“Any sign of him?” Edwyrd asked Maelen as the man seemed to wake from his trance.
“Not yet. I’ve searched the upper levels of the castle and am working my way downward. I’ve certainly encountered a lot of demons though. You were right on that account. I don’t like the looks of this. Too many demons and Rupert missing, plus other things.”
“Other things?” Edwyrd asked.
“Yes. Other, disturbing things.” Maelen frowned.
“What other things?” Edwyrd asked. Maelen looked around as if to make sure no one was within listening distance. There was no one. He and Edwyrd were in Edwyrd’s room. Gastropé had gone off with Tizzy some place. Hunting more demons, apparently.
“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.
