The Complete Kane Chronicles

CHAPTER


14. At the Tomb of Zia Rashid
THE SARCOPHAGUS was made of water.

It was an oversize human figure with rounded feet, wide shoulders, and a larger-than-life smiling face, like other Egyptian coffins I’d seen; but the whole thing was sculpted from pure glowing liquid. It sat on a stone dais in the middle of a square chamber. Egyptian art decorated the walls, but I didn’t pay too much attention to that.

Inside the sarcophagus, Zia Rashid floated in white robes. Her arms were crossed over her chest. In her hands she gripped a shepherd’s crook and a war flail, the symbols of a pharaoh. Her staff and wand floated at her side. Her short black hair drifted around her face, which was just as beautiful as I remembered. If you’ve ever seen the famous sculpture of Queen Nefertiti, Zia reminded me of her, with the raised eyebrows, high cheekbones, graceful nose, and perfect red lips.

[Sadie says I’m overdoing it with the description, but it’s true. There’s a reason Nefertiti was called the most beautiful woman in the world.]

As I approached the sarcophagus, the water began to shimmer. A current rippled down the sides, tracing the same symbol over and over:Bes made a rumbling sound in his throat. “You didn’t tell me she was a godling.”

I hadn’t thought to mention it, but of course that’s why Iskandar had hidden Zia away. When our dad unleashed the gods at the British Museum, one of them—the river goddess Nephthys—had chosen Zia for a host.

“That’s the symbol of Nephthys?” I guessed.

Bes nodded. “Didn’t you say this girl was a fire elementalist?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmph. Not a good combination. No wonder the Chief Lector put her in suspended animation. A fire magician hosting a water goddess—that could kill her, unless…huh, that’s pretty clever.”

“What?”

“The combination of water over fire could also mask Zia’s powers. If Iskandar was trying to hide her from Apophis…” His eyes widened. “Holy Mother Nut. Is that the crook and flail?”

“Yeah, I think.” I wasn’t sure why he acted so shocked. “Didn’t a lot of important people get buried with those?”

Bes gave me an incredulous look. “You don’t understand, kid. Those are the original crook and flail, the royal instruments of Ra.”

Suddenly I felt like I’d swallowed a marble. I don’t think I could’ve been more surprised if Bes had said By the way, you’re leaning against a hydrogen bomb. The crook and flail of Ra were the most powerful symbols of the most powerful Egyptian god. Yet in Zia’s hands they didn’t appear to be anything special. The crook looked like an oversize gold and blue candy cane. The flail was a wooden rod with three spiked chains at the end. They didn’t glow or say PROPERTY OF RA.

“Why would they be here?” I asked.

“Dunno,” Bes said, “but that’s them. Last I heard they were locked in the First Nome’s vaults. Only the Chief Lector had access. I guess Iskandar buried them with your friend here.”

“To protect her?”

Bes shrugged, clearly baffled. “That’d be like wiring your home security system to a nuclear missile. Complete overkill. No wonder Apophis hasn’t been able to attack her. That’s some serious protection against Chaos.”

“What happens if I wake her?”

“The spells shielding her will be broken. That could be why Apophis led you here. Once Zia’s out of that sarcophagus, she’s an easier target. As to why Apophis would want her dead, or why Iskandar would go to such trouble to guard her—your guess is as good as mine.”

I studied Zia’s face. For three months, I’d dreamed of finding her. Now I was almost too scared to wake her. By breaking the sleep spell, I might accidentally hurt her, or leave her open to an attack from Apophis. Even if I succeeded, what if she woke up and decided that she hated me? I wanted to believe she possessed shared memories with her shabti, so that she would remember the times we’d had together. But if she hadn’t, I wasn’t sure I could stand the rejection.

I touched the water coffin.

“Careful, kid,” Bes warned.

Magic energy rippled through me. It was subtle—like looking in the face of the water demon—but I could sense Zia’s thoughts. She was trapped in a dream of drowning. She was trying to hold on to her last good memory: Iskandar’s kindly face as he placed the crook and flail in her hands: Keep these, my dear. You will need them. And do not fear. Dreams will not bother you.

But Iskandar had been wrong. Nightmares had invaded her sleep. The voice of Apophis hissed in the darkness: I destroyed your family. And I am coming for you. Zia saw the demolition of her village over and over, while Aphophis laughed, and the spirit of Nephthys churned uncomfortably inside her. Iskandar’s magic had trapped the goddess too in an enchanted sleep, and she tried to protect Zia, calling on the Nile to cover this chamber and shield them both from the Serpent. Still, she couldn’t stop the dreams. Zia had been having the same chaotic nightmare for three months, and her sanity was crumbling.

“I have to free her,” I said. “She’s partially conscious.”

Bes sucked air through his teeth. “That shouldn’t be possible, but if it’s true—”

“She’s in serious trouble.” I sank my hand deeper into the sarcophagus. I channeled the same kind of magic I’d used to part the river, only on a smaller scale. Slowly the water lost its shape, melting like an ice cube. Before Zia could spill off the dais, I caught her in my arms. She dropped the crook and flail. Her staff and wand clattered to the floor.

As the last of the sarcophagus trickled away, Zia’s eyes flew open. She tried to breathe but couldn’t seem to inhale.

“Bes, what’s wrong with her?” I said. “What do I do?”

“The goddess,” he said. “Zia’s body is rejecting the spirit of Nephthys. Get her to the river!”

Zia’s face started to turn blue. I gathered her in my arms and raced up the slippery stairs, which wasn’t easy with Zia kicking and hitting me all the way. I managed to make it across the mud without falling and eased her down next to the riverbank.

She clawed at her throat, her eyes full of fear; but as soon as her body touched the Nile, a blue aura flickered around her. Her face turned back to its normal color. Water gushed from her mouth like she’d turned into a human fountain. Looking back on it, I suppose that was pretty gross, but at the time I was too relieved to care.

From the surface of the river rose the watery form of a woman in a blue dress. Most Egyptian gods grew weak in running water, but Nephthys was clearly an exception. She glowed with power. She wore a silver Egyptian crown on her long black hair. Her regal face reminded me of Isis, but this woman had a gentler smile and kinder eyes.

“Hello, Bes.” Her voice was soft and rustling, like a breeze through the river grass.

“Nephthys,” said the dwarf. “Long time.”

The water goddess looked down at Zia, who was shivering in my arms, still gasping for breath.

“I am sorry for using her as a host,” Nephthys said. “It was a poor choice, which almost destroyed us both. Guard her well, Carter Kane. She has a good heart, and an important destiny.”

“What destiny?” I asked. “How do I protect her?”

Instead of answering, the spirit of Nephthys melted into the Nile.

Bes grunted with approval. “The Nile’s where she should be. That’s her proper body.”

Zia sputtered and doubled over.

“She still can’t breathe!” I did the only thing I could think of. I tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Yes, okay, I know how that sounds, but I wasn’t thinking straight.

[Stop laughing, Sadie.]

Honestly, I wasn’t trying to take advantage. I was just trying to help.

Zia didn’t see it that way. She punched me in the chest so hard, I made a sound like a squeaky toy. Then she turned to one side and retched.

I didn’t think my breath was that bad.

When she focused on me again, her eyes blazed with anger —just like old times.

“Don’t you dare kiss me!” she managed.

“I wasn’t—I didn’t—”

“Where’s Iskandar?” she demanded. “I thought…” Her eyes lost their focus. “I had a dream that…” She started to tremble. “Eternal Egypt, he’s not… He can’t be—”

“Zia—” I tried to put my hand on her shoulder, but she pushed me away. She turned toward the river and began to sob, her fingers clawing the mud.

I wanted to help her. I couldn’t stand to see her in pain. But I looked at Bes, and he tapped his bloody nose, as if warning me: Go slow, or she’ll give you one of these.

“Zia, we’ve got a lot to talk about,” I said, trying not to sound heartbroken. “Let’s get you away from the river.”

She sat on the steps of her own tomb and hugged her arms. Her clothes and hair were starting to dry, but in spite of the warm night and the dry wind from the desert, she still trembled.

At my request, Bes brought up her staff and wand from the tomb, along with the crook and flail, but he didn’t look happy about it. He handled the items as if they were toxic.

I tried to explain things to Zia: about the shabti, Iskandar’s death, Desjardins’ becoming the Chief Lector, and what had transpired in the last three months since the battle with Set, but I’m not sure how much she heard. She kept shaking her head, pressing her hands over her ears.

“Iskandar can’t be dead.” Her voice quavered. “He wouldn’t have…he wouldn’t have done this to me.”

“He was trying to protect you,” I said. “He didn’t know you’d have nightmares. I’ve been looking for you—”

“Why?” she demanded. “What do you want from me? I remember you from London, but after that—”

“I met your shabti in New York. She—you—took Sadie and me to the First Nome. You started our training. We worked together in New Mexico, then at the Red Pyramid—”

“No.” She shut her eyes tight. “No, that wasn’t me.”

“But you can remember what the shabti did. Just try—”

“You’re a Kane!” she cried. “You’re all outlaws. And you’re here with—with that.” She gestured at Bes.

“That has a name,” Bes grumbled. “I’m starting to wonder why I drove halfway across Egypt to wake you.”

“You’re a god!” Zia said. Then she turned to me. “And if you summoned him, you’ll be put to death!”

“Listen, girl,” Bes said. “You were hosting the spirit of Nephthys. So if anyone gets put to death—”

Zia snatched up her staff. “Be gone!”

Fortunately, she wasn’t back to full strength. She managed to shoot a weak column of fire at Bes’s face, but the dwarf god easily swatted the flames aside.

I grabbed the end of her staff. “Zia, stop! He’s not the enemy.”

“Can I punch her?” Bes asked. “You punched me, kid. Seems only fair.”

“No punching,” I said. “No blasting with flames. Zia, we’re on the same side. The equinox starts tomorrow at sunset, and Apophis will break out of his prison. He means to destroy you. We’re here to rescue you.”

The name Apophis hit her hard. She struggled to breathe, as if her lungs were filling with water again. “No. No, it isn’t possible. Why should I believe you?”

“Because…” I hesitated. What could I say? Because we’d fallen for each other three months ago? Because we’ve been through so much together and saved each other’s lives? Those memories weren’t hers. She remembered me—sort of. But our time together was like a movie she’d watched, with an actress playing her role, doing things she never would’ve done.

“You don’t know me,” she said bitterly. “Now, go, before I’m forced to fight you. I’ll make my own way back to the First Nome.”

“Maybe she’s right, kid,” Bes said. “We should leave. We’ve worked enough magic here to send up all kinds of alarm bells.”

I clenched my fists. My worst fears had come true. Zia didn’t like me. Everything we’d shared had crumbled with her ceramic replica. But as I may have mentioned, I get stubborn when I’m told I can’t do something.

“I’m not leaving you.” I gestured at the ruins of her village. “Zia, this place was destroyed by Apophis. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t your dad’s fault. The Serpent was targeting you. Iskandar raised you because he sensed you had an important destiny. He hid you with the pharaoh’s crook and flail for the same reason—not just because you were hosting a goddess, but because he was dying and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to protect you anymore. I don’t know what your destiny is, exactly, but—”

“Stop!” She reignited the tip of her staff. It blazed more brightly this time. “You’re twisting my thoughts. You’re just like the nightmares.”

“You know I’m not.” I probably should’ve shut up, but I couldn’t believe Zia would actually incinerate me. “Before he died, Iskandar realized the old ways had to be brought back. That’s why he let Sadie and me live. Gods and the magicians have to work together. You—your shabti realized that, when we fought together at the Red Pyramid.”

“Kid,” Bes said more urgently. “We really should go.”

“Come with us,” I told Zia. “I know you’ve always felt alone. You never had anyone but Iskandar. I get that, but I’m your friend. We can protect you.”

“No one protects me!” She shot to her feet. “I am a scribe in the House of Life!”

Flames shot from her staff. I grabbed for my wand, but of course I’d lost it in the river. Instinctively my hands closed around the symbols of the pharaoh—the shepherd’s crook and the war flail. I held them up in a defensive X, and Zia’s staff shattered instantly. The fire dissipated.

Zia stumbled backward, smoke curling from her hands.

She stared at me in absolute shock. “You dare to use the symbols of Ra?”

I probably looked just as surprised. “I—I didn’t mean to! I just want to talk. You’ve got to be hungry. We’ve got food and water back at the pickup truck—”

“Carter!” Bes tensed. “Something’s wrong…”

He turned too late. A blinding white light exploded around him. When the spots cleared from my eyes, Bes was frozen in a cage of bars glowing like fluorescent tubes. Standing next to him were the two people I least wanted to see:

Michel Desjardins and Vlad the Inhaler.

Desjardins looked even older than he had in my vision. His graying hair and forked beard were long and unkempt. His cream-colored robes hung loosely on him. The leopard-skin cloak of the Chief Lector was slipping off his left shoulder.

Vlad Menshikov, on the other hand, looked well rested and ready for a good game of Torture-the-Kane. He wore a fresh white linen suit and carried a new serpent staff. His silver snake necklace glinted against his tie. On his curly gray hair sat a white fedora, probably to cover the head injuries Set had given him. He smiled as if he were delighted to see me, which might’ve been convincing—except he didn’t have his sunglasses anymore. Through the wreckage of scar tissue and red welts, those horrible eyes gleamed with hatred.

“As I told you, Chief Lector,” Menshikov rasped, “Kane’s next move would be to find this poor girl and attempt to turn her.”

“Desjardins, listen,” I said. “Menshikov’s a traitor. He summoned Set. He’s trying to free Apophis—”

“You see?” Menshikov cried. “As I predicted, the boy tries to blame his illegal magic on me.”

“What?” I said. “No!”

The Russian turned to examine Bes, who was still frozen in his glowing cage. “Carter Kane, you claim to be innocent, and yet we find you here consorting with gods. Who have we here? Bes the dwarf! Fortunately, my grandfather taught me an excellent binding spell for this particular creature. Grandfather also taught me many spells of torment which were…quite effective on the dwarf god. I’ve always wanted to try them.”

Desjardins wrinkled his nose in distaste, but I couldn’t tell whether it was because of me or of Menshikov.

“Carter Kane,” said the Chief Lector, “I knew you desired the pharaoh’s throne. I knew you were scheming with Horus. But now I find you holding the crook and flail of Ra, which were recently discovered to be missing from our vaults. Even for you, this is a brazen act of aggression.”

I looked down at the weapons in my hands. “It’s not like that. I just found them…”

I stopped. I couldn’t tell him the symbols had been buried with Zia. Even if he believed me, it might get Zia in trouble.

Desjardins nodded as if I’d confessed. To my surprise, he looked a little sad about it. “As I thought. Amos assured me you were an honorable servant of Ma’at. Instead, I find you are both a godling and thief.”

“Zia.” I turned toward her. “You’ve got to listen. You’re in danger. Menshikov is working for Apophis. He’ll kill you.”

Menshikov did a good job of looking offended. “Why would I wish to harm her? I sense she is free of Nephthys now. It’s not her fault the goddess invaded her form.” He held out his hand to Zia. “I am glad to see you safe, child. You are not to blame for Iskandar’s odd decisions in his final days—hiding you here, softening his attitude toward these Kane criminals. Come away from the traitor. Come home with us.”

Zia hesitated. “I had…I had strange dreams….”

“You are confused,” Desjardins said gently. “This is natural. Your shabti was relaying its memories to you. You saw Carter Kane and his sister make a pact with Set at the Red Pyramid. Rather than destroy the Red Lord, they let him go. Do you remember?”

Zia studied me warily.

“Remember why we did it,” I pleaded. “Chaos is rising. Apophis will break free in less than twenty-four hours. Zia…I…”

The words stuck in my throat. I wanted to tell her how I felt about her, but her eyes hardened like amber.

“I don’t know you,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Menshikov smiled. “Of course you don’t, child. You have no business with traitors. Now, with Lord Desjardins’ permission, we will bring this young heretic back to the First Nome, where he will be given a fair trial”—Menshikov turned toward me, his ruined eyes burning with triumph—“and then, executed.”
SADIE


15. Camels Are Evil…
YES, CARTER, THE WHOLE BUSINESS with the water demons must’ve been horrible. But I feel no sympathy for you, as 1) you brought that trip entirely on yourself, and 2) while you were rescuing Zia, I was dealing with camels.

Camels are disgusting.

You may think But, Sadie, these were magical camels, summoned by one of Walt’s amulets. Clever Walt! Surely magic camels are not as bad as normal camels.

I can now attest that magic camels spit like, poo like, drool like, bite like, eat like, and, most disgustingly, smell like normal camels. If anything, their disgustingness is magically enhanced.

We didn’t start with the camels, of course. We worked our way up to them in a series of progressively more horrible modes of transportation. First we took a bus to a small town west of Alexandria—a bus without air conditioning, packed with men who had not discovered the benefits of underarm deodorant. Then we hired a driver to take us to Bahariya—a driver who first had the nerve to play ABBA’s greatest hits and eat raw onions, then drove us to the middle of nowhere and—surprise!—introduced us to his friends, the bandits, who were keen to rob defenseless American teenagers. I was delighted to show them how my staff turned into a large hungry lion. As far as I know, the bandits and driver are still running. However, the car had stopped, and no amount of magic would revive the engine.

At that point, we decided it was best to stay off the grid. I could deal with dirty looks from the locals. I could deal with attracting attention as an oddity—an American/British girl with purple-streaked hair, traveling alone with a boy who did not look like her brother. In fact, that fairly well described my life. But after the highway robbery incident, Walt and I realized just how much the locals were watching us, marking us as a target. I had no desire to be singled out by more bandits, or Egyptian police, or, even worse, any magicians who might be lurking undercover. So we summoned the magic camels, charmed a handful of sand to point the way to Bahariya, and set out across the desert.

How was the desert, Sadie? You might wonder.

Thanks for asking. It was hot.

And another thing: Why do deserts have to be so bloody huge? Why can’t they be a few hundred meters wide, just enough to give you the idea of sandy, dry, and miserable, then yield to some proper landscape, like a meadow with a river, or a high street with shops?

No such luck for us. The desert went on forever. I could imagine Set, the god of the wastelands, laughing at us as we trudged over endless dunes. If this was his home, I didn’t think much of the way he’d decorated.

I named my camel Katrina. She was a natural disaster. She slobbered everywhere and seemed to think the purple streak in my hair was some kind of exotic fruit. She was obsessed with trying to eat my head. I named Walt’s camel Hindenburg. He was almost as large as a zeppelin and definitely as full of gas.

As we rode side by side, Walt seemed lost in thought, peering at the horizon. He’d rushed to my aid in Alexandria without hesitation. As I’d suspected, our shen amulets were connected. With a little concentration, I’d been able to send him a mental message about our predicament. With a bit more effort, I’d been able to literally pull him through the Duat to my side. Quite a handy magic item: instant hot guy.

Once here, though, he’d grown increasingly quiet and uncomfortable. He was dressed like a normal American teen on an outdoor excursion—a black workout top that fit him quite well, hiking pants, and boots. But if you looked more closely, you could tell he’d come equipped with every magic item he’d ever made. Around his neck hung a veritable zoo of animal amulets. Three rings glinted on each hand. Around his waist was a corded belt I’d never seen before, so I assumed it had magic powers. He also carried a backpack, no doubt stuffed with more handy bits and bobs. Despite this personal arsenal, Walt seemed awfully nervous.

“Lovely weather,” I prompted.

He frowned, coming out of his daze. “Sorry. I was…thinking.”

“You know, sometimes talking helps. For instance, oh, I don’t know. If I had a major problem, something life-threatening, and I’d only confided to Jaz…and if Bes knew what was going on, but wasn’t telling…and if I’d agreed to come on an adventure with a good friend, and had hours to chat as we crossed the desert, I might be tempted to tell her what was wrong.”

“Hypothetically,” he said.

“Yes. And if this girl were the last person on earth to know what was wrong with me, and really cared…well, I can imagine she’d get quite frustrated at being kept in the dark. And she might hypothetically strangle you—I mean me. Hypothetically.”

Walt managed a faint smile. Though I can’t say his eyes melted me like Anubis’s, he did have a gorgeous face. He looked nothing like my father, but he had the same sort of strength and rugged handsomeness—a kind of gentle gravity that made me feel safer, and a bit more firmly planted on the earth.

“It’s hard for me to talk about,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hide anything from you.”

“Fortunately, it’s not too late.”

Our camels plodded along. Katrina tried to kiss, or possibly spit on Hindenburg, and Hindenburg farted in response. I found this a depressing commentary on boy-girl relationships.

At last Walt said, “It has to do with the blood of the pharaohs. You guys—I mean the Kanes—you combine two powerful royal lines, Narmer and Ramesses the Great, right?”

“So I’ve been told. Sadie the Great does have a nice ring to it.”

Walt didn’t respond to that. Perhaps he was imagining me as a pharaoh, which I’ll admit is a rather frightening concept.

“My royal line…” He hesitated. “How much do you know about Akhenaton?”

“Off the top of my head, I’d say he was a pharaoh. Probably of Egypt.”

Walt laughed, which was good. If I could keep his mood from getting too serious, it might be easier for him to open up.

“Top of the class,” he said. “Akhenaton was the pharaoh who decided to do away with all the old gods and just worship Aten, the sun.”

“Oh…right.” The story vaguely rang a bell, which alarmed me, as it made me feel like almost as much of an Egyptian geek as Carter. “He’s the chap who moved the capital, eh?”

Walt nodded. “He built an entirely new city at Amarna. He was kind of a weird dude, but he was the first one who had the idea that the old gods were bad. He tried to ban their worship, shut down their temples. He wanted to worship only one god, but he made a strange choice for the one god. He thought it was the sun. Not the sun god Ra—the actual sun disk, Aten. Anyway, the old priests and magicians, especially the priests of Amun-Ra—”

“Another name for Ra?” I guessed.

“More or less,” Walt said. “So the priests of Amun-Ra’s temple weren’t too happy with Akhenaton. After he died, they defaced his statues, tried to wipe out his name from all the monuments and stuff. Amarna was completely abandoned. Egypt went back to the old ways.”

I let that sink in. Thousands of years before Iskandar had issued a rule exiling the gods, a pharaoh had had the same idea.

“And this was your great-great-whatever grandfather?” I asked.

Walt wrapped the camel’s reins around his wrist. “I’m one of Akhenaton’s descendants. Yeah. We’ve got the same aptitude for magic as most royal lines, but…we’ve got problems, too. The gods weren’t happy with Akhenaton, as you can imagine. His son Tutankhamen—”

“King Tut?” I asked. “You’re related to King Tut?”

“Unfortunately,” Walt said. “Tutankhamen was the first to suffer the curse. He died at nineteen. And he was one of the luckier ones.”

“Hang on. What curse?”

That’s when Katrina came to a screeching halt. You may protest that camels can’t screech, but you’re quite wrong. As she reached the top of a massive sand dune, Katrina made a wet screechy sound much worse than a car’s brakes. Hindenburg came to more of a farting halt.

I looked down the other side of the dune. Below us, in the middle of the desert, a hazy valley of green fields and palm trees sprawled out, roughly the size of central London. Birds flew overhead. Small lakes sparkled in the afternoon sun. Smoke rose from cooking fires at a few dwellings dotted here and there. After so long in the desert, my eyes hurt from looking at all the colors, like when you come out of a dark cinema into a bright afternoon.

I understood how ancient travelers must’ve felt, discovering an oasis like this after days in the wilderness. It was the closest thing I’d ever seen to the Garden of Eden.

The camels hadn’t stopped to admire the beautiful scenery, though. A trail of tiny footprints wound through the sand, all the way from the edge of the oasis to our dune. And coming up the hill was a very disgruntled-looking cat.

“It’s about time,” said the cat.

I slid off Katrina’s back and stared at the cat in amazement. Not because it spoke—I’d seen stranger things—but because I recognized the voice.

“Bast?” I said. “What are you doing inside that—what is that, exactly?”

The cat stood on its hind legs and spread its front paws like: Voilà! “An Egyptian mau, of course. Beautiful leopard spots, bluish fur—”

“It looks like it’s been through a blender!”

I wasn’t just being harsh. The cat was terribly beaten up. Large chunks of its fur were missing. It might once have been beautiful, but I was more inclined to think it had always been feral. Its remaining fur was dirty and matted, and its eyes were swollen and scarred almost as badly as Vlad Menshikov’s.

Bast—or the cat—or whatever was in charge—dropped back on all fours and sniffed indignantly. “Sadie, dear, I believe we’ve talked about battle scars on cats. This old tom is a warrior!”

A warrior who loses, I thought, but I decided not to say that.

Walt slid off Hindenburg’s back. “Bast, how—where are you?”

“Still deep in the Duat.” She sighed. “It’ll be another day at least before I can find my way out. Things down here are a bit…chaotic.”

“Are you all right?” I asked.

The cat nodded. “I just have to be careful. The abyss is teeming with enemies. All the regular paths and river ways are guarded. I’ll have to take a long detour to get back safely, and since the equinox starts tomorrow at sunset, the timing is going to be tight. I thought I’d better send you a message.”

“So…” Walt knit his eyebrows. “That cat isn’t real?”

“Of course it’s real,” Bast said. “Just controlled by a sliver of my ba. I can speak through cats easily, you know, at least for a few minutes at a time, but this is the first time you’ve been close to one. Did you realize that? Unbelievable! You really need to hang around more cats. By the way, this mau will need a reward when I’m gone. Some nice fish, perhaps, or some milk—”

“Bast,” I interrupted. “You said you had a message?”

“Right. Apophis is waking.”

“We knew that!”

“But it’s worse than we thought,” she said. “He’s got a legion of demons working on his cage, and he’s timing his release to coincide with your waking Ra. In fact, he’s counting on your freeing Ra. It’s part of his plan.”

My head felt like it was turning to jelly, though that may have been because Katrina the camel was sucking on my hair. “Apophis wants us to free his archenemy? That makes no sense.”

“I can’t explain it,” Bast said, “but as I got closer to his cage, I could glean his thoughts. I suppose because we fought so many centuries we have some sort of connection. At any rate, the equinox begins tomorrow at sunset, as I said. The following dawn, the morning of March twenty-first, Apophis intends to rise from the Duat. He plans to swallow the sun and destroy the world. And he believes your plan to awaken Ra will help him do that.”

Walt frowned. “If Apophis wants us to succeed, why is he trying so hard to stop us?”

“Is he?” I asked.

A dozen small things that had bothered me over the past few days suddenly clicked together: why had Apophis only scared Carter in the Brooklyn Museum, when the Arrows of Sekhmet could have destroyed him? How had we escaped so easily from St. Petersburg? Why had Set volunteered the location of the third scroll?

“Apophis wants chaos,” I said. “He wants to divide his enemies. If Ra comes back, it could throw us into a civil war. The magicians are already divided. The gods would be fighting each other. There would be no clear ruler. And if Ra isn’t reborn in a strong new form—if he’s as old and feeble as I saw in my vision—”

“So we shouldn’t awaken Ra?” Walt asked.

“That’s not the answer either,” I said.

Bast tilted her head. “I’m confused.”

My mind was racing. Katrina the camel was still chewing on my hair, turning it into a slimy mess, but I hardly noticed. “We have to stick to the plan. We need Ra. Ma’at and Chaos have to balance, right? If Apophis rises, Ra has to as well.”

Walt twisted his rings. “But if Apophis wants Ra awakened, if he thinks it will help him destroy the world—”

“We have to believe Apophis is wrong.” I remembered something Jaz’s ren had told me: We choose to believe in Ma’at.

“Apophis can’t imagine that anyone could unite the gods and magicians,” I said. “He thinks the return of Ra will weaken us even further. We have to prove him wrong. We have to make order from chaos. That’s what Egypt has always done. It’s a risk—a huge risk—but if we do nothing because we fear we’ll fail, we play right into Apophis’s hands.”

It’s hard to give a rousing speech with a camel licking your head, but Walt nodded. The cat didn’t look quite so enthusiastic. Then again, cats rarely do.

“Don’t underestimate Apophis,” Bast said. “You haven’t fought him. I have.”

“Which is why we need you back quickly.” I told her about Vlad Menshikov’s conversation with Set, and his plans to destroy Brooklyn House. “Bast, our friends are in terrible danger. Menshikov is possibly even more insane than Amos realizes. As soon as you’re able, go to Brooklyn. I have a feeling our last stand is going to be there. We’ll get the third scroll and find Ra.”

“I don’t like last stands,” the cat said. “But you’re right. It sounds bad. By the way, where are Bes and Carter?” She looked suspiciously at the camels. “You didn’t turn them into those, did you?”

“The idea is appealing,” I said. “But, no.”

I told her briefly what Carter was up to.

Bast hissed with distaste. “A foolish detour! I’ll have words with that dwarf about letting you go off on your own.”

“What am I, invisible?” Walt protested.

“Sorry, dear, I didn’t mean—” The cat’s eyes twitched. It coughed like it had a hairball. “My connection is failing. Good luck, Sadie. The best entrance to the tombs is on a small date farm just to the southeast. Look for a black water tower. And do watch out for the Romans. They’re quite—”

The cat puffed up its tail. Then it blinked and looked around in confusion.

“What Romans?” I asked. “They’re quite what?”

“Mrow.” The cat stared at me with an expression that said: Who are you and where is the food?

I swatted the camel’s nose away from my slimy hair. “Come on, Walt,” I grumbled. “Let’s go find some mummies.”

We provided the cat with bits of beef jerky and some water from our supplies. It wasn’t as good as fish and milk, but the cat seemed happy enough. As it was in sight of the oasis and obviously knew its way around better than we did, we left it to finish its meal. Walt turned the camels back into amulets, thank goodness, and we trudged into Bahariya on foot.

The date farm wasn’t difficult to find. The black water tower sat at the edge of the property, and it was the tallest structure in sight. We made our way toward it, weaving through acres of palm trees, which provided some shade from the sun. An adobe farmhouse stood in the distance, but we didn’t see any people. Probably the Egyptians knew better than to be out in the afternoon heat.

When we reached the water tower, I didn’t see any obvious tomb entrance. The tower looked quite old—four rusty steel posts holding a round tank the size of a garage about fifteen meters in the air. The tank had a slow leak. Every few seconds water dropped from the sky and smacked against the hard-packed sand underneath. There wasn’t much else in sight except for more palm trees, a few tarnished farm tools, and a weathered plywood sign lying on the ground. The sign was spray-painted in Arabic and English, probably from some attempt by the farmer to sell his wares in the market. The English read: Dates—best price. Cold Bebsi.

“Bebsi?” I asked.

“Pepsi,” Walt said. “I read about that on the Internet. There’s no ‘p’ in Arabic. Everyone here calls soda Bebsi.”

“So you have to have Bebsi with your bizza?”

“Brobably.”

I snorted. “If this is a famous dig site, shouldn’t there be more activity? Archaeologists? Ticket booths? Souvenir merchants?”

“Maybe Bast sent us to a secret entrance,” Walt said. “Better than sneaking past a bunch of guards and caretakers.”

A secret entrance sounded quite intriguing, but unless the water tower was a magic teleporter, or one of the date trees had a concealed door, I wasn’t sure where this oh-so-helpful entrance might be. I kicked the Bebsi sign. There was nothing underneath except more sand, slowly turning to mud from the drip, drip, drip of the leaky tower.

Then I looked more closely at the wet spot on the ground.

“Hang on.” I knelt. The water was pooling in a little canal, as if the sand were seeping into a subterranean crack. The crevice was about a meter long and no wider than a pencil, but much too straight to be natural. I dug in the sand. Six centimeters down, my fingernails scraped stone.

“Help me clear this,” I told Walt.

A minute later we’d uncovered a flat paving stone about one meter square. I tried to work my fingers under the wet edges, but the stone was too thick and much too heavy to lift.

“We can use something as a lever,” Walt suggested. “Pry it up.”

“Or,” I said, “stand back.”

Walt looked ready to protest, but when I brought out my staff, he knew enough to get out of the way. With my new understanding of godly magic, I didn’t so much think about what I needed as feel a connection to Isis. I remembered a time when she’d found her husband’s coffin grown into the trunk of a cypress tree, and in her anger and desperation she blew the tree apart. I channeled those emotions and pointed at the stone. “Ha-di!”

Good news: the spell worked even better than in St. Petersburg. The hieroglyph glowed at the end of my staff, and the stone was blasted to rubble, revealing a dark hole underneath.

Bad news: that’s not all I destroyed. Around the hole, the ground began to crumble. Walt and I scrambled backward as more stones fell into the pit, and I realized I’d just destabilized the entire roof of a subterranean room. The hole widened until it reached the support legs of the water tower. The water tower began to creak and sway.

“Run!” Walt yelled.

We didn’t stop until we were hiding behind a palm tree thirty meters away. The water tower sprang a hundred different leaks, wobbled back and forth like a drunken man, then fell toward us and shattered, soaking us from head to toe and sending a flood through the rows of palm trees.

The noise was so deafening, it must’ve been heard throughout the oasis.

“Oops,” I said.

Walt looked at me like I was mad. I suppose I was guilty as charged. But it’s just so bloody tempting to blow things up, isn’t it?

We ran to the Sadie Kane Memorial Crater. It was now the size of a swimming pool. Five meters down, under a pile of sand and rocks, were rows of mummies, all wrapped in old cloth and laid out on stone slabs. The mummies were now flattened, I’m afraid, but I could tell they’d been brightly painted with red, blue, and gold.

“Golden mummies.” Walt looked horrified. “Part of the tomb system that hasn’t been excavated yet. You just ruined—”

“I did say Oops. Now, help me down there, before the owner of this water tower shows up with a shotgun.”
SADIE


16. …But Not as Evil as Romans
TO BE FAIR, THE MUMMIES in that particular room were mostly ruined already, thanks to the moisture from the leaking tower above. Just add water to mummies for a truly horrible smell.

We climbed over the rubble and found a corridor leading deeper underground. I couldn’t tell whether it was natural or man-made, but it snaked a good forty meters through solid rock before opening into another burial chamber. This room had not been damaged by water. Everything was remarkably well preserved. Walt had brought torches [flashlights, for you Americans], and in the dim light, on stone slabs and in niches carved along the walls, gold-painted mummies glittered. There were at least a hundred in this room alone, and more corridors led off in each direction.

Walt shined his light on three mummies lying together on a central dais. Their bodies were completely wrapped in linen, so they looked rather like bowling pins. Their likenesses were painted on the linen in meticulous detail—hands crossed over their chests, jewelry adorning their necks, Egyptian kilt and sandals, and a host of protective hieroglyphs and images of the gods in a border on each side. All this was typical Egyptian art, but their faces were done in a completely different style —realistic portraits that looked cut-and-pasted onto the mummies’ heads. On the left was a man with a thin, bearded face and sad dark eyes. On the right was a beautiful woman with curly auburn hair. What really pulled at my heart, though, was the mummy in the middle. Its body was tiny—obviously a child. Its portrait showed a boy of about seven years old. He had the man’s eyes and the woman’s hair.

“A family,” Walt guessed. “Buried together.”

There was something tucked under the child’s right elbow —a small wooden horse, possibly his favorite toy. Even though this family had been dead for thousands of years, I couldn’t help getting a bit teary-eyed. It was so bloody sad.

“How did they die?” I wondered.

From the corridor directly in front of us, a voice echoed, “The wasting disease.”

My staff was instantly in my hand. Walt trained his torch on the doorway, and a ghost stepped into the room. At least I assumed he was a ghost, because he was see-through. He was a heavy older man with short-cropped white hair, bulldog jowls, and a cross expression. He wore Roman-style robes and kohl eyeliner, so he looked rather like Winston Churchill—if the old prime minister had thrown a wild toga party and gotten his face painted.

“Newly dead?” He eyed us warily. “Haven’t seen any new arrivals in a long time. Where are your bodies?”

Walt and I glanced at each other.

“Actually,” I said, “we’re wearing them.”

The ghost’s eyebrows shot up. “Di immortales! You’re alive?”

“So far,” Walt said.

“Then you’ve brought offerings?” The man rubbed his hands. “Oh, they said you would come, but we’ve waited ages! Where have you been?”

“Um…” I didn’t want to disappoint a ghost, especially as he was beginning to glow more brightly, which in magic is often a prelude to exploding. “Perhaps we should introduce ourselves. I’m Sadie Kane. This is Walt—”

“Of course! You need my name for the spells.” The ghost cleared his throat. “I am Appius Claudius Iratus.”

I got the feeling I was supposed to be impressed. “Right. That’s not Egyptian, I gather?”

The ghost looked offended. “Roman, of course. Following those cursed Egyptian customs is how we all ended up here to begin with! Bad enough I got stationed in this god-forsaken oasis—as if Rome needs an entire legion to guard some date farms! Then I had the bad luck to fall ill. Told my wife on my deathbed: ‘Lobelia, an old-fashioned Roman burial. None of this local nonsense.’ But no! She never listened. Had to mummify me, so my ba is stuck here forever. Women! She probably moved back to Rome and died in the proper way.”

“Lobelia?” I asked, because really I hadn’t heard much after that. What sort of parents name their child Lobelia?

The ghost huffed and crossed his arms. “But you don’t want to hear me ramble on, do you? You may call me Mad Claude. That’s the translation in your tongue.”

I wondered how a Roman ghost could speak English—or if I simply understood him through some sort of telepathy. Either way, I was not relieved to find out his name was Mad Claude.

“Um…” Walt raised his hand. “Are you mad as in angry? Or mad as in crazy?”

“Yes,” Claude said. “Now, about those offerings. I see staffs, wands, and amulets, so I assume you’re priests with the local House of Life? Good, good. Then you’ll know what to do.”

“What to do!” I agreed heartily. “Yes, quite!”

Claude’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, Jupiter. You’re novices, aren’t you? Did the temple even explain the problem to you?”

“Um—”

He stormed over to the family of mummies we’d been looking at. “This is Lucius, Flavia, and little Purpens. They died of the wasting plague. I’ve been here so long, I could tell you practically everyone’s story!”

“They talk to you?” I stepped away from the mummy family. Suddenly little Purpens didn’t seem so cute.

Mad Claude waved his hand impatiently. “Sometimes, yes. Not as much as in the old days. Their spirits sleep most of the time, now. The point is, no matter how bad a death these people had, their fate after death has been worse! All of us —all these Romans living in Egypt—got an Egyptian burial. Local customs, local priests, mummify the bodies for the next life, et cetera. We thought we were covering our bases—two religions, twice the insurance. Problem was, you foolish Egyptian priests didn’t know what you were doing anymore! By the time we Romans came along, most of your magic knowledge was lost. But did you tell us that? No! You were happy to take our coins and do a shoddy job.”

“Ah.” I backed away a bit more from Mad Claude, who was now glowing quite dangerously. “Well, I’m sure the House of Life has a customer service number for that—”

“You can’t go halfway with these Egyptian rituals,” he grumbled. “We ended up with mummified bodies and eternal souls tethered to them, and no one followed up! No one said the prayers to help us move to the next life. No one made offerings to nourish our bas. Do you know how hungry I am?”

“We’ve got some beef jerky,” Walt offered.

“We couldn’t go to Pluto’s realm like good Romans,” Mad Claude went on, “because our bodies had been prepared for a different afterlife. We couldn’t go to the Duat, because we weren’t given the proper Egyptian rituals. Our souls were stuck here, attached to these bodies. Do you have any idea how boring it is down here?”

“So, if you’re a ba,” I asked, “why don’t you have a bird’s body?”

“I told you! We’re all mixed up, not pure Roman ghost, not proper ba. If I had wings, believe me, I’d fly out of here! By the way, what year is it? Who’s the emperor now?”

“Oh, his name is—” Walt coughed, then rushed on: “You know, Claude, I’m sure we can help you.”

“We can?” I said. “Oh, right! We can!”

Walt nodded encouragingly. “The thing is, we have to find something first.”

“A scroll,” I put in. “Part of the Book of Ra.”

Claude scratched his considerable jowls. “And this will help you send our souls to the next life?”

“Well…” I said.

“Yes,” Walt said.

“Possibly,” I said. “We don’t really know until we find it. It’s supposed to wake Ra, you see, which will help the Egyptian gods. I’d think that would improve your chances at getting into the afterlife. Besides, I’m on good terms with the Egyptian gods. They pop over for tea from time to time. If you helped us, I could put in a word.”

Honestly, I’d just been making up things to say. I’m sure this will surprise you, but I sometimes ramble when I get nervous.

[Oh, stop laughing, Carter.]

At any rate, Mad Claude’s expression became shrewder. He studied us as if assessing our bank accounts. I wondered if the Roman Empire had used chariot salesmen, and if Mad Claude had been one. I imagined him on a Roman commercial in a cheap plaid toga: I must be crazy to be giving away chariots at these prices!

“On good terms with the Egyptian gods,” he mused. “Put in a word, you say.”

Then he turned to Walt. Claude’s expression was so calculating, so eager, it made my skin crawl. “If the scroll you seek is ancient, it would be in the oldest section of the catacombs. Some natives were buried there, you know, long before we Romans came along. Their bas have all moved on now. No trouble getting into the Duat for them. But their burial sites are still intact, lots of relics and so on.”

“You’d be willing to show us?” Walt asked, with much more excitement than I could’ve managed.

“Oh, yes.” Mad Claude gave us his best “used chariot salesman” smile. “And later, we’ll talk about an appropriate fee, eh? Come along, my friends. It’s not far.”

Note to self: When a ghost offers to guide you deeper into a burial site and his name includes the word Mad, it’s best to say no.

As we passed through tunnels and chambers, Mad Claude gave us a running commentary on the various mummies. Caligula the date merchant: “Horrible name! But once you’re named for an emperor, even a psychotic one, you can’t do much about it. He died betting someone he could kiss a scorpion.” Varens the slaver: “Disgusting man. Tried to go into the gladiator business. If you give a slave a sword, well…you can guess how he died!” Octavia the legion commander’s wife: “Went completely native! Had her cat mummified. She even believed she had the blood of the pharaohs and tried to channel the spirit of Isis. Her death, needless to say, was painful.”

He grinned at me like this was extremely funny. I tried not to look horrified.

What struck me most was the sheer number and variety of the mummies. Some were wrapped in real gold. Their portraits were so lifelike, their eyes seemed to follow me as we passed. They sat on ornately carved marble slabs surrounded by valuables: jewelry, vases, even some shabti. Other mummies looked as if nursery school children had made them in art class. They were crudely wrapped, painted with shaky hieroglyphs and little stick-figure gods. Their portraits were not much better than I could’ve done—which is to say, dreadful. Their bodies were stuffed three-deep in shallow niches, or simply piled in the corners of the room.

When I asked about them, Mad Claude was dismissive. “Commoners. Wannabes. Didn’t have money for artists and funeral rites, so they tried the do-it-yourself approach.”

I looked down at the portrait of the nearest mummy, her face a crude finger-painted image. I wondered if her grieving children had made it—one last gift for their mother. Despite the bad quality, I found it rather sweet. They had no money and no artistic skill, but they’d done their best to lovingly send her to the afterlife. Next time I saw Anubis, I would ask him about this. A woman like that deserved a chance at happiness in the next world, even if she couldn’t pay. We had quite enough snobbery in this world without exporting it to the hereafter.

Walt trailed behind us, not speaking. He’d shine his light on this mummy or that, as if pondering each one’s fate. I wondered if he was thinking of King Tut, his famous ancestor, whose tomb had been in a cavern not too different from this.

After several more long tunnels and crowded mummy rooms, we arrived in a burial chamber that was clearly much older. The wall paintings had faded, but they looked more authentically Egyptian, with the sideways-walking people and hieroglyphs that actually formed words, rather than simply providing decoration. Instead of realistic facial portraits, the mummies had the generic wide-eyed, smiling faces I’d seen on most Egyptian death masks. A few had crumbled to dust. Others were encased in stone sarcophagi.

“Natives,” Mad Claude confirmed. “Egyptian nobles from before Rome took over. What you’re looking for should be somewhere in this area.”

I scanned the room. The only other doorway was blocked with boulders and debris. While Walt began searching, I remembered what Bes had said—that the first two scrolls of Ra might help me find the third. I pulled them from my bag, hoping they would point the way like a dowsing rod, but nothing happened.

From the other side of the room, Walt called, “What’s this?”

He was standing in front of some sort of shrine—a niche set into the wall, with the statue of a man wrapped like a mummy. The figure was carved from wood, decorated with jewels and precious metals. His wrappings glistened like pearl in the light of the torch. He held a golden staff with a silver djed symbol on top. Around his feet stood several golden rodents—rats, perhaps. The skin of his face gleamed turquoise blue.

“It’s my dad,” I guessed. “Er…I mean Osiris, isn’t it?”

Mad Claude arched his eyebrows. “Your dad?”

Fortunately, Walt saved me from explaining. “No,” he said. “Look at his beard.”

The statue’s beard was rather unusual. It was pencil thin from his sideburns around his jaw line, with a perfectly straight bit coming down for a goatee—as if someone had traced the beard with a grease pen, then stuck the pen on his chin.

“And the collar,” Walt continued. “It’s got a tassel thing hanging down in back. You don’t see that with Osiris. And those animals at his feet…are those rats? I remember some story about rats—

“I thought you were priests,” Mad Claude grumped. “Obviously, the god is Ptah.”

“Ptah?” I’d heard quite a few odd Egyptian god names, but this was a new one for me. “Ptah, son of Pitooey? Is he the god of spitting?”

Claude glared at me. “Are you always so irreverent?”

“Usually, more.”

“A novice and a heretic,” he said. “Just my luck. Well, girl, I shouldn’t have to teach you about your own gods, but as I understand it, Ptah was the god of craftsmen. We compared him to our Roman god Vulcan.”

“Then what’s he doing in a tomb?” Walt asked.

Claude scratched his nonexistent head. “I’ve never been sure, actually. You don’t see him in most Egyptian funeral rites.”

Walt pointed to the statue’s staff. When I looked more closely, I realized the djed symbol was combined with something else, a curved top that looked strangely familiar.“That’s the symbol was,” Walt said. “It means power. Lots of the gods had staffs like that, but I never realized it looks like—”

“Yes, yes,” Claude said impatiently. “The priest’s ceremonial knife for opening the mouth of the dead. Honestly, you Egyptian priests are hopeless. No wonder we conquered you so easily.”

My hand acted quite on its own, reaching into my bag and bringing out the black netjeri blade Anubis had given me.

Mad Claude’s eyes glinted. “Ah, so you’re not hopeless. That’s perfect! With that knife and the proper spell, you should be able to touch my mummy and release me into the Duat.”

“No,” I said. “No, there’s more to it. The knife, the Book of Ra, this statue of the spit god. It all fits together somehow.”

Walt’s face lit up. “Sadie, Ptah was more than the craftsman god, right? Didn’t they call him the God of Opening?”

“Um…possibly.”

“I thought you taught us that. Or maybe it was Carter.”

“Boring bit of information? Probably Carter.”

“But it’s important,” Walt insisted. “Ptah was a creation god. In some legends, he created the souls of mankind just by speaking a word. He could revive any soul, and open any door.”

My eyes drifted to the debris-filled doorway, the only other exit from the room. “Open any door?”

I held up the two scrolls of Ra and walked toward the collapsed tunnel. The scrolls became uncomfortably warm.

“The last scroll is on the other side,” I said. “We need to get past this rubble.”

I held the black knife in one hand and the scrolls in the other. I spoke the command for Open. Nothing happened. I went back to the statue of Ptah and tried the same thing. No luck.

“Hullo, Ptah?” I called. “Sorry about the spit comment. Look, we’re trying to get the third scroll of Ra, which is on the other side, there. I suppose you were placed here to open a path. So would you mind terribly?”

Still nothing happened.

Mad Claude gripped the trim of his toga as if he wanted to strangle us with it. “Look, I don’t know why you need this scroll to free us if you’ve got the knife. But why don’t you try an offering? All gods need offerings.”

Walt rummaged through his supplies. He placed a juice pouch and a bit of beef jerky at the foot of the statue. The statue did nothing. Even the gold rats at his feet apparently didn’t want our beef jerky.

“Bloody spit god.” I threw myself down on the dusty ground. I had a mummy on either side of me, but I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t believe we were so close to the last scroll, after fighting demons, gods, and Russian assassins, and now we’d been stopped by a pile of rocks.

“I hate to suggest it,” Walt said, “but you could blast through with the ha-di spell.”

“And bring down the ceiling on top of us?” I said.

“You’d die,” Claude agreed. “Which isn’t an experience I’d recommend.”

Walt knelt next to me. “There’s got to be something…” He took stock of his amulets.

Mad Claude paced the room. “I still don’t understand. You’re priests. You have the ceremonial knife. Why can’t you release us?”

“The knife isn’t for you!” I snapped. “It’s for Ra!”

Walt and Claude both stared at me. I hadn’t realized it before, but as soon as I spoke, I knew it was the truth.

“Sorry,” I said. “But the knife is used for the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, to free a soul. I’ll need it to awaken Ra. That’s why Anubis gave it to me.”

“You know Anubis!” Claude clapped with delight. “He can free us all! And you—” He pointed at Walt. “You’re one of Anubis’s chosen, aren’t you? You can get us more knives if you need them! I sensed the presence of the god around you as soon as we met. Did you take his service when he realized you were dying?”

“Wait…what?” I asked.

Walt wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m not a priest of Anubis.”

“But dying?” I choked up. “How are you dying?”

Mad Claude looked incredulous. “You mean you don’t know? He’s got the old pharaoh’s curse. We didn’t see it much in my day, but I recognize it, all right. Occasionally a person from one of the old Egyptian royal lines—”

“Claude, shut up,” I said. “Walt, speak. How does this curse work?”

In the dim light, he looked thinner and older. On the wall behind him, his shadow loomed like a deformed monster.

“Akhenaton’s curse runs in my family,” he said. “Kind of a genetic disease. Not every generation, not every person, but when it strikes, it’s bad. Tut died at nineteen. Most of the others…twelve, thirteen. I’m sixteen now. My dad…my dad was eighteen. I never knew him.”

“Eighteen?” That alone brought up a host of new questions, but I tried to stay focused. “Can’t it be cured…?” Guilt washed over me, and I felt like a total imbecile. “Oh, god. That’s why you were talking to Jaz. She’s a healer.”

Walt nodded grimly. “I thought she might know spells that I hadn’t been able to find. My dad’s family—they spent years searching. My mom has been looking for a cure since I was born. The doctors in Seattle couldn’t do anything.”

“Doctors,” Mad Claude said with disgust. “I had one in the legion, loved to put leeches on my legs. Only made me worse. Now, about this connection to Anubis, and using that knife…”

Walt shook his head. “Claude, we’ll try to help you, but not with the knife. I know magic items. I’m pretty sure it can be used only once, and we can’t just make another. If Sadie needs it for Ra, she can’t risk using it before that.”

“Excuses!” Claude roared.

“If you don’t shut up,” I warned, “I’m going to find your mummy and draw a mustache on your portrait!”

Claude turned as white as…well, a ghost. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Walt,” I said, trying to ignore the Roman, “was Jaz able to help?”

“She tried her best. But this curse has been defying healers for three thousand years. Modern doctors think it’s related to sickle cell anemia, but they don’t know. They’ve been trying for decades to figure out how King Tut died, and they can’t agree. Some say poison. Some say a genetic disease. It’s the curse, but of course they can’t say that.”

“Isn’t there any way? I mean we know gods. Perhaps I could cure you like Isis did Ra. If I knew your secret name—”

“Sadie, I’ve thought of that,” he said. “I’ve thought of everything. The curse can’t be cured. It can only be slowed down if…if I avoid magic. That’s why I got into talismans and amulets. They store magic in advance, so they don’t require as much from the user. But it’s only helped a little bit. I was born to do magic, so the curse progresses in me no matter what I do. Some days it’s not so bad. Some days my whole body is in pain. When I do magic, it gets worse.”

“And the more you do—”

“The faster I die.”

I punched him in the chest. I couldn’t help it. All my grief and guilt flipped right to anger. “You idiot! Why are you here, then? You should’ve told me to shove off! Bes warned you to stay in Brooklyn. Why didn’t you listen?”

What I told you earlier about Walt’s eyes not melting me? I take it back. When he looked at me in that dusty tomb, his eyes were every bit as dark, tender, and sad as Anubis’s. “I’m going to die anyway, Sadie. I want my life to mean something. And…I want to spend as much time as I can with you.”

That hurt me worse than a punch in the chest. Much worse.

I think I might’ve kissed him. Or possibly slapped him.

Mad Claude, however, was not a sympathetic audience. “Very sweet, I’m sure, but you promised me payment! Come back to the Roman tombs. Release my spirit from my mummy. Then release the others. After that, you can do as you like.”

“The others?” I asked. “Are you mad?”

He stared at me.

“Silly question,” I conceded. “But there are thousands of mummies. We have one knife.”

“You promised!”

“We did not,” I said. “You said we’d discuss a fee after we found the scroll. We’ve found nothing but a dead end here.”

The ghost growled, more like a wolf than a human. “If you won’t come to us,” he said, “we’ll come to you.”

His spirit glowed, then disappeared in a flash.

I looked nervously at Walt. “What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But we should figure out how to get through that rubble and get out of here—quickly.”

Despite our best efforts, nothing happened quickly. We couldn’t move the debris. There were too many large boulders. We couldn’t dig around, over, or under it. I didn’t dare risk a ha-di spell or use the black knife’s magic. Walt had no amulets that would help. I was frankly stumped. The statue of Ptah smiled at us but didn’t offer any helpful suggestions, nor did he seem interested in the beef jerky and juice.

Finally, covered with dust, drenched with sweat, I plopped down on a stone sarcophagus and examined my blistered fingers.

Walt sat next to me. “Don’t give up. There has to be a way.”

“Does there?” I asked, feeling especially resentful. “Like there has to be a cure for you? What if there isn’t? What if…”

My voice broke. Walt turned his face so it was hidden in shadow.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was terrible. But I just couldn’t stand it if…”

I was so confused, I didn’t know what to say, or how I felt. All I knew was that I didn’t want to lose Walt.

“Did you mean it?” I asked. “When you said you wanted to spend time…you know.”

Walt shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious?”

I didn’t answer, but, please—nothing is obvious with boys. For such simple creatures, they are quite baffling.

I imagined I was blushing fiercely, so I decided to change the subject.

“Claude said he sensed the spirit of Anubis about you. You’ve been talking to Anubis a lot?”

Walt turned his rings. “I thought maybe he could help me. Maybe grant me a little extra time before…before the end. I wanted to be around long enough to help you defeat Apophis. Then I’d feel like I did something with my life. And…there were other reasons I wanted to talk to him. About some—some powers I’ve been developing.”

“What sort of powers?”

It was Walt’s turn to change the subject. He looked at his hands like they’d become dangerous weapons. “The thing is, I almost didn’t come to Brooklyn. When I got the djed amulet —that calling card you guys sent—my mom didn’t want me to leave. She knew that learning magic would make the curse accelerate. Part of me was afraid to go. Part of me was angry. It seemed like a cruel joke. You guys offered to train me for magic when I knew I wouldn’t survive longer than a year or two.”

“A year or two?” I could hardly breathe. I’d always thought of a year as an incredibly long time. I’d waited forever to turn thirteen. And each school term seemed like an eternity. But suddenly two years seemed much too short. I’d only be fifteen, not even driving yet. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to know that I would die in two years—possibly sooner, if I continued doing what I was born to do, practicing magic. “Why did you come to Brooklyn, then?”

“I had to,” Walt said. “I’ve lived my whole life under the threat of death. My mom made everything so serious, so huge. But when I got to Brooklyn, I felt like I had a destiny, a purpose. Even if it made the curse more painful, it was worth it.”

“But it’s so bloody unfair.”

Walt looked at me, and I realized he was smiling. “That’s my line. I’ve been saying that for years. Sadie, I want to be here. The past two months I’ve felt like I’m actually living for the first time. And getting to know you…” He cleared his throat. He was quite attractive when he got nervous. “I started worrying about small things. My hair. My clothes. Whether I brushed my teeth. I mean, I’m dying, and I’m worrying about my teeth.”

“You have lovely teeth.”

He laughed. “That’s what I mean. A little comment like that, and I feel better. All these small things suddenly seem important. I don’t feel like I’m dying. I feel happy.”

Personally, I felt miserable. For months I’d dreamed about Walt admitting he liked me, but not like this—not like, I can be honest with you, because I’m dying anyway.

Something he’d said was nagging at me, too. It reminded me of a lesson I’d taught at Brooklyn House, and an idea began to form in my mind.

“‘Small things suddenly seem important,’” I repeated. I looked down at a little mound of rubble we’d cleared from the blocked doorway. “Oh, it couldn’t be that easy.”

“What?” asked Walt.

“Rocks.”

“I just bared my soul, and you’re thinking about rocks?”

“The doorway,” I said. “Sympathetic magic. Do you think…”

He blinked. “Sadie Kane, you’re a genius.”

“Well I know that. But can we make it work?”

Walt and I began gathering up more pebbles. We chipped some pieces from the larger boulders and added them to our pile. We tried our best to make a miniature replica of the rubble collection blocking the doorway.

My hope, of course, was to create a sympathetic bond, as I’d done with Carter and the wax figurine in Alexandria. The rocks in our replica pile came from the collapsed tunnel, so our pile and the original were already connected in substance, which should have made it easy to establish a link. But moving something very large with something very small is always tricky. If we didn’t do it carefully, we could collapse the whole room. I didn’t know how deep underground we were, but I imagined there was quite enough rock and dirt over our heads to bury us forever.

“Ready?” I asked.

Walt nodded and pulled out his wand.

“Oh, no, cursed boy,” I said. “You just watch my back. If the ceiling starts to fall and we need a shield, that’s your job. But you’ll do no magic unless absolutely necessary. I’ll clear the doorway.”

“Sadie, I’m not fragile,” he complained. “I don’t need a protector.”

“Rubbish,” I said. “That’s macho bluster, and all boys like to be mothered.”

“What? God, you’re annoying!”

I smiled sweetly. “You did want to spend time with me.”

Before he could protest, I raised my wand and began the spell.

I imagined a bond between our small pile of rubble and the debris in the doorway. I imagined that in the Duat, they were one and the same. I spoke the command for join:

“Hi-nehm.”The symbol burned faintly over our miniature rubble pile.

Slowly and carefully, I brushed a few pebbles away from the pile. The debris in the corridor rumbled.

“It’s working,” Walt said.

I didn’t dare look. I stayed focused on my task—moving the pebbles a little at a time, dispersing the pile into smaller mounds. It was almost as hard as moving real boulders. I went into a daze. When Walt put his hand on my shoulder, I had no idea how much time had passed. I was so exhausted I couldn’t see straight.

“It’s done,” he said. “You did great.”

The doorway was clear. The rubble had been pushed into the corners of our room, where it lay in smaller piles.

“Nice job, Sadie.” Walt leaned down and kissed me. He was probably just expressing appreciation or happiness, but the kiss didn’t make me feel any less fuzzyheaded.

“Um,” I said—again with the incredible verbal skills.

Walt helped me to my feet. We headed down the corridor into the next room. For all the work we’d done to get there, the room wasn’t very exciting, just a five-meter-square chamber with nothing inside except a red lacquered box on a sandstone pedestal. On top of the box was a carved wooden handle shaped like a demonic greyhound with tall ears—the Set animal.

“Oh, that can’t be good,” Walt said.

But I walked straight up to the box, opened the lid, and grabbed the scroll inside.

“Sadie!” Walt yelled.

“What?” I turned. “It’s Set’s box. If he’d wanted to kill me, he could’ve done so in St. Petersburg. He wants me to have this scroll. Probably thinks it’ll be fun watching me kill myself trying to awaken Ra.” I looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “Isn’t that right, Set?”

My voice echoed through the catacombs. I no longer had the power to invoke Set’s secret name, but I still felt as if I’d gotten his attention. The air turned sharper. The ground trembled as if something underneath it, something very large, was laughing.

Walt exhaled. “I wish you wouldn’t take chances like that.”

“This from a boy who’s willing to die to spend time with me?”

Walt made an exaggerated bow. “I take it back, Miss Kane. Please, go right ahead trying to kill yourself.”

“Thank you.”

I looked at the three scrolls in my hands—the entire Book of Ra, together for probably the first time since Mad Claude wore little Roman diapers. I had collected the scrolls, done the impossible, triumphed beyond all expectations. Yet it still wouldn’t be enough unless we could find Ra and wake him before Apophis rose. “No time to waste,” I said. “Let’s get—”

Deep moaning echoed through the corridors, as if something—or a whole host of somethings—had woken up in a very bad mood.

“Out of here,” Walt said. “Great idea.”

As we ran through the previous chamber, I glanced at the statue of Ptah. I was tempted to take back the jerky and juice, just to be mean, but I decided against it.

I suppose it isn’t your fault, I thought. Can’t be easy to have a name like Ptah. Enjoy the snack, but I do wish you’d helped us.

We ran on. It wasn’t easy to remember our path. Twice we had to double back before finding the room with the family of mummies where we’d met Mad Claude.

I was about to bolt blindly across the chamber and into the last tunnel, but Walt held me back and saved my life. He shined his light on the far exit, then on the corridors to either side.

“No,” I said. “No, no, no.”

All three doorways were clogged with human figures wrapped in linen. They pressed together as far as I could see down each corridor. Some were still completely bound. They hopped and shuffled and waddled forward as if they were giant cocoons engaged in a sack race. Other mummies had partially broken free. They limped along on emaciated legs, hands like dried branches clawing at their wrappings. Most still wore their painted-face portraits, and the effect was gruesome—lifelike masks smiling serenely at the top of undead scarecrows of bones and painted linen.

“I hate mummies,” I whimpered.

“Maybe a fire spell,” Walt said. “They’ve got to burn easily.”

“We’ll burn ourselves, too! It’s too close in here.”

“You have a better idea?”

I wanted to cry. Freedom so near—and just as I’d feared, we were trapped by a crowd of mummies. But these were worse than movie mummies. They were silent and slow, pathetic ruined things that once were human.

One of the mummies on the floor grabbed my leg. Before I could even scream, Walt reached out and tapped the thing on the wrist. The mummy instantly turned to dust.

I stared at him in amazement. “Is that the power you were worried about? That was brilliant! Do it again!”

Immediately I felt awful suggesting it. Walt’s face was tight with pain.

“I can’t do it a thousand more times,” he said sadly. “Maybe if…”

Then, on the central dais, the mummy family began to stir.

I will not lie. When the child-size mummy of little Purpens sat up, I almost had an accident that would’ve ruined my new jeans. If my ba could’ve shed my skin and flown away, it would have.

I gripped Walt’s arm.

At the far end of the room, the ghost of Mad Claude flickered into view. As he walked toward us, the rest of the mummies began to stir.

“You should be honored, my friends.” He gave us a crazy grin. “It takes a lot of excitement for ba to return to their withered old bodies. But we simply can’t let you leave until you’ve freed us for the afterlife. Use the knife, do your spells, and you can go.”

“We can’t free you all!” I shouted.

“A shame,” Claude said. “Then we’ll take the knife and free ourselves. I suppose two more bodies in the catacombs won’t make any difference.”

He said something in Latin, and all the mummies surged toward us, shuffling and tripping, falling and rolling. Some crumbled to pieces as they tried to walk. Others fell down and were trampled by their fellows. But more came forward.

We backed into the corridor. I had my staff in one hand. With my other, I held tight to Walt’s hand. I’d never been good at summoning fire, but I managed to set the end of my staff ablaze.

“We’ll try it your way,” I told Walt. “Light them up and run.”

I knew it was a bad idea. In close quarters, a blaze would hurt us as much as the mummies. We’d die of smoke inhalation or suffocation or heat. Even if we managed to retreat back into the catacombs, we’d just get lost and run into more mummies.

Walt lit his own staff.

“On three,” I suggested. I stared in horror at the child’s mummy coming toward us, the portrait of a seven-year-old boy smiling at me from beyond the grave. “One, two—”

I faltered. The mummies were only a meter away, but from behind me came a new sound—like water running. No—like skittering. A mass of living things charging toward us, thousands and thousands of tiny claws on stone, possibly insects or…

“Three comes next,” Walt said nervously. “Are we torching them or not?”

“Hug the walls!” I shrieked. I didn’t know exactly what was coming, but I knew I didn’t want to be in their way. I pushed Walt against the stone and flattened myself next to him, our faces pressed against the wall, as a wave of claws and fur slammed into us and rolled over our backs: an army of rodents scuttling five-deep along the floor and racing horizontally across the walls, defying gravity.

Rats. Thousands of rats.

They ran straight over us, doing no damage except for the odd claw scratch. Not so bad, you might think, but have you ever been upright and trampled by an army of filthy rats? Do not pay money for the experience.

The rats flooded the burial chamber. They tore into the mummies, clawing and chewing and squealing their tiny battle cries. The mummies writhed under the assault, but they didn’t stand a chance. The room was a hurricane of fur, teeth, and shredded linen. It was like the old cartoons of termites swarming over wood and dissolving it to nothing.

“No!” yelled Mad Claude. “No!”

But he was the only one screaming. The mummies withered silently under the fury of the rats.

“I’ll get you!” Claude snarled as his spirit began to flicker. “I’ll have my revenge!”

And with one final evil glare, his image faded and was gone.

The rats divided their forces and scurried off down all three corridors, chewing through mummies as they went, until the room was silent and empty, the floor littered with dust, shreds of linen, and a few bones.

Walt looked shaken. I fell against him and hugged him. I probably cried with relief. I was so glad to hold a warm living human being.

“It’s okay.” He stroked my hair, which felt awfully good. “That—that was the story about rats.”

“What?” I managed.

“They…they saved Memphis. An enemy army besieged the city, and the people prayed for help. Their patron god sent a horde of rats. They ate the enemy’s bowstrings, their sandals, everything they could chew. The attackers had to withdraw.”

“The patron god—you mean—”

“Me.” From the exit corridor across the room, an Egyptian farmer stepped into view. He wore grubby robes, a head wrap, and sandals. He held a rifle at his side. He grinned at us, and as he got closer, I saw his eyes were blank white. His skin had a slightly bluish tint, as if he were suffocating and really enjoying the experience.

“Sorry I didn’t answer sooner,” said the farmer. “I am Ptah. And no, Sadie Kane, I am not the god of spit.”

“Please, have a seat,” the god said. “Sorry about the mess, but what do expect from Romans? They never did clean up after themselves.”

Neither Walt nor I sat. A grinning god with a rifle was a bit off-putting.

“Ah, quite right.” Ptah blinked his blank white eyes. “You’re in a hurry.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Are you a date farmer?”

Ptah looked down at his grubby robes. “I’m just borrowing this poor fellow for a minute, you understand. I thought you wouldn’t mind, as he was coming down here to shoot you for destroying his water tower.”

“No, carry on,” I said. “But the mummies—what will happen to their ba?”

Ptah laughed. “Don’t worry about them. Now that their remains are destroyed, I imagine their ba will go on to whatever Roman afterlife awaits them. As it should be.”

He put his hand over his mouth and burped. A cloud of white gas billowed out, coalesced into a glowing ba, and flew off down the corridor.

Walt pointed after the spirit bird. “Did you just—”

“Yes.” Ptah sighed. “I really try not to talk at all. That’s how I create, you see, with words. They can get me into trouble. Once just for fun I made up the word ‘platypus’ and—”

Instantly, a duckbilled, furry thing appeared on the floor, scrabbling around in a panic.

“Oh, dear,” Ptah said. “Yes, that’s exactly what happened. Slip of the tongue. Really the only way something like that could have been created.”

He waved his hand, and the platypus disappeared. “At any rate, I have to be careful, so I can’t talk long. I’m glad you found the Book of Ra! I always did like the old chap. I would have helped earlier, when you asked, but it took a while to get here from the Duat. Also, I can open only one door per customer. I thought you had that blocked corridor well in hand. But there’s a much more important door that you need.”

“Sorry?” I asked.

“Your brother,” Ptah said. “He’s in a great deal of trouble.”

As exhausted, bedraggled, and covered with rat scratches as I was, that news set my nerves tingling. Carter needed help. I had to save my brother’s ridiculous hide.

“Can you send us there?” I asked.

Ptah smiled. “Thought you’d never ask.”

He pointed to the nearest wall. The stones dissolved into a portal of swirling sand.

“And, my dear, some words of advice.” Ptah’s milky eyes studied me. “Courage. Hope. Sacrifice.”

I wasn’t sure whether he was reading those qualities within me, or giving me a pep talk, or perhaps creating the traits I needed, the way he’d created the ba and the platypus. Whatever the case, I suddenly felt warmer inside, filled with new energy.

“You’re beginning to understand,” he told me. “Words are the source of all power. And names are more than just a collection of letters. Well done, Sadie. You may succeed yet.”

I stared at the funnel of sand. “What will we face on the other side?”

“Enemies and friends,” Ptah said. “But which are which, I can’t say. If you survive, go to the top of the Great Pyramid. That should do nicely for an entry point into the Duat. When you read the Book of Ra—“

He choked, doubling over and dropping his rifle.

“I must go,” he said, straightening with a great deal of effort. “This host can’t stand any more. But, Walt…” He smiled sadly. “Thank you for the beef jerky and juice. There is an answer for you. It’s not one you’ll like, but it is the best way.”

“What do you mean?” Walt asked. “What answer?”

The farmer blinked. Suddenly his eyes were normal. He looked at us in surprise, then yelled something in Arabic and raised his gun.

I grabbed Walt’s hand, and together we jumped into the portal.