Darren Craske - The Eleventh Plague

'And they were, Madame,' reminded Aloysius. 'For twenty years those letters remained unopened…the secret preserved – until it was time for your destiny to bring you back to Egypt and they called you to them.' He looked over his shoulder nervously, as though someone were pursuing him. As he gripped Destine's wrists, she felt a cold chill constrict around them, as if they were submerged in iced water. 'Destine, you have to put an end to this! My diary is the key, remember?'

'Aloysius, what do you mean?' Destine called to him.

'Warn others! Warn them of the Eleventh Plague,' said Aloysius Bedford, his voice fading along with his spectral form, gradually becoming one with the mist that hung in the air. 'Destine, my time is short and I must go. They have come for me.'

'Who?' asked Destine. 'Who has come for you?'

An almighty white blast of light bathed the sand dunes and a piercing wail like a thousand screams shattered the silence. Destine clamped her hands to ears and crouched into a ball on the ground. Moments later, the silence returned and Aloysius was gone from the desert…and so was Madame Destine.

She was back in the underground citadel in Fantoma. Alone in the room. Numbly, she glanced down at her bare feet, staring at the sand between her toes, and she remembered. She remembered everything. The past was back in place, pigeonholed within her memories. And they were not alone in her mind. Her clairvoyant gifts had returned, just as Aloysius had said they would. A shower of elation soaked Destine's body as she felt the tingle of her ability's re-emergence.

Madame Destine was whole again.

She had become a swan.

Her mind was being flooded with messages, images and visions of the future, as though she had returned from a long holiday to greet a carpet of unopened letters. As the onslaught besieged her, one vision in particular was possessed of clarity – the last prophecy that she had experienced prior to her voyage to Egypt. Considering all that she had learned from Aloysius's spectre, the words seemed to make a strange sort of imperfect sense:

The past and the present shall entwine once more.

Beware the dawn of the Eleventh Plague.

'The journal is the key!' Destine gasped. 'That is why I wrote those letters to myself, that is what they were leading me to…and now I know why! I have to use it to make sure that the Eleventh Plague can never rise again.' She patted herself down, sifting through the folds of her gown for the book – just as a sudden realisation slammed so violently into her mind that it brought a tear to her eye. She recalled the moments before the hooded riders on the road to Umkaza attacked her, she recalled giving the book to her trusted friend for safekeeping, and she recalled exactly where Aloysius's journal was.

The Day of Reckoning

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, the sun loomed low over the Egyptian desert, casting the ominous shadows of the Hawass Mountains over the tiny encampment positioned at its foot. Yawning loudly, Godfrey Joyce pawed clumsily at his eyes as the sight of two hooded Hades Consortium assassins startled him awake.

'Oh, thank God,' he blurted uncontrollably. 'You've come to rescue me!'

'Rescue you?' smiled Cornelius Quaint, pulling down his dark red hood. 'Not quite, Godfrey.'

'You? I thought you were one of them!' gasped Joyce.

'That's the general idea,' said Quaint. 'I told you it would work, Faroud.'

Standing at Quaint's side – also dressed head to foot in claret-coloured robes – Aksak Faroud threw off his hood and patted his assassin's ragged uniform about his torso. 'We fooled him, but we have still to test them on the sentries guarding Fantoma.'

'Have faith, Aksak!' said Quaint. 'This plan'll work.'

'It had better – it is the only one we have got,' reminded Faroud. He motioned to the grouped Scarabs, as everyone slowly roused themselves awake. 'Come, brothers, we must ready ourselves for the battle that lies ahead.'

The Unwelcome Visitors

SINCE HER ARRIVAL at the Hades Consortium's lair, Madame Destine had been in solitary confinement. That situation was about to be remedied, yet the company would not be pleasant.

She lifted her head to greet the newcomers, noticing the stooped old man first. Sir George Dray dragged his hunched form into the room, huffing and puffing with each expense of energy, with Lady Jocasta following at his heels.

'Madame Destine, isn't it,' Sir George said rather than asked. 'It's a pleasure to meet you and I mean that sincerely. I hope you don't mind the interruption, but I want to ask you a question about a mutual friend, if you don't mind.'

'You may ask me as many questions as you wish, monsieur, but that does not mean I will choose to answer them,' Destine replied defiantly.

'That's hardly polite behaviour towards your host,' Dray grinned.

'What makes you think that I would relish consorting with a vile monster like you?' Destine replied.

'But we've not even been formally introduced yet!' said Dray, with a laugh.

'I know who you are, monsieur…I know what you are,' said Destine.

'And I know you, my dear lady,' Sir George said, teasing his cracked lips with his tongue. 'And I would have thought that someone like you would be used to consorting with vile monsters…after all, you gave birth to one.' The old man watched the effect his words had upon Destine with keen interest. 'It was a real shame what happened to Antoine in London. You have my sympathies.'

'You may keep them!' Destine said. 'I have long since given up shedding tears for him – he chose his life, and he deserved his death. He was nothing but a cold-blooded murderer.'

'True…but one of the most gifted cold-blooded murderers I've ever met,' said Dray, flashing a glimpse of his yellowed teeth. 'No remorse, no conscience, and no limits to the lengths he would go to get the job done. The Hades Consortium can't take all the credit, of course. All we did was encourage his skills along a little. But your son is not why I am here, Madame. Like I said, I have a question about a mutual friend…the man responsible for your son's death…Cornelius Quaint.'

'My son was responsible for his own death!' replied Destine forthrightly.

Dray cackled. 'So you approved of Cornelius's actions, did you? Interesting. That takes rare strength of character, Madame. I doubt that I'd be so generous if someone did that to my son!'

Lady Jocasta felt her blood chill.

It was almost as if the old man was speaking one thing, but meaning something else, and something directed only at her. She tried to mask her shattered nerves, praying he could not sense her fear.

'Cornelius acted with honour, as he always does, monsieur!' Destine said.

'Maybe so. We shall soon see if he holds you in as much regard,' said Dray, as he leaned on his walking cane and pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. 'Our sentries tell us that Cornelius is camped on the outskirts of this very base. He is no doubt coming for you, but when he gets here he will have a very nasty surprise waiting for him.'

Destine looked up. 'Which is?'

Sir George Dray smiled a tight, crooked smile. 'Me.'

The Advance Guard

CORNELIUS QUAINT AND Aksak Faroud held centre stage in front of the group of Clan Scarabs (plus Godfrey Joyce) gathered around the ashes of the campfire.

'Right then, does everyone know their part?' Quaint asked. 'Faroud and I will be disguised as Consortium guards at the rear. Joyce is the vanguard, and Kulfar and Nehmet here will be masquerading as his prisoners – namely Faroud and myself respectively. Once we get close, the Consortium guards will be watching us like hawks so you'll have to keep your nerve – not to mention your wits.' He clasped his hands behind his back and looked out across the Scarabs' apprehensive faces. 'The rest of you are to be our second wave. After we enter the sanctorum, Faroud and I will be causing a commotion and drawing a lot of attention to ourselves. The Consortium will be running around like headless chickens. Wait for the signal before you join the fray. You'll know it when you see it. It will be up to you to back us up. We may be outnumbered and outgunned – but they won't be expecting us to bring the fight to them. Once we get a foot in the door, we'll bottleneck them within the confines of the tunnels, but whatever we do, we can't let them use numbers against us.' Quaint smiled effusively. 'Now, we've assembled an array of weaponry that you lot thoughtfully managed to procure from Bara Mephista before you left. I suggest everyone fills their pockets. Any questions? No? In that case…good luck to us all.'