The Serpent's Shadow

Page 13

Anubis said something I couldn’t make out. Then the flurry of debris completely obscured him.
When the wind died, both gods were gone. I stood alone on the dance floor, surrounded by dozens of kids and adults who were starting to wake up.
I was about to run to Carter to make sure he was all right. [Yes, Carter, honestly I was.]
Then, at the edge of the pavilion, a young man stepped into the light.
He wore a gray military outfit with a wool coat too heavy for the warm September night. His enormous ears seemed to be the only things holding up his oversized hat. A rifle was slung across his shoulder. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen; and though he was definitely not from any of the schools at the dance, he looked vaguely familiar.
St. Petersburg, Shu had said.
Yes. I’d met this boy briefly last spring. Carter and I had been running from the Hermitage Museum. This boy had tried to stop us. He’d been disguised as a guard, but revealed himself as a magician from the Russian Nome—one of the servants of the evil Vlad Menshikov.
I grabbed my staff from the Duat—successfully this time.
The boy raised his hands in surrender.
“Nyet!” he pleaded. Then, in halting English, he said: “Sadie Kane. We…need…to talk.”
6. Amos Plays with Action Figures
HIS NAME WAS LEONID, and we agreed not to kill each other.
We sat on the steps of the gazebo and talked while the students and teachers struggled to wake up around us.
Leonid’s English was not good. My Russian was nonexistent, but I understood enough of his story to be alarmed. He’d escaped the Russian nome and somehow convinced Shu to whisk him here to find me. Leonid remembered me from our invasion of the Hermitage. Apparently I’d made a strong impression on the young man. No surprise. I am rather memorable.
[Oh, stop laughing, Carter.]
Using words, hand gestures, and sound effects, Leonid tried to explain what had happened in St. Petersburg since the death of Vlad Menshikov. I couldn’t follow it all, but this much I understood: Kwai, Jacobi, Apophis, First Nome, many deaths, soon, very soon.
Teachers began corralling students and calling parents. Apparently they feared the mass blackout might have been caused by bad punch or hazardous gas (Drew’s perfume, perhaps) and they’d decided to evacuate the area. I suspected we’d have police and paramedics on the scene shortly. I wanted to be gone before then.
I dragged Leonid over to meet my brother, who was stumbling around, rubbing his eyes.
“What happened?” Carter asked. He scowled at Leonid. “Who—?”
I gave him the one-minute version: Anubis’s visit, Shu’s intervention, the Russian’s appearance. “Leonid has information about an impending attack on the First Nome,” I said. “The rebels will be after him.”
Carter scratched his head. “You want to hide him at Brooklyn House?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve got to take him to Amos straightaway.”
Leonid choked. “Amos? He turn into Set—eat face?”
“Amos will not eat your face,” I assured him. “Jacobi’s been telling you stories.”
Leonid still looked uneasy. “Amos not become Set?”
How to explain without making it sound worse? I didn’t know the correct Russian for: He was possessed by Set but it wasn’t his fault, and he’s much better now.
“No Set,” I said. “Good Amos.”
Carter studied the Russian. He looked at me with concern. “Sadie, what if this is a trap? You trust this guy?”
“Oh, I can handle Leonid. He doesn’t want me to morph him into a banana slug, do you, Leonid?”
“Nyet,” Leonid said solemnly. “No banana slug.”
“There, you see?”
“What about visiting Thoth?” Carter asked. “That can’t wait.”
I saw the worry in his eyes. I imagined he was thinking the same thing I was: our mum was in trouble. The spirits of the dead were disappearing, and it had something to do with the shadow of Apophis. We had to find the connection.
“You visit Thoth,” I said. “Take Walt. And, uh, keep an eye on him, all right? Anubis wanted to tell me something about him, but there wasn’t time. And in Dallas, when I looked at Walt in the Duat…”
I couldn’t make myself finish. Just thinking about Walt wrapped in mummy linen brought tears to my eyes.
Fortunately, Carter seemed to get the general idea. “I’ll keep him safe,” he promised. “How will you get to Egypt?”
I pondered that. Leonid had apparently flown here via Shu Airways, but I doubted that fussy aviator god would be willing to help me, and I didn’t want to ask.
“We’ll risk a portal,” I said. “I know they’ve been a bit wonky, but it’s just one quick jump. What could go wrong?”
“You could materialize inside a wall,” Carter said. “Or wind up scattered through the Duat in a million pieces.”
“Why, Carter, you care! But really, we’ll be fine. And we haven’t got much choice.”
I gave him a quick hug—I know, horribly sentimental, but I wanted to show solidarity. Then, before I could change my mind, I took Leonid’s hand and raced across campus.
My head was still spinning from my talk with Anubis. How dare Isis and Horus keep us apart when we weren’t even together! And what had Anubis wanted to tell me about Walt? Perhaps he’d wanted to end our ill-fated relationship and give his blessing for me to date Walt. (Lame.) Or perhaps he wanted to declare his undying love and fight Walt for my affections. (Highly unlikely, nor would I appreciate being fought over like a basketball.) Or perhaps—most probable—he’d wanted to break some bad news.
Anubis had visited Walt on several occasions that I knew of. They’d both been rather tight-lipped about what was discussed, but since Anubis was the guide of the dead, I assumed he’d been preparing Walt for death. Anubis might have wanted to warn me that the time was nigh—as if I needed another reminder.
Anubis: off-limits. Walt: at death’s door. If I lost both of the guys I liked, well…there wasn’t much point in saving the world.
All right, that was a slight exaggeration. But only slight.
On top of that, my mum was in trouble, and Sarah Jacobi’s rebels were planning some horrible attack on my uncle’s headquarters.
Why, then, did I feel so…hopeful?
An idea started to tug at me—a tiny glimmer of possibility. It wasn’t just the prospect that we might find a way to defeat the serpent. Anubis’s words kept playing in my mind: The shadow lingers. There must be a way to retrieve a soul from oblivion.
If a shadow could be used to bring back a mortal soul that had been destroyed, could it do the same for a god?
I was so lost in thought, I barely noticed when we reached the fine arts building. Leonid stopped me.
“This for portal?” He pointed to a block of carved limestone in the courtyard.
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
Long story short: when I started at BAG, I reckoned it would be good to have an Egyptian relic close by for emergencies. So I did the logical thing: I borrowed a chunk of limestone frieze from the nearby Brooklyn Museum. Honestly, the museum had enough rocks. I didn’t think they’d miss this one.
I’d left a facsimile in its place and asked Alyssa to present the actual Egyptian frieze to her art teacher as her class project—an attempt to simulate an ancient art form. The teacher had been duly impressed. He’d installed “Alyssa’s” artwork in the courtyard outside his classroom. The carving showed mourners at a funeral, which I thought appropriate for a school setting.
It wasn’t a powerful or important piece of art, but all relics of Ancient Egypt have some amount of power, like magical batteries. With the right training, a magician can use them to jump-start spells that would otherwise be impossible, such as opening portals.
I’d got rather good at this particular magic. Leonid watched my back as I began to chant.
Most magicians wait for “auspicious moments” to open gates. They spend years memorizing a timetable of important anniversaries like the time of day each god was born, the alignment of the stars, and whatnot. I suppose I should have worried about such things, but I didn’t. Given the thousands of years of Egyptian history, there were so many auspicious moments that I simply chanted until I hit one. Of course, I had to hope my portal didn’t open during an inauspicious moment. That could have caused all sorts of nasty side effects—but what’s life without taking a few risks?
(Carter is shaking his head and muttering. I have no idea why.)
The air rippled in front of us. A circular doorway appeared—a swirling vortex of golden sand—and Leonid and I jumped through.
I’d like to say my spell worked perfectly and we ended up in the First Nome. Sadly, I was a bit off the mark.
The portal spit us out roughly a hundred meters above Cairo. I found myself free-falling through the cool night air toward the city lights below.
I didn’t panic. I could have cast any number of spells to get out of this situation. I could have even assumed the form of a kite (the bird of prey, not the kind with a string), although that wasn’t my favorite way to travel. Before I could decide on a plan of action, Leonid grabbed my hand.
The direction of the wind changed. Suddenly we were gliding over the city in a controlled descent. We set down softly in the desert just outside the city limits near a cluster of ruins that I knew from experience hid an entrance to the First Nome.
I looked at Leonid in amazement. “You summoned the power of Shu!”
“Shu,” he said grimly. “Yes. Necessary. I do…forbidden.”
I smiled with delight. “You clever boy! You learned the path of the gods on your own? I knew there was a reason I didn’t turn you into a banana slug.”
Leonid’s eyes widened. “No banana slug! Please!”
“It was a compliment, silly,” I said. “Forbidden is good! Sadie likes forbidden! Now, come on. You need to meet my uncle.”
No doubt Carter would describe the underground city in excruciating detail, with exact measurements of each room, boring history on every statue and hieroglyph, and background notes on the construction of the magical headquarters of the House of Life.
I will spare you that pain.
It’s big. It’s full of magic. It’s underground.
There. Sorted.
At the bottom of the entry tunnel, we crossed a stone bridge over a chasm, where I was challenged by a ba. The glowing bird spirit (with the head of a famous Egyptian I probably should’ve known) asked me a question: What color are the eyes of Anubis?
Brown. Duh. I suppose he was trying to trick me with an easy question.
The ba let us pass into the city proper. I hadn’t visited in six months, and I was distressed to see how few magicians were about. The First Nome had never been crowded. Egyptian magic had withered over the centuries as fewer and fewer young initiates learned the arts. But now most shops in the central cavern were closed. At the market stalls, no one was haggling over the price of ankhs or scorpion venom. A bored-looking amulet salesman perked up as we approached, then slumped as we passed by.