The Serpents Shadow

  Zia cranked the fire on her staff to white-hot. “Careful, Setne. I know what a proper disenchantment sounds like. If I suspect you’re casting anything else, I’ll blast you into ectoplasmic dust.”

  “Relax, doll.” Setne cracked his knuckles. His diamond pinky rings flashed in the firelight. “You gotta keep that scarab under control, or you’re gonna turn yourself into ashes.”

  I frowned. “Scarab?”

  Setne glanced back and forth between us and laughed. “You mean she hasn’t told you? And you haven’t figured it out? You kids today! I love the ignorance!”

  He turned toward the wall and began to chant. Zia’s fire ebbed to a cooler red flame. I gave her a questioning look.

  She hesitated—then touched the base of her throat. She hadn’t been wearing a necklace before. I was sure of that. But when she touched her throat, an amulet blinked into existence—a glittering golden scarab on a gold chain. She must have hidden it with a glamor—a magical illusion like Setne had done with the Ribbons of Hathor.

  The scarab looked metal, but I realized I’d seen it before, and I’d seen it alive. Back when Ra had imprisoned Apophis in the Underworld, he’d given up part of his soul—his incarnation as Khepri, scarab of the morning sun—to keep his enemy confined. He’d buried Apophis under a landslide of living beetles.

  By the time Sadie and I had found that prison last spring, millions of scarabs had been reduced to desiccated shells. When Apophis broke free, only one golden beetle survived: the last remnant of Khepri’s power.

  Ra had tried to swallow that scarab. (Yes, disgusting. I know.) When that didn’t work…he’d offered it to Zia.

  I didn’t remember Zia taking the scarab, but somehow I knew that amulet was the same bug.

  “Zia—”

  She shook her head adamantly. “Later.”

  She gestured at Setne, who was in the middle of his spell.

  Okay, probably not a good time to talk. I didn’t want the tunnel coming down on us. But my mind was reeling.

  You haven’t figured it out? Setne had taunted me.

  I knew Ra was fascinated with Zia. She was his favorite babysitter. Setne mentioned that Zia was having temperature control problems. The old man is getting to you, he’d said. And Ra had given Zia that scarab—literally a piece of his soul—as if she were his high priestess…or maybe someone even more important.

  The tunnel rumbled. The dead-end wall dissolved into dust, revealing a chamber beyond.

  Setne glanced back at us with a smile. “Showtime, kids.”

  We followed him into a circular room that reminded me of the library at Brooklyn House. The floor was a sparkling mosaic of pastures and rivers. On the walls, painted priests were adorning painted cows with flowers and feathery headdresses for some kind of festival, while Ancient Egyptians waved palm fronds and shook bronze noisemakers called sistrums. The domed ceiling depicted Osiris on his throne, passing judgment over a bull. For an absurd moment, I wondered if Ammit devoured the hearts of wicked cows, and if he liked the beefy taste.

  In the middle of the chamber, on a coffin-shaped pedestal, stood a life-sized statue of the Apis Bull. It was made of dark stone—basalt, maybe—but painted so skillfully, it looked alive. Its eyes seemed to follow me. Its hide glistened black except for a small white diamond on the front of its chest, and over its back was a gold blanket cut and embroidered to resemble a hawk’s wings. Between its horns sat a Frisbee of gold—a sun disk crown. Beneath that, sticking out of the bull’s forehead like a curly unicorn horn, was a rearing cobra.

  A year ago I would’ve said, “Freaky, but at least it’s just a statue.” Now, I’d had lots of experience with Egyptian statues coming to life and trying to stomp the ankh out of me.

  Setne didn’t seem worried. He strolled right up to the stone bull and patted its leg. “The Shrine of Apis! I built this chamber just for my chosen priests and me. Now all we have to do is wait.”

  “Wait for what?” Zia asked. Being a smart girl, she was hanging back by the entrance with me.

  Setne checked his nonexistent watch. “It won’t be long. Just a timer, sort of. Come on in! Make yourself comfortable.”

  I edged my way inside. I waited for the doorway to solidify behind me, but it stayed open. “You sure the book is still here?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Setne walked around the statue, checking the base. “I just need to remember which of these panels on the dais is going to pop open. I wanted to make this entire room out of gold, you know? That would’ve been much cooler. But Dad cut back on my funding.”

  “Your dad.” Zia stepped next to me and slipped her hand into mine, which I didn’t mind. The golden scarab necklace glinted around her neck. “You mean Ramses the Great?”

  Setne’s mouth twisted in a cruel sneer. “Yeah, that’s how his PR department branded him. Me, I liked to call him Ramses II, or Ramses Number Two.”

  “Ramses?” I said. “Your dad is the Ramses?”

  I suppose I hadn’t processed how Setne fit into Egyptian history. Looking at this scrawny little guy with his greasy hair, his shoulder-padded jacket, and his ridiculous bling, I couldn’t believe he was related to a ruler so famous. Even worse, it made him related to me, since our mom’s side of the family traced its magic heritage from Ramses the Great.

  (Sadie says she can see the family resemblance between Setne and me. [Shut up, Sadie.])

  I guess Setne didn’t like my looking surprised. He stuck his beaky nose in the air. “You should know what it’s like, Carter Kane—growing up in the shadow of a famous dad. Always trying to live up to his legend. Look at you, son of the great Dr. Julius Kane. You finally make a name for yourself as a big-shot magician, what does your dad do? He goes and becomes a god.”

  Setne laughed coldly. I’d never felt any resentment toward my father before; I’d always thought it was cool being Dr. Kane’s son. But Setne’s words rolled over me, and anger started to build in my chest.

  He’s playing with you, said the voice of Horus.

  I knew Horus was right, but that didn’t make me feel better.

  “Where’s the book, Setne?” I asked. “Enough delays.”

  “Don’t warp your wand, pal. It won’t be much longer.” He gazed at the picture of Osiris on the ceiling. “There he is! The blue dude himself. I’m telling you, Carter, you and I are a lot alike. I can’t go anywhere in Egypt without seeing my dad’s face, either. Abu Simbel? There’s Papa Ramses glaring down at me—four copies of him, each sixty feet tall. It’s like a nightmare. Half the temples in Egypt? He commissioned them and put up statues of himself. Is it any wonder I wanted to be the world’s biggest magician?” He puffed up his scrawny chest. “And I made it, too. What I don’t understand, Carter Kane, is why you haven’t taken the pharaoh’s throne yet. You’ve got Horus on your side, itching for power. You should merge with the god, become the pharaoh of the world, and, ah…” He patted the Apis statue. “Take the bull by the horns.”

  He’s right, Horus said. This human has wisdom.

  Make up your mind, I complained.

  “Carter, don’t listen to him,” Zia said. “Setne, whatever you’re up to—stop. Now.”

  “What I’m up to? Look, doll—”

  “Don’t call me that!” Zia said.

  “Hey, I’m on your side,” Setne promised. “The book’s right here in the dais. As soon as the bull moves—”

  “The bull moves?” I asked.

  Setne narrowed his eyes. “Didn’t I mention that? I got the idea from this holiday we used to have in the old days, the Festival of Sed. Awesome fun! You ever been to that Running of the Bulls in, what is it, Spain?”

  “Pamplona,” I said. Another wave of resentment got the best of me. My dad had taken me to Pamplona once, but he hadn’t let me go out in the street while the bulls were running through town. He’d said it was too dangerous—as if his secret life as a magician weren’t way more dangerous than that.

  “Right, Pamplona,” Setne agreed. “We
ll, you know where that tradition started? Egypt. The pharaoh would do this ritual race with the Apis Bull to renew his kingly power, prove his strength, get blessed by the gods—all that junk. In later times, it became just a charade, no real danger. But at the beginning, it was the real thing. Life and death.”

  On the word death, the bull statue moved. He bent his legs stiffly. Then he lowered his head and glared at me, snorting out a cloud of dust.

  “Setne!” I reached for my sword, but of course it wasn’t there. “Make that thing stop, or I’ll wrap you in ribbons so fast—”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Setne warned. “See, I’m the only one who can pick up the book without getting zapped by about sixteen different curses.”

  Between the bull’s horns, its golden sun disk flashed. On its forehead, the cobra writhed to life, hissing and spitting gobs of fire.

  Zia drew her wand. Was it my imagination, or was her scarab necklace starting to steam? “Call off that creature, Setne. Or I swear—”

  “I can’t, doll. Sorry.” He grinned at us from behind the bull’s dais. He didn’t look very sorry. “This is part of the security system, see? If you want the book, you’ve got to distract the bull and get it out of here, while I open the dais and grab the Book of Thoth. I have complete faith in you.”

  The bull pawed his pedestal and leaped off. Zia pulled me back into the hallway.

  “That’s it!” Setne shouted. “Just like the Sed Festival. Prove you’re worthy of the pharaoh’s throne, kid. Run or die!”

  The bull charged.

  A sword would’ve been really nice. I would’ve settled for a matador’s cape and a spear. Or an assault rifle. Instead, Zia and I ran back through the catacombs and quickly realized that we were lost. Letting Setne lead us into the maze had been a stupid idea. I should’ve dropped breadcrumbs or marked the walls with hieroglyphs or something.

  I hoped the tunnels would be too narrow for the Apis Bull. No such luck. I heard rock walls rumbling behind us as the bull shouldered his way through. There was another sound I liked even less—a deep hum followed by an explosion. I didn’t know what that was, but it was good incentive to run faster.

  We must have passed through a dozen halls. Each had twenty or thirty sarcophagi. I couldn’t believe how many Apises had been mummified down here—centuries’ worth of bull. Behind us, our monstrous stone friend bellowed as he smashed his way through the tunnels.

  I glanced back once and was sorry I did. The bull was closing fast, the cobra on his forehead spewing fire.

  “This way!” Zia cried.

  She pulled me down a side corridor. At the far end, what looked like daylight spilled from an open doorway. We sprinted toward it.

  I was hoping for an exit. Instead we stumbled into another circular chamber. There was no bull statue in the middle, but spaced around the circumference were four giant stone sarcophagi. The walls were painted with pictures of bovine paradise—cows being fed, cows frolicking in meadows, cows being worshipped by silly little humans. The daylight streamed from a shaft in the domed ceiling, twenty feet above. A beam of sunshine sliced through the dusty air and hit the middle of the floor like a spotlight, but there was no way we could use the shaft to escape. Even if I turned into a falcon, the opening was too narrow, and I wasn’t about to leave Zia alone.

  “Dead end,” she said.

  “HRUUUFF!” The Apis Bull loomed in the doorway, blocking our exit. His hood ornament cobra hissed.

  We backed into the room until we stood in the warm sunlight. It seemed cruel to die here, stuck under thousands of tons of rock but able to see the sun.

  The bull pawed the floor. He took a step forward, then hesitated, as if the sunlight bothered him.

  “Maybe I can talk to him,” I said. “He’s connected to Osiris, right?”

  Zia looked at me like I was crazy—which I was—but I didn’t have any better ideas.

  She readied her wand and staff. “I’ll cover you.”

  I stepped toward the monster and showed my empty hands. “Nice bull. I’m Carter Kane. Osiris is my dad, sort of. How about we call a truce and—”

  The cobra spewed fire in my face.

  It would’ve turned me into an extra-crispy Carter, but Zia shouted a command. As I stumbled backward, her staff absorbed the blast, sucking in the flames like a vacuum cleaner. She sliced the air with her wand, and a shimmering red wall of fire erupted around the Apis Bull. Unfortunately, the bull just stood there and glared at us, completely unharmed.

  Zia cursed. “We seem to be at an impasse with the fire magic.”

  The bull lowered its horns.

  My war god instincts took control. “Take cover!”

  Zia dove one way. I dove the other. The bull’s sun disk glowed and hummed, then shot a golden beam of heat right where we’d been standing. I barely made it behind a sarcophagus. My clothes were steaming. The bottoms of my shoes were melted. Where the beam had hit, the floor was blackened and bubbling, as if the rock had reached boiling point.

  “Cows with laser beams?” I protested. “That’s completely unfair!”

  “Carter!” Zia called from across the room. “You okay?”

  “We’ll have to split up!” I shouted back. “I’ll distract it. You get out of here!”

  “What? No!”

  The bull turned toward the sound of her voice. I had to move fast.

  My avatar wouldn’t be much good in an enclosed space like this, but I needed the war god’s strength and speed. I summoned the power of Horus. Blue light flickered around me. My skin felt as thick as steel, my muscles as powerful as hydraulic pistons. I rose to my feet, smashed my fists into the sarcophagus, and reduced it to a pile of stone and mummy dust. I picked up a chunk of the lid—a three-hundred-pound stone shield—and charged at the bull.

  We smashed into each other. Somehow I held my ground, but it took every bit of my magical strength. The bull bellowed and pushed. The cobra spit flames that rolled over the top of my shield.

  “Zia, get out of here!” I shouted.

  “I’m not leaving you!”

  “You’ve got to! I can’t—”

  The hairs on my arms stood up even before I heard the humming sound. My slab of stone disintegrated in a flash of gold, and I flew backward, crashing into another sarcophagus.

  My vision blurred. I heard Zia shout. When my eyes could focus again, I saw her standing in the middle of the room, wrapped in sunlight, chanting a spell I didn’t recognize. She’d gotten the bull’s attention, which had probably saved my life. But before I could cry out, the bull aimed his sun disk and shot a superheated laser beam straight at Zia.

  “No!” I screamed.

  The light blinded me. The heat sucked all the oxygen out of my lungs. There was no way Zia could have survived that hit.

  But when the golden light faded, Zia was still there. Around her burned a massive shield shaped like…like a scarab shell. Her eyes glowed with orange fire. Flames swirled around her. She looked at the bull and spoke a deep rasping voice that definitely wasn’t hers: “I am Khepri, the rising sun. I will not be denied.”

  Only later did I realize that she’d spoken in Ancient Egyptian.

  She thrust out her hand. A miniature comet shot toward the Apis Bull and the monster burst into flames, turning and stomping, suddenly panicked. His legs crumbled. He collapsed and broke into a smoking pile of charred rubble.

  The room was suddenly quiet. I was afraid to move. Zia was still wreathed in fire, and it seemed to be getting hotter—burning yellow, then white. She stood as if in a trance. The golden scarab around her neck was definitely smoking now.

  “Zia!” My head throbbed, but I managed to rise.

  She turned toward me and hefted another fireball.

  “Zia, no!” I said. “It’s me. Carter.”

  She hesitated. “Carter…?” Her expression turned to confusion, then fear. The orange flames faded in her eyes, and she collapsed in the pool of sunlight.

  I ran
to her. I tried to gather her in my arms, but her skin was too hot to touch. The golden scarab had left a nasty burn on her throat.

  “Water,” I muttered to myself. “I need water.”

  I’d never been good at divine words, but I shouted: “Maw!”

  The symbol blazed above us:

  Several cubic gallons of water materialized in midair and crashed down on us. Zia’s face steamed. She coughed and spluttered, but she didn’t wake. Her fever still felt dangerously high.

  “I’ll get you out of here,” I promised, lifting her in my arms.

  I didn’t need the strength of Horus. I had so much adrenaline coursing through my body, I didn’t feel any of my own injuries. I ran right by Setne when he passed me in the hall.

  “Hey, pal!” He turned and jogged along next to me, waving a thick papyrus scroll. “Good job! I got the Book of Thoth!”

  “You almost killed Zia!” I snapped. “Get us out of here—NOW!”

  “Okay, okay,” Setne said. “Calm down.”

  “I’m taking you back to my dad’s courtroom,” I growled. “I’m going to personally stuff you down Ammit’s mouth, like a branch into a wood chipper.”

  “Whoa, big man.” Setne led me up a sloping passage back to the electrical lighting of the excavated tunnels. “How about we get you out of here first, huh? Remember, you still need me to decipher this book and find the serpent’s shadow. Then we’ll see about the wood chipper, okay?”

  “She can’t die,” I insisted.

  “Right, I got that.” Setne led me through more tunnels, picking up speed. Zia seemed to weigh nothing. My headache had disappeared. Finally we burst into the sunlight and ran for the Egyptian Queen.

  I’ll admit I wasn’t thinking straight.

  When we got back on board, Bloodstained Blade reported on the ship’s repairs, but I barely heard him. I plowed right past him and carried Zia inside to the nearest cabin. I set her on the bed and rummaged through my pack for medical supplies—a water bottle, some magic salve Jaz had given me, a few written charms. I was no rekhet like Jaz. My healing powers consisted mostly of bandages and aspirin, but I began to work.