The Serpent's Shadow

Page 22

Halfway down the beach, we passed the two old codgers who’d been playing in the lava. Now they were wrestling waist-deep in the lake. One pummeled the other with an ankh and warbled, “It’s my pudding! My pudding!”
“Oh dear,” Tawaret said. “Fire-embracer and Hot Foot are at it again.”
I choked back a laugh. “Hot Foot? What sort of godly name is that?”
Tawaret studied the fiery surf, as if looking for a way to navigate through it without getting incinerated. “They’re gods from the Hall of Judgment, dear. Poor things. There used to be forty-two of them, each in charge of judging a different crime. Even in the old days, we could never keep them all straight. Now…” She shrugged. “They’re quite forgotten, sadly. Fire-embracer, the one with the ankh—he used to be the god of robberies. I’m afraid it made him paranoid. He always thinks Hot Foot has stolen his pudding. I’ll have to break up the fight.”
“Let me,” Zia said.
Tawaret stiffened. “You, my…dear?”
I got the feeling she was going to say something other than dear.
“The fire won’t bother me,” Zia assured her. “You two go ahead.”
I wasn’t sure how Zia could be so confident. Perhaps she simply preferred swimming in flames to seeing Bes in his present state. If so, I couldn’t blame her. The experience was unsettling.
Whatever the case, Zia strode toward the surf and waded straight in like a flame-retardant Baywatch lifeguard.
Tawaret and I continued along the beach. We reached the dock where Ra’s sun boat had anchored the first time Carter and I had visited this place.
Bes sat at the end of the pier in a comfy leather chair, which Tawaret must have brought down especially for him. He wore a fresh red-and-blue Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. His face was thinner than it had been last spring, but otherwise he looked unchanged—the same scraggly nest of black hair, the same bristly mane that passed for a beard, the same lovably grotesque face that reminded me of a pug dog’s.
But Bes’s soul was gone. He stared vacantly at the lake, not reacting at all when I knelt next to him and gripped his furry hand.
I remembered the first time he’d saved my life—picking me up in a limo full of rubbish, driving me to Waterloo Bridge, then scaring away two gods who had been chasing me. He had jumped out of the car wearing nothing but a Speedo and screamed, “Boo!”
Yes, he’d been a true friend.
“Dear Bes,” I said, “we’re going to try to help you.”
I told him everything that had happened since my last visit. I knew he couldn’t hear me. Since his secret name had been stolen, his mind simply wasn’t there. But talking to him made me feel better.
Tawaret sniffled. I knew she had loved Bes forever, though Bes hadn’t always returned her feelings. He couldn’t have had a better caretaker.
“Oh, Sadie…” The hippo goddess wiped away a tear. “If you truly could help him, I—I’d do anything. But how is it possible?”
“Shadows,” I said. “This bloke Setne…he found a way to use shadows for an execration spell. If the sheut is a backup copy of the soul, and if Setne’s magic could be used in reverse…”
Tawaret’s eyes widened. “You believe you could use Bes’s shadow to bring him back?”
“Yes.” I knew it sounded mad, but I had to believe. Saying it aloud to Tawaret, who cared about Bes even more than I did…well, I simply couldn’t let her down. Besides, if we could do this for Bes, then who knew? Perhaps we could use the same magic to get the sun god Ra back in fighting shape. First things first, however. I intended to keep my promise to the dwarf god.
“Here’s the tricky bit,” I said. “I’m hoping you can help me locate Bes’s shadow. I don’t know much about gods and their sheuts and whatnot. I understand that you often hide them?”
Tawaret shifted nervously, her feet creaking on the pier boards. “Um, yes…”
“I’m hoping they’re a bit like secret names,” I forged on. “Since I can’t ask Bes where he keeps his shadow, I thought I’d ask the person who was closest to him. I thought you’d have the best chance of knowing.”
Seeing a hippo blush is quite odd. It almost made Tawaret look delicate—in a massive sort of way.
“I—I saw his shadow once,” she admitted. “During one of our best moments together. We were sitting on the temple wall in Saïs.”
“Sorry?”
“A city in the Nile Delta,” Tawaret explained. “The home of a friend of ours—the hunting goddess Neith. She liked to invite Bes and me on her hunting excursions. We would, ah, flush her prey for her.”
I imagined Tawaret and Bes, two gods with super-ugly powers, plowing through the marshes hand in hand, yelling “Boo!” to scare up bevies of quail. I decided to keep that image to myself.
“At any rate,” Tawaret continued, “one night after dinner, Bes and I were sitting alone on the walls of Neith’s temple, watching the moon rise over the Nile.”
She gazed at the dwarf god with such adoring eyes, I couldn’t help but imagine myself on that temple wall, sharing a romantic evening with Anubis…no, Walt…no…Gah! My life was horrid.
I sighed unhappily. “Go on, please.”
“We talked about nothing in particular,” Tawaret remembered. “We held hands. That was all. But I felt so close to him. Just for a moment, I looked at the mud-brick wall next to us, and I saw Bes’s shadow in the torchlight. Normally gods don’t keep their shadows so close. He must’ve trusted me a great deal to reveal it. I asked him about it, and he laughed. He said, ‘This is a good place for my shadow. I think I’ll leave it here. That way it can always be happy, even when I’m not.’”
The story was so sweet and sad, I could hardly bear it.
Down the shore, the old god Fire-embracer shrieked something about pudding. Zia was standing in the surf, trying to keep the two gods apart as they splashed her with lava from both sides. Amazingly, it didn’t seem to bother her.
I turned to Tawaret. “That night in Saïs—how long ago was it?”
“A few thousand years.”
My heart sank. “Any chance the shadow would still be there?”
She shrugged helplessly. “Saïs was destroyed centuries ago. The temple is gone. Farmers pulled down the ancient buildings and used the mud bricks for fertilizer. Most of the land has reverted to marshes.”
Blast. I’d never been a fan of Egyptian ruins. From time to time, I’d been tempted to pull down a few temples myself. But just this once, I wished the ruins had survived. I wanted to cuff those farmers.
“Then there’s no hope?” I asked.
“Oh, there’s always hope,” Tawaret said. “You could search the area, calling on Bes’s shadow. You’re his friend. It might appear to you if it’s still there. And if Neith is still in the area, she might be able to help. That is, if she doesn’t hunt you instead…”
I decided not to dwell on that possibility. I had enough problems. “We’ll have to try. If we can find the shadow and puzzle out the proper spell—”
“But, Sadie,” the goddess said, “you have so little time. You have to stop Apophis! How can you help Bes, too?”
I looked at the dwarf god. Then I bent down and kissed his bumpy forehead. “I made a promise,” I said. “Besides, we’ll need him if we’re going to win.”
Did I really believe that? I knew Bes couldn’t scare Apophis away simply by yelling “Boo!” no matter how ghastly he looked in his Speedo. In the sort of battle we were facing, I wasn’t sure one more god would even make a difference. And I was even less sure that this reverse shadow idea could work on Ra. But I had to try with Bes. If the world ended the day after tomorrow, I would not go to my death without first knowing I’d done everything I could to save my friend.
Of all the goddesses I’d met, Tawaret was the most likely to understand my motives.
She put her hands protectively on Bes’s shoulders. “In that case, Sadie Kane, I wish you luck—for Bes, and for all of us.”
I left her on the dock, standing behind Bes as if the two gods were enjoying a romantic sunset together.
On the beach, I rejoined Zia, who was brushing ashes out of her hair. Except for a few burn holes in her trousers, she looked perfectly fine.
She gestured at Fire-embracer and Hot Foot, who were once again playing nice in the lava. “They’re not so bad,” Zia said. “They just needed some attention.”
“Like pets,” I said. “Or my brother.”
Zia actually smiled. “Did you find the information you need?”
“I think so,” I said. “But first, we need to get to the Hall of Judgment. It’s almost time for Setne’s trial.”
“How do we get there?” Zia asked. “Another doorway?”
I stared across the Lake of Fire, pondering that problem. I remembered the Hall of Judgment being on an island somewhere on this lake, but Duat geography is a bit dodgy. For all I knew, the hall was on a totally different level of the Duat, or the lake was six billion miles wide. I didn’t fancy the idea of walking around the shore through unknown territory, or taking a swim. And I certainly didn’t feel like arguing with Isis again.
Then I saw something across the fiery waves—the silhouette of a familiar steamboat approaching, twin smokestacks trailing luminous gold smoke and a paddle wheel churning through the lava.
My brother—bless his heart—was absolutely mad.
“Problem solved,” I told Zia. “Carter will give us a ride.”
10. “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” Goes Horribly Wrong
AS THEY APPROACHED THE DOCK, Carter and Walt waved at us from the bow of the Egyptian Queen. Next to them stood the captain, Bloodstained Blade, who looked quite dashing in his riverboat pilot’s uniform, except for the fact that his head was a blood-speckled double-sided ax.
“That’s a demon,” Zia said nervously.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Is it safe?”
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“Of course not,” she muttered. “I’m traveling with the Kanes.”
The crew of glowing orbs zipped around the boat, pulling lines and lowering the gangplank.
Carter looked tired. He wore jeans and a rumpled shirt with specks of barbecue sauce on it. His hair was wet and flat on one side as if he’d fallen asleep in the shower.
Walt looked much better—well, really, there was no contest. He wore his usual sleeveless shirt and workout pants, and managed a smile for me even though his posture made it obvious he was in pain. The shen charm on my necklace seemed to heat up, or perhaps that was just my body temperature rising.
Zia and I climbed the gangplank. Bloodstained Blade bowed, which was quite unnerving, as his head could’ve sliced a watermelon in half.
“Welcome aboard, Lady Kane.” His voice was a metallic hum from the edge of his frontal blade. “I am at your service.”