The Serpent's Shadow kc-3 Page 11

  I gazed up at the arena’s ceiling, which suddenly seemed much lower. “Which means…we’re stuck too?”

  Thoth waved aside the question. “You should be able to pass back through. The serpent’s net is designed to catch a god. You and Walt aren’t large or important enough to be caught.”

  I wondered if that were true, or if Apophis was allowing me to come and go—to have the choice of surrendering Ra.

  You interest me, Carter, Apophis had said. Yield to me, and I will spare you.

  I took a deep breath. “But, Thoth, if you’re on your own…I mean, how much longer can you last?”

  The god brushed at his lab coat, which was covered with scribbles in a dozen languages. The word time fluttered off his sleeve. Thoth caught it, and suddenly he was checking a gold pocket watch.

  “Let’s see. Judging from the weakening of the pyramid’s defenses and the rate at which my power is being expended, I’d say I could withstand nine more attacks, or just over two days, which would take us to dawn on the equinox. Ha! That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “And then?” Walt asked.

  “Then my pyramid will be breached. My minions will be killed. I’m guessing Doomsday will happen all over, in fact. The fall equinox would be a sensible time for Apophis to rise. He’ll probably cast me into the abyss, or possibly scatter my essence across the universe in a billion pieces. Hmm…the physics of a god’s death.” His pocket watch turned into a pen. He scribbled something on the neck of his guitar. “That would make an excellent research paper.”

  “Thoth,” Walt prompted. “Tell Carter what you told me, about why you’re being targeted.”

  “I thought that was obvious,” Thoth said. “Apophis wants to distract me from helping you. That is why you’ve come, isn’t it? To find out about the serpent’s shadow?”

  For a moment I was too stunned to speak. “How did you know?”

  “Please.” Thoth played a Jimi Hendrix riff, then set down his guitar. “I am the god of knowledge. I knew sooner or later you’d come to the conclusion that your only hope of victory was a shadow execration.”

  “A shadow execration,” I repeated. “That’s an actual spell with an actual name? It could work?”

  “In theory.”

  “And you didn’t volunteer this information—why?”

  Thoth snorted. “Knowledge of any value can’t be given. It must be sought and earned. You’re a teacher now, Carter. You should know this.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to strangle him or hug him. “So, I’m seeking the knowledge. I’m earning the knowledge. How do I defeat Apophis?”

  “I’m so glad you asked!” Thoth beamed at me with his multicolored eyes. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you.”

  I glanced at Walt. “Do you want to kill him, or should I?”

  “Now, now,” Thoth said. “I can guide you a little. But you’ll have to connect the freckles, as they say.”

  “Dots,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re on the right track. The sheut could be used to destroy a god, or even Apophis himself. And yes, like all sentient beings, Apophis has a shadow, though he keeps that part of his soul well hidden and well guarded.”

  “So where is it?” I asked. “How do we use it?”

  Thoth spread his hands. “The second question I can’t answer. The first question I’m not allowed to answer.”

  Walt shoved his plate aside. “I’ve been trying to get it out of him, Carter. For a god of knowledge, he isn’t very helpful.”

  “Come on, Thoth,” I said. “Can’t we do a quest for you or something? Couldn’t we blow up Elvis’s house again?”

  “Tempting,” the god said. “But you must understand, giving a mortal the location of an immortal’s shadow—even Apophis’s—would be a grave crime. The other gods already think I’m a sell-out. Over the centuries, I’ve divulged too many secrets to mankind. I taught you the art of writing. I taught you magic and founded the House of Life.”

  “Which is why magicians still honor you,” I said. “So help us one more time.”

  “And give humans knowledge that could be used to destroy the gods?” Thoth sighed. “Can you understand why my brethren might object to such a thing?”

  I clenched my fists. I thought about my mother’s spirit huddling beneath a cliff, fighting to stay put. The dark force had to be Apophis’s shadow. Apophis had shown me that vision to make me despair. As his power grew, his shadow grew stronger too. It was pulling in the spirits of the dead, consuming them.

  I could guess the shadow was somewhere in the Duat, but that didn’t help. It was like saying somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The Duat was huge.

  I glared at Thoth. “Your other option is not to help us and let Apophis destroy the world.”

  “Point taken,” he admitted, “which is why I’m still talking to you. There is a way you could find the shadow’s location. Long ago, when I was young and naïve, I wrote a book—a field study, of sorts—called the Book of Thoth.”

  “Catchy name,” Walt muttered.

  “I thought so!” Thoth said. “At any rate, it described every form and disguise each god can take, their most secret hiding places—all sorts of embarrassing details.”

  “Including how to find their shadows?” I asked.

  “No comment. At any rate, I never meant for humans to read the book, but it was stolen in ancient times by a crafty magician.”

  “Where is it now?” I asked. Then I held up my hands. “Wait…let me guess. You can’t tell us.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Thoth said. “This crafty magician hid the book. Fortunately he died before he could take full advantage of it, but he did use its knowledge to formulate a number of spells, including the shadow execration. He wrote down his thoughts in a special variation of the Book of Overcoming Apophis.”

  “Setne,” I said. “That’s the magician you’re talking about.”

  “Indeed. His spell was only theoretical, of course. Even I never had that knowledge. And as you know, all copies of his scroll have now been destroyed.”

  “So it’s hopeless,” I said. “Dead end.”

  “Oh, no,” Thoth said. “You could ask Setne himself. He wrote the spell. He hid the Book of Thoth that, ahem, may or may not describe the shadow’s location. If he were so inclined, he could help you.”

  “But hasn’t Setne been dead for thousands of years?”

  Thoth grinned. “Yes. And that’s only the first problem.”

  Thoth told us about Setne, who’d apparently been pretty famous in Ancient Egypt—like Robin Hood, Merlin, and Attila the Hun rolled into one. The more I heard, the less I wanted to meet him.

  “He was a pathological liar,” Thoth said. “A scoundrel, a traitor, a thief, and a brilliant magician. He prided himself on stealing books of knowledge, including mine. He battled monsters, adventured in the Duat, conquered gods, and broke into sacred tombs. He created curses that couldn’t be lifted and unearthed secrets that should have stayed buried. He was quite the evil genius.”

  Walt tugged at his amulets. “Sounds like you admire him.”

  The god gave him a sidelong grin. “Well, I appreciate the pursuit of knowledge, but I couldn’t endorse Setne’s methods. He’d stop at nothing to possess the secrets of the universe. He wanted to be a god, you see—not the eye of a god. A full-fledged immortal.”

  “Which is impossible,” I guessed.

  “Hard, not impossible,” Thoth said. “Imhotep, the first mortal magician—he was made a god after his death.” Thoth turned toward his computers. “That reminds me, I haven’t seen Imhotep in millennia. I wonder what he’s up to. Perhaps I should Google him—”

  “Thoth,” Walt said, “concentrate.”

  “Right. So, Setne. He created this spell for destroying any being—even a god. I could never endorse such knowledge falling into the hands of a mortal, but hypothetically speaking, if you needed the spell to defeat Apophis, you might be able to convince Setne to teac
h you the enchantment and lead you to the shadow of Apophis.”

  “Except Setne’s dead,” I said. “We keep coming back to that.”

  Walt sat up. “Unless…you’re suggesting we find his spirit in the Underworld. But if Setne was so evil, wouldn’t Osiris have condemned him in the Hall of Judgment? Ammit would’ve eaten his heart, and he would have ceased to exist.”

  “Normally, yes,” Thoth said. “But Setne is a special case. He’s quite…persuasive. Even before the court of the Underworld, he was able to, ah, manipulate the legal system. Many times, Osiris sentenced him to oblivion, but Setne always managed to evade punishment. He got a lighter sentence, or he made a plea bargain, or he simply escaped. He’s managed to survive—as a spirit, at least—all these eons.”

  Thoth turned his swirling eyes toward me. “But recently, Carter Kane, your father became Osiris. He’s been cracking down on rebellious ghosts, trying to restore Ma’at to the Underworld. The next time the sun sets, approximately fourteen hours from now, Setne is scheduled for a new trial. He will come before your father. And this time—”

  “My dad won’t let him go.” I felt like the demon’s hands were closing around my throat again.

  My father was fair but stern. He didn’t take excuses from anyone. All the years we’d traveled together, I could never even get away with leaving my shirt untucked. If Setne was as bad as Thoth said, my father would show him no mercy. He’d toss this guy’s heart to Ammit the Devourer like it was a doggie biscuit.

  Walt’s eyes shone with excitement. He looked more animated than I’d seen him in a long time. “We can plead with your dad,” he said. “We can get Setne’s trial delayed, or ask for a reduced sentence in exchange for Setne’s help. The laws of the Underworld allow that.”

  I frowned. “How do you know so much about dead people’s court?”

  I regretted saying that immediately. I realized that he’d probably been preparing himself to face that courtroom. Maybe that’s what he’d been discussing with Thoth earlier.

  I’m afraid you don’t have much time, Thoth had said.

  “Sorry, man,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” Walt said. “But we have to try. If we can convince your dad to spare Setne—”

  Thoth laughed. “That would be amusing, wouldn’t it? If Setne got off yet again, because his evil ways were the only thing that might save the world?”

  “Hilarious,” I said. The brisket sandwich wasn’t sitting well in my stomach. “So you’re suggesting we go to my father’s court and try to save the ghost of an evil psychotic magician. Then we ask this ghost to lead us to Apophis’s shadow and teach us how to destroy it, while trusting that he won’t escape, kill us, or betray us to the enemy.”

  Thoth nodded enthusiastically. “You’d have to be crazy! I certainly hope you are.”

  I took a deep breath. “I guess I’m crazy.”

  “Excellent!” Thoth cheered. “One more thing, Carter. To make this work, you’ll need Walt’s help, but he’s running out of time. His only chance—”

  “It’s fine,” Walt snapped. “I’ll tell him myself.”

  Before I could ask what he meant, the overtime buzzer blared from the arena’s speakers.

  “It’s almost dawn,” Thoth said. “You two had better leave, before the demons return. Good luck. And by all means, give Setne my regards—if you live that long, of course.”

  C A R T E R

  8. My Sister, The Flowerpot

  THE RIDE BACK WASN’T FUN.

  Walt and I held on to the boat while our teeth chattered and our eyes jiggled. The magic fog had turned the color of blood. Ghostly voices whispered angrily, like they’d decided to riot and loot the ethereal world.

  Sooner than I expected, Freak pushed his way out of the Duat. We found ourselves over the New Jersey dockyards, our boat trailing steam as Freak bobbed wearily through the air. In the distance, the Manhattan skyline gleamed gold in the sunrise.

  Walt and I hadn’t spoken during the trip. The Duat tends to put a damper on conversation. Now he regarded me sheepishly.

  “I should explain some things,” he said.

  I can’t pretend I wasn’t curious. As his sickness had progressed, Walt had gotten more and more secretive. I wondered what he’d been talking about with Thoth.

  But it wasn’t my business. After Sadie learned my secret name last spring and got a free tour of my innermost thoughts, I’d become sensitive about respecting people’s privacy.

  “Look, Walt, it’s your personal life,” I said. “If you don’t want to tell—”

  “But it’s not just personal. You need to know what’s going on. I—I won’t be around much longer.”

  I gazed down at the harbor, the Statue of Liberty passing below us. For months I’d known Walt was dying. It never got easier to accept. I remembered what Apophis had said at the Dallas Museum: Walt wouldn’t live long enough to see the end of the world.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Isn’t there some way—?”

  “Anubis is sure,” he said. “I’ve got until sunset tomorrow, at the very latest.”

  I didn’t want to hear another impossible deadline. By sunset tonight, we had to save the ghost of an evil magician. By sunset tomorrow, Walt would die. And the sunrise after that, if we were really lucky, we could look forward to Doomsday.

  I never liked being thwarted. Whenever I felt like something was impossible, I usually tried even harder out of sheer stubbornness.

  But at this point, I felt like Apophis was having a good laugh at my expense.

  Oh, you’re not a quitter? he seemed to be asking. How about now? What if we give you a few more impossible tasks? Are you a quitter now?

  Anger made a small hard knot in my gut. I kicked the side of the boat and nearly broke my foot.

  Walt blinked. “Carter, it’s—”

  “Don’t say it’s all right!” I snapped. “It’s not all right.”

  I wasn’t mad at him. I was mad at the unfairness of his stupid curse, and the fact that I kept failing people who depended on me. My parents had died to give Sadie and me a chance to save the world, which we were close to botching. In Dallas, dozens of good magicians had died because they’d tried to help me. Now we were about to lose Walt.

  Sure, he was important to Sadie. But I relied on him just as much. Walt was my unofficial lieutenant at Brooklyn House. The other kids listened to him. He was a calming presence in every crisis, the deciding vote in every debate. I could trust him with any secret—and even with making the execration statue of Apophis, which I couldn’t tell my uncle about. If Walt died…

  “I won’t let it happen,” I said. “I refuse.”

  Wild thoughts ran through my mind: Maybe Anubis was lying to Walt about his imminent death, trying to push Walt away from Sadie. (Okay, unlikely. Sadie wasn’t that much of a prize.)

  [Yeah, Sadie, I really said that. Just checking to see if you were still paying attention.]

  Maybe Walt could beat the odds. People survived cancer miraculously. Why not ancient curses? Maybe we could put him in suspended animation like Iskandar had done for Zia, until we found an antidote. Sure, his family had been searching for a cure unsuccessfully for centuries. Jaz, our best healer, had tried everything with no luck. But maybe we’d overlooked something.

  “Carter,” Walt said. “Will you let me finish? We’ve got to make plans.”

  “How can you be so calm?” I demanded.

  Walt fingered his shen necklace, the twin of the one he’d given Sadie. “I’ve known about my curse for years. I won’t let it stop me from doing what I need to. One way or another, I’m going to help you beat Apophis.”

  “How?” I said. “You just told me—”

  “Anubis has an idea,” Walt said. “He’s been helping me make sense of my powers.”

  “You mean…” I glanced at Walt’s hands. Several times I’d seen him turn objects to ashes simply by touching them, the way he’d done to that criosphinx in Dallas. The power di
dn’t come from any of his magic items. None of us understood it, and as Walt’s disease progressed, he seemed less and less able to control it, which made me think twice about giving the guy a high five.

  Walt flexed his fingers. “Anubis thinks he understands why I have that ability. And there’s more. He thinks there might be a way to extend my life.”

  That was such good news that I let out a shaky laugh. “Why didn’t you say so? He can cure you?”

  “No,” Walt said. “Not a cure. And it’s risky. It’s never been done before.”

  “That’s what you were talking to Thoth about.”

  Walt nodded. “Even if Anubis’s plan works, there could be…side effects. You might not like it.” He lowered his voice. “Sadie might not like it.”

  Unfortunately, I had a vivid imagination. I envisioned Walt turning into some sort of undead creature—a withered mummy, a ghostly ba, or a disfigured demon. In Egyptian magic, side effects could be pretty extreme.

  I tried not to let my emotions show. “We want you to live. Don’t worry about Sadie.”

  I could tell from Walt’s eyes that he worried about Sadie a lot. Seriously, what did he see in my sister?

  [Stop hitting me, Sadie. I’m just being honest.]

  Walt flexed his fingers. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I detected wisps of gray steam curling from his hands, as if just talking about his strange power had made it turn active.

  “I won’t make the decision yet,” Walt said. “Not until I’m on my last breath. I want to talk to Sadie first, explain to her…”

  He rested his hand on the side of the boat. That was a mistake. The woven reeds turned gray under his touch.

  “Walt, stop!” I yelped.

  He jerked his hand away, but it was too late. The boat crumbled to ashes.

  We lunged for the ropes. Thankfully they did not crumble—maybe because Walt was paying more attention now. Freak squawked as the boat disappeared, and suddenly Walt and I were dangling under the griffin’s belly, holding on to the ropes for dear life and bonking into each other as we flew above the skyscrapers of Manhattan.