The Red Pyramid

Page 51

“But you got away,” I said, grasping for any good news. “So there must be weaknesses in his defenses or—”
“The magic that froze me eventually began to weaken. I concentrated my energy and worked my way out of the binding. It took many hours, but finally I broke free. I sneaked out at midday, when the demons were sleeping. It was much too easy.”
“It doesn’t sound easy,” I said.
Amos shook his head, obviously troubled. “Set allowed me to escape. I don’t know why, but I shouldn’t be alive. It’s a trick of some sort. I’m afraid...” Whatever he was going to say, he changed his mind. “At any rate, my first thought was to find you, so I summoned my boat.”
He gestured behind him. I managed to lift my head and saw we were in a strange desert of white dunes that stretched as far as I could see in the starlight. The sand under my fingers was so fine and white, it might’ve been sugar. Amos’s boat, the same one that had carried us from the Thames to Brooklyn, was beached at the top of a nearby dune, canted at a precarious angle as if it had been thrown there.
“There’s a supply locker aboard,” Amos offered, “if you’d like fresh clothes.”
“But where are we?”
“White Sands,” Carter told me. “In New Mexico. It’s a government range for testing missiles. Amos said no one would look for us here, so we gave you some time to heal. It’s about seven in the evening, still the twenty-eighth. Twelve hours or so until Set...you know.”
“But...” Too many questions swam round in my mind. The last thing I remembered, I’d been at the river talking to Nephthys. Her voice had seemed to come from the other side of the world. She’d spoken faintly through the current—so hard to understand, yet quite insistent. She’d told me she was sheltered far away in a sleeping host, which I couldn’t make sense of. She’d said she could not appear in person, but that she would send a message. Then the water had started to boil.
“We were attacked.” Carter stroked Muffin’s head, and I finally noticed that the amulet—Bast’s amulet—was missing. “Sadie, I’ve got some bad news.”
He told me what had happened, and I closed my eyes. I started to weep. Embarrassing, yes, but I couldn’t help it. Over the last few days, I’d lost everything—my home, my ordinary life, my father. I’d been almost killed half a dozen times. My mother’s death, which I’d never gotten over to begin with, hurt like a reopened wound. And now Bast was gone too?
When Anubis had questioned me in the Underworld, he’d wanted to know what I would sacrifice to save the world.
What haven’t I sacrificed already? I wanted to scream. What have I got left?
Carter came over and gave me Muffin, who purred in my arms, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t Bast.
“She’ll come back, won’t she?” I looked at Amos imploringly. “I mean she’s immortal, isn’t she?”
Amos tugged at the rim of his hat. “Sadie...I just don’t know. It seems she sacrificed herself to defeat Sobek. Bast forced him back to the Duat at the expense of her own life force. She even spared Muffin, her host, probably with the last shred of her power. If that’s true, it would be very difficult for Bast to come back. Perhaps some day, in a few hundred years—”
“No, not a few hundred years! I can’t—” My voice broke.
Carter put his hand on my shoulder, and I knew he understood. We couldn’t lose anyone else. We just couldn’t.
“Rest now,” Amos said. “We can spare another hour, but then we’ll have to get moving.”
Khufu offered me a bowl of his concoction. The chunky liquid looked like soup that had died long ago. I glanced at Amos, hoping he’d give me a pass, but he nodded encouragingly.
Just my luck, on top of everything else I had to take baboon medicine.
I sipped the brew, which tasted almost as bad as it smelled, and immediately my eyelids felt heavy. I closed my eyes and slept.
And just when I thought I had this soul-leaving-the-body business sorted, my soul decided to break the rules. Well, it is my soul after all, so I suppose that makes sense.
As my ba left my body, it kept its human form, which was better than the winged poultry look, but it kept growing and growing until I towered above White Sands. I’d been told many times that I have a lot of spirit (usually not as a compliment), but this was absurd. My ba was as tall as the Washington Monument.
To the south, past miles and miles of desert, steam rose from the Rio Grande—the battle site where Bast and Sobek had perished. Even as tall as I was, I shouldn’t have been able to see all the way to Texas, especially at night, but somehow I could. To the north, even farther away, I saw a distant red glow and I knew it was the aura of Set. His power was growing as his pyramid neared completion.
I looked down. Next to my foot was a tiny cluster of specks—our camp. Miniature Carter, Amos, and Khufu sat talking round the cooking fire. Amos’s boat was no larger than my little toe. My own sleeping form lay curled in a blanket, so small I could’ve crushed myself with one misstep.
I was enormous, and the world was small.
“That’s how gods see things,” a voice told me.
I looked around but saw nothing, just the vast expanse of rolling white dunes. Then, in front of me, the dunes shifted. I thought it was the wind, until an entire dune rolled sideways like a wave. Another moved, and another. I realized I was looking at a human form—an enormous man lying in the fetal position. He got up, shaking white sand everywhere. I knelt down and cupped my hands over my companions to keep them from getting buried. Oddly, they didn’t seem to notice, as if the disruption were no more than a sprinkle of rain.
The man rose to his full height—at least a head taller than my own giant form. His body was made of sand that curtained off his arms and chest like waterfalls of sugar. The sand shifted across his face until he formed a vague smile.
“Sadie Kane,” he said. “I have been waiting for you.”
“Geb.” Don’t ask me how, but I knew instantly that this was the god of the earth. Maybe the sand body was a giveaway. “I have something for you.”
It didn’t make sense that my ba would have the envelope, but I reached into my shimmering ghostly pocket and pulled out the note from Nut.
“Your wife misses you,” I said.
Geb took the note gingerly. He held it to his face and seemed to sniff it. Then he opened the envelope. Instead of a letter, fireworks burst out. A new constellation blazed in the night sky above us—the face of Nut, formed by a thousand stars. The wind rose quickly and ripped the image apart, but Geb sighed contentedly. He closed the envelope and tucked it inside his sandy chest as if there were a pocket right where his heart should be.
“I owe you thanks, Sadie Kane,” Geb said. “It has been many millennia since I saw the face of my beloved. Ask me a favor that the earth can grant, and it shall be yours.”
“Save my father,” I said immediately.
Geb’s face rippled with surprise. “Hmm, what a loyal daughter! Isis could learn a thing from you. Alas, I cannot. Your father’s path is twined with that of Osiris, and matters between the gods cannot be solved by the earth.”
“Then I don’t suppose you could collapse Set’s mountain and destroy his pyramid?” I asked.
Geb’s laughter was like the world’s largest sand shaker. “I cannot intervene so directly between my children. Set is my son too.”
I almost stamped my foot in frustration. Then I remembered I was giant and might smash the whole camp. Could a ba do that? Better not to find out. “Well, your favors aren’t very useful, then.”
Geb shrugged, sloughing off a few tons of sand from his shoulders. “Perhaps some advice to help you achieve what you desire. Go to the place of the crosses.”
“And where is that?”
“Close,” he promised. “And, Sadie Kane, you are right. You have lost too much. Your family has suffered. I know what that is like. Just remember, a parent would do anything to save his children. I gave up my happiness, my wife—I took on the curse of Ra so that my children could be born.” He looked up at the sky wistfully. “And while I miss my beloved more each millennium, I know neither of us would change our choice. I have five children whom I love.”
“Even Set?” I asked incredulously. “He’s about to destroy millions of people.”
“Set is more than he appears,” Geb said. “He is our flesh and blood.”
“Not mine.”
“No?” Geb shifted, lowering himself. I thought he was crouching, until I realized he was melting into the dunes. “Think on it, Sadie Kane, and proceed with care. Danger awaits you at the place of crosses, but you will also find what you need most.”
“Could you be a little more vague?” I grumbled.
But Geb was gone, leaving only a taller than normal dune in the sands; and my ba sank back into my body.
Chapter 32. The Place of Crosses
I WOKE WITH MUFFIN SNUGGLED on my head, purring and chewing my hair. For a moment, I thought I was home. I used to wake with Muffin on my head all the time. Then I remembered I had no home, and Bast was gone. My eyes started tearing up again.
No, Isis’s voice chided. We must stay focused.
For once, the goddess was right. I sat up and brushed the white sand off my face. Muffin meowed in protest, then waddled two steps and decided she could settle for my warm place on the blanket.
“Good, you’re up,” Amos said. “We were about to wake you.”
It was still dark. Carter stood on the deck of the boat, pulling on a new linen coat from Amos’s supply locker. Khufu loped over to me and made a purring sound at the cat. To my surprise, Muffin leaped into his arms.
“I’ve asked Khufu to take the cat back to Brooklyn,” Amos said. “This is no place for her.”
Khufu grunted, clearly unhappy with his assignment.
“I know, my old friend,” Amos said. His voice had a hard edge; he seemed to be asserting himself as the alpha baboon. “It is for the best.”
“Agh,” Khufu said, not meeting Amos’s eyes.
Unease crept over me. I remembered what Amos said: that his release might have been a trick of Set’s. And Carter’s vision: Set was hoping that Amos would lead us to the mountain so we could be captured. What if Set was influencing Amos somehow? I didn’t like the idea of sending Khufu away.
On the other hand, I didn’t see much choice but to accept Amos’s help. And seeing Khufu there, holding Muffin, I couldn’t bear the idea of putting either of them in danger. Maybe Amos had a point.
“Can he travel safely?” I asked. “Out here all by himself?”
“Oh, yes,” Amos promised. “Khufu—and all baboons—have their own brand of magic. He’ll be fine. And just in case...”
He brought out a wax figurine of a crocodile. “This will help if the need arises.”
I coughed. “A crocodile? After what we just—”