by Rick Riordan
Mad Claude gripped the trim of his toga as if he wanted to strangle us with it. “Look, I don’t know why you need this scroll to free us if you’ve got the knife. But why don’t you try an offering? All gods need offerings.”
Walt rummaged through his supplies. He placed a juice pouch and a bit of beef jerky at the foot of the statue. The statue did nothing. Even the gold rats at his feet apparently didn’t want our beef jerky.
“Bloody spit god.” I threw myself down on the dusty ground. I had a mummy on either side of me, but I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t believe we were so close to the last scroll, after fighting demons, gods, and Russian assassins, and now we’d been stopped by a pile of rocks.
“I hate to suggest it,” Walt said, “but you could blast through with the ha-di spell.”
“And bring down the ceiling on top of us?” I said.
“You’d die,” Claude agreed. “Which isn’t an experience I’d recommend.”
Walt knelt next to me. “There’s got to be something…” He took stock of his amulets.
Mad Claude paced the room. “I still don’t understand. You’re priests. You have the ceremonial knife. Why can’t you release us?”
“The knife isn’t for you!” I snapped. “It’s for Ra!”
Walt and Claude both stared at me. I hadn’t realized it before, but as soon as I spoke, I knew it was the truth.
“Sorry,” I said. “But the knife is used for the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, to free a soul. I’ll need it to awaken Ra. That’s why Anubis gave it to me.”
“You know Anubis!” Claude clapped with delight. “He can free us all! And you—” He pointed at Walt. “You’re one of Anubis’s chosen, aren’t you? You can get us more knives if you need them! I sensed the presence of the god around you as soon as we met. Did you take his service when he realized you were dying?”
“Wait…what?” I asked.
Walt wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m not a priest of Anubis.”
“But dying?” I choked up. “How are you dying?”
Mad Claude looked incredulous. “You mean you don’t know? He’s got the old pharaoh’s curse. We didn’t see it much in my day, but I recognize it, all right. Occasionally a person from one of the old Egyptian royal lines—”
“Claude, shut up,” I said. “Walt, speak. How does this curse work?”
In the dim light, he looked thinner and older. On the wall behind him, his shadow loomed like a deformed monster.
“Akhenaton’s curse runs in my family,” he said. “Kind of a genetic disease. Not every generation, not every person, but when it strikes, it’s bad. Tut died at nineteen. Most of the others…twelve, thirteen. I’m sixteen now. My dad…my dad was eighteen. I never knew him.”
“Eighteen?” That alone brought up a host of new questions, but I tried to stay focused. “Can’t it be cured…?” Guilt washed over me, and I felt like a total imbecile. “Oh, god. That’s why you were talking to Jaz. She’s a healer.”
Walt nodded grimly. “I thought she might know spells that I hadn’t been able to find. My dad’s family—they spent years searching. My mom has been looking for a cure since I was born. The doctors in Seattle couldn’t do anything.”
“Doctors,” Mad Claude said with disgust. “I had one in the legion, loved to put leeches on my legs. Only made me worse. Now, about this connection to Anubis, and using that knife…”
Walt shook his head. “Claude, we’ll try to help you, but not with the knife. I know magic items. I’m pretty sure it can be used only once, and we can’t just make another. If Sadie needs it for Ra, she can’t risk using it before that.”
“Excuses!” Claude roared.
“If you don’t shut up,” I warned, “I’m going to find your mummy and draw a mustache on your portrait!”
Claude turned as white as…well, a ghost. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Walt,” I said, trying to ignore the Roman, “was Jaz able to help?”
“She tried her best. But this curse has been defying healers for three thousand years. Modern doctors think it’s related to sickle cell anemia, but they don’t know. They’ve been trying for decades to figure out how King Tut died, and they can’t agree. Some say poison. Some say a genetic disease. It’s the curse, but of course they can’t say that.”
“Isn’t there any way? I mean we know gods. Perhaps I could cure you like Isis did Ra. If I knew your secret name—”
“Sadie, I’ve thought of that,” he said. “I’ve thought of everything. The curse can’t be cured. It can only be slowed down if…if I avoid magic. That’s why I got into talismans and amulets. They store magic in advance, so they don’t require as much from the user. But it’s only helped a little bit. I was born to do magic, so the curse progresses in me no matter what I do. Some days it’s not so bad. Some days my whole body is in pain. When I do magic, it gets worse.”
“And the more you do—”
“The faster I die.”
I punched him in the chest. I couldn’t help it. All my grief and guilt flipped right to anger. “You idiot! Why are you here, then? You should’ve told me to shove off! Bes warned you to stay in Brooklyn. Why didn’t you listen?”
What I told you earlier about Walt’s eyes not melting me? I take it back. When he looked at me in that dusty tomb, his eyes were every bit as dark, tender, and sad as Anubis’s. “I’m going to die anyway, Sadie. I want my life to mean something. And…I want to spend as much time as I can with you.”
That hurt me worse than a punch in the chest. Much worse.
I think I might’ve kissed him. Or possibly slapped him.
Mad Claude, however, was not a sympathetic audience. “Very sweet, I’m sure, but you promised me payment! Come back to the Roman tombs. Release my spirit from my mummy. Then release the others. After that, you can do as you like.”
“The others?” I asked. “Are you mad?”
He stared at me.
“Silly question,” I conceded. “But there are thousands of mummies. We have one knife.”
“You promised!”
“We did not,” I said. “You said we’d discuss a fee after we found the scroll. We’ve found nothing but a dead end here.”
The ghost growled, more like a wolf than a human. “If you won’t come to us,” he said, “we’ll come to you.”
His spirit glowed, then disappeared in a flash.
I looked nervously at Walt. “What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we should figure out how to get through that rubble and get out of here—quickly.”
Despite our best efforts, nothing happened quickly. We couldn’t move the debris. There were too many large boulders. We couldn’t dig around, over, or under it. I didn’t dare risk a ha-di spell or use the black knife’s magic. Walt had no amulets that would help. I was frankly stumped. The statue of Ptah smiled at us but didn’t offer any helpful suggestions, nor did he seem interested in the beef jerky and juice.
Finally, covered with dust, drenched with sweat, I plopped down on a stone sarcophagus and examined my blistered fingers.
Walt sat next to me. “Don’t give up. There has to be a way.”
“Does there?” I asked, feeling especially resentful. “Like there has to be a cure for you? What if there isn’t? What if…”
My voice broke. Walt turned his face so it was hidden in shadow.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was terrible. But I just couldn’t stand it if…”
I was so confused, I didn’t know what to say, or how I felt. All I knew was that I didn’t want to lose Walt.
“Did you mean it?” I asked. “When you said you wanted to spend time…you know.”
Walt shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious?”
I didn’t answer, but, please—nothing is obvious with boys. For such simple creatures, they are quite baffling.
I imagined I was blushing fiercely, so I decided to change the subject.
“Claude said he sensed
the spirit of Anubis about you. You’ve been talking to Anubis a lot?”
Walt turned his rings. “I thought maybe he could help me. Maybe grant me a little extra time before…before the end. I wanted to be around long enough to help you defeat Apophis. Then I’d feel like I did something with my life. And…there were other reasons I wanted to talk to him. About some—some powers I’ve been developing.”
“What sort of powers?”
It was Walt’s turn to change the subject. He looked at his hands like they’d become dangerous weapons. “The thing is, I almost didn’t come to Brooklyn. When I got the djed amulet —that calling card you guys sent—my mom didn’t want me to leave. She knew that learning magic would make the curse accelerate. Part of me was afraid to go. Part of me was angry. It seemed like a cruel joke. You guys offered to train me for magic when I knew I wouldn’t survive longer than a year or two.”
“A year or two?” I could hardly breathe. I’d always thought of a year as an incredibly long time. I’d waited forever to turn thirteen. And each school term seemed like an eternity. But suddenly two years seemed much too short. I’d only be fifteen, not even driving yet. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to know that I would die in two years—possibly sooner, if I continued doing what I was born to do, practicing magic. “Why did you come to Brooklyn, then?”
“I had to,” Walt said. “I’ve lived my whole life under the threat of death. My mom made everything so serious, so huge. But when I got to Brooklyn, I felt like I had a destiny, a purpose. Even if it made the curse more painful, it was worth it.”
“But it’s so bloody unfair.”
Walt looked at me, and I realized he was smiling. “That’s my line. I’ve been saying that for years. Sadie, I want to be here. The past two months I’ve felt like I’m actually living for the first time. And getting to know you…” He cleared his throat. He was quite attractive when he got nervous. “I started worrying about small things. My hair. My clothes. Whether I brushed my teeth. I mean, I’m dying, and I’m worrying about my teeth.”
“You have lovely teeth.”
He laughed. “That’s what I mean. A little comment like that, and I feel better. All these small things suddenly seem important. I don’t feel like I’m dying. I feel happy.”
Personally, I felt miserable. For months I’d dreamed about Walt admitting he liked me, but not like this—not like, I can be honest with you, because I’m dying anyway.
Something he’d said was nagging at me, too. It reminded me of a lesson I’d taught at Brooklyn House, and an idea began to form in my mind.
“‘Small things suddenly seem important,’” I repeated. I looked down at a little mound of rubble we’d cleared from the blocked doorway. “Oh, it couldn’t be that easy.”
“What?” asked Walt.
“Rocks.”
“I just bared my soul, and you’re thinking about rocks?”
“The doorway,” I said. “Sympathetic magic. Do you think…”
He blinked. “Sadie Kane, you’re a genius.”
“Well I know that. But can we make it work?”
Walt and I began gathering up more pebbles. We chipped some pieces from the larger boulders and added them to our pile. We tried our best to make a miniature replica of the rubble collection blocking the doorway.
My hope, of course, was to create a sympathetic bond, as I’d done with Carter and the wax figurine in Alexandria. The rocks in our replica pile came from the collapsed tunnel, so our pile and the original were already connected in substance, which should have made it easy to establish a link. But moving something very large with something very small is always tricky. If we didn’t do it carefully, we could collapse the whole room. I didn’t know how deep underground we were, but I imagined there was quite enough rock and dirt over our heads to bury us forever.
“Ready?” I asked.
Walt nodded and pulled out his wand.
“Oh, no, cursed boy,” I said. “You just watch my back. If the ceiling starts to fall and we need a shield, that’s your job. But you’ll do no magic unless absolutely necessary. I’ll clear the doorway.”
“Sadie, I’m not fragile,” he complained. “I don’t need a protector.”
“Rubbish,” I said. “That’s macho bluster, and all boys like to be mothered.”
“What? God, you’re annoying!”
I smiled sweetly. “You did want to spend time with me.”
Before he could protest, I raised my wand and began the spell.
I imagined a bond between our small pile of rubble and the debris in the doorway. I imagined that in the Duat, they were one and the same. I spoke the command for join:
“Hi-nehm.”
The symbol burned faintly over our miniature rubble pile.
Slowly and carefully, I brushed a few pebbles away from the pile. The debris in the corridor rumbled.
“It’s working,” Walt said.
I didn’t dare look. I stayed focused on my task—moving the pebbles a little at a time, dispersing the pile into smaller mounds. It was almost as hard as moving real boulders. I went into a daze. When Walt put his hand on my shoulder, I had no idea how much time had passed. I was so exhausted I couldn’t see straight.
“It’s done,” he said. “You did great.”
The doorway was clear. The rubble had been pushed into the corners of our room, where it lay in smaller piles.
“Nice job, Sadie.” Walt leaned down and kissed me. He was probably just expressing appreciation or happiness, but the kiss didn’t make me feel any less fuzzyheaded.
“Um,” I said—again with the incredible verbal skills.
Walt helped me to my feet. We headed down the corridor into the next room. For all the work we’d done to get there, the room wasn’t very exciting, just a five-meter-square chamber with nothing inside except a red lacquered box on a sandstone pedestal. On top of the box was a carved wooden handle shaped like a demonic greyhound with tall ears—the Set animal.
“Oh, that can’t be good,” Walt said.
But I walked straight up to the box, opened the lid, and grabbed the scroll inside.
“Sadie!” Walt yelled.
“What?” I turned. “It’s Set’s box. If he’d wanted to kill me, he could’ve done so in St. Petersburg. He wants me to have this scroll. Probably thinks it’ll be fun watching me kill myself trying to awaken Ra.” I looked up at the ceiling and shouted, “Isn’t that right, Set?”
My voice echoed through the catacombs. I no longer had the power to invoke Set’s secret name, but I still felt as if I’d gotten his attention. The air turned sharper. The ground trembled as if something underneath it, something very large, was laughing.
Walt exhaled. “I wish you wouldn’t take chances like that.”
“This from a boy who’s willing to die to spend time with me?”
Walt made an exaggerated bow. “I take it back, Miss Kane. Please, go right ahead trying to kill yourself.”
“Thank you.”
I looked at the three scrolls in my hands—the entire Book of Ra, together for probably the first time since Mad Claude wore little Roman diapers. I had collected the scrolls, done the impossible, triumphed beyond all expectations. Yet it still wouldn’t be enough unless we could find Ra and wake him before Apophis rose. “No time to waste,” I said. “Let’s get—”
Deep moaning echoed through the corridors, as if something—or a whole host of somethings—had woken up in a very bad mood.
“Out of here,” Walt said. “Great idea.”
As we ran through the previous chamber, I glanced at the statue of Ptah. I was tempted to take back the jerky and juice, just to be mean, but I decided against it.
I suppose it isn’t your fault, I thought. Can’t be easy to have a name like Ptah. Enjoy the snack, but I do wish you’d helped us.
We ran on. It wasn’t easy to remember our path. Twice we had to double back before finding the room with the family of mummies where we’d met Mad Cla
ude.
I was about to bolt blindly across the chamber and into the last tunnel, but Walt held me back and saved my life. He shined his light on the far exit, then on the corridors to either side.
“No,” I said. “No, no, no.”
All three doorways were clogged with human figures wrapped in linen. They pressed together as far as I could see down each corridor. Some were still completely bound. They hopped and shuffled and waddled forward as if they were giant cocoons engaged in a sack race. Other mummies had partially broken free. They limped along on emaciated legs, hands like dried branches clawing at their wrappings. Most still wore their painted-face portraits, and the effect was gruesome—lifelike masks smiling serenely at the top of undead scarecrows of bones and painted linen.
“I hate mummies,” I whimpered.
“Maybe a fire spell,” Walt said. “They’ve got to burn easily.”
“We’ll burn ourselves, too! It’s too close in here.”
“You have a better idea?”
I wanted to cry. Freedom so near—and just as I’d feared, we were trapped by a crowd of mummies. But these were worse than movie mummies. They were silent and slow, pathetic ruined things that once were human.
One of the mummies on the floor grabbed my leg. Before I could even scream, Walt reached out and tapped the thing on the wrist. The mummy instantly turned to dust.
I stared at him in amazement. “Is that the power you were worried about? That was brilliant! Do it again!”
Immediately I felt awful suggesting it. Walt’s face was tight with pain.
“I can’t do it a thousand more times,” he said sadly. “Maybe if…”
Then, on the central dais, the mummy family began to stir.
I will not lie. When the child-size mummy of little Pur-pens sat up, I almost had an accident that would’ve ruined my new jeans. If my ba could’ve shed my skin and flown away, it would have.
I gripped Walt’s arm.
At the far end of the room, the ghost of Mad Claude flickered into view. As he walked toward us, the rest of the mummies began to stir.
“You should be honored, my friends.” He gave us a crazy grin. “It takes a lot of excitement for ba to return to their withered old bodies. But we simply can’t let you leave until you’ve freed us for the afterlife. Use the knife, do your spells, and you can go.”