The Red Pyramid -1 (16 page)

From a distance she looked all right, but as she got closer I saw that Serqet's pale skin glistened like an insect shell. Her eyes were beady black. Her long, dark hair was unnaturally thick, as if made from a million bristling bug antennae. And when she opened her mouth, sideways mandibles snapped and retracted outside her regular human teeth.

The goddess stopped about twenty meters away, studying us. Her hateful black eyes fixed on Zia. "Give me the younglings."

Her voice was harsh and raspy, as if she hadn't spoken in centuries.

Zia crossed her staff and wand. "I am mistress of the elements, Scribe of the First Nome. Leave or be destroyed."

Serqet clicked her mandibles in a gruesome foamy grin. Some of her scorpions advanced, but when the first one touched the glowing lines of our protective circle, it sizzled and turned to ashes. Mark my words, nothing smells worse than burned scorpion.

The rest of the horrible things retreated, swirling round the goddess and crawling up her legs.

With a shudder, I realized they were wriggling into her robes. After a few seconds, all the scorpions had disappeared into the brown folds of her clothes.

The air seemed to darken behind Serqet, as if she were casting an enormous shadow. Then the darkness rose up and took the form of a massive scorpion tail, arcing over Serqet's head. It lashed down at us at blazing speed, but Zia raised her wand and the sting glanced off the ivory tip with a hissing sound. Steam rolled off Zia's wand, smelling of sulfur.

Zia pointed her staff towards the goddess, engulfing her body in fire. Serqet screamed and staggered backwards, but the fire died almost instantly. It left Serqet's robes seared and smoking, but the goddess looked more enraged than hurt.

"Your days are past, magician. The House is weak. Lord Set will lay waste to this land."

Zia threw her wand like a boomerang. It smashed into the shadowy scorpion tail and exploded in a blinding flash of light. Serqet lurched back and averted her eyes, and as she did, Zia reached into her sleeve and brought out something small--something closed inside her fist.

The wand was a diversion, I thought. A magician's sleight of hand.

Then Zia did something reckless: she leaped out of the magic circle--the very thing she'd warned us not to do.

"Zia!" Carter called. "The gate!"

I glanced behind me, and my heart almost stopped. The space between the two columns at the temple's entrance was now a vertical tunnel of sand, as if I were looking into the funnel of an enormous sideways hourglass. I could feel it tugging at me, pulling me towards it with magical gravity.

"I'm not going in there," I insisted, but another flash of light brought my attention back to Zia.

She and the goddess were involved in a dangerous dance. Zia twirled and spun with her fiery staff, and everywhere she passed, she left a trail of flames burning in the air. I had to admit it: Zia was almost as graceful and impressive as Bast.

I had the oddest desire to help. I wanted--very badly, in fact--to step outside the circle and engage in combat. It was a completely mad urge, of course. What could I possibly have done?

But still I felt I shouldn't--or couldn't--jump through the gate without helping Zia.

"Sadie!" Carter grabbed me and pulled me back. Without my even realizing it, my foot had almost stepped across the line of chalk. "What are you thinking?"

I didn't have an answer, but I stared at Zia and mumbled in a sort of trance, "She's going to use ribbons. They won't work."

"What?" Carter demanded. "Come on, we've got to go through the gate!"

Just then Zia opened her fist and small red tendrils of cloth fluttered into the air. Ribbons. How had I known? They zipped about like living things--like eels in water--and began to grow larger.

Serqet was still concentrating on the fire, trying to keep Zia from caging her. At first she didn't seem to notice the ribbons, which grew until they were several meters long. I counted five, six, seven of them in all. They zipped around, orbiting Serqet, ripping through her shadow scorpion as if it were a harmless illusion. Finally they wrapped around Serqet's body, pinning her arms and legs. She screamed as if the ribbons burned her. She dropped to her knees, and the shadow scorpion disintegrated into an inky haze.

Zia spun to a stop. She pointed her staff at the goddess's face. The ribbons began to glow, and the goddess hissed in pain, cursing in a language I didn't know.

"I bind you with the Seven Ribbons of Hathor," Zia said. "Release your host or your essence will burn forever."

"Your death will last forever!" Serqet snarled. "You have made an enemy of Set!"

Zia twisted her staff, and Serqet fell sideways, writhing and smoking.

"I will...not..." the goddess hissed. But then her black eyes turned milky white, and she lay still.

"The gate!" Carter warned. "Zia, come on! I think it's closing!"

He was right. The tunnel of sand seemed to be moving a bit more slowly. The tug of its magic did not feel as strong.

Zia approached the fallen goddess. She touched Serqet's forehead, and black smoke billowed from the goddess's mouth. Serqet transformed and shrank until we were looking at a completely different woman wrapped in red ribbons. She had pale skin and black hair, but otherwise she didn't look anything like Serqet. She looked, well, human.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"The host," Zia said. "Some poor mortal who--"

She looked up with a start. The black haze was no longer dissipating. It was getting thicker and darker again, swirling into a more solid form.

"Impossible," Zia said. "The ribbons are too powerful. Serqet can't re-form unless--"

"Well, she is re-forming," Carter yelled, "and our exit is closing! Let's go!"

I couldn't believe he was willing to jump into a churning wall of sand, but as I watched the black cloud take the shape of a two-story-tall scorpion--a very angry scorpion--I made my decision.

"Coming!" I yelled.

"Zia!" Carter yelled. "Now!"

"Perhaps you're right," the magician decided. She turned, and together we ran and plunged straight into the swirling vortex.

C A R T E R

13. I Face the Killer Turkey

MY TURN.

First of all, Sadie's "puppy dog" comment was totally out of line. I was not starry-eyed about Zia. It's just that I don't meet a lot of people who can throw fireballs and battle gods. [Stop making faces at me, Sadie. You look like Khufu.]

Anyway, we plunged into the sand tunnel.

Everything went dark. My stomach tingled with that top-of-the-roller-coaster weightlessness as I hurtled forward. Hot winds whipped around me, and my skin burned.

Then I tumbled out onto a cold tile floor, and Sadie and Zia crashed on top of me.

"Ow!" I grumbled.

The first thing I noticed was the fine layer of sand covering my body like powdered sugar. Then my eyes adjusted to the harsh light. We were in a big building like a shopping mall, with crowds bustling around us.

No...not a mall. It was a two-level airport concourse, with shops, lots of windows, and polished steel columns. Outside, it was dark, so I knew we must be in a different time zone.

Announcements echoed over the intercom in a language that sounded like Arabic.

Sadie spit sand out of her mouth. "Yuck!"

"Come on," Zia said. "We can't stay here."

I struggled to my feet. People were streaming past--some in Western clothes, some in robes and headscarves. A family arguing in German rushed by and almost ran over me with their suitcases.

Then I turned and saw something I recognized. In the middle of the concourse stood a life-size replica of an Ancient Egyptian boat made from glowing display cases--a sales counter for perfume and jewelry.

"This is the Cairo airport," I said.

"Yes," Zia said. "Now, let's go!"

"Why the rush? Can Serqet...can she follow us through that sand gate?"

Zia shook her head. "An artifact overheats whenever it creates a gate. It requires a twelve-hour cooldown before it can be used again. But we still have to worry about airport security. Unless you'd like to meet the Egyptian police, you'll come with me now."

She grabbed our arms and steered us through the crowd. We must've looked like beggars in our old-fashioned clothes, covered head-to-toe in sand. People gave us a wide berth, but nobody tried to stop us.

"Why are we here?" Sadie demanded.

"To see the ruins of Heliopolis," Zia said.

"Inside an airport?" Sadie asked.

I remembered something Dad had told me years ago, and my scalp tingled.

"Sadie, the ruins are under us." I looked at Zia. "That's right, isn't it?"

She nodded. "The ancient city was pillaged centuries ago. Some of its monuments were carted away, like Cleopatra's two needles. Most of its temples were broken down to make new buildings. What was left disappeared under Cairo's suburbs. The largest section is under this airport."

"And how does that help us?" Sadie asked.

Zia kicked open a maintenance door. On the other side was a broom closet. Zia muttered a command--"Sahad"--and the image of the closet shimmered and disappeared, revealing a set of stone steps leading down.

"Because not all Heliopolis is in ruins," Zia said. "Follow closely. And touch nothing."

The stairs must've led down about seven million miles, because we descended forever. The passage had been made for miniature people, too. We had to crouch and crawl most of the way, and even so, I bonked my head on the ceiling a dozen times. The only light was from a ball of fire in Zia's palm, which made shadows dance across the walls.

I'd been in places like this before--tunnels inside pyramids, tombs my dad had excavated--but I've never liked them. Millions of tons of rock above me seemed to crush the air out of my lungs.

Finally we reached the bottom. The tunnel opened up, and Zia stopped abruptly. After my eyes adjusted, I saw why. We were standing at the edge of a chasm.

A single wooden plank spanned the void. On the opposite ledge, two jackal-headed granite warriors flanked a doorway, their spears crossed over the entrance.

Sadie sighed. "Please, no more psychotic statues."

"Do not joke," Zia warned. "This is an entrance to the First Nome, the oldest branch of the House of Life, headquarters for all magicians. My job was to bring you here safely, but I cannot help you cross. Each magician must unbar the path for herself, and the challenge is different for each supplicant."

She looked at Sadie expectantly, which annoyed me. First Bast, now Zia--both of them treated Sadie like she should have some kind of superpowers. I mean, okay, so she'd been able to blast the library doors apart, but why didn't anyone look at me to do cool tricks?

Plus, I was still annoyed with Sadie for the comments she'd made at the museum in New York-how I had it so good traveling the world with Dad. She had no idea how often I wanted to complain about the constant traveling, how many days I wished I didn't have to get on a plane and could just be like a normal kid going to school and making friends. But I couldn't complain.

You always have to look impeccable, Dad had told me. And he didn't just mean my clothes. He meant my attitude. With Mom gone, I was all he had. Dad needed me to be strong. Most days, I didn't mind. I loved my dad. But it was also hard.

Sadie didn't understand that. She had it easy. And now she seemed to be getting all the attention, as if she were the special one. It wasn't fair.

Then I heard Dad's voice in my head: "Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself."

I don't know what got into me, but I drew my sword and marched across the plank. It was like my legs were working by themselves, not waiting for my brain. Part of me thought: This is a really bad idea. But part of me answered: No, we do not fear this. And the voice didn't sound like mine.

"Carter!" Sadie cried.

I kept walking. I tried not to look down at the yawning void under my feet, but the sheer size of the chasm made me dizzy. I felt like one of those gyroscope toys, spinning and wobbling as I crossed the narrow plank.

As I got closer to the opposite side, the doorway between the two statues began to glow, like a curtain of red light.

I took a deep breath. Maybe the red light was a portal, like the gate of sand. If I just charged through fast enough...

Then the first dagger shot out of the tunnel.

My sword was in motion before I realized it. The dagger should've impaled me in the chest, but somehow I deflected it with my blade and sent it sailing into the abyss. Two more daggers shot out of the tunnel. I'd never had the best reflexes, but now they sped up. I ducked one dagger and hooked the other with the curved blade of my sword, turned the dagger and flung it back into the tunnel. How the heck did I do that?

I advanced to the end of the plank and slashed through the red light, which flickered and died. I waited for the statues to come alive, but nothing happened. The only sound was a dagger clattering against the rocks in the chasm far below.