Tut (11 page)

“Bring it on,” I said. “I'm ready.”

“No cheating this time,” Qeb said.

Tia made a pretend motion of zipping her mouth and tossing away a key.

Imsety pulled the final piece of papyrus from the Canopic jar. “Last question. What's the…” he started. “Oh, come on. This is way too easy.”

I deserved something easy. My quest for vengeance was noble and just. Horemheb had to be eliminated.

“Read it.”

“Fine,” Imsety said. “What's the volume of a pyramid? Seriously? That's like basic pharaoh training one-oh-one.”

“Darn right it is,” I said. I'd learned about the great pyramids of Giza when I was six years old. My tutors had drilled me, making sure I could do all the calculations in my head. I silently sent them a prayer of thanks. “Area of the base times the height divided by three.”

Imsety ripped the slip of papyrus in half and threw it to the ground. “I cannot believe we didn't even get to shave your head.”

After the questions, I couldn't, either.

“Maybe next time,” I said. “Not.”

The final ankh—the golden one in the center—shimmered and twisted upward, pulling the entire wall with it. A dark room lay ahead. I'd won.

“Guess I won,” I said.

“Well played,” Qeb said. “I thought we had you there with that dead king thing.”

I thought so, too, but I didn't dare voice it. The gods could play by any rules they wanted. I didn't want them to retract my victory.

“Yeah, not everyone knows about Seti the First being cut into pieces and buried under the obelisks,” Imsety said. “Our dad told you, didn't he?”

Horus had never mentioned anything of the sort. I had no clue the obelisks had been built on top of Pharaoh Seti the First's body parts. Who knew?

“Yep,” I lied. “You know Horus.”

Full of more secrets than Imsety was full of hot air.

“You should stop by more often, little Tut,” Qeb said, mussing my hair, which I was very happy to still have.

“You should drop by the town house sometime,” I said. “Horus would love to see you.”

“That's debatable,” Qeb said. It was so hard to read what he was really thinking with that falcon head of his.

“Sure he would. Just not on the new moon.” If Qeb dropped by then, Horus might kill him. Let's put it this way: new moons and Horus? Not the best of friends. During the new moon, Horus went totally blind. Not just missing-one-eye blind, but couldn't see out of the other one either. And when Horus was blind, Horus was dangerous. And pretty much crazy. He'd tried to scratch both my eyes out one time. Gil had almost pulled Horus's claws out, he'd been so mad. That had been a thousand years ago, and ever since, Horus disappeared for a few days around the new moon.

Qeb clacked his falcon beak, which made me guess he was laughing. “Right. I almost forgot about that.”

I never forgot about it. The image of my eyeballs clawed out made it impossible to forget.

Ahead of us, the dark room beckoned. I couldn't risk losing entry.

“Come on.” I grabbed Tia's hand and pulled her through the open doorway. And then the door lowered behind us. We were swallowed in darkness.

 

8

WHERE THE SHABTIS DRAW BLOOD

“It's dark in here,” Tia said not two seconds after the ankh door lowered behind us.

Even though I knew it was showing off, I let light erupt from my scarab heart before she could grab her flashlight. Unlit torches lined the walls.

“Sort of a cool trick,” she said, “but watch this.” She reached into her cargo pants pocket, and I figured she was going to grab her flashlight, but instead, she pulled a pack of matches out. I wondered what else she had stashed in her pockets. Maybe a midnight snack?

Tia lit a match and touched it to a torch. Suddenly the entire wall was on fire. One torch lit the next and then the next, as if somehow they were all connected. The room exploded with light.

It looked like a museum had been teleported inside. Gold columns—like real gold, not paint from the craft store—stretched from floor to ceiling. Statues and paintings covered every inch of wall. And shelves started just feet from where we stood and continued on, out of sight. Maybe all this stuff had come from the Library of Alexandria, and maybe at one point, it had even been catalogued. But the time of that was long gone. If Imsety and Qeb were in charge of neatness and orderliness, they'd given up ages ago.

“What are these?” Tia used the toe of her combat boot to prod a pile of stone tablets that were leaning against a column.

The symbols carved into the tablets were from back when Gil had been king of Mesopotamia, way before my time. “Sumerian accounting records.”

Tia brushed her hand over one, and dust flew everywhere. “Shouldn't they be on display somewhere?”

“Do you have any idea how many tablets like this there are in the world?” I said. “The Sumerians kept track of everything.”

“Can you read them?”

“Of course I can read them,” I said.

“What's this one say?” she asked.

“Something about how many camels were traded for grain.”

“And this one?”

“Marriage records.”

“This one?”

“Are you testing me?”

“Not at all.” She left the stack of tablets and moved on to some limestone blocks near the side wall. “Okay, what's this?”

It wasn't Sumerian at all. It was from my kingdom—Egypt. It only took me one look at the hieroglyphics to know what we were looking at. “The tomb of Ay. I mean, it's not put together or anything, but most of the pieces are here.”

“Didn't Ay rule after you?”

She knew about Egyptian gods. I guess she knew her Egyptian history, too.

“I don't want to talk about who ruled after me,” I said.

“Why not?” Tia said.

“Because he should have never been pharaoh,” I said. “I was pharaoh.”

“But you're immortal,” Tia said. “Isn't that better?”

“It's debatable. Anyway, just stay here, okay? I don't want you looking over my shoulder.”

“You can't get rid of me, Tut.” Tia crossed her arms and waited, slouching in the most adorable way, while tapping the toe of her combat boot. Her streak of orange hair fell over her forehead, making it look like she was winking at me, even though I knew she wasn't.

“Yes, I can,” I said. I could … okay, my options were nil. It wasn't like I could come back another night when she wasn't here. I needed to find the scroll to get information on the knife tonight. Tia wouldn't know what it was for, anyway.

“Just stay out of my way.”

“I knew you'd give in,” Tia said. She brushed the orange streak from her face, making it obvious she wasn't winking at me. She was gloating.

“I did not give in.” I leaned down to ground level. “What did Horus say?” I asked Colonel Cody.

“The cat informed us to look for an invisible scroll made of gold with ink of blood,” Colonel Cody said.

“You named your cat Horus?” Tia asked.

“Sort of.”

It was time for spell number sixty-eight. The spell to reveal all things. I pulled the scroll from the
Book of the Dead
out from under my shirt and pressed out the wrinkles.

“The doors of the sky are open for me…” I began.

My scarab heart started to pound, pulsing the energy through my body. I drew on this energy. I continued the words from the spell, and the energy doubled. Tripled. It took everything I had to keep saying the words and to not get lost in how amazing the energy running through me felt.

As the last words of the spell fell from my lips, the energy gathered together and shot out of me, forming a trail. I tucked the page from the
Book of the Dead
back under my shirt and followed the trail, passing tablets and tombs and sarcophagi until I came to a marble table covered in scrolls. There was no question about it—the spell had led me to this table. I reached my hand out, moving it along the trail. It brushed against something that wasn't there; something invisible.

I wrapped my fingers around the object and it winked into existence. It was shiny gold carved with symbols painted in red—bloodred.

“You found it!” Tia said.

The trail and energy evaporated, and the piece of power from the
Book of the Dead
that I'd just used was ripped from me. Even though I'd only had it for a matter of hours, it felt like a part of me had been stolen away. I only had two spells left.

“Yeah, look at that. I found it.”

“How did you do it?” she asked.

I almost told her about Horus and the
Book of the Dead
. Almost, except something told me to keep my mouth shut.

“Just a spell I looked up at home,” I said. “It's no big deal.”

“Right, no big deal. So open it.” Tia grabbed for the scroll.

“No.” I pulled it away. I could look later, once she wasn't around.

“Yes,” she said.

“No.”

“Fine. Be that way,” Tia said. And she pouted. And even though it killed me to admit it, she looked really cute when she pouted. So cute that all my senses must have escaped me. The next thing I knew, she'd grabbed the scroll from under my arm and unrolled it. I tried to grab it back, but I didn't want to tear it. Plus, my curiosity and desire for revenge took over, so I knelt down next to her.

The scroll was blank.

“Shouldn't there be writing?” Tia asked.

I looked to Colonel Cody. “Well?”

He facepalmed. “The cat said it would be revealed to the worthy.”

“Revealed how?” Darn Horus for his half-truths and riddles. I was worthy.

“The cat did not say,” Colonel Cody said.

Perfect. I figured I could take it with me back to the town house and decipher it there … until I saw the giant sign overhead. Written in ten different languages, including English and ancient Egyptian, were the words:

ARTIFACTS MAY NOT

UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

BE REMOVED FROM THE

HALL OF ARTIFACTS.

VIOLATORS WILL BE THROWN

INTO STASIS

FOR ALL ETERNITY!

There was a good chance it was an empty threat put in place by Imsety and Qeb, but I didn't want to risk it. Spending my immortal years in Egyptian god purgatory would ruin my plans for revenge.

“Didn't your cute little bodyguard say something about ink made of blood?” Tia asked.

Colonel Cody beamed under her praise. “The beautiful mortal girl is correct.”

Tia blushed in return.

“Perhaps blood, Great Master.” Colonel Cody snapped his fingers and the two green shabtis I called Major Rex and Major Mack ran off, returning moments later with a pointy tool of some kind that looked sharp enough to puncture my eardrum.

It couldn't hurt. Well, actually it could, but not that much. Major Rex pierced my finger, and I let a drop of blood fall onto the golden scroll.

I prayed to Maat that I would be found worthy. I had to read the scroll.

Words began to take shape.
Immortal. Afterworld. Knife. Osiris.
My heart pounded. This was exactly what I'd been looking for.

Hieroglyphs of blood filled the page in front of us. Based on the style of writing and the usage of the hieroglyphs, I would have bet Horus's other eye that this scroll had been made before I'd been pharaoh. Probably before my entire dynasty. The symbol choices looked like the stuff Horus decorated his cat-scratching post with. Like the language of the gods.

Wind whipped through the room, blowing the flames in the torches. I let my mind carry me back to the ancient days—the days when Egypt had been the jewel of the world and the gods had been feared. Now they were hardly believed in, just a thing of mythology. I scanned the symbols and my brain instantly fell back into ancient Egyptian, picking out symbols that made up words.

“What's it say?” Tia asked.

That's right. I had serious doubts anyone alive could read this thing except me.

“I don't know,” I lied. “The script is too old.”

Except I could read every word, and it told me exactly what I needed to know.

“You read those Sumerian tablets,” Tia said. “You can read anything.”

“Nope. Sorry.” Sure, I wanted to defend myself. To tell her I could not only read this scroll, but that I could translate our whole World Cultures textbook into this text. But my common sense held its ground.

“You're lying,” Tia said. And she grabbed the scroll and ran.

I tore off after her. She ran in the opposite direction that we'd come in, almost like she knew where she was going, weaving in and out of the long rows of artifacts.

“Stop!” I called, but of course she didn't listen.

I jumped over Canopic jars and obelisks and statues and columns, trying to catch up. Tia rounded a corner and I lost sight of her.

“Where did she go?” I asked Colonel Cody.

“We'll find her,” he said. He snapped his fingers and his majors ran off in four different directions.

It wasn't until I heard the snap of wood that I saw her, halfway up a rickety flight of stairs against a wall. It was another way out. Except she had the scroll. The warning from the sign flew back into my mind.

“Don't take the scroll with you!” I cried out, but either she didn't hear me or she didn't listen, because the second she got to the top and opened the door, the entire Hall of Artifacts quaked like a sonic boom had come through. I ducked as objects flew through the air from the impact. And when I looked back up, the door stood open, but there was no sign of Tia or the scroll.

 

9

WHERE I'M STALKED BY THE PIZZA GUY

I ran out the same way as Tia, but there was no sign of her. I didn't want her to be cast into stasis for all of eternity, like the sign had said, but I also didn't want her to have escaped with the scroll. Both options stunk. I spent the next two hours scouring D.C. for her, dreading having to tell Horus what had happened. I didn't find her. At least if she did get away, she couldn't read the scroll. And now I knew where the knife was.