“I really shouldn’t say. I don’t want to cause any unwanted and possibly unfounded concern.”
“You don’t want to cause any possibly unfounded concern? We are trapped in a demon infested palace with two warring wizards, surrounded by the Rod of Tiernon that wants to hang us, Rupert is lost and missing somewhere in the midst of this, and you don’t want to cause anymore unfounded concern? Don’t worry.”
“Well, last night I wandered across a gentleman in a disturbing uniform. I hope it is just someone trying to pull some sort of hoax, especially given the name I heard mentioned with this uniform.”
“You found someone in a disturbing uniform? Personally, at this moment, I find the Rod’s uniforms disturbing. What exactly did you see?” Edwyrd was impatient. He was getting very concerned for Rupert’s safety and he didn’t feel like beating around the bush.
Maelen frowned again, very grim this time. “The uniform was that of a Time Warrior.” Edwyrd just looked at him straight in the eye, waiting for him to continue. “The name that I overheard with the person in the uniform was Ramses. As in Ramses the Damned.”
Edwyrd blinked. This really didn’t make much sense. “You mean like the Mummy?”
“The mummy?” Now it was Maelen’s turn to be confused. “Well, yes he was noted for use of mummies to destroy his enemies. But really he was known as the Anilord in charge of the Time Warriors.”
Edwyrd had no idea what Maelen was talking about. The only Ramses he knew about had been a pharaoh in ancient Egypt. Supposedly cursed with immortality and entombed as a mummy in the desert. “Ramses the Immortal? Cursed to wander the face of the globe, undying, for eternity? Is this the Ramses you mean?”
Maelen was quiet, staring at Edwyrd for a moment. Edwyrd wondered if he’d said something really stupid, something that everyone knew about, but him. Finally Maelen blinked. “You obviously know something about this gentleman that I do not. Given that, if this really were Ramses the Damned, he’d be well over a thousand years old; calling him an immortal would certainly not be out of the question.”
Edwyrd shrugged. “All I know is that, Ramses II, known variously as Ramses the Great, Ramses the Immortal, and Ramses the Damned was a pharaoh in Egypt three thousand years ago. Supposedly he was cursed for some reason, and doomed to wander the world for all eternity.” Edwyrd didn’t add that all of this had happened in a different world. If it was Ramses, he was wandering the wrong world.
“Egypt? I’ve never heard of such a place. I am fairly familiar with history and I recall no such land.” Maelen looked puzzled. Edwyrd just shrugged, it had been stupid to bring it up, but he’d opened his mouth without thinking. He’d just carried it through. Actually, it was really pointless at this point for finding Rupert. While Ramses had been a real person, he knew the whole mummy thing was just the stuff of grade B movies. It was highly doubtful that a human from Earth would be wandering around Astlan, three thousand years later.
Tom paused at that one. It wasn’t completely impossible. He was from Earth, and as had been pointed out to him on multiple occasions, demons were immortal. It would not be inconceivable that he, Tom, would be wandering Astlan three thousand years in the future. Suddenly he got a real shiver down his spine. He’d never really taken that immortality thing much beyond casual face value. The thought, however, that he, Tom, might actually still be alive in three thousand years sent goose bumps running all over Edwyrd’s body. The meaning of the word immortal hadn’t really sunk in until that moment. Someone a couple hundred years old was easy enough to imagine, but three thousand? It almost seemed unimaginable.
Maelen had seen somebody claiming to be Ramses the Damned though. Whatever the case, Egypt’s Ramses or not, Maelen said the man should be over a thousand years old. It didn’t seem likely that humans lived that long on Astlan. True, Maelen was very spritely for his age, but he wasn’t the inconceivably old of a true immortal.
A true immortal, thousands of years old, would need to be a demon, or an incredibly powerful wizard or something. If a demon, then surely such a demon would have gotten good enough to be a big shot. Especially if he really had already been a major power in Astlan, or in Egypt. If a demon then he would probably be an archdemon. If one believed what Lenamare said, an archdemon was on his way, possibly already here. Believing the Rod meant there were several unaccounted for archdemons already in the palace.
Edwyrd didn’t like the way his thoughts were going at all. He had to let them out though. Maelen seemed about the most trustworthy person he could find for such information. “Maelen,” Edwyrd said slowly. Maelen looked up at him, curious by the sudden change in tone of voice.
“What if,” Edwyrd paused for a second, getting his thoughts in order. “What if Ramses the Damned is literally that?”
“What do you mean?” Maelen asked shaking his head.
“I mean, what if he really is damned, so to speak. What if he’s a demon? More specifically what if he’s one of the archdemons that are supposed to be hanging around here? Wouldn’t that explain how he could be over a thousand years old?”
Maelen said nothing. He just stared at Edwyrd. He stared for a very long time. Eventually, Edwyrd shrugged. “It makes some sense if you think of it, doesn’t it?”
Maelen still said nothing for a moment. Then he bowed his head. “It makes very, very, good sense. I’m just trying to figure out why it’s not plausible. It can’t be. I hope it’s not. I really don’t want to contemplate that this fellow really is Ramses the Damned, Ramses the Anilord, the Time Warrior. I don’t want to think that that historical monster could actually be an archdemon. It makes so much sense that I don’t even want to conceive of it.”
Maelen shook his head. He continued, “If, if this man really is Ramses the Damned and is an archdemon, then things are bad. I know it looked that way before, but I just didn’t comprehend exactly how bad.
“We know that something is definitely up. The problem is: we don’t know what.” Maelen raised his hands above his head. “We have to know what is in that damn book of Lenamare’s. The whole thing must revolve around that. I curse now that we gave it back to him. That’s what Exador wants, that’s what Lenamare says the archdemons want. The question is: what the Abyss is in the damn book?!” Maelen was looking extremely frustrated. Edwyrd hadn’t seen the man this upset before. “We are sitting on the bull’s eye of something much more explosive than that little incident at Lenamare’s school. I’d really like to know who is shooting what arrows before we all get killed.”
Rupert was eating lunch. It was a very good lunch for that matter. Nothing fancy, but incredibly tasty trail rations for soldiers who appeared to be about to lay siege to a city. Rupert had gone out earlier for a small stroll. No one had stopped him, but one of the soldiers had followed him at a discreet but obvious distance. So far, the Rod hadn’t impeded traffic flow in and out of the city. At least not directly. It appeared that several merchants and individuals would see the Rod near the city and decide that entering the city would not be such a good idea, and skirted around it.
One other thing that Rupert noted was that there seemed to be an awful lot of new arrivals. He couldn’t see where they were coming from, but the Rod’s encampment seemed to be growing. New tents were being erected on the edges of the previous encampment. Actually, if he wasn’t mistaken the numbers were increasing fairly rapidly.
As Rupert put down his fork and wiped his mouth, the tent flap pulled aside partially. Sir Talarius stuck his head in. “Good day, lad. May we have a word with you?” the knight asked, polite as were all the Rod.