The Complete Kane Chronicles

CHAPTER


16. Sadie Rides Shotgun (Worst. Idea. Ever.)
HERE’S SOME FREE ADVICE: Don’t walk toward Chaos.

With every step, I felt like I was being dragged into a black hole. Trees, boulders, and demons flew past us and were sucked into the ocean, while lightning flickered through the red-gray mist. Under our feet, chunks of the ground kept cracking and sliding into the tide.

I grasped the crook and flail in one hand and held Zia’s hand with the other. Setne whistled and floated along beside us. He tried to act cool, but from the way his colors were fading and his greased hair pointed toward the ocean like a comet’s tail, I figured he was having a tough time holding his ground.

Once I lost my balance. I almost tumbled into the surf, but Zia pulled me back. A few steps later, a fish-headed demon flew out of nowhere and slammed into me. He grabbed my leg, trying desperately to avoid getting sucked in. Before I could decide whether or not to help him, he lost his grip and disappeared into the sea.

The most horrible thing about the journey? Part of me was tempted to give up and let Chaos draw me in. Why keep struggling? Why not end the pain and the worry? So what, if Carter Kane dissolved into trillions of molecules?

I knew those thoughts weren’t really mine. The voice of Apophis was whispering in my head, tempting me as it had before. I concentrated on the glowing white obelisk—our lighthouse in the storm of Chaos. I didn’t know if that spire was really the first part of creation, or how that myth jibed with the Big Bang, or with God creating the world in seven days, or whatever else people might believe. Maybe the obelisk was just a manifestation of something larger—something my mind couldn’t comprehend. Whatever the case, I knew the obelisk stood for Ma’at, and I had to focus on it. Otherwise I was lost.

We reached the base of the jetty. The rocky path felt reassuringly solid under my feet, but the pull of Chaos was strong on either side. As we inched forward, I remembered photos I’d seen of construction workers building skyscrapers back in the old days, fearlessly walking across girders six hundred feet in the air with no safety harnesses.

I felt like that now, except I wasn’t fearless. The winds buffeted me. The jetty was ten feet wide, but I still felt like I was going to lose my balance and pitch into the waves. I tried not to look down. The stuff of Chaos churned and crashed against the rocks. It smelled like ozone, car exhaust, and formaldehyde mixed together. The fumes alone were almost enough to make me pass out.

“Just a little farther,” Setne said.

His form flickered unevenly. Zia’s green demon disguise blinked in and out. I held up my arm and saw my glamor shimmering in the wind, threatening to collapse. I didn’t mind losing the shocking-purple bottle-opening chimp look, but I hoped the wind would tear away only the illusion, not my actual skin.

Finally, we reached the obelisk. It was carved with tiny hieroglyphs, thousands of them, white on white, so they were almost impossible to read. I spotted the names of gods, enchantments to invoke Ma’at, and some divine words so powerful, they almost blinded me. Around us, the Sea of Chaos heaved. Each time the wind blew, a glowing shield in the shape of a scarab flickered around Zia—the magical carapace of Khepri, sheltering us all. I suspected it was the only thing keeping us from instant death.

“What now?” I asked.

“Read the spell,” Setne said. “You’ll see.”

Zia handed me the scroll. I tried to find the right lines, but I couldn’t see straight. The glyphs blurred together. I should have anticipated this problem. Even when I wasn’t standing next to the Sea of Chaos, I’d never been good at incantations. I wished Sadie were there.

[Yes, Sadie. I actually said that. Don’t gasp so loud.]

“I—I can’t read it,” I admitted.

“Let me help.” Zia traced her finger down the scroll. When she found the hieroglyphs she wanted, she frowned.

“This is a simple summoning spell.” She glared at Setne. “You said the magic was complicated. You said we’d need your help. How could you lie while holding the Feather of Truth?”

“I didn’t lie!” Setne protested. “The magic is complicated for me. I’m a ghost! Some spells—like summoning spells—I can’t cast at all. And you did need my help to find the shadow. You needed the Book of Thoth for that, and you needed me to interpret it. Otherwise, you’d still be shipwrecked at the river.”

I hated to admit it, but I said, “He’s got a point.”

“Sure I do,” Setne said. “Now that you’re here, the rest isn’t so bad. Just force the shadow to show itself, and then I—er—you can capture it.”

Zia and I exchanged a nervous look. I imagined she felt the same way I did. Standing at the edge of creation, facing an endless Sea of Chaos, the last thing I wanted to do was cast a spell that would summon part of Apophis’s soul. It was like shooting off a flare gun, signaling, Hey, big nasty shadow! Here we are! Come and kill us!

I didn’t see that we had much choice, though.

Zia did the honors. It was an easy invocation, the kind a magician might use to summon a shabti, or an enchanted dust mop, or pretty much any minor creature from the Duat.

When Zia finished, a tremor spread in all directions, as if she’d dropped a massive stone into the Sea of Chaos. The disturbance rippled up the beach and over the hills.

“Um…what was that?” I asked.

“Distress signal,” Setne said. “I’m guessing the shadow just called on the forces of Chaos to protect it.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “We’d better hurry, then. Where’s the—? Oh…”

The sheut of Apophis was so large, it took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. The white obelisk seemed to cast a shadow across the sea; but as the shadow darkened, I realized that it wasn’t the silhouette of the obelisk. Rather, the shadow writhed across the surface of the water like the body of a giant snake. The shadow grew until the head of the serpent almost reached the horizon. It lashed across the sea, darting its tongue, and biting at nothing.

My hands shook. My insides felt like I’d just chugged a big glass of Chaos water. The serpent’s shadow was so massive, radiating so much power, that I didn’t see how we could possibly capture it. What had I been thinking?

Only one thing kept me from total panic.

The serpent wasn’t completely free. Its tail seemed to be anchored to the obelisk, as if someone had driven a spike to keep it from escaping.

For a disturbing moment, I felt the serpent’s thoughts. I saw things from Apophis’s point of view. It was trapped by the white obelisk—seething and in pain. It hated the world of mortals and gods, which pinned it down and constricted its freedom. Apophis despised creation the way I might despise a rusty nail driven through my foot, keeping me from walking.

All Apophis wanted was to snuff out the obelisk’s blinding light. He wanted to annihilate the earth, so he could go back to the darkness and swim forever in the unrestricted expanses of Chaos. It took all of my willpower not to feel sorry for the poor little world-destroying, sun-devouring serpent.

“Well,” I said hoarsely. “We found the shadow. Now what do we do with it?”

Setne chuckled. “Oh, I can take it from here. You guys did great. Tas!”

If I hadn’t been so distracted, I might have seen what was coming, but I didn’t. My demon glamor suddenly turned into solid bands of mummy linen, covering my mouth first, then wrapping around my body with blinding speed. I toppled and fell, completely encased except for my eyes. Zia hit the rocks next to me, also cocooned. I tried to breathe, but it was like inhaling through a pillow.

Setne leaned over Zia. He carefully extracted the Book of Thoth from beneath her bindings and tucked it under his arm. Then he smiled down at me.

“Oh, Carter, Carter.” He shook his head as if he were mildly disappointed. “I like you, pal. I really do. But you are way too trusting. After that business on the riverboat, you still gave me permission to cast a glamor spell on you? Come on! Changing a glamor into a straitjacket is sooo easy.”

“Mmm!” I grunted.

“What’s that?” Setne cupped his ear. “Hard to talk when you’re all bound up, isn’t it? Look, it’s nothing personal. I couldn’t cast that invocation spell myself, or I would have done it ages ago. I needed you two! Well…one of you, anyway. I figured I’d be able to kill either you or your girlfriend along the way, make the other one easier for me to handle. I never thought both of you would survive this far. Impressive!”

I wriggled and almost toppled into the water. For some reason, Setne pulled me back to safety.

“Now, now,” he chided. “No point killing yourself, pal. Your plan isn’t ruined. I’m just going to alter it. I’ll trap the shadow. That part I can do myself! But instead of casting the execration, I’ll blackmail Apophis, see? He’ll destroy only what I let him destroy. Then he retreats back into Chaos, or his shadow gets stomped, and the big snake goes bye-bye.”

“Mmm!” I protested, but it was getting harder to breathe.

“Yeah, yeah.” Setne sighed. “This is the part where you say, ‘You’re mad, Setne! You’ll never get away with it!’ But the thing is, I will. I’ve been getting away with impossible stuff for thousands of years. I’m sure the snake and I can come to a deal. Oh, I’ll let him kill Ra and the rest of the gods. Big deal. I’ll let him destroy the House of Life. I’ll definitely let him tear down Egypt and every cursed statue of my dad, Ramses. I want that blowhard erased from existence! But the whole mortal world? Don’t worry about it, pal. I’ll spare most of it. I’ve gotta have someplace to rule, don’t I?”

Zia’s eyes flared orange. Her bonds started to smoke, but they held her fast. Her fire receded, and she slumped against the rocks.

Setne laughed. “Nice try, doll. You guys sit tight. If you make it through the big shake-up, I’ll come back and get you. Maybe you can be my jesters or something. You two crack me up! But in the meantime, I’m afraid we’re done here. No miracle’s gonna drop from the sky and save you.”

A rectangle of darkness appeared in the air just above the ghost’s head. Sadie dropped out of it.

I’ll say this for my sister: she has great timing, and she’s quick on the draw. She crashed into the ghost and sent him sprawling. Then she noticed us wrapped up like presents, quickly realized what was going on, and turned toward Setne.

“Tas!” she yelled.

“Noooo!” Setne was wrapped in pink ribbons until he looked like a forkful of spaghetti.

Sadie stood and stepped back from Setne. Her eyes were puffy like she’d been crying. Her clothes were covered in dried mud and leaves.

Walt wasn’t with her. My heart sank. I was almost glad my mouth was covered, because I wouldn’t have known what to say.

Sadie took in the scene—the Sea of Chaos, the serpent’s writhing shadow, the white obelisk. I could tell she felt the pull of Chaos. She braced her feet, leaning away from the sea like the anchorperson in a tug-of-war. I knew her well enough to tell she was steeling herself, pushing her emotions back inside and forcing her sorrow down.

“Hullo, brother dear,” she said in a shaky voice. “Need some help?”

She managed to dispel the glamor on us. She looked surprised to find me holding Ra’s crook and flail. “How in the world—?”

Zia briefly explained what we’d been up to—from the fight with the giant hippo through Setne’s most recent betrayals.

“All that,” Sadie marveled, “and you had to drag my brother along too? You poor girl. But how can we even survive here? The Chaos power…” She focused on Zia’s scarab pendant. “Oh. I really am thick. No wonder Tawaret looked at you strangely. You’re channeling the power of Ra.”

“Ra chose me,” Zia said. “I didn’t want this.”

Sadie got very quiet—which wasn’t like her.

“Sis,” I said, as gently as possible, “what happened to Walt?”

Her eyes were so full of pain that I wanted to apologize for even asking. I hadn’t seen her look like that since…well, since our mom died, when Sadie was little.

“He’s not coming,” she said. “He’s…gone.”

“Sadie, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Are you—?”

“I’m fine!” she snapped.

Translation: I’m most definitely not fine, but if you ask again I’ll stuff wax in your mouth.

“We have to hurry,” she continued, trying to modulate her voice. “I know how to capture the shadow. Just give me the figurine.”

I had a moment of panic. Did I still have the statue of Apophis that Walt had made? Coming all the way here and forgetting it would’ve been a major bonehead move.

Fortunately, it was still at the bottom of my pack.

I handed it to Sadie, who stared at the careful red carving of the coiled serpent, the hieroglyphs of binding around the name Apophis. I imagined she was thinking of Walt, and all the effort he’d put into making it.

She knelt at the edge of the jetty, where the obelisk’s base met the shadow.

“Sadie,” I said.

She froze. “Yeah?”

My mouth felt like it was full of glue. I wanted to tell her to forget the whole thing.

Seeing her at the obelisk, with that massive shadow coiling toward the horizon…I just knew something would go wrong. The shadow would attack. The spell would backfire somehow.

Sadie reminded me so much of our mom. I couldn’t shake the impression that we were repeating history. Our parents had tried to restrain Apophis once before, at Cleopatra’s Needle, and our mom had died. I’d spent years watching my dad deal with his guilt. If I stood by now while Sadie got hurt…

Zia took my hand. Her fingers were trembling, but I was grateful for her presence. “This will work,” she promised.

Sadie blew a strand of hair from her face. “Listen to your girlfriend, Carter. And stop distracting me.”

She sounded exasperated, but there was no irritation in her eyes. Sadie understood my concerns as clearly as she knew my secret name. She was just as scared as I was, but in her own annoying way, she was trying to reassure me.

“May I continue?” she asked.

“Good luck,” I managed.

Sadie nodded.

She touched the figurine to the shadow and began to chant.

I was afraid the waves of Chaos might dissolve the figurine, or, worse, pull Sadie in. Instead, the serpent’s shadow began to thrash. Slowly it shrank, writhing and snapping its mouth as if it were being hit with a cattle prod. The figurine absorbed the darkness. Soon the shadow was completely gone, and the statue was midnight black. Sadie spoke a simple binding spell on the figurine: “Hi-nehm.”

A long hiss escaped from the sea—almost like a sigh of relief—and the sound echoed across the hills. The churning waves turned a lighter shade of red, as if some murky sediment had been dredged away. The pull of Chaos seemed to lessen just slightly.

Sadie stood. “Right. We’re ready.”

I stared at my sister. Sometimes she teased me that she’d eventually catch up to me in age and be my older sibling. Looking at her now, with that determined glint in her eyes and the confidence in her voice, I could almost believe her. “That was amazing,” I said. “How did you know the spell?”

She scowled. Of course, the answer was obvious: she’d watched Walt do the same spell on Bes’s shadow…before whatever happened to Walt.

“The execration will be easy,” she said. “We have to be facing Apophis, but otherwise it’s the same spell we’ve been practicing.”

Zia prodded Setne with her foot. “That’s another thing this maggot lied about. What should we do with him? We’ll have to get the Book of Thoth out of those bindings, obviously, but after that should we shove him into the drink?”

“MMM!” Setne protested.

Sadie and I exchanged looks. We silently agreed that we couldn’t dissolve Setne—even as horrible as he was. Maybe we’d seen too many awful things over the past few days, and we didn’t need to see any more. Or maybe we knew that Osiris had to be the one to decide Setne’s punishment, since we had promised to bring the ghost back to the Hall of Judgment.

Maybe, standing next to the obelisk of Ma’at, surrounded by the Sea of Chaos, we both realized that restraining ourselves from vengeance is what made us different from Apophis. Rules had their place. They kept us from unraveling.

“Drag him along,” Sadie said. “He’s a ghost. Can’t be that heavy.”

I grabbed his feet, and we made our way back down the jetty. Setne’s head bonked against the rocks, but that didn’t concern me. It took all my concentration to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Moving away from the Sea of Chaos was even harder than moving toward it.

By the time we reached the beach, I was exhausted. My clothes were drenched in sweat. We trudged across the sand and finally crested the hill.

“Oh…” I uttered some words that were definitely not divine.

In the cratered field below us, demons had gathered—hundreds of them, all marching in our direction. As Setne had guessed, the shadow had sent a distress signal to the forces of Apophis, and the call had been answered. We were trapped between the Sea of Chaos and a hostile army.

At this point, I was starting to wonder, Why me?

All I wanted was to infiltrate the most dangerous part of the Duat, steal the shadow of the primordial Lord of Chaos, and save the world. Was that too much to ask?

The demons were maybe two football fields away, closing rapidly. I estimated that there were at least three or four hundred of them, and more kept pouring onto the field. Several dozen winged monsters were even closer, spiraling lower and lower overhead. Against this army, we had two Kanes, Zia, and a gift-wrapped ghost. I didn’t like those odds.

“Sadie, can you make a gate to the surface?” I asked.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. She shook her head. “No signal from Isis. Possibly we’re too close to the Sea of Chaos.”

That was a scary thought. I tried to summon the avatar of Horus. Nothing happened. I guess I should have known it would be hard to channel his powers down here, especially after I had asked him for a weapon back on the ship, and the best he could do was an ostrich feather.

“Zia?” I said. “Your powers from Khepri are still working. Can you get us out of here?”

She clutched her scarab amulet. “I don’t think so. All Khepri’s energy is being spent shielding us from Chaos. He can’t do any more.”

I considered running back to the white obelisk. Maybe we could use it to open a portal. But I quickly dismissed the idea. The demons would be on us before we ever got there.

“We’re not going to get out of this,” I decided. “Can we cast the execration on Apophis right now?”

Zia and Sadie spoke in unison: “No.”

I knew they were right. We had to stand face-to-face with Apophis for the spell to work. But I couldn’t believe we’d come all this way, just to be stopped now.

“At least we can go out fighting.” I unhooked the crook and flail from my belt.

Sadie and Zia readied their staffs and wands.

Then, at the other end of the field, a wave of confusion spread through the demons’ ranks. They slowly began turning away from us, running in different directions. Behind the demon army, fireballs lit the sky. Plumes of smoke rose from newly opened craters in the ground. A battle seemed to be breaking out at the wrong end of the field.

“Who are they fighting?” I asked. “Each other?”

“No.” Zia pointed, a smile spreading across her face. “Look.”

It was hard to see through the hazy air, but a wedge of combatants was slowly forcing its way through the back ranks of the demons. Their numbers were smaller—maybe a hundred or so—but the demons gave way to them. Those that didn’t were cut down, trampled, or blown up like fireworks.

“It’s the gods!” Sadie said.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “The gods wouldn’t march into the Duat to rescue us!”

“Not the big gods, no.” She grinned at me. “But the old forgotten ones from the House of Rest would! Anubis said he was calling for reinforcements.”

“Anubis?” I was really confused now. When had she seen Anubis?

“There!” Sadie shouted. “Oh—!”

She seemed to forget how to speak. She just waved her finger toward our new friends. The battle lines opened momentarily. A sleek black car barreled into combat. The driver had to be a maniac. He plowed down demons, going out of his way to hit them. He jumped over fiery crevices and spun in circles, flashing his lights and honking his horn. Then he came straight at us, until the front ranks of demons started to scatter. Only a few brave winged demons had the nerve to chase him.

As the car got closer, I could see it was a Mercedes limo. It climbed the hill, trailed by bat demons, and screeched to a stop in a cloud of red dust. The driver’s door opened, and a small hairy man in a blue Speedo stepped out.

I had never been so happy to see someone so ugly.

Bes, in all his horrible warty glory, climbed onto the roof of his car. He turned to face the bat demons. His eyes bulged. His mouth opened impossibly wide. His hair stood out like porcupine quills, and he yelled, “BOO!”

The winged demons screamed and disintegrated.

“Bes!” Sadie ran toward him.

The dwarf god broke into a grin. He slid down to the hood, so he was almost Sadie’s height when she hugged him.

“There’s my girl!” he said. “And, Carter, get your sorry hide over here!”

He hugged me, too. I didn’t even mind him rubbing his knuckles on my head.

“And, Zia Rashid!” Bes cried generously. “I got a hug for you too—”

“I’m good,” Zia said, stepping back. “Thanks.”

Bes bellowed with laughter. “You’re right. Time for warm and fuzzy later. We gotta get you guys out of here!”

“The—the shadow spell?” Sadie stammered. “It actually worked?”

“Of course it worked, you crazy kid!” Bes thumped his hairy chest, and suddenly he was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. “Now, get in the car!”

I turned to grab Setne…and my heart nearly stopped. “Oh, holy Horus…” The magician was gone. I scanned the terrain in every direction, hoping he’d just inchwormed away. There was no sign of him.

Zia blasted fire at the spot where he’d been lying. Apparently, the ghost hadn’t merely become invisible, because there was no scream.

“Setne was right there!” Zia protested. “Tied up in the Ribbons of Hathor! How could he just disappear?”

Bes frowned. “Setne, eh? I hate that weasel. Have you got the serpent’s shadow?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but Setne has the Book of Thoth.”

“Can you cast the execration without it?” Bes asked.

Sadie and I exchanged looks.

“Yes,” we both said.

“Then we’ll have to worry about Setne later,” Bes said. “We don’t have much time!”

I guess if you have to travel through the Land of Demons, a limo is the way to go. Unfortunately, Bes’s new sedan was no cleaner than the one we’d left at the bottom of the Mediterranean last spring. I wondered if he pre-ordered them already littered with old Chinese-food containers, stomped-on magazines, and dirty laundry.

Sadie rode shotgun. Zia and I climbed in back. Bes slammed the accelerator and played a game of hit-the-demon.

“Five points if you can hit that bloke with the cleaver head!” Sadie screamed.

Boom! Cleaver-head went flying over the hood.

Sadie applauded. “Ten points if you can hit those two dragonfly things at once.”

Boom, boom! Two very large bugs hit the windshield.

Sadie and Bes laughed like crazy. Me, I was too busy yelling, “Crevice! Look out! Flaming geyser! Go left!”

Call me practical. I wanted to live. I grabbed Zia’s hand and tried to hang on.

As we approached the heart of the battle, I could see the gods pushing back the demons. It looked like the entire Sunny Acres Godly Retirement Community had unleashed their geriatric wrath on the forces of darkness. Tawaret the hippo goddess was in the lead, wearing her nurse’s outfit and high heels, swinging a flaming torch in one hand and a hypodermic needle in the other. She bonked one demon on the head, then injected another in the rump, causing him to pass out immediately.

Two old guys in loincloths were hobbling around, throwing fireballs into the sky and incinerating flying demons. One of the old dudes kept screaming, “My pudding!” for no apparent reason.

Heket the frog goddess leaped around the battlefield, knocking out monsters with her tongue. She seemed to have a special fondness for the demons with insect heads. A few yards away, the senile cat goddess Mekhit was smashing demons with her walker, yelling, “Meow!” and hissing.

“Should we help them?” Zia asked.

Bes chuckled. “They don’t need help. This is the most fun they’ve had in centuries. They have a purpose again! They’re going to cover our retreat while I get you to the river.”

“But we don’t have a ship anymore!” I protested.

Bes raised a furry eyebrow. “You sure about that?” He slowed the Mercedes and rolled down the window. “Hey, sweetie! You okay here?”

Tawaret turned and gave him a huge hippo smile. “We’re fine, honeycakes! Good luck!”

“I’ll be back!” he promised. He blew her a kiss, and I thought Tawaret was going to faint from happiness.

The Mercedes peeled out.

“Honeycakes?” I asked.

“Hey, kid,” Bes growled, “do I criticize your relationships?”

I didn’t have the guts to look at Zia, but she squeezed my hand. Sadie stayed quiet. Maybe she was thinking about Walt.

The Mercedes leaped one last flaming chasm and slammed to a stop on the beach of bones.

I pointed to the wreckage of the Egyptian Queen. “See? No boat.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bes asked. “Then what’s that?”

Upriver, light blazed in the darkness.

Zia inhaled sharply. “Ra,” she said. “The sun boat approaches.”

As the light got closer, I saw she was right. The gold-and-white sail gleamed. Glowing orbs flitted around the deck of a boat. The crocodile-headed god Sobek stood at the bow, knocking aside random river monsters with a big pole. And sitting in a fiery throne in the middle of the sun barque was the old god Ra.

“Halllloooooo!” he yelled across the water. “We have cooooookies!”

Sadie kissed Bes on the cheek. “You’re brilliant!”

“Hey, now,” the dwarf mumbled. “You’re gonna make Tawaret jealous. It just so happened the timing was right. If we’d missed the sun boat, we’d have been out of luck.”

That thought made me shudder.

For millennia, Ra had followed this cycle—sailing into the Duat at sunset, traveling along the River of Night until he emerged into the mortal world again at sunrise. But it was a one-way trip, and the boat kept to a tight schedule. As Ra passed through the various Houses of the Night, their gates closed until the next evening, making it easy for mortal travelers like us to get stranded. Sadie and I had experienced that once before, and it hadn’t been fun.

As the sun boat drifted toward the shore, Bes gave us a lopsided grin. “Ready, kids? I got a feeling things up in the mortal world aren’t going to be pretty.”

That was the first unsurprising thing I’d heard all day.

The glowing lights extended the boat’s gangplank, and we climbed aboard for what might be the last sunrise in history.
SADIE


17. Brooklyn House Goes to War
I WAS SORRY TO LEAVE THE LAND OF DEMONS.

[Yes, Carter, I’m quite serious.]

After all, I’d had a rather successful visit there. I’d saved Zia and my brother from that horrid ghost Setne. I’d captured the serpent’s shadow. I’d witnessed the Charge of the Old Folks’ Brigade in all its glory, and most of all, I’d been reunited with Bes. Why wouldn’t I have fond memories of the place? I might even take a beach holiday there someday, rent a cabana on the Sea of Chaos. Why not?

The flurry of activity also distracted me from less pleasant thoughts. But once we arrived at the riverbank and I had a few moments to breathe, I started thinking about how I’d learned the spell to rescue Bes’s shadow. My elation turned to despair.

Walt—oh, Walt. What had he done?

I remembered how lifeless and cold he’d been, cradled in my arms amid the mud-brick ruins. Then suddenly he had opened his eyes and gasped.

Look, he’d said to me.

On the surface, I’d seen Walt as I’d always known him. But in the Duat…the boy god Anubis shimmered, his ghost-gray aura sustaining Walt’s life.

Still me, they had said in unison. Their double voice had made my skin tingle.

I’ll meet you at sunrise, they had promised, at the First Nome, if you’re sure you don’t hate me.

Did I hate him? Or was it them? Gods of Egypt, I wasn’t even sure what to call him anymore! I certainly didn’t know how I felt, or if I wanted to see him again.

I tried to put those thoughts aside. We still needed to defeat Apophis. Even with his captured shadow, there was no guarantee we would succeed in casting the spell. I doubted Apophis would stand idly by while we tried to obliterate him from the universe. And it was entirely possible that the execration would require more magic than Carter and I had, combined. If we burned up, my dilemma with Walt would hardly be a problem.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t stop thinking about him/them—the way their warm brown eyes merged together so perfectly, and how natural Anubis’s smile looked on Walt’s face.

Argh! This was not helpful.

We climbed aboard the sun barque—Carter, Zia, Bes, and me. I was relieved beyond words that my favorite dwarf would be accompanying us to our final battle. I needed a reliably ugly god in my life right now.

At the bow, our old enemy Sobek regarded me with a crocodile smile, which I suppose was the only kind of smile he had. “So…the little Kane children have returned.”

“So,” I snapped, “the crocodile god wants his teeth kicked in.”

Sobek threw back his scaly green head and laughed. “Well said, girl! You have iron in your bones.”

I suppose that was meant as a compliment. I chose to sneer at him and turn away.

Sobek only respected strength. In our first encounter, he had drowned Carter in the Rio Grande and smacked me across the Texas-Mexico border. We hadn’t got much chummier since. From what I’d heard, he had only agreed to join our side because Horus and Isis had threatened him with extreme bodily harm. That didn’t say much about his loyalty.

The glowing crew orbs fluttered around me, humming in my mind—little happy greetings of: Sadie. Sadie. Sadie. Once upon a time, they had also wanted to kill me; but since I’d awakened their old master Ra, they’d become quite friendly.

“Yes, hullo, boys,” I muttered. “Lovely to see you. Excuse me.”

I followed Carter and Zia to the fiery throne. Ra gave us a toothless grin. He was still as old and wrinkly as ever, but something seemed different about his eyes. Before, his gaze had always slid over me as if I were part of the scenery. Now, he actually focused on my face.

He held out a plate of macaroons and chocolate biscuits, which were a bit melted from the heat of his throne. “Cookies? Wheee!”

“Uh, thanks.” Carter took a macaroon.

Naturally, I opted for the chocolate. I hadn’t eaten a proper meal since we’d left our father’s court.

Ra set down the platter and wobbled to his feet. Bes tried to help, but Ra waved him off. He tottered toward Zia.

“Zia,” he warbled happily, as if singing a nursery rhyme. “Zia, Zia, Zia.”

With a jolt, I realized it was the first time I’d heard him use her actual name.

He reached out to touch her scarab amulet. Zia backed away nervously. She glanced at Carter for reassurance.

“It’s okay,” Carter promised.

She took a deep breath. She unclasped her necklace and pressed it into the old man’s hands. A warm glow expanded from the scarab, enveloping both Zia and Ra in a brilliant golden light.

“Good, good,” Ra said. “Good…”

I expected the old god to get better. Instead, he began to crumble.

It was one of the most alarming things I’d seen in a very alarming day. First his ears fell off and melted to dust. Then his skin started turning to sand.

“What’s happening?” I cried. “Shouldn’t we do something?”

Carter’s eyes widened with horror. His mouth opened, but no words came out.

Ra’s smiling face dissolved. His arms and legs cracked apart like a desiccated sand sculpture. His particles scattered across the River of Night.

Bes grunted. “That was fast.” He didn’t seem particularly shocked. “Usually it takes longer.”

I stared at him. “You’ve seen this before?”

Bes gave me a crooked grin. “Hey, I took my turns working on the sun barque in the old days. We’ve all seen Ra go through his cycle. But it’s been a long, long time. Look.”

He pointed at Zia.

The scarab had disappeared from her hands, but golden light still radiated around her like a full-body halo. She turned toward me with a brilliant smile. I’d never seen her so at ease, so pleased.

“I see now.” Her voice was much richer, a chorus of tones descending in octaves through the Duat. “It’s all about balance, isn’t it? My thoughts and his. Or is it mine and hers…?”

She laughed like a child on her first bike ride. “Rebirth, at last! You were right, Sadie and Carter! After so many eons in the darkness, I am finally reborn through Zia’s compassion. I’d forgot what it is like to be young and powerful.”

Carter stepped back. I couldn’t blame him. The memory of Walt and Anubis merging was still fresh in my mind, so I had a sense what Carter was feeling; it was more than a little creepy hearing Zia describe herself in the third person.

I lowered my vision deeper into the Duat. In Zia’s place stood a tall man in leather and bronze armor. In some ways, he still looked like Ra. He was still bald. His face was still wrinkled and weathered with age, and he had the same kindly smile (only with teeth). Now, though, his posture was straight. His body rippled with muscles. His skin glowed like molten gold. He was the world’s buffest, most golden grandpa.

Bes knelt. “My lord Ra.”

“Ah, my small friend.” Ra ruffled the dwarf god’s hair. “Rise! It’s good to see you.”

At the bow, Sobek came to attention, holding his long iron staff like a rifle. “Lord Ra! I knew you would return.”

Ra chuckled. “Sobek, you old reptile. You would snap me up for dinner if you thought you could get away with it. Horus and Isis kept you in line?”

Sobek cleared his throat. “As you say, my king.” He shrugged. “I can’t help my nature.”

“No matter,” Ra said. “We’ll need your strength soon enough. Are we approaching sunrise?”

“Yes, my king.” Sobek pointed ahead of us.

I saw light at the end of the tunnel—literally. As we neared the end of the Duat, the River of Night widened. The exit gates stood about a kilometer ahead, flanked by statues of the sun god. Past that, daylight glowed. The river turned to clouds and poured into the morning sky.

“Very good,” Ra said. “Steer us to Giza, Lord Sobek.”

“Yes, my king.” The croc god thrust his iron staff into the water, poling us along like a gondolier.

Carter still hadn’t moved. The poor boy stared at the sun god with a mixture of fascination and shock.

“Carter Kane,” Ra said with affection, “I know this is difficult for you, but Zia cares for you greatly. Nothing about her feelings has changed.”

I coughed. “Ah…request? Please don’t kiss him.”

Ra laughed. His image rippled, and I saw Zia in front of me again.

“It’s all right, Sadie,” she promised. “Now would not be the time.”

Carter turned awkwardly. “Um…I’ll just…be over there.” He bumped into the mast, then staggered toward the stern of the boat.

Zia knit her brow in concern. “Sadie, go take care of him, will you? We’ll be reaching the mortal world soon. I must stay vigilant.”

For once, I didn’t argue. I went to check on my brother.

He was sitting by the tiller in crash position, his head between his knees.

“All right?” I asked. Stupid question, I know.

“She’s an old man,” he muttered. “The girl I like is a buff old man with a voice deeper than mine. I kissed her on the beach, and now…”

I sat next to him. The glowing orbs fluttered around us in excitement as the ship approached the daylight.

“Kissed her, eh?” I said. “Details, please.”

I thought he might feel better if I could get him talking. I’m not sure if it worked, but at least it got his head out from between his knees. He told me about his journey with Zia through the serapeum, and the destruction of the Egyptian Queen.

Ra—I mean Zia—stood at the bow between Sobek and Bes, very carefully not looking back at us.

“So you told her it was all right,” I summed up. “You encouraged her to help Ra. And now you’re having second thoughts.”

“Do you blame me?” he asked.

“We’ve both hosted gods ourselves,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be permanent. And she’s still Zia. Besides, we’re heading into battle. If we don’t survive, do you want to spend your last few hours pushing her away?”

He studied my expression. “What happened to Walt?”

Ah…touché. At times, it seemed that Carter knew my secret name as well as I knew his.

“I…I don’t know exactly. He’s alive, but only because—”

“He’s hosting Anubis,” Carter finished.

“You knew?”

He shook his head. “Not until I saw that look on your face. But it makes sense. Walt has a knack for…whatever it is. That gray obliteration touch. Death magic.”

I couldn’t answer. I’d come back here to comfort Carter and reassure him that everything would be all right. Now, somehow, he’d managed to turn the tables.

He put his hand briefly on my knee. “This could work, sis. Anubis can keep Walt alive. Walt could live a normal life.”

“You call that normal?”

“Anubis has never had a human host. This is his chance to have an actual body, to be flesh and blood.”

I shivered. “Carter, it isn’t like Zia’s situation. She can separate at any time.”

“So let me get this straight,” Carter said. “The two guys you liked—one who was dying and one who was off-limits because he’s a god—are now one guy, who isn’t dying and isn’t off-limits. And you’re complaining.”

“Don’t make me sound ridiculous!” I shouted. “I’m not ridiculous!”

The three gods looked back at me. All right. Fine. I did sound ridiculous.

“Look,” Carter said, “let’s agree to freak out about this later, okay? Assuming we don’t die.”

I took a shaky breath. “Deal.”

I helped my brother up. Together we joined the gods at the bow as the sun boat emerged from the Duat. The River of Night disappeared behind us, and we sailed across the clouds.

The Egyptian landscape spread out red and gold and green in the dawn. To the west, sandstorms swirled across the desert. To the east, the Nile snaked its way through Cairo. Directly below us, at the edge of the city, three pyramids rose on the plains of Giza.

Sobek struck his staff against the bow of the ship. He shouted like a herald: “At last, Ra has truly returned! Let his people rejoice! Let his throngs of worshippers assemble!”

Perhaps Sobek said that as a formality, or to suck up to Ra, or possibly just to make the old sun god feel worse. Whatever the case, nobody down below was assembling. Definitely nobody was rejoicing.

I’d seen this vista many times, but something was wrong. Fires burned across the city. The streets seemed strangely deserted. There were no tourists, no humans at all around the pyramids. I’d never seen Giza so empty.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

Sobek hissed in disgust. “I should have known. The weak humans are in hiding, or scared away because of the unrest in Egypt. Apophis has planned this well. His chosen battleground will be clear of mortal annoyances.”

I shivered. I’d heard about the troubles in Egypt lately, along with all the strange natural disasters, but I hadn’t thought of it as part of Apophis’s plan.

If this was his chosen battleground…

I focused more closely on the plains of Giza. Peering into the Duat, I realized the area wasn’t empty after all. Encircling the base of the Great Pyramid was an enormous serpent formed from a swirling tornado of red sand and darkness. His eyes were burning points of light. His fangs were forks of lightning. Wherever he touched, the desert boiled, and the pyramid itself shook with a horrible resonance. One of the oldest structures in human history was about to crumble.

Even from high above, I could feel the presence of Apophis. He radiated panic and fear so strongly, I could sense the mortals across Cairo cowering in their homes, afraid to go out. The whole land of Egypt was holding its breath.

As we watched, Apophis reared his massive cobra head. He struck at the desert floor, biting a house-sized crater in the sand. Then he recoiled as if he’d been stung, and hissed with anger. At first, I couldn’t tell what he was fighting. I called on Isis’s bird-of-prey sight and spotted a small lithe figure in a leopard-skin leotard, knives flashing in both hands as she leaped with inhuman agility and speed, striking at the serpent and evading his bite. All by herself, Bast was holding Apophis at bay.

My mouth tasted like old pennies. “She’s alone. Where are the others?”

“They await the pharaoh’s orders,” Ra said. “Chaos has left them divided and confused. They will not march to battle without a leader.”

“Then lead them!” I demanded.

The sun god turned. His form shimmered, and for a moment I saw Zia in front of me instead. I wondered if she would blast me to cinders. I had a feeling that would be quite easy for her now.

“I will face my old enemy,” she said calmly, still with Ra’s voice. “I won’t let my loyal cat fight alone. Sobek, Bes—attend me.”

“Yes, my king,” Sobek said.

Bes cracked his knuckles. His chauffeur’s outfit vanished, replaced by only his Dwarf Pride Speedo. “Chaos…get ready to meet Ugly.”

“Wait,” Carter said. “What about us? We’ve got the serpent’s shadow.”

The ship was descending rapidly now, coming in for a landing just south of the pyramids.

“First things first, Carter.” Zia pointed to the Great Sphinx, which stood about three hundred meters from the pyramids. “You and Sadie must help your uncle.”

Between the Sphinx’s paws, a trail of smoke rose from a tunnel entrance. My heart missed a beat. Zia had once told us how that tunnel was sealed to keep archaeologists from finding their way into the First Nome. Obviously, the tunnel had been forced open.

“The First Nome is about to fall,” Zia said. Her form shifted again, and it was the sun god standing before me. I really wished he/she/they would make up their mind.

“I will hold off Apophis as long as I can,” Ra said. “But if you don’t help your uncle and your friends immediately, there will be no one left to save. The House of Life will crumble.”

I thought about poor Amos and our young initiates, surrounded by a mob of rebel magicians. We couldn’t let them be slaughtered.

“She’s right,” I said. “Er, he’s right. Whichever.”

Carter nodded reluctantly. “You’ll need these, Lord Ra.”

He offered the sun god the crook and flail, but Ra shook his head. Or Zia shook her head. Gods of Egypt, this is confusing!

“When I told you the gods waited for their pharaoh,” Ra said, “I meant you, Carter Kane, the Eye of Horus. I am here to fight my old enemy, not to assume the throne. That is your destiny. Unite the House of Life, rally the gods in my name. Never fear, I will hold Apophis until you come.”

Carter stared at the crook and flail in his hands. He looked every bit as terrified as he had when Ra had crumbled to sand.

I couldn’t blame him. Carter had just been ordered to assume the throne of creation and lead an army of magicians and gods into battle. A year ago, even six months ago, the idea of my brother’s being given that kind of responsibility would’ve horrified me as well.

Strangely, I didn’t mind it now. Thinking of Carter as the pharaoh was actually comforting. I’m sure I’ll regret saying this, and I’m sure Carter will never let me forget it, but the truth was I’d been relying on my brother ever since we’d moved to Brooklyn House. I’d come to depend on his strength. I trusted him to make the right decisions, even when he didn’t trust himself. When I had learned his secret name, I’d seen one very clear trait woven into his character: leadership.

“You’re ready,” I told him.

“Indeed,” Ra agreed.

Carter looked up, a bit stunned, but I suppose he could tell I wasn’t teasing him—not this time.

Bes punched him in the shoulder. “’Course you’re ready, kid. Now, stop wasting time and go save your uncle!”

Looking at Bes, I tried not to get teary-eyed. I’d already lost him once.

As for Ra, he seemed so confident, but still he was confined to the form of Zia Rashid. She was a strong magician, yes, but she was new to this hosting business. If she wavered even slightly, or overextended herself…

“Good luck, then.” Carter swallowed. “I hope…”

He faltered. I realized the poor boy was trying to say good-bye to his girlfriend, possibly for the last time, and he couldn’t even kiss her without kissing the sun god.

Carter began to change shape. His clothes, his pack, even the crook and flail melted into plumage. His form shrank until he was a brown-and-white falcon. Then he spread his wings and dove off the side of the boat.

“Oh, I hate this part,” I muttered.

I called on Isis and invited her in: Now. It’s time to act as one.

Immediately her magic flowed into me. It felt as if someone had switched on enough hydroelectric generators to light up a nation and channeled all that power straight into me. I turned into a kite (the bird) and soared into the air.

For once, I had no problem turning back to human. Carter and I rendezvoused at the feet of the Great Sphinx and studied the newly blasted tunnel entrance. The rebels hadn’t been too subtle. Stone blocks the size of cars had been reduced to rubble. The surrounding sand had blackened and melted to glass. Either Sarah Jacobi’s crew had used a ha-di spell or several sticks of dynamite.

“This tunnel…” I said. “Doesn’t the other end open just across from the Hall of Ages?”

Carter nodded grimly. He pulled out the crook and flail, which were now glowing with ghostly white fire. He plunged into the darkness. I summoned my staff and wand and followed him inside.

As we descended, we saw evidence of battle. Explosions had scorched the walls and steps. One portion of the ceiling had buckled. Carter was able to clear a path with the strength of Horus, but as soon as we were through, the tunnel collapsed behind us. We wouldn’t be exiting that way.

Below us, I heard the sounds of combat—divine words being cast; fire, water, and earth magic clashing. A lion roared. Metal clanged on metal.

A few meters farther, and we found the first casualty. A young man in a tattered gray military uniform was propped against the wall, holding his stomach and wheezing painfully.

“Leonid!” I cried.

My Russian friend was pale and bloody. I put my hand on his forehead. His skin was cold.

“Below,” he gasped. “Too many. I try—”

“Stay here,” I said, which I realized was silly, since he could hardly move. “We’ll be back with help.”

He nodded bravely, but I looked at Carter and knew we were thinking the same thing. Leonid might not last that long. His uniform coat was soaked with blood. He kept his hand over his gut, but he’d clearly been savaged—either by claws or knives or some equally horrible magic.

I cast a Slow spell on Leonid, which would at least steady his breathing and stem the flow of blood, but it wouldn’t help much. The poor boy had risked his life to escape St. Petersburg. He’d come all the way to Brooklyn to warn me about the impending attack. Now he’d tried to defend the First Nome against his former masters, and they’d cut him down and walked right over him, leaving him to suffer a lingering death.

“We will be back,” I promised again.

Carter and I stumbled on.

We reached the bottom of the steps and were instantly thrown into battle. A shabti lion leaped at my face.

Isis reacted faster than I could have. She gave me a single word to speak: “Fah!”

And the hieroglyph for Release shimmered in the air:The lion shrank to a wax statuette and bounced harmlessly off my chest.

All around us, the corridor was in mayhem. In either direction our initiates were locked in combat with enemy magicians. Directly in front of us, a dozen rebels had formed a wedge blocking the doors to the Hall of Ages, and our friends seemed to be trying to get past them.

For a moment, that seemed backward to me. Shouldn’t our side be defending the doors? Then I realized what must have happened. The attack on the sealed tunnel had surprised our allies. They’d rushed to help Amos, but by the time they’d got to the doors, the enemies were already inside. Now this lot was keeping our reinforcements from reaching Amos, while our uncle was inside the hall, possibly alone, facing Sarah Jacobi and her elite hit squad.

My pulse raced. I charged into battle, flinging spells from Isis’s incredibly diverse menu. It felt good to be a goddess again, I must admit, but I had to keep careful track of my energy. If I let Isis have free reign, she would destroy our enemies in seconds, but she would also burn me up in the process. I had to temper her inclination to rend the puny mortals to pieces.

I threw my wand like a boomerang and hit a large, bearded magician who was yelling in Russian as he fought sword-to-sword against Julian.

The Russian disappeared in a golden flash. Where he’d been standing, a hamster squeaked in alarm and scurried away. Julian grinned at me. His sword blade was smoking and the turn-ups of his trousers were on fire, but otherwise he looked all right.

“About time!” he said.

Another magician charged him, and we had no further time to chat.

Carter waded forward, swinging his flail and crook as if he had trained with them all his life. An enemy magician summoned a rhino—which I thought quite rude, considering the tight space we were in. Carter lashed it with his flail, and each spiked chain became a rope of fire. The rhino crumbled, cut into three pieces, and melted into a pile of wax.

Our other friends weren’t doing too badly, either. Felix used an ice spell that I’d never seen before—encasing his enemies in big fluffy snowmen, complete with carrot noses and pipes. His army of penguins waddled around him, pecking at enemy magicians and stealing their wands.

Alyssa was fighting with another earth elementalist, but this Russian woman was clearly outmatched. She’d probably never faced the power of Geb before. Each time the Russian summoned a stone creature or tried to throw boulders, her attacks dissolved into rubble. Alyssa snapped her fingers, and the floor turned to quicksand under her opponent’s feet. The Russian sank up to her shoulders, quite stuck.

At the north end of the corridor, Jaz crouched next to Cleo, tending her arm, which had been turned into a sunflower. Cleo had got off better than her opponent, though. At her feet lay a human-sized volume of the novel David Copperfield, which I had a feeling had once been an enemy magician.

(Carter tells me David Copperfield is a magician. He finds this funny for some reason. Just ignore him. I do.)

Even our ankle-biters had got into the act. Young Shelby had scattered her crayons down the hallway to trip the enemy. Now she was wielding her wand like a tennis racket, running between the legs of adult magicians, swatting them on the bottom and yelling, “Die, die, die!”

Aren’t children adorable?

She swatted a large metal warrior, a shabti no doubt, and he transformed into a rainbow-colored potbellied pig. If we lived through the day, I had a bad feeling Shelby would want to keep it.

Some of the First Nome residents were helping us, but depressingly few. A handful of tottering old magicians and desperate merchants threw talismans and deflected spells.

Slowly but surely, we waded toward the doors, where the main wedge of enemies seemed to be focused on a single attacker.

When I realized who it was, I was tempted to turn myself into a hamster and scamper away, squeaking.

Walt had arrived. He ripped through the enemy line with his bare hands—throwing one rebel magician down the hallway with inhuman strength, touching another and instantly encasing the man in mummy linen. He grabbed the staff of a third rebel, and it crumbled to dust. Finally he swept his hand toward the remaining enemies, and they shrank to the size of dolls. Canopic jars—the sort used to bury a mummy’s internal organs—sprang up around each of the tiny magicians, sealing them in with lids shaped like animal heads. The poor magicians yelled desperately, banging on the clay containers and wobbling about like a line of very unhappy bowling pins.

Walt turned to our friends. “Is everyone all right?”

He looked like normal old Walt—tall and muscular with a confident face, soft brown eyes, and strong hands. But his clothes had changed. He wore jeans, a dark Dead Weather T-shirt, and a black leather jacket—Anubis’s outfit, sized up to fit Walt’s physique. All I had to do was lower my vision into the Duat, just a bit, and I saw Anubis standing there in all his usual annoying gorgeousness. Both of them—occupying the same space.

“Get ready,” Walt told our troops. “They’ve sealed the doors, but I can—”

Then he noticed me, and his voice faltered.

“Sadie,” he said. “I—”

“Something about opening the doors?” I demanded.

He nodded mutely.

“Amos is in there?” I asked. “Fighting Kwai and Jacobi and who knows what else?”

He nodded again.

“Then stop staring at me and open the doors, you annoying boy!”

I was talking to both of them. It felt quite natural. And it felt good to let my anger out. I’d deal with those two—that one—whatever he was—later. Right now, my uncle needed me.

Walt/Anubis had the nerve to smile.

He put his hand on the doors. Gray ash spread across the surface. The bronze crumbled to dust.

“After you,” he told me, and we charged into the Hall of Ages.
SADIE


18. Death Boy to the Rescue
THE GOOD NEWS: Amos wasn’t entirely alone.

The bad news: his backup was the god of evil.

As we poured into the Hall of Ages, our rescue attempt sputtered to a stop. We hadn’t expected to see a deadly aerial ballet with lightning and knives. The normal floating hieroglyphs that filled the room were gone. The holographic curtains on either side of the hall flickered weakly. Some had collapsed altogether.

As I’d suspected, an assault team of enemy magicians had locked themselves in here with Amos, but it looked like they were regretting their choice.

Hovering midair in the center of the hall, Amos was cloaked in the strangest avatar I’d ever seen. A vaguely human form swirled around him—part sandstorm, part fire, rather like the giant Apophis we’d seen upstairs, except a lot happier. The giant red warrior laughed as he fought, spinning a ten-meter black iron staff with careless force. Suspended in his chest, Amos copied the giant’s moves, his face beaded with sweat. I couldn’t tell if Amos was directing Set or trying to restrain him. Possibly both.

Enemy magicians flew circles around him. Kwai was easy to spot, with his bald head and blue robes, darting through the air like one of those martial arts monks who could defy gravity. He shot bolts of red lightning at the Set avatar, but they didn’t seem to have much effect.

With her spiky black hair and flowing white robes, Sarah Jacobi looked like the Schizophrenic Witch of the West, especially as she was surfing about on a storm cloud like a flying carpet. She held two black knives like barbershop razors, which she threw over and over in a horrific juggling act, launching them into the Set avatar, then catching them as they returned to her hands. I’d seen knives like that before—netjeri blades, made from meteoric iron. They were mostly used in funeral ceremonies, but they seemed to work quite well as weapons. With every strike, they disrupted the avatar’s sandy flesh a little more, slowly wearing it down. As I watched her throw her knives, anger clenched inside me like a fist. Some instinct told me that Jacobi had stuck my Russian friend Leonid with those knives before leaving him to die.

The other rebels weren’t quite as successful with their attacks, but they were certainly persistent. Some blasted Set with gusts of wind or water. Others launched shabti creatures, like giant scorpions and griffins. One fat bloke was pelting Amos with bits of cheese. Honestly, I’m not sure I would have chosen a Cheese Master for my elite hit squad, but perhaps Sarah Jacobi got peckish during her battles.

Set seemed to be enjoying himself. The giant red warrior slammed his iron staff into Kwai’s chest and sent him spiraling through the air. He kicked another magician into the holographic curtains of the Roman Age, and the poor man collapsed with smoke coming out his ears, his mind probably overloaded with visions of toga parties.

Set thrust his free hand toward the Cheese Master. The fat magician was swallowed in a sandstorm and began to scream, but just as quickly, Set retracted his hand. The storm died. The magician dropped to the floor like a rag doll, unconscious but still alive.

“Bah!” the red warrior bellowed. “Come on, Amos, let me have some fun. I only wanted to strip the flesh from his bones!”

Amos’s face was tight with concentration. Clearly he was doing his best to control the god, but Set had many other enemies to play with.

“Pull!” The red god shot lightning at a stone sphinx and blasted it to dust. He laughed insanely and swatted his staff at Sarah Jacobi. “This is fun, little magicians! Don’t you have any more tricks?”

I’m not sure how long we stood in the doorway, watching the battle. Probably not more than a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity.

Finally Jaz choked back a sob. “Amos…he’s possessed again.”

“No,” I insisted. “No, this is different! He’s in control.”

Our initiates gazed at me with disbelief. I understood their panic. I remembered better than anyone how Set had nearly broken my uncle’s sanity. It was hard to comprehend that Amos would ever willingly channel the red god’s power. Yet he was doing the impossible. He was winning.

Still, even the Chief Lector couldn’t channel that much power for long.

“Look at him!” I pleaded. “We have to help him! Amos isn’t possessed. He’s controlling Set!”

Walt frowned. “Sadie, that—that’s impossible. Set can’t be controlled.”

Carter raised his crook and flail. “Obviously he can be, because Amos is doing it. Now, are we going to war, or what?”

We charged forward, but we’d hesitated too long. Sarah Jacobi had noticed our presence. She yelled down at her followers: “Now!”

She may have been evil, but she was not a fool. Their assault on Amos thus far had simply been to distract him and weaken him. On her cue, the real attack began. Kwai blasted lightning at Amos’s face just as the other magicians drew out magic ropes and threw them at the Set avatar.

The red warrior staggered as the ropes tightened all at once, lashing around his legs and arms. Sarah Jacobi sheathed her knives and produced a long black lariat. Sailing her storm cloud above the avatar, she deftly lassoed his head and pulled the noose tight.

Set roared with outrage, but the avatar began to shrink. Before we could even close the distance, Amos was kneeling on the floor of the Hall of Ages, surrounded by only the thinnest of glowing red shields. Magical ropes now bound him tight. Sarah Jacobi stood behind him, holding the black lasso like a leash. One of her netjeri blades was pressed against Amos’s neck.

“Stop!” she commanded us. “This ends now.”

My friends hesitated. The rebel magicians turned and faced us warily.

Isis spoke in my mind: Regrettable, but we must let him die. He hosts Set, our old enemy.

That’s my uncle! I replied.

He has been corrupted, Isis said. He is already gone.

“No!” I yelled. Our connection wavered. You can’t share the mind of a god and have a disagreement. To be the Eye, you must act in perfect unison.

Carter seemed to be having similar trouble with Horus. He summoned the hawk warrior avatar, but almost immediately it dissipated and dropped Carter to the floor.

“Come on, Horus!” he growled. “We have to help.”

Sarah Jacobi’s laugh sounded like metal scraped through sand.

“Do you see?” She pulled tight on the noose around Amos’s neck. “This is what comes from the path of the gods! Confusion. Chaos. Set himself in the Hall of Ages! Even you misguided fools cannot deny this is wrong!”

Amos clawed at his throat. He growled in outrage, but it was Set’s voice that spoke. “I try to do something nice, and this is my thanks? You should have let me kill them, Amos!”

I stepped forward, careful to make no sudden movements. “Jacobi, you don’t understand. Amos is channeling Set’s power, but he’s in control. He could have killed you, but he didn’t. Set was a lieutenant of Ra. He’s a useful ally, properly managed.”

Set snorted. “Useful, yes! I don’t know about the properly managed business. Let me go, puny magicians, so I can crush you!”

I glared at my uncle. “Set! Not helping!”

Amos’s expression changed from anger to concern. “Sadie!” he said with his own voice. “Go: fight Apophis. Leave me here!”

“No,” I said. “You’re the Chief Lector. We’ll fight for the House of Life.”

I didn’t look behind me, but I hoped that my friends would agree. Otherwise my last stand would be very, very short.

Jacobi sneered. “Your uncle is a servant of Set! You and your brother are sentenced to death. The rest of you, lay down your weapons. As your new Chief Lector, I will give you amnesty. Then we will battle Apophis together.”

“You’re in league with Apophis!” I yelled.

Jacobi’s face turned stony cold. “Treason.”

She thrust out her staff. “Ha-di.”

I raised my wand, but Isis wasn’t helping me this time. I was just Sadie Kane, and my defenses were slow. The explosion ripped through my weak shields and threw me backward into a curtain of light. Images from the Age of the Gods crackled around me—the founding of the world, the crowning of Osiris, the battle between Set and Horus—like having sixty different movies downloaded into my brain while being electrocuted. The light shattered, and I lay on the floor, dazed and drained.

“Sadie!” Carter charged toward me, but Kwai blasted him with a bolt of red lightning. Carter fell to his knees. I didn’t even have the strength to cry out.

Jaz ran toward him. Little Shelby yelled, “Stop it! Stop it!” Our other initiates seemed stunned, unable to move.

“Give up,” Jacobi said. I realized she was speaking with words of power, just like the ghost Setne had done. She was using magic to paralyze my friends. “The Kanes have brought you nothing but trouble. It’s time this ended.”

She lifted her netjeri blade from Amos’s throat. Quick as light, she threw it at me. As the blade flew, my mind seemed to speed up. In that millisecond, I understood that Sarah Jacobi wouldn’t miss. My end would be as painful as poor Leonid’s, who was bleeding to death alone in the outer tunnel. Yet I could do nothing to defend myself.

A shadow crossed in front of me. A bare hand snatched the blade out of the air. The meteoric iron turned gray and crumbled.

Jacobi’s eyes widened. She hastily drew her second knife.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Walt Stone,” he said, “blood of the pharaohs. And Anubis, god of the dead.”

He stepped in front of me, shielding me from my enemies. Maybe my vision was double because I’d cracked my head, but I saw the two of them with equal clarity—both handsome and powerful, both quite angry.

“We speak with one voice,” Walt said. “Especially on this matter. No one harms Sadie Kane.”

He thrust out his hand. The floor split open at Sarah Jacobi’s feet, and souls of the dead sprang up like weeds—skeletal hands, glowing faces, fanged shadows, and winged ba with their claws extended. They swarmed Sarah Jacobi, wrapping her in ghostly linen, and dragged her screaming into the chasm. The floor closed behind her, leaving no trace that she had ever existed.

The black noose slackened around Amos’s neck, and the voice of Set laughed with delight. “That’s my boy!”

“Shut up, Father,” Anubis said.

In the Duat, Anubis looked as he always had, with his tousled dark hair and lovely brown eyes, but I’d never seen him filled with such rage. I realized that anyone who dared to hurt me would suffer his full wrath, and Walt wasn’t going to hold him back.

Jaz helped Carter to his feet. His shirt was burned, but he looked all right. I suppose a blast of lightning wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him lately.

“Magicians!” Carter managed to stand tall and confident, addressing both our initiates and the rebels. “We’re wasting time. Apophis is above, about to destroy the world. A few brave gods are holding him back for our sakes, for the sake of Egypt and the world of mortals, but they can’t do it alone. Jacobi and Kwai led you astray. Unbind the Chief Lector. We have to work together.”

Kwai snarled. Red electricity arced between his fingers. “Never. We do not bow to gods.”

I managed to rise.

“Listen to my brother,” I said. “You don’t trust the gods? They are already helping us. Meanwhile, Apophis wants us to fight one another. Why do you think your attack was timed for this morning, at the same moment Apophis is rising? Kwai and Jacobi have sold you out. The enemy is right in front of you!”

Even the rebel magicians now turned to stare at Kwai. The remaining ropes fell away from Amos.

Kwai sneered. “You’re too late.”

His voice hummed with power. His robes turned from blue to bloodred. His eyes glowed, his pupils turning to reptilian slits. “Even now, my master destroys the old gods, sweeping away the foundations of your world. He will swallow the sun. All of you will die.”

Amos got to his feet. Red sand swirled around him, but I had no doubt who was in charge now. His white robes shimmered with power. The leopard-skin cape of the Chief Lector gleamed on his shoulders. He held out his staff, and multicolored hieroglyphs filled the air.

“House of Life,” he said. “To war!”

Kwai did not give up easily.

I suppose that’s what happens when the Serpent of Chaos is invading your thoughts and filling you with unlimited rage and magic.

Kwai sent a chain of red lightning across the room, knocking over most of the other magicians, including his own followers. Isis must have protected me, because the electricity rippled over me with no effect. Amos didn’t seem bothered in his swirling red tornado. Walt stumbled, but only briefly. Even Carter in his weakened state managed to turn aside the lightning with his pharaoh’s crook.

The others weren’t as lucky. Jaz collapsed. Then Julian. Then Felix and his squad of penguins. All our initiates and the rebels they’d been fighting crumpled unconscious to the floor. So much for a massive offensive.

I summoned the power of Isis. I began to cast a binding charm; but Kwai wasn’t done with his tricks. He raised his hands and created his own sandstorm. Dozens of whirlwinds spun through the hall, thickening and forming into creatures of sand—sphinxes, crocodiles, wolves, and lions. They attacked in every direction, even pouncing on our defenseless friends.

“Sadie!” Amos warned. “Protect them!”

I quickly changed spells—casting hasty shields over our unconscious initiates. Amos blasted the monsters one after the other, but they just kept re-forming.

Carter summoned his avatar. He charged at Kwai, but the red magician blasted him backward with a new surge of lightning. My poor brother slammed into a stone column, which collapsed on top of him. I could only hope his avatar had taken the brunt of the impact.

Walt released a dozen magical creatures at once—his sphinx, his camels, his ibis, even Philip of Macedonia. They charged at the sand creatures, trying to keep them away from the fallen magicians.

Then Walt turned to face Kwai.

“Anubis,” Kwai hissed. “You should have stayed in your funeral parlor, boy god. You are outmatched.”

By way of answer, Walt spread his hands. On either side of him, the floor cracked open. Two massive jackals leaped from the crevices, their fangs bared. Walt’s form shimmered. Suddenly he was dressed in Egyptian battle armor, a was staff twirling in his hands like a deadly fan blade.

Kwai roared. He blasted the jackals with waves of sand. He hurled lightning and words of power at Walt, but Walt deflected them with his staff, reducing Kwai’s attacks to gray ashes.

The jackals harried Kwai from either side, sinking their teeth into his legs, while Walt stepped in and swung his staff like a golf club. He hit Kwai so hard, I imagined it echoed all the way through the Duat. The magician fell. His sand creatures vanished.

Walt called off his jackals. Amos lowered his staff. Carter rose from the rubble, looking dizzy but unharmed. We gathered around the fallen magician.

Kwai should have been dead. A line of blood trickled from his mouth. His eyes were glassy. But as I studied his face, he took a sharp breath and laughed weakly.

“Idiots,” he rasped. “Sahei.”

A bloodred hieroglyph burned against his chest:His robes erupted in flames. Before our eyes, he dissolved into sand and a wave of cold—the power of Chaos—rippled through the Hall of Ages. Columns shook. Chunks of stone fell from the ceiling. A slab the size of an oven crashed into the steps of the dais, almost crushing the pharaoh’s throne.

“Bring down,” I said, realizing what the hieroglyph meant. Even Isis seemed terrified by the invocation. “Sahei is Bring down.”

Amos swore in Ancient Egyptian—something about donkeys trampling Kwai’s ghost. “He used up his life force to cast this curse. The hall is already weakened. We’ll have to leave before we’re buried alive.”

I glanced around us at the fallen magicians. Some of our initiates were starting to stir, but there was no way we could get them all to safety in time.

“We have to stop it!” I insisted. “We have four gods present! Can’t we save the hall?”

Amos furrowed his brow. “The power of Set will not help me in this. He can only destroy, not restore.”

Another column toppled. It broke across the floor, barely missing one of the unconscious rebels.

Walt—who looked quite good in armor, by the way—shook his head. “This is beyond Anubis. I’m sorry.”

The floor rumbled. We had only seconds to live. Then we would be just another bunch of entombed Egyptians.

“Carter?” I asked.

He regarded me helplessly. He was still weak, and I realized his battle magic wouldn’t be much good in this situation.

I sighed. “So it comes down to me, as always. Fine. You three shield the others as best you can. If this doesn’t work, get out quickly.”

“If what doesn’t work?” Amos said, as more chunks of ceiling rained down around us. “Sadie, what are you planning?”

“Just a word, dear uncle.” I raised my staff and called on the power of Isis.

She immediately understood what I needed. Together, we tried to find calm in the Chaos. I focused on the most peaceful, well-ordered moments of my life—and there weren’t many. I remembered my sixth birthday party in Los Angeles with Carter, my dad and mum—the last clear memory I had of all of us together as a family. I imagined listening to music in my room at Brooklyn House while Khufu ate Cheerios on my dresser. I imagined sitting on the terrace with my friends, having a restful breakfast as Philip of Macedonia splashed in his pool. I remembered Sunday afternoons at Gran and Gramps’s flat—Muffin on my lap, Gramps’s rugby game on the telly, and Gran’s horrible biscuits and weak tea on the table. Good times, those were.

Most important, I faced down my own chaos. I accepted my jumbled emotions about whether I belonged in London or New York, whether I was a magician or a schoolgirl. I was Sadie Kane, and if I survived today, I could bloody well balance it all. And, yes, I accepted Walt and Anubis…I gave up my anger and dismay. I imagined both of them with me, and if that was peculiar, well then, it fit right in with the rest of my life. I made peace with the idea. Walt was alive. Anubis was flesh and blood. I stilled my restlessness and let go of my doubts.

“Ma’at,” I said.

I felt as if I’d struck a tuning fork against the foundation of the earth. Deep harmony resonated outward through every level of the Duat.

The Hall of Ages stilled. Columns rose and repaired themselves. The cracks in the ceiling and floor sealed. Holographic curtains of light blazed once again along either side of the hall, and hieroglyphs once more filled the air.

I collapsed into Walt’s arms. Through my fuzzy vision, I saw him smiling down at me. Anubis, too. I could see them both, and I realized I didn’t have to pick.

“Sadie, you did it,” he said. “You’re so amazing.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered. “Good night.”

They tell me I was only out a few seconds, but it felt like centuries. When I came to, the other magicians were back on their feet. Amos smiled down at me. “Up you come, my girl.”

He helped me to my feet. Carter hugged me quite enthusiastically, almost as if he appreciated me properly for once.

“It’s not over,” Carter warned. “We have to get to the surface. Are you ready?”

I nodded, though neither of us was in good shape. We’d used up too much energy in the fight for the Hall of Ages. Even with the gods’ help, we were in no condition to face Apophis. But we had little choice.

“Carter,” Amos said formally, gesturing to the empty throne. “You are blood of the pharaohs, Eye of Horus. You carry the crook and flail, bestowed by Ra. The kingship is yours. Will you lead us, gods and mortals, against the enemy?”

Carter stood straight. I could see the doubt and fear in him, but possibly that was just because I knew him. I’d spoken his secret name. On the outside, he looked confident, strong, adult—even kingly.

[Yes, I said that. Don’t get a big head, brother dear. You’re still a huge dork.]

“I’ll lead you,” Carter said. “But the throne will have to wait. Right now, Ra needs us. We have to get to the surface. Can you show us the quickest way?”

Amos nodded. “And the rest of you?”

The other magicians shouted assent—even the former rebels.

“We aren’t many,” Walt observed. “What are your orders, Carter?”

“First we get reinforcements,” he said. “It’s time I summoned the gods to war.”