight on Ardeth’s chest. “Your names.”
Ardeth knows what Rick’s will be—the way it will contain the symbol on Rick’s wrist combined with the characters for unstoppable and protector. He welcomes it onto his body—welcomes Rick’s fierce energy as a complement to Ardeth’s only faltering strength.
Ardeth is less certain what will be used to represent him on Rick’s body. There are so very many medjai, and it has been happenstance that pulls them together—or so Rick would like to believe.
Happenstance that spans lifetimes, that means he saw Rick in his dreams and vision-seekings long before he truly met Rick.
And then something jolts through him, lightning without source, and all sense of the physical world is ripped away in a torrent of power that it takes all of Ardeth’s faltering essence to mold into something useful.
***
Rick draws in a breath to yell, and stops as the world around him… rearranges.
He’s still in his bedroom. He’s certain of that, because he’s been exposed to a lot of magic, and it usually does horrific things like ‘summon bugs to eat people alive’ and ‘bring dead creatures back to life’ and ‘summon giant sandstorms to destroy you and everyone you love’. Teleporting him to what seems to be a very nice desert oasis, complete with tall trees to shade from the bright sun and sparkling water that feels cold even from a distance doesn’t seem to be in line with that.
Ardeth sits cross-legged at the edge of the water, his hands formed into a circle in his lap. His eyes are closed, but he smiles anyway as Rick edges closer to the water. “Don’t be afraid. Not yet, at least.”
“Who’s afraid? Definitely not me.” Rick looks around, uneasily aware that nothing else here is moving. The plants hang, pristine and perfect; the water lays like a sheet of glass. No insects buzz; there aren’t any animal tracks.
On the plus side, Ardeth looks much better than he did while the older medjai tattooed them. He’s still too thin, his cheeks fever-sunken, but there’s no sign of bandages or blood under the simple black robes that seem to be standard medjai attire.
“It’s all right to be afraid sometimes. Wise, even.” Ardeth rises in one smooth motion, turning to face Rick. The smile falters slightly, though Rick isn’t certain what the reason is for Ardeth’s unease. “Thank you. For being willing to do this.”
“You’re my friend. You’re—” Rick reaches for the wrist guard that hides his tattoo, but it’s gone, revealing what he was marked as for all the world to see.
“I am a stranger, traveling from the East, seeking that which is lost.” Ardeth pulls down on his robes, revealing a line of fresh dark tattoos that trail just beneath his collarbone. The last of the tattoos looks something like the mark on Rick’s wrist, though it’s been added to. The very edge of the deep claw wounds that started all this mess show just beneath it, but Rick’s certain that’s not what Ardeth wants to talk about right now.
Drawing in a deep breath, Rick forces his voice to steadiness as he replies, “I am a stranger traveling from the West. It is I whom you seek.”
Ardeth nods. “I’m sorry if it upsets you, that I sought you out again. Our time together is frequently short, but Allah is merciful in letting me see you again and again, and I… cherish what friendship you and I have been able to cultivate.”
“Oh, for Jesus’ fucking sake.” Rick glances over Ardeth’s shoulder, to where a shadow is growing in the north—a threat if he saw one. “Just get over here and kiss me.”
Ardeth freezes, just staring at him, so Rick steps forward, grabs the medjai by the lapels of his robe, and presses their lips together. He pulls back when Ardeth doesn’t untense, suddenly worried that he’s been misreading the whole situation—that his own dreams have been wildly, vastly different than Ardeth’s. “Sorry. If that isn’t what you want, then—”
Ardeth’s hands move, a warrior-fast strike, grabbing Rick by the leather straps that hold his guns. Ardeth pushes forward, and before Rick knows quite what’s happening he’s being pushed up against a tree, Ardeth’s lips pressing hungrily to his.
It feels… way too damn good. Distractingly good, and Rick has to force himself to look over Ardeth’s shoulder, towards where the shadow is growing much more impressive and disturbing. Slapping Ardeth’s right shoulder, he points towards the danger.
Ardeth pulls back, a low, guttural growl of frustration rumbling in his throat.
Rick draws in a shaky breath. “I take it that’s something bad?”
“Our enemy. Sekhmet’s power, driven by the death-curse of her priestess.” Ardeth steps back, and though Rick could have sworn he wasn’t wearing a weapon early, the medjai now cleanly draws his sword from its sheath.
“And we’re… what, inside your head?” Rick readies one of his pistols, making sure all the chambers are full.
“In a realm of spirit, shaped by my desires, and yours… and its.” Ardeth steps forward, and there is wind now, shaking the trees around them and rippling the water into fierce little waves. “We are turning the curse’s own trick against it, confronting it in a place where we can actually damage it.”
“But it can also damage us, yeah? That’s the trick to the trick.” Rick takes two paces to the side, hoping that he’ll be able to flank the attacking creature—no, creatures. A wave of monsters that seems to blot out the northern horizon, coming closer by the second.
On second thought, maybe back-to-back will be better. Rick retreats to Ardeth’s side.
“Yes. But I will do everything in my power to see you back with your wife and child, no matter what it costs me.” Ardeth’s face sets in the same fierce scowl he wore during their assault on Hamunaptra, and after his hawk died on the way to Ahm Shere—a determination to lay down his life for a cause he believes in.
“Hey.” Rick bumps his shoulder against Ardeth’s. “We’re both getting out of this alive, all right? There’s a hell of a lot we need to discuss once we’re back in the real world.”
Ardeth’s composure cracks, just slightly. “What… kind of things?”
“Kissing type things, mostly. And how that’ll work when you’re medjai and typically live half a world away and I’m married, but since Evy gave her blessing and also thinks you’re about as hot as the sun and did I mention gave her blessing…”
“You are very good at giving me incentive to survive.” Ardeth smiles, just the tiniest grin, before he focuses his attention back on their enemies.
Then there isn’t time for anything more than screaming and fighting.
Rick recognizes some of the monsters that come at them. He really could do with going just a decade—just one—without seeing the creatures that Imhotep raises. And his far-off glimpses of Anubis’ minions were plenty—having one snarling right up in his face makes it even more impressive when Ardeth beheads it and the creature turns to black sand.
Some of the monsters they fight are human. Rick hears snippets of a hundred different stories in the accusation thrown at Ardeth from the mouths of people who look like everything from fellow medjai to foreign soldiers.
Some of the monsters are from Rick’s own past, but that was a mistake. One thing Rick learned young, from the orphanage and the foreign legion both, was never to dwell in the possible mistakes of the past. That way lies madness, and grief, and an early death from either stupidity or alcohol poisoning. He doesn’t allow himself to listen to his old headmaster, or to any of his commanders, or to his fellow explorers who want to blame him for their deaths.
It’s a dangerous world out there, and he’s going to survive—not only that, he’s going to keep his people alive, no matter what it takes, and right now that means Ardeth.
He fires off one final shot, into the face of a man who tried to drown him as a child, and turns to find… only one more enemy.
She’s twice as large as any of the others. She walks through the black-sand corpses that litter the ground with the ease of a lion stalking, her eyes flicking between him and Ardeth. Her hands are misshapen, too large for a human body, her fingers tipped with blood-drenched claws. “Why do you prolong this? Why do you fight against my apotheosis?”
Ardeth circles the beast, his footing steady, his bloody blade held sure before him in a defensive posture. “You are not Sekhmet. You are not even a proper fragment of Her, and even if you were, I defy you.”
“Of course you do, little man.” The creature laughs and lunges forward, moving on the toes of her feet. A lion’s mane, bright gold, flickers like sunlight around her neck. “You cling to the past, one more piece to be purged before a better present can be made.”
“Hey, fur-face!” Rick waits just a moment for the cat-lady to turn towards him, and fires off two rounds.
Both find their mark in the monster’s face, and she staggers back, yowling.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all?” Rick begins reloading, cursing the timing that means he’s out of bullets now.
The cat-woman cackles, circling, moving on all fours now and still looming over the two of them. “Nice? What nice things would Sekhmet have to say to the abandoned orphan boy who rebuffs all attempts at friendship? Who rejects anything that could be seen as a destiny?”
“I am working on tha—ah!” Rick yelps as Ardeth charges into him, the medjai’s body carrying both of them away from where Sekhmet pounces.
“Less talking.” Ardeth rolls off him, somehow managing not to stab either of them as he return to harrying the cat-woman’s flanks. “More shooting.”
“Right. I knew you kept me around for my strengths.” Scrambling back to his feet, Rick looks for his next target.
There’s something almost beautiful in fighting alongside Ardeth. It’s still brutal—no fight Rick has been in hasn’t been brutal—but the medjai flows through his sword-work as though he were born with the blade in his hand, and it’s almost like Rick knows where Ardeth will be. He’s able to shift along with the medjai, to harry the cat-creature—to ensure that her claws don’t drink any more of Ardeth’s blood.
The fight, like all fights do, seems to last an eternity. Each second drains more and more of his strength, leaving his hands too slow, his reactions too delayed as matters drag on.
They’re winning, though. Bit by bit, blow by blow and shot by shot, they’re damaging the cat-creature. Her blood turns the sand around them dark and hot, but that doesn’t seem to stop Ardeth’s dancing attacks.
Rick’s chest feels heavy, and his eyelids are drooping when the cat-woman finally falls to her knees between him and Ardeth.
“You are nothing.” The cat-woman’s blood sizzles as it strikes the ground, burning away into black ash like all the other constructs the curse crafted. “You are sad, pathetic mortals who will die while we live on. Give yourself to your quest, and in a hundred years, in a thousand, another will rise to open the tomb. I will walk among mortals again, delivering my justice.”
“Perhaps.” Ardeth’s voice shakes, but his hand doesn’t as he grasps that shimmering-gold mane and lifts the cat-woman’s head. “But it will not be because I failed in my duties.”
There’s no spattering of blood as Ardeth runs his blade across the cat-creature’s throat. There’s just a lightening of the sky, a loss of an ash-smell from the air.
The exhaustion stays, and Rick allows himself to flop down in the clean sand, his pistols hanging between his knees. “Ow.”
“Yes.” Ardeth drops next to Rick, his sword once more gone.
“I’m gonna have to learn how to do that. To summon and send away weapons and…” Rick shifts so that he’s leaning against Ardeth. “Does that mean we win?”
“Yes.” Ardeth’s left hand moves, slow and hesitant, to wrap around Rick’s waist. “We win. I live. Sekhmet continues to fume for another thousand years.”
“I don’t really care about her.” Leaving his pistols in the sand, Rick turns Ardeth’s face so that they’re nose-to-nose. “I care about you. You’re really going to be all right?”
Ardeth’s smile this time is wide and open, filled with the same glee he demonstrated every time they tried a new form of conveyance. “I will live. And you… you kissed me. Of your own volition. You said… we would talk about things?”
“Yeah, we will. But first…” Rick buries his hands in Ardeth’s hair and presses their lips together for a softer, lingering kiss.
Which is, of course, when the oasis dissolves around them, leaving him straddling Ardeth’s bandage-wrapped body.
Kissing him soundly.
As Evy and the old medjai watch, both of them with a hand over their mouth.
Rick sighs.
At least Evy looks more like she’s enjoying the show than anything else.
Groaning, he allows his body to collapse to the side, away from Ardeth and his injuries. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more exhausted in my life.”
“Uh huh.” Evy steps forward, reaching up to smooth Rick’s hair away from his eyes. “I believe you, strangely enough. It’s because of all those kisses you and I have had over the years in similar situations.”
She’s not mad at all. Rick searches her face, but all he sees is quiet pride and bright acceptance. Taking Evy’s hand, Rick kisses the back of it.
The old medjai presses the back of his hand to Ardeth’s forehead, then inspects the deep claw marks across Ardeth’s chest. “The curse is broken, and your fever with it. Thank you, O’Connell.”
“You’re welcome.” Rick edges just a little closer to Evy, not certain how many knives and swords medjai usually hide in their robes and a little worried he’s about to find out in a painful way.
Fixing him with a fierce glare, the medjai continues. “You are bound to Ardeth now, O’Connell. If you betray the trust he shows you—the medjai take care of their own, understand?”
“Nasir—” Ardeth places a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“No, Ardeth.” Nasir draws himself up straighter. “You are kind, and you love deeply. Let the man know that he is being watched, as all husbands who marry into the medjai are watched.”
Rick opens his mouth to protest, sees that Ardeth seems to be as stunned as he is, and decides it’s best to just lie still and say nothing for once.
There will be time enough for talking when he doesn’t feel like he got run over by a tank.
And when he’s maybe had a little bit more time to explore what it’s like to kiss Ardeth without the threat of death hanging over both of them.
***
“It’s truly all right if I stay here?” Ardeth hesitates, looking between the elder and the door to the O’Connell’s house.
“Ardeth, you still have at least three weeks of healing left. Do it here, with your taw’am alruwh.” Nasir’s voice strains for exasperation, but he’s smiling, his eyes lighter than Ardeth’s seen them in years.
“What you said…” Ardeth hesitates. “About Rick being—about him marrying in—”
“What happens between him, and you, and his wife—that is for God to judge. All I will judge is whether he is as caring towards you as he is towards that trouble-making wife of his.” Nasir claps Ardeth on his right shoulder. “You are a hero, Ardeth, and always a part of the medjai. But we will not begrudge you a bit of peace. And really… it might be better to have someone here to watch the O’Connell’s, given their historical precedent for getting into trouble.”
“At least for a bit, then. At least until I’m healed, or another crisis rises.” Placing his fist in front of his chest, Ardeth bows. “Thank you. For honoring my request and bringing me here.”
“Thank you for surviving. I’ve seen enough good men die. I’m glad I didn’t add another to the tally.” Nasir shoulders his pack. "Allahu ma’ana, Ardeth.”
“Allahu ma’ana.” Ardeth watches until Nasir turns onto the main street, out of sight.
Then he turns back to where Rick and Evy wait for him, the O’Connell’s leaning against each other and the door to their house.
Rick holds out a hand. “Talking or kissing first?”
Ardeth takes the proffered hand. “Kissing first. I’ve been around you enough to know if we don’t we might not get another chance.”
Evy laughs, and closes the door behind the three of them, welcoming Ardeth into his next lease on life.