The Complete Kane Chronicles (26 page)

Panic had made my mind go blank, but my hand instinctively went for my magic bag. I pulled out a small bit of twine. Hardly a rope, but it triggered a memory—something Zia had done in the New York museum. I threw the twine at Wayne and yelled a word Isis suggested:
“Tas!”

A golden hieroglyph burned in the air over Wayne’s head:

The twine whipped toward him like an angry snake, growing longer and thicker as it flew. Wayne’s eyes widened. He stumbled back and sent jets of flame shooting from both staffs, but the rope was too quick. It lashed round his ankles and toppled him sideways, wrapping round his whole body until he was encased in a twine cocoon from chin to toes. He struggled and screamed and called me quite a few unflattering names.

I got up unsteadily. Jerrod was still out cold. I retrieved my staff, which had fallen next to Wayne. He continued straining against the twine and cursing in Egyptian, which sounded strange with an American Southern accent.

Finish him,
Isis warned.
He can still speak. He will not rest until he destroys you.

“Fire!” Wayne screamed. “Water! Cheese!”

Even the cheese command did not work. I reckoned his rage was throwing his magic off balance, making it impossible to focus, but I knew he would recover soon.

“Silence,” I said.

Wayne’s voice abruptly stopped working. He kept screaming, but no sound came out.

“I’m not your enemy,” I told him. “But I can’t have you killing me, either.”

Something wriggled in my pocket, and I remembered Carter. I took him out. He looked okay, except of course for the fact he was still a lizard.

“I’ll try to change you back,” I told him. “Hopefully I don’t make things worse.”

He made a little croak that didn’t convey much confidence.

I closed my eyes and imagined Carter as he should be: a tall boy of fourteen, badly dressed, very human, very annoying. Carter began to feel heavy in my hands. I put him down and watched as the lizard grew into a vaguely human blob. By the count of three, my brother was lying on his stomach, his sword and pack next to him on the lawn.

He spit grass out of his mouth. “How’d you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “You just seemed…wrong.”

“Thanks a lot.” He got up and checked to make sure he had all his fingers. Then he saw the two magicians and his mouth fell open. “What did you do to them?”

“Just tied one up. Knocked one out. Magic.”

“No, I mean…” He faltered, searching for words, then gave up and pointed.

I looked at the magicians and yelped. Wayne wasn’t moving. His eyes and mouth were open, but he wasn’t blinking or breathing. Next to him, Jerrod looked just as frozen. As we watched, their mouths began to glow as if they’d swallowed matches. Two tiny yellow orbs of fire popped out from between their lips and shot into the air, disappearing in the sunlight.

“What—what was that?” I asked. “Are they dead?”

Carter approached them cautiously and put his hand on Wayne’s neck. “It doesn’t even feel like skin. More like rock.”

“No, they were human! I didn’t turn them to rock!”

Carter felt Jerrod’s forehead where I’d whacked him with my wand. “It’s cracked.”

“What?”

Carter picked up his sword. Before I could even scream, he brought the hilt down on Jerrod’s face and the magician’s head cracked into shards like a flowerpot.

“They’re made of clay,” Carter said. “They’re both
shabti
.”

He kicked Wayne’s arm and I heard it crunch under the twine.

“But they were casting spells,” I said. “And talking. They were
real.”

As we watched, the
shabti
crumbled to dust, leaving nothing behind but my bit of twine, two staffs, and some grungy clothes.

“Thoth was testing us,” Carter said. “Those balls of fire, though…” He frowned as if trying to recall something important.

“Probably the magic that animated them,” I guessed. “Flying back to their master—like a recording of what they did?”

It sounded like a solid theory to me, but Carter seemed awfully troubled. He pointed to the blasted back door of Graceland. “Is the whole house like that?”

“Worse.” I looked at the ruined Elvis jumpsuit under Jerrod’s clothes and scattered rhinestones. Maybe Elvis had no taste, but I still felt bad about trashing the King’s palace. If the place had been important to Dad… Suddenly an idea perked me up. “What was it Amos said, when he repaired that saucer?”

Carter frowned. “This is a whole house, Sadie. Not a saucer.”

“Got it,” I said.
“Hi-nehm!”

A gold hieroglyphic symbol flickered to life in my palm.

I held it up and blew it towards the house. The entire outline of Graceland began to glow. The pieces of the door flew back into place and mended themselves. The tattered bits of Elvis clothing disappeared.

“Wow,” Carter said. “Do you think the inside is fixed too?”

“I—” My vision blurred, and my knees buckled. I would’ve knocked my head on the pavement if Carter hadn’t caught me.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You did a lot of magic, Sadie. That was amazing.”

“But we haven’t even found the item Thoth sent us for.”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “Maybe we have.”

He pointed to Elvis’s grave, and I saw it clearly: a memento left behind by some adoring fan—a necklace with a silver loop-topped cross, just like the one on Mum’s T-shirt in my old photograph.

“An ankh,” I said. “The Egyptian symbol for eternal life.”

Carter picked it up. There was a small papyrus scroll attached to the chain.

“What’s this?” he murmured, and unrolled the sheet. He stared at it so hard I thought he’d burn a hole in it.

“What?” I looked over his shoulder.

The painting looked quite ancient. It showed a golden, spotted cat holding a knife in one paw and chopping the head off a snake.

Beneath it, in black marker, someone had written:
Keep up the fight!

“That’s vandalism, isn’t it?” I asked. “Marking up an ancient drawing like that? Rather an odd thing to leave for Elvis.”

Carter didn’t seem to hear. “I’ve seen this picture before. It’s in a lot of tombs. Don’t know why it never occurred to me…”

I studied the picture more closely. Something about it did seem rather familiar.

“You know what it means?” I asked.

“It’s the Cat of Ra, fighting the sun god’s main enemy, Apophis.”

“The snake,” I said.

“Yeah, Apophis was—”

“The embodiment of chaos,” I said, remembering what Nut had said.

Carter looked impressed, as well he should have. “Exactly. Apophis was even worse than Set. The Egyptians thought Doomsday would come when Apophis ate the sun and destroyed all of Creation.”

“But…the cat killed it,” I said hopefully.

“The cat had to kill it over and over again,” Carter said. “Like what Thoth said about repeating patterns. The thing is…I asked Dad one time if the cat had a name. And he said nobody knows for sure, but most people assume it’s Sekhmet, this fierce lion goddess. She was called the Eye of Ra because she did his dirty work. He saw an enemy; she killed it.”

“Fine. So?”

“So the cat doesn’t look like Sekhmet. It just occurred to me…”

I finally saw it, and a shiver went down my back. “The Cat of Ra looks exactly like Muffin. It’s Bast.”

Just then the ground rumbled. The memorial fountain began to glow, and a dark doorway opened.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ve got some questions for Thoth. And then I’m going to punch him in the beak.”

C A R T E R

BEING TURNED INTO A LIZARD
can really mess up your day. As we stepped through the doorway, I tried to hide it, but I was feeling pretty bad.

You’re probably thinking:
Hey, you already turned into a falcon. What’s the big deal?
But someone else
forcing
you into another form—that’s totally different. Imagine yourself in a trash compactor, your entire body smashed into a shape smaller than your hand. It’s painful and it’s humiliating. Your enemy pictures you as a stupid harmless lizard, then imposes their will on you, overpowering your thoughts until you have to be what
they
want you to be. I guess it could’ve been worse. He could’ve pictured me as a fruit bat, but still…

Of course I felt grateful to Sadie for saving me, but I also felt like a complete loser. It was bad enough that I’d embarrassed myself on the basketball court with a troop of baboons. But I’d also totally failed in battle. Maybe I’d done okay with Leroy, the airport monster, but faced with a couple of magicians (even clay ones), I got turned into a reptile in the first two seconds. How would I stand a chance against Set?

I was shaken out of those thoughts when we emerged from the portal, because we were definitely not in Thoth’s office.

In front of us loomed a life-size glass-and-metal pyramid, almost as big as the ones at Giza. The skyline of downtown Memphis rose up in the distance. At our backs were the banks of the Mississippi River.

The sun was setting, turning the river and the pyramid to gold. On the pyramid’s front steps, next to a twenty-foot-tall pharaoh statue labeled
RAMESSES THE GREAT
, Thoth had set out a picnic with barbecued ribs and brisket, bread and pickles, the works. He was playing his guitar with a portable amp. Khufu stood nearby, covering his ears.

“Oh, good.” Thoth strummed a chord that sounded like the death cry of a sick donkey. “You lived.”

I stared up at the pyramid in amazement. “Where did this come from? You didn’t just…build it, did you?” I remembered my
ba
trip to Set’s red pyramid, and suddenly pictured gods building monuments all over the U.S.

Thoth chuckled. “I didn’t have to build it. The people of Memphis did that. Humans never really forget Egypt, you know. Every time they build a city on the banks of a river, they remember their heritage, buried deep in their subconscious. This is the Pyramid Arena—sixth largest pyramid in the world. It used to be a sports arena for…what is that game you like, Khufu?”

“Agh!”
Khufu said indignantly. And I swear he gave me a dirty look.

“Yes, basketball,” Thoth said. “But the arena fell on hard times. It’s been abandoned for years. Well, no longer. I’m moving in. You do have the ankh?”

For a moment, I wondered if it had been such a good idea helping Thoth, but we needed him. I tossed him the necklace.

“Excellent,” he said. “An ankh from the tomb of Elvis. Powerful magic!”

Sadie clenched her fists. “We almost died getting that. You tricked us.”

“Not a trick,” he insisted. “A test.”

“Those
things,
” Sadie said, “the
shabti—”

“Yes, my best work in centuries. A shame to break them, but I couldn’t have you beating up on
real
magicians, could I?
Shabti
make excellent stunt doubles.”

“So you saw the whole thing,” I muttered.

“Oh, yes.” Thoth held out his hand. Two little fires danced across his palm—the magic essences we’d seen escape from the
shabtis’
mouths. “These are…recording devices, I suppose you’d say. I got a full report. You defeated the
shabti
without killing. I must admit I’m impressed, Sadie. You controlled your magic and controlled Isis. And you, Carter, did well turning into a lizard.”

I thought he was teasing me. Then I realized there was genuine sympathy in his eyes, as if my failure had also been some kind of test.

“You will find worse enemies ahead, Carter,” he warned. “Even now, the House of Life sends its best against you. But you will also find friends where you least expect them.”

I didn’t know why, but I got the feeling he was talking about Zia…or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Thoth stood and handed Khufu his guitar. He tossed the ankh at the statue of Ramesses, and the necklace fastened itself around the pharaoh’s neck.

“There you are, Ramesses,” Thoth said to the statue. “Here’s to our new life.”

The statue glowed faintly, as if the sunset had just gotten ten times brighter. Then the glow spread to the entire pyramid before slowly fading.

“Oh, yes,” Thoth mused. “I think I’ll be happy here. Next time you children visit me, I’ll have a much bigger laboratory.”

Scary thought, but I tried to stay focused.

“That’s not all we found,” I said. “You need to explain
this.”

I held out the painting of the cat and the snake.

“It’s a cat and a snake,” Thoth said.

“Thank you, god of wisdom. You placed it for us to find, didn’t you? You’re trying to give us some kind of clue.”

“Who, me?”

Just kill him,
Horus said.

Shut up,
I said.

At least kill the guitar.

“The cat is Bast,” I said, trying to ignore my inner psycho falcon. “Does this have something to do with why our parents released the gods?”

Thoth gestured toward the picnic plates. “Did I mention we have barbecue?”

Sadie stomped her foot. “We had a deal, Ja-hooty!”

“You know…I like that name,” Thoth mused, “but not so much when
you
say it. I believe our deal was that I would explain how to use the spell book. May I?”

He held out his hand. Reluctantly I dug the magic book out of my bag and handed it over.

Thoth unfolded the pages. “Ah, this takes me back. So many formulae. In the old days, we believed in ritual. A good spell might take weeks to prepare, with exotic ingredients from all over the world.”

“We don’t have weeks,” I said.

“Rush, rush, rush.” Thoth sighed.

“Agh,” Khufu agreed, sniffing the guitar.

Thoth closed the book and handed it back to me. “Well, it’s an incantation for destroying Set.”

“We
know
that,” Sadie said. “Will it destroy him forever?”

“No, no. But it will destroy his form in this world, banishing him deep into the Duat and reducing his power so he will not be able to appear again for a long, long time. Centuries, most likely.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “How do we read it?”

Thoth stared at me like the answer should be obvious. “You cannot read it now because the words can only be spoken in Set’s presence. Once before him, Sadie should open the book and recite the incantation. She’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

“Right,” Sadie said. “And Set will just stand there calmly while I read him to death.”

Thoth shrugged. “I did not say it would be easy. You’ll also require two ingredients for the spell to work—a verbal ingredient, Set’s secret name—”

“What?”
I protested. “How are we supposed to get that?”

“With difficulty, I’d imagine. You can’t simply read a secret name from a book. The name must come from the owner’s own lips, in his own pronunciation, to give you power over him.”

“Great,” I said. “So we just force Set to tell us.”

“Or trick him,” Thoth said. “Or convince him.”

“Isn’t there any other way?” Sadie asked.

Thoth brushed an ink splotch off his lab coat. A hieroglyph turned into a moth and fluttered away. “I suppose…yes. You could ask the person closest to Set’s heart—the person who loves him most. She would also have the ability to speak the name.”

“But nobody loves Set!” Sadie said.

“His wife,” I guessed. “That other goddess, Nephthys.”

Thoth nodded. “She’s a river goddess. Perhaps you could find her in a river.”

“This just gets better and better,” I muttered.

Sadie frowned at Thoth. “You said there was another ingredient?”

“A physical ingredient,” Thoth agreed, “a feather of truth.”

“A what?” Sadie asked.

But I knew what he was talking about, and my heart sank. “You mean from the Land of the Dead.”

Thoth beamed. “Exactly.”

“Wait,” Sadie said. “What is he talking about?”

I tried to conceal my fear. “When you died in Ancient Egypt, you had to take a journey to the Land of the Dead,” I explained. “A really
dangerous
journey. Finally, you made it to the Hall of Judgment, where your life was weighed on the Scales of Anubis: your heart on one side, the feather of truth on the other. If you passed the test, you were blessed with eternal happiness. If you failed, a monster ate your heart and you ceased to exist.”

“Ammit the Devourer,” Thoth said wistfully. “Cute little thing.”

Sadie blinked. “So we’re supposed to get a feather from this Hall of Judgment
how,
exactly?”

“Perhaps Anubis will be in a good mood,” Thoth suggested. “It happens every thousand years or so.”

“But how do we even get to the Land of the Dead?” I asked. “I mean…without dying.”

Thoth gazed at the western horizon, where the sunset was turning blood-red. “Down the river at night, I should think. That’s how most people pass into the Land of the Dead. I would take a boat. You’ll find Anubis at the end of the river—” He pointed north, then changed his mind and pointed south. “Forgot, rivers flow south here. Everything is backward.”

“Agh!”
Khufu ran his fingers down the frets of the guitar and ripped out a massive rock ’n’ roll riff. Then he belched as if nothing had happened and set down the guitar. Sadie and I just stared at him, but Thoth nodded as if the baboon had said something profound.

“Are you sure, Khufu?” Thoth asked.

Khufu grunted.

“Very well.” Thoth sighed. “Khufu says he would like to go with you. I told him he could stay here and type my doctoral thesis on quantum physics, but he’s not interested.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Sadie said. “Glad to have Khufu along, but where do we find a boat?”

“You are the blood of pharaohs,” Thoth said. “Pharaohs always have access to a boat. Just make sure you use it wisely.”

He nodded toward the river. Churning toward the shore was an old-fashioned paddlewheel steamboat with smoke billowing from its stacks.

“I wish you a good journey,” Thoth said. “Until we meet again.”

“We’re supposed to take
that?”
I asked. But when I turned to look at Thoth, he was gone, and he’d taken the barbecue with him.

“Wonderful,” Sadie muttered.

“Agh!”
Khufu agreed. He took our hands and led us down to the shore.