The Red Pyramid, Page 34

  “I will never eat salsa again,” I decided.

  “You both did wonderfully,” Zia said. “But your boat is burned. How do we get to Phoenix?”

  “We?” Sadie said. “I don’t recall inviting you.”

  Zia’s face turned salsa red. “Surely you don’t still think I led you into a trap?”

  “I don’t know,” Sadie said. “Did you?”

  I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.

  “Sadie.” My voice sounded dangerously angry, even to myself. “Lay off. Zia summoned that pillar-of-fire thing. She sacrificed her magic to save us. And she told us how to beat the lioness. We need her.”

  Sadie stared at me. She glanced back and forth between Zia and me, probably trying to judge how far she could push things.

  “Fine.” She crossed her arms and pouted. “But we need to find Amos first.”

  “No!” Zia said. “That would be a very bad idea.”

  “Oh, so we can trust you, but not Amos?”

  Zia hesitated. I got the feeling that was exactly what she meant, but she decided to try a different approach. “Amos would not want you to wait. He said to keep going, didn’t he? If he survived Sekhmet, he will find us on the road. If not...”

  Sadie huffed. “So how do we get to Phoenix? Walk?”

  I gazed across the parking lot, where one sixteen-wheeler was still intact. “Maybe we don’t have to.” I took off the linen coat I’d borrowed from Amos’s supply locker. “Zia, Amos had a way of animating his coat so it could steer his boat. Do you know the spell?”

  She nodded. “It’s fairly simple with the right ingredients. I could do it if I had my magic.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  She pursed her lips. “The hardest part is the figurine. The first time you enchant the piece of clothing, you’d need to smash a shabti into the fabric and speak a binding charm to meld them together. It would require a clay or wax figure that has already been imbued with a spirit.”

  Sadie and I looked at each other, and simultaneously said, “Doughboy!”

  C A R T E R

  34. Doughboy Gives Us a Ride

  I SUMMONED DAD’S MAGIC TOOLKIT out of the Duat and grabbed our little legless friend. “Doughboy, we need to talk.”

  Doughboy opened his wax eyes. ““Finally! You realize how stuffy it is in there? At last you’ve remembered that you need my brilliant guidance.”

  “Actually we need you to become a coat. Just for a while.”

  His tiny mouth fell open. “Do I look like an article of clothing? I am the lord of all knowledge! The mighty—”

  I smashed him into my jacket, wadded it up, threw it on the pavement and stepped on it. “Zia, what’s that spell?”

  She told me the words, and I repeated the chant. The coat inflated and hovered in front of me. It brushed itself off and ruffled its collar. If coats can look indignant, this one did.

  Sadie eyed it suspiciously. “Can it drive a lorry with no feet for the pedals?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” Zia said. “It’s a nice long coat.”

  I sighed with relief. For a moment, I’d imagined myself having to animate my pants, too. That could get awkward.

  “Drive us to Phoenix,” I told the coat.

  The coat made a rude gesture at me—or at least, it would’ve been rude if the coat had hands. Then it floated into the driver’s seat.

  The cab was bigger than I’d thought. Behind the seat was a curtained area with a full-size bed, which Sadie claimed immediately.

  “I’ll let you and Zia have some quality time,” she told me. “Just the two of you and your coat.”

  She ducked behind the curtains before I could smack her.

  The coat drove us west on I-10 as a bank of dark clouds swallowed the stars. The air smelled like rain.

  After a long time, Zia cleared her throat. “Carter, I’m sorry about...I mean, I wish the circumstances were better.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess you’ll get in a lot of trouble with the House.”

  “I will be shunned,” she said. “My staff broken. My name blotted from the books. I’ll be cast into exile, assuming they don’t kill me.”

  I thought about Zia’s little shrine in the First Nome—all those pictures of her village and her family that she didn’t remember. As she talked about getting exiled, she had the same expression on her face that she had worn then: not regret or sadness, more like confusion, as if she herself couldn’t figure out why she was rebelling, or what the First Nome had meant to her. She’d said Iskandar was like her only family. Now she had no one.

  “You could come with us,” I said.

  She glanced over. We were sitting close together, and I was very aware of her shoulder pressing against mine. Even with the reek of burned peppers on both of us, I could smell her Egyptian perfume. She had a dried chili stuck in her hair, and somehow that made her look even cuter.

  Sadie says my brain was just addled. [Seriously, Sadie, I don’t interrupt this much when you’re telling the story.]

  Anyway, Zia looked at me sadly. “Where would we go, Carter? Even if you defeat Set and save this continent, what will you do? The House will hunt you down. The gods will make your life miserable.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I promised. “I’m used to traveling. I’m good at improvising, and Sadie’s not all bad.”

  “I heard that!” Sadie’s muffled voice came through the curtain.

  “And with you,” I continued, “I mean, you know, with your magic, things would be easier.”

  Zia squeezed my hand, which sent a tingle up my arm. “You’re kind, Carter. But you don’t know me. Not really. I suppose Iskandar saw this coming.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Zia took her hand away, which kind of bummed me out. “When Desjardins and I came back from the British Museum, Iskandar spoke to me privately. He said I was in danger. He said he would take me somewhere safe and...” Her eyebrows knit together. “That’s odd. I don’t remember.”

  A cold feeling started gnawing at me. “Wait, did he take you somewhere safe?”

  “I...I think so.” She shook her head. “No, he couldn’t have, obviously. I’m still here. Perhaps he didn’t have time. He sent me to find you in New York almost immediately.”

  Outside, a light rain began to fall. The coat turned on our windshield wipers.

  I didn’t understand what Zia had told me. Perhaps Iskandar had sensed a change in Desjardins, and he was trying to protect his favorite student. But something else about the story bothered me—something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  Zia stared into the rain as if she saw bad things out there in the night.

  “We’re running out of time,” she said. “He’s coming back.”

  “Who’s coming back?”

  She looked at me urgently. “The thing I needed to tell you—the thing you need. It’s Set’s secret name.”

  The storm surged. Thunder crackled and the truck shuddered in the wind.

  “H-hold on,” I stammered. “How could you know Set’s name? How did you even know we needed it?”

  “You stole Desjardins’ book. Desjardins told us about it. He said it didn’t matter. He said you could not use the spell without Set’s secret name, which is impossible to get.”

  “So how do you know it? Thoth said it could only come from Set himself, or from the person...” My voice trailed off as a horrible thought occurred to me. “Or from the person closest to him.”

  Zia shut her eyes as if in pain. “I—I can’t explain it, Carter. I just have this voice telling me the name—”

  “The fifth goddess,” I said, “Nephthys. You were there too at the British Museum.”

  Zia looked completely stunned. “No. That’s impossible.”

  “Iskandar said you were in danger. He wanted to take you somewhere safe. That’s what he meant. You’re a godling.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “But he didn’t take me away. I’m right her
e. If I were hosting a god, the other magicians of the House would’ve figured it out days ago. They know me too well. They would’ve noticed the changes in my magic. Desjardins would’ve destroyed me.”

  She had a point—but then another terrible thought occurred to me. “Unless Set is controlling him,” I said.

  “Carter, are you really so blind? Desjardins is not Set.”

  “Because you think it’s Amos,” I said. “Amos who risked his life to save us, who told us to keep going without him. Besides, Set doesn’t need a human form. He’s using the pyramid.”

  “Which you know because...?”

  I hesitated. “Amos told us.”

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Zia said. “I know Set’s secret name, and I can tell you. But you must promise you will not tell Amos.”

  “Oh, come on. Besides, if you know the name, why can’t you just use it yourself?”

  She shook her head, looking almost as frustrated as I felt. “I don’t know why....I just know it’s not my role to play. It must be you or Sadie—blood of the pharaohs. If you don’t—”

  The truck slowed abruptly. Out the front windshield, about twenty yards ahead, a man in a blue coat was standing in our headlights. It was Amos. His clothes were tattered like he’d been sprayed with a shotgun, but otherwise he looked okay. Before the truck had even stopped completely, I jumped out of the cab and ran to meet him.

  “Amos!” I cried. “What happened?”

  “I distracted Sekhmet,” he said, putting a finger through one of the holes in his coat. “For about eleven seconds. I’m glad to see you survived.”

  “There was a salsa factory,” I started to explain, but Amos held up his hand.

  “Time for explanations later,” he said. “Right now we have to get going.”

  He pointed northwest, and I saw what he meant. The storm was worse up ahead. A lot worse. A wall of black blotted out the night sky, the mountains, the highway, as if it would swallow the whole world.

  “Set’s storm is gathering,” Amos said with a twinkle in his eyes. “Shall we drive into it?”

  S A D I E

  35. Men Ask for Directions (and Other Signs of the Apocalypse)

  I DON’T KNOW HOW I MANAGED IT with Carter and Zia yammering, but I got some sleep in the back of the truck. Even after the excitement of seeing Amos alive, as soon as we got going again I was back in the bunk and drifting off. I suppose a good ha-di spell can really take it out of you.

  Naturally, my ba took this as an opportunity to travel. Heaven forbid I get some peaceful rest.

  I found myself back in London, on the banks of the Thames. Cleopatra’s Needle rose up in front of me. It was a gray day, cool and calm, and even the smell of the low-tide muck made me feel homesick.

  Isis stood next to me in a cloud-white dress, her dark hair braided with diamonds. Her multicolored wings faded in and out behind her like the Northern Lights.

  “Your parents had the right idea,” she said. “Bast was failing.”

  “She was my friend,” I said.

  “Yes. A good and loyal servant. But chaos cannot be kept down forever. It grows. It seeps into the cracks of civilization, breaks down the edges. It cannot be kept in balance. That is simply its nature.”

  The obelisk rumbled, glowing faintly.

  “Today it is the American continent,” Isis mused. “But unless the gods are rallied, unless we achieve our full strength, chaos will soon destroy the entire human world.”

  “We’re doing our best,” I insisted. “We’ll beat Set.”

  Isis looked at me sadly. “You know that’s not what I mean. Set is only the beginning.”

  The image changed, and I saw London in ruins. I’d seen some horrific photos of the Blitz in World War II, but that was nothing compared to this. The city was leveled: rubble and dust for miles, the Thames choked with flotsam. The only thing standing was the obelisk, and as I watched, it began to crack open, all four sides peeling away like some ghastly flower unfolding.

  “Don’t show me this,” I pleaded.

  “It will happen soon enough,” Isis said, “as your mother foresaw. But if you cannot face it...”

  The scene changed again. We stood in the throne room of a palace—the same one I’d seen before, where Set had entombed Osiris. The gods were gathering, materializing as streams of light that shot through the throne room, curled round the pillars, and took on human form. One became Thoth with his stained lab coat, his wire-rimmed glasses, and his hair standing out all over his head. Another became Horus, the proud young warrior with silver and gold eyes. Sobek, the crocodile god, gripped his watery staff and snarled at me. A mass of scorpions scuttled behind a column and emerged on the other side as Serqet, the brown-robed arachnid goddess. Then my heart leaped, because I noticed a boy in black standing in the shadows behind the throne: Anubis, his dark eyes studying me with regret.

  He pointed at the throne, and I saw it was empty. The palace was missing its heart. The room was cold and dark, and it was impossible to believe this had once been a place of celebrations.

  Isis turned to me. “We need a ruler. Horus must become pharaoh. He must unite the gods and the House of Life. It is the only way.”

  “You can’t mean Carter,” I said. “My mess of a brother—pharaoh? Are you joking?”

  “We have to help him. You and I.”

  The idea was so ridiculous I would have laughed had the gods not been staring at me so gravely.

  “Help him?” I said. “Why doesn’t he help me become pharaoh?”

  “There have been strong women pharaohs,” Isis admitted. “Hatshepsut ruled well for many years. Nefertiti’s power was equal to her husband’s. But you have a different path, Sadie. Your power will not come from sitting on a throne. I think you know this.”

  I looked at the throne, and I realized Isis had a point. The idea of sitting there with a crown on my head, trying to rule this lot of bad-tempered gods, did not appeal to me in the slightest. Still...Carter?

  “You’ve grown strong, Sadie,” Isis said. “I don’t think you realize how strong. Soon, we will face the test together. We will prevail, if you maintain your courage and faith.”

  “Courage and faith,” I said. “Not my two strong suits.”

  “Your moment comes,” Isis said. “We depend on you.”

  The gods gathered round, staring at me expectantly. They began to crowd in, pressing so close I couldn’t breathe, grabbing my arms, shaking me....

  I woke to find Zia poking my shoulder. “Sadie, we’ve stopped.”

  I instinctively reached for my wand. “What? Where?”

  Zia pushed aside the curtains of the sleeping berth and leaned over me from the front seat, unnervingly like a vulture. “Amos and Carter are in the gas station. You need to be prepared to move.”

  “Why?” I sat up and looked out the windshield, straight into a raging sandstorm. “Oh...”

  The sky was black, so it was impossible to tell if it was day or night. Through the gale of wind and sand, I could see we were parked in front of a lighted petrol station.

  “We’re in Phoenix,” Zia said, “but most of the city is shut down. People are evacuating.”

  “Time?”

  “Half past four in the morning,” Zia said. “Magic isn’t working very well. The closer we get to the mountain, the worse it is. And the truck’s GPS system is down. Amos and Carter went inside to ask directions.”

  That didn’t sound promising. If two male magicians were desperate enough to stop for directions, we were in dire straits.

  The truck’s cab shook in the howling wind. After all we’d been through, I felt silly being scared of a storm, but I climbed over the seat so I could sit next to Zia and have some company.

  “How long have they been in there?” I asked.

  “Not long,” Zia said. “I wanted to talk to you before they come back.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “About Carter? Well, if you’re wondering whether he likes you, the way h
e stammers might be an indication.”

  Zia frowned. “No, I’m—”

  “Asking if I mind? Very considerate. I must say at first I had my doubts, what with you threatening to kill us and all, but I’ve decided you’re not a bad sort, and Carter’s mad about you, so—”

  “It’s not about Carter.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Oops. Could you just forget what I said, then?”

  “It’s about Set.”

  “God,” I sighed. “Not this again. Still suspicious of Amos?”

  “You’re blind not to see it,” Zia said. “Set loves deception and traps. It is his favorite way to kill.”

  Part of me knew she had a point. No doubt you’ll think I was foolish not to listen. But have you ever sat by while someone talks badly about a member of your family? Even if it’s not your favorite relative, the natural reaction is to defend them—at least it was for me, possibly because I didn’t have that much family to begin with. “Look, Zia, I can’t believe Amos would—”

  “Amos wouldn’t,” Zia agreed. “But Set can bend the mind and control the body. I’m not a specialist on possession, but it was a very common problem in ancient times. Minor demons are difficult enough to dislodge. A major god—”

  “He’s not possessed. He can’t be.” I winced. A sharp pain was burning in my palm, in the spot where I’d last held the feather of truth. But I wasn’t telling a lie! I did believe Amos was innocent...didn’t I?

  Zia studied my expression. “You need Amos to be all right. He is your uncle. You’ve lost too many members of your family. I understand that.”

  I wanted to snap back that she didn’t understand anything, but her tone made me suspect she had known grief—possibly even more than I.

  “We’ve got no choice,” I said. “There’s what, three hours till sunrise? Amos knows the best way into the mountain. Trap or no, we have to go there and try to stop Set.”

  I could almost see the gears spinning in her head as she searched for some way, any way to convince me.

  “All right,” she said at last. “I wanted to tell Carter something but I never got the opportunity. I’ll tell you instead. The last thing you need to stop Set—”