The Serpents Shadow, Page 21

  “Yes,” the goddess said.

  “And I understand you’re a friend of Bes and Tawaret’s.”

  “That’s true. I like them. They’re ugly. I don’t think they’re in the conspiracy.”

  “Oh, definitely not! So could you, perhaps, show us where Bes’s shadow is?”

  “I could. It dwells in my realm—in the shadows of ancient times.”

  “In the…what now?”

  I was so sorry I asked.

  Neith nocked her arrow and shot it toward the sky. As it sailed upward, the air rippled. A shockwave spread across the landscape, and I felt momentarily dizzy.

  When I blinked, I found that the afternoon sky had turned a more brilliant blue, striped with orange clouds. The air was crisp and clean. Flocks of geese flew overhead. The palm trees were taller; the grass was greener—

  [Yes, Carter, I know it sounds silly. But the grass really was greener on the other side.]

  Where the mud-brick ruins had been, a proud temple now stood. Walt, Neith, and I were just outside the walls, which rose ten meters and gleamed brilliant white in the sun. The whole complex must have been at least a kilometer square. Halfway down the left wall, a gate glittered with gold filigree. A road lined with stone sphinxes led to the river, where sailboats were docked.

  Disorienting? Yes. But I’d had a similar experience once before, when I’d touched the curtains of light in the Hall of Ages.

  “We’re in the past?” I guessed.

  “A shadow of it,” Neith said. “A memory. This is my refuge. It may be your burial ground, unless you survive the hunt.”

  I tensed. “You mean…you hunt us? But we’re not your enemy! Bes is your friend. You should be helping us!”

  “Sadie’s right,” Walt said. “Apophis is your enemy. He’s going to destroy the world tomorrow morning.”

  Neith snorted. “The end of the world? I’ve seen that coming for eons. You soft mortals have ignored the warning signs, but I’m prepared. I’ve got an underground bunker stockpiled with food, clean water, and enough weapons and ammunition to hold off a zombie army.”

  Walt knit his eyebrows. “A zombie army?”

  “You never know!” Neith snapped. “The point is, I’ll survive the apocalypse. I can live off the land!” She jabbed a finger at me. “Did you know the palm tree has six different edible parts?”

  “Um—”

  “And I’ll never be bored,” Neith continued, “since I’m also the goddess of weaving. I have enough twine for a millennium of macramé!”

  I had no reply, as I wasn’t sure what macramé was.

  Walt raised his hands. “Neith, that’s great, but Apophis is rising tomorrow. He’ll swallow the sun, plunge the world into darkness, and let the whole earth crumble back into the Sea of Chaos.”

  “I’ll be safe in my bunker,” Neith insisted. “If you can prove to me that you’re friend and not foe, maybe I’ll help you with Bes. Then you can join me in the bunker. I’ll teach you survival skills. We’ll eat rations and weave new clothes from the pockets of our enemies!”

  Walt and I exchanged looks. The goddess was a nutter. Unfortunately, we needed her help.

  “So you want to hunt us,” I said. “And we’re supposed to survive—”

  “Until sunset,” she said. “Evade me that long, and you can live in my bunker.”

  “I’ve got a counteroffer,” I said quickly. “No bunker. If we win, you help us find Bes’s shadow, but you’ll also fight on our side against Apophis. If you’re really a war goddess and a huntress and all that, you should enjoy a good battle.”

  Neith grinned. “Done! I’ll even give you a five-minute head start. But I should warn you: I never lose. When I kill you, I’ll take your pockets!”

  “You drive a hard bargain,” I said. “But fine.”

  Walt elbowed me. “Um, Sadie—”

  I shot him a warning look. As I saw it, there was no way we could escape this hunt, but I did have an idea that might keep us alive.

  “We’ve begun!” Neith cried. “You can go anywhere in my territory, which is basically the entire delta. It doesn’t matter. I’ll find you.”

  Walt said, “But—”

  “Four minutes, now,” Neith said.

  We did the only sensible thing. We turned and ran.

  “What is macramé?” I yelled as we barreled through the rushes.

  “A kind of weaving,” Walt said. “Why are we talking about this?”

  “Dunno,” I admitted. “Just cur—”

  The world turned upside down—or rather, I did. I found myself hanging in a scratchy twine net with my feet in the air.

  “That’s macramé,” Walt said.

  “Lovely. Get me down!”

  He pulled a knife from his pack—practical boy—and managed to free me, but I reckoned we’d lost most of our head start. The sun was lower on the horizon, but how long would we have to survive—thirty minutes? An hour?

  Walt rifled through his pack and briefly considered the white wax crocodile. “Philip, maybe?”

  “No,” I said. “We can’t fight Neith head-on. We have to avoid her. We can split—”

  “Tiger. Boat. Sphinx. Camels. No invisibility,” Walt muttered, examining his amulets. “Why don’t I have an amulet for invisibility?”

  I shuddered. The last time I’d tried invisibility, it hadn’t gone very well. “Walt, she’s a hunting goddess. We probably couldn’t fool her with any sort of concealment spell, even if you had one.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  I put my finger on Walt’s chest and tapped the one amulet he wasn’t considering—a necklace that was the twin to mine.

  “The shen amulets?” He blinked. “But how can those help?”

  “We split up and buy time,” I said. “We can share thoughts through the amulets, yes?”

  “Well…yes.”

  “And they can teleport us to each other’s side, right?”

  Walt frowned. “I—I designed them for that, but—”

  “If we split up,” I said, “Neith will have to choose one of us to track. We get as far apart as possible. If she finds me first, you teleport me out of danger with the amulet. Or vice versa. Then we split up again, and we keep at it.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Walt admitted. “If the amulets will work quickly enough. And if we can keep the mental connection. And if Neith doesn’t kill one of us before we can call for help. And—”

  I put my finger to his lips. “Let’s just leave it at ‘That’s brilliant.’”

  He nodded, then gave me a hasty kiss. “Good luck.”

  The silly boy shouldn’t do things like that when I need to stay focused. He dashed off to the north and, after a dazed moment, I ran south.

  Squishy combat boots are not the best for sneaking around.

  I considered wading into the river, thinking perhaps the water would obscure my trail, but I didn’t want to go for a swim without knowing what was under the surface—crocs, snakes, evil spirits. Carter once told me that most Ancient Egyptians couldn’t swim, which had seemed ridiculous to me at the time. How could people living next to a river not swim? Now I understood. No one in his right mind would want to take a dip in that water.

  (Carter says a swim in the Thames or the East River would be almost as bad for your health. All right, fair point. [Now shut up, brother dear, and let me get back to the brilliant Sadie-saves-the-day part.])

  I ran along the banks, crashing through reeds, jumping straight over a sunning crocodile. I didn’t bother to check if it was chasing me. I had bigger predators to worry about.

  I’m not sure how long I ran. It seemed like miles. As the riverbank widened, I veered inland, trying to stay under the cover of the palm trees. I heard no signs of pursuit, but I had a constant itch in the middle of my shoulder blades where I expected an arrow.

  I stumbled through a clearing where some Ancient Egyptians in loincloths were cooking over an open fire next to a small thatched hut. Perhaps the
Egyptians were just shadows from the past, but they looked real enough. They seemed quite startled to see a blond girl in combat clothes stumble into their encampment. Then they saw my staff and wand and immediately groveled, putting their heads to the dirt and mumbling something about Per Ankh—the House of Life.

  “Um, yes,” I said. “Per Ankh official business. Carry on. Bye.”

  Off I raced. I wondered if I would appear on a temple wall painting someday—a blond Egyptian girl with purple highlights running sideways through the palm trees, screaming “Yikes!” in hieroglyphics as Neith chased after me. The thought of some poor archaeologist trying to figure that out almost lifted my spirits.

  I reached the edge of the palm forest and stumbled to a stop. Before me, plowed fields spread into the distance. Nowhere to run or hide.

  I turned back.

  THUNK!

  An arrow hit the nearest palm tree with such force that dates rained down on my head.

  Walt, I thought desperately, now, please.

  Twenty meters away, Neith rose from the grass. She had smeared river mud on her face. Palm fronds stuck from her hair like bunny ears.

  “I’ve hunted feral pigs with more skill than you,” she complained. “I’ve hunted papyrus plants with more skill!”

  Now, Walt, I thought. Dear, dear Walt. Now.

  Neith shook her head in disgust. She nocked an arrow. I felt a tugging sensation in my stomach, as if I were in a car and the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes.

  I found myself sitting in a tree next to Walt, on the lowest bough of a large sycamore.

  “It worked,” he said.

  Wonderful Walt!

  I kissed him properly—or as properly as possible given our situation. There was a sweet smell about him I hadn’t noticed before, as if he’d been eating lotus blossoms. I imagined that old school rhyme: “Walt and Sadie / sitting in a tree / K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” Fortunately, anyone who might tease me was still five thousand years in the future.

  Walt took a deep breath. “Is that a thank-you?”

  “You look better,” I noticed. His eyes weren’t as yellow. He seemed to be moving with less pain. This should have delighted me, but instead it made me worried. “That lotus smell…did you drink something?”

  “I’m okay.” He looked away from me. “We’d better split up and try again.”

  That didn’t make me any less worried, but he was right. We had no time to chat. We both jumped to the ground and headed off in opposite directions.

  The sun was almost touching the horizon. I began to feel hopeful. Surely we wouldn’t have to hold out much longer.

  I almost stumbled into another macramé net, but fortunately I was on the lookout for Neith’s arts and crafts projects. I sidestepped the trap, pushed through a stand of papyrus plants, and found myself back at Neith’s temple.

  The golden gates stood open. The wide avenue of sphinxes led straight into the complex. No guards…no priests. Maybe Neith had killed them all and collected their pockets, or perhaps they were all down in the bunker, preparing for a zombie invasion.

  Hmm. I reckoned that the last place Neith might look for me was in her home base. Besides, Tawaret had seen Bes’s shadow up on those ramparts. If I could find the shadow without Neith’s help, all the better.

  I ran for the gates, keeping a suspicious eye on the sphinxes. None of them came alive. Inside the massive courtyard were two freestanding obelisks tipped with gold. Between them glowered a statue of Neith in Ancient Egyptian garb. Shields and arrows had been piled around her feet like spoils of war.

  I scanned the surrounding walls. Several stairways led up to the ramparts. The setting sun cast plenty of long shadows, but I didn’t see any obvious dwarf silhouettes. Tawaret had suggested I call to the shadow. I was about to try when I heard Walt’s voice in my mind: Sadie!

  It’s awfully hard to concentrate when someone’s life depends on you.

  I grasped the shen amulet and muttered, “Come on. Come on.”

  I pictured Walt standing next to me, preferably without an arrow in him. I blinked—and there he was. He almost knocked me down with a hug.

  “She—she would’ve killed me,” Walt gasped. “But she wanted to talk first. She said she liked our trick. She was proud to slay us and take our pockets.”

  “Super,” I said. “Split up again?”

  Walt glanced over my shoulder. “Sadie, look.”

  He pointed to the northwest corner of the walls, where a tower jutted from the ramparts. As the sky turned red, shadows slowly melted from the side of the tower, but one shadow remained—the silhouette of a stout little man with frizzy hair.

  I’m afraid we forgot our plan. Together, we ran to the steps and climbed the wall. In no time, we were standing on the parapets, staring at the shadow of Bes.

  I realized we must have been in the exact spot where Tawaret and Bes had held hands on the night Tawaret had described. Bes had told the truth—he’d left his shadow here so it could be happy, even when he wasn’t.

  “Oh, Bes…” My heart felt like it was shrinking into a wax shabti. “Walt, how do we capture it?”

  A voice behind us said, “You don’t.”

  We turned. A few meters away, Neith stood on the ramparts. Two arrows were nocked in her bow. At this range, I imagined she’d have no trouble hitting us both at once.

  “A good try,” she admitted. “But I always win the hunt.”

  S A D I E

  14. Fun with Split Personalities

  AN EXCELLENT TIME TO CALL ON ISIS?

  Perhaps. But even if Isis had answered, I doubted I could summon any magic faster than Neith could shoot. And on the off chance I actually defeated the huntress, I had the feeling Neith would consider it cheating if I used another goddess’s power against her. She’d probably decide I was part of the Russian/zombie/tax collector conspiracy.

  As mad as Neith was, we needed her help. She’d be much more useful shooting arrows at Apophis than sitting in her bunker making jackets out of our pockets and knotted twine.

  My mind raced. How to win over a hunter? I didn’t know much about hunters, except for old Major McNeil, Gramps’s friend from the pensioners’ home, who used to tell stories constantly about…Ah.

  “It’s a shame, really,” I blurted out.

  Neith hesitated, as I’d hoped she would.

  “What is?” she asked.

  “Six edible parts of a palm tree.” I laughed. “It’s seven actually.”

  Neith frowned. “Impossible!”

  “Oh, yes?” I raised my eyebrows. “Have you ever lived off the land in Covent Garden? Have you ever trekked through the wilds of Camden Lock and lived to tell about it?”

  Neith’s bow dipped ever so slightly. “I do not know those places.”

  “I thought not!” I said triumphantly. “Oh, the stories we could’ve shared, Neith. The tips for survival. Once I went for a whole week on nothing but stale biscuits and the juice of the Ribena.”

  “Is that a plant?” Neith asked.

  “With every nutrient you need for survival,” I said. “If you know where to buy—I mean harvest it.”

  I lifted my wand, hoping she would see this as a dramatic move, not a threat. “Why once, in my bunker at Charing Cross Station, I stalked the deadly prey known as Jelly Babies.”

  Neith’s eyes widened. “They are dangerous?”

  “Horrible,” I agreed. “Oh, they seem small alone, but they always appear in great numbers. Sticky, fattening—quite deadly. There I was, alone with only two quid and a Tube pass, beset by Jelly Babies, when…Ah, but never mind. When the Jelly Babies come for you…you will find out on your own.”

  She lowered her bow. “Tell me. I must know how to hunt Jelly Babies.”

  I looked at Walt gravely. “How many months have I trained you, Walt?”

  “Seven,” he said. “Almost eight.”

  “And have I ever deemed you worthy of hunting Jelly Babies with me?”

  “Uh…no.
”

  “There you have it!” I knelt and began tracing on the rampart floor with my wand. “Even Walt is not ready for such knowledge. I could draw for you here a picture of the dreaded Jelly Baby, or even—gods forbid!—the Jacob’s Digestive Cream. But that knowledge might destroy a lesser hunter.”

  “I am the goddess of hunting!” Neith inched closer, staring in awe at the glowing markings—apparently not realizing I was making protective hieroglyphs. “I must know.”

  “Well…” I glanced at the horizon. “First, you must understand the importance of timing.”

  “Yes!” Neith said eagerly. “Tell me of this.”

  “For instance…” I tapped the hieroglyphs and activated my spell. “It’s sunset. We’re still alive. We win.”

  Neith’s expression hardened. “Trickery!”

  She lunged at me, but the protective glyphs flared, pushing back the goddess. She raised her bow and shot her arrows.

  What happened next was surprising on many levels. First, the arrows must have been heavily enchanted, because they sailed right through my defenses. Second, Walt lunged forward with impossible speed. Faster than I could scream (which I did), Walt snatched the arrows out of the air. They crumbled to gray dust, scattering in the wind.

  Neith stepped back in horror. “It’s you. This is unfair!”

  “We won,” Walt said. “Honor your agreement.”

  A look passed between them that I didn’t quite understand—some sort of contest of wills.

  Neith hissed through clenched teeth. “Very well. You may go. When Apophis rises, I will fight at your side. But I will not forget how you trespassed on my territory, child of Set. And you—”

  She glared at me. “I lay this hunter’s curse upon you: someday you will be tricked by your prey as I have been tricked today. May you be set upon by a pack of wild Jelly Babies!”

  With that terrifying threat, Neith dissolved into a pile of twine.

  “Child of Set?” I narrowed my eyes at Walt. “What exactly—?”

  “Look out!” he warned. All around us, the temple began to crumble. The air rippled as the magic shockwave contracted, transforming the landscape back to present-day Egypt.

  We barely made it to the base of the stairs. The last walls of the temple were reduced to a pile of worn mud bricks, but the shadow of Bes was still visible against them, slowly fading as the sun went down.