by Rick Riordan
Ostracon #1
Zia is different since her return from London. Her yellow-red aura now flickers with blue, like the blue at the heart of a flame. What does it mean? Perhaps nothing more than that her skills with fire have intensified.
Ostracon #2
Our sau tells me Zia asked him for a maw amulet. A fire elementalist wearing a water symbol is disturbing. If it was anyone else but Zia…still, it would be prudent to watch her.
Ostracon #3
Zia is napping. I listen at her door. She is talking in her sleep. Hapi is happy. Why would she dream of the blue giant who inhabits the Nile?
Ostracon #4
I caught Zia staring at a memory in the Hall of Ages just now. A memory of Set screaming in anger at his wife’s betrayal. When I pulled her back, her eyes were black with fear.
Ostracon #5
Zia lingers longingly by the fountain of Thoth, plunging her arms deep in the water when she thinks I’m not looking.
Ostracon #6
Thoth help me, I have been blind. My fire child is the godling of Nephthys.
Ostracon #7
I have communed with the goddess. She has known from the start that Zia is not a suitable host. She can feel Zia’s growing confusion. Yet the goddess hesitates to leave. She fears Set will discover her and force her to join him. Within Zia she is safe, her water hidden by Zia’s fire.
Ostracon #8
Nephthys has a plan to save them both. She has promised to protect my fire child. Thoth help me, I pray it works.
Ostracon #9
My ancient hands shake as I sculpt. This, my last shabti, must be my masterpiece, every detail exact. More lives than Zia’s depend upon it. But I confess her life is the only one I think of.
Ostracon #10
Zia knows. I needed a snip of her hair to imbue the shabti with her essence. She communes with the goddess even now.
Ostracon #11
The fear and trust in her eyes as I crossed Ra’s crook and flail upon her chest…my heart breaks to remember it. Nephthys, preserve her sanity. Keep her safe. And free her at your first opportunity.
Ostracon #12
I found these potsherds scattered in the waters by our tomb. I send them with tears shed for your loss. May you meet Iskandar again in Aaru.
I’m not what you’d call buff or intimidating. (Keep your comments to yourself, Sadie!) Oh, Carter, why would I say anything when your self-evaluation is so spot on?—Sadie. So, yeah, it was fun being the muscle while hosting Horus, the god of war. The downside to sharing my mind with him—besides the constant threat of burning up when his power became too hot to handle—was having to listen to him brag about his victories. Funny how he never talked about his losses…
Circle the correct answer:
1. Horus’s great-grandfather is a) Khufu; b) Imhotep; c) Ra; d) Tefnut.
2. What are the two different colors of Horus’s eyes? a) baby blue and sea green; b) pitch black and milky white; c) gold and silver; d) it’s a trick question; his eyes are swirling kaleidoscopes of all colors.
3. Horus’s sword is called a a) khopesh; b) wedjat; c) netjeri; d) tjesu heru.
4. Horus has two sacred animals, one of which is mythological. What are they? a) penguin and sphinx; b) hippo and uraeus; c) cobra and serpopard; d) falcon and griffin.
5. Horus’s avatar is a) a penguin-headed hippo; b) a falcon-headed warrior; c) a flying cobra; d) an empty trench coat.
6. If Horus had a favorite toy, it would be a) Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots; b) a kite (the kind that flies on a string, not the bird); c) a hula hoop; d) a Paint the Tomb by Numbers kit.
Answers:
1. c: Khufu is the name of a famous pharaoh (also of our resident baboon). Imhotep was a famous architect, mathematician, and healer. Teflon was…Wait, who was this again?
2. c: Thoth is the one with the kaleidoscope eyes.
3. a: The wedjat is Horus’s hieroglyph symbol. A netjeri is a knife made of meteoric iron used during the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. The tjesu heru is a nasty two-headed snake.
4. d: Sphinx, uraeus, and serpopard are all bizarre mythological creatures, though chances are an ancient Egyptian would consider a penguin bizarre, too.
5. b: I’ve seen a flying cobra—called a uraeus—and an empty animated trench coat. But a penguin-headed hippo? C’mon, not even Egyptian creatures could get that weird.
6. a: Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots is a classic toy featuring two plastic robots that punch each other in the face over and over until one of their heads pops up. Pointless? Perhaps. Entertaining? Hugely. Would Horus have loved it? Definitely!
JUST when you think you know a god, you discover something new and surprising, as I found out on a recent visit to the First Nome. Uncle Amos was running late, so I wandered the Hall of Ages, the miles-long corridor flanked by shimmering curtains of memories from the ancient past to the present. Each age has its own color—gold for the dawn of time, silver and copper for the height of Egypt’s power, blue for the years of Egypt’s decline and fall to Rome, red for the beginning of its modern history. Our current era is deep purple.
I didn’t hang out in purple—um, been there, done that—and instead moved backward in time. Something between red and blue caught my eye. It’s not a good idea to dwell on the past, but I couldn’t stop myself. I entered the memory.
My mind exploded with images. I saw twenty-year-old Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh of Egypt, spill out of a rolled-up rug and land at the feet of Julius Caesar, a general of Rome. Her beauty captivated the fifty-two-year-old Roman, and the two became lovers. (I averted my eyes at that point.)
Twenty and fifty-two? I’m sorry, but eww! Although perhaps I’m not one to point fingers, since the boy I’m dating is sixteen going on five thousand.—Sadie
Time fast-forwarded one year, to 47 BCE. Cleopatra gave birth to a baby she nicknamed Caesarion, or Little Caesar. She assumed that Caesar, who had no other sons of his own, would claim the boy. I sensed her triumph at the thought that one day, her son would inherit Caesar’s position and wealth as well as Egypt’s throne.
Except he didn’t. Caesar ignored Cleopatra’s son and named his grandnephew Octavian as his sole heir. Cleopatra’s triumph morphed into rage. When Caesar was assassinated three years later and Octavian stepped into his granduncle’s sandals, her rage twisted into an obsession to unseat Octavian and put Caesarion on the throne. But she couldn’t do it alone. So, one night, with the toddler Caesarion at her side, she called for help.
“Isis!” Her demanding voice rang out in my mind. “Isis!”
The goddess of magic appeared. Cleopatra drew herself up. “I offer myself as host.” Then she laid a hand on Caesarion. “And I offer my son as host to your son.” Isis accepted and summoned Horus. They moved in that night.
I nearly pulled out of the memory then. The thought of a three-year-old toddler hosting the god of war—it was horrifying. Then I remembered how ferocious our own little ankle-biter Shelby could be. If Caesarion was anything like her, he probably held his own hosting Horus.
Then the memory sped forward. Cleopatra fell in love with Octavian’s Roman rival, Mark Antony. She added her money, army, and the power of Isis to his side. In 32 BCE, they challenged Octavian for control of Rome and Egypt. War raged for nearly two years. On August 1, 30 BCE, Octavian won.
Devastated and humiliated, Antony committed suicide.
Ten days later, Cleopatra secluded herself in her bedroom. She removed a deadly asp from a basket and pressed its fangs to her chest. The asp bit her, pumping its poison into her veins. Asp venom doesn’t kill instantly; it paralyzes. Cleopatra collapsed on her bed and waited for death.
These scenes flashed through my mind at lightning speed. When the asp bared its fangs, though, they slowed, as if to show me something important. That’s when I saw it—a dark red snake superimposed over the asp. I sucked in my breath.
The Chaos snake, Apophis!
No, I amended. One of his minion
s.
As though responding to my thoughts, the memory shifted again. I plunged deep into the abyss, where the cat goddess Bast was battling the serpent of Chaos. She faltered for a moment, just long enough for Apophis to dispatch his servant with a whispered order: Strike Isis.
The minion shot upward through the Duat to Cleopatra’s bedroom. It coiled around the asp. When the asp bit Cleopatra, the red snake bit Isis. Its poison mimicked the asp’s venom. As Cleopatra succumbed to paralysis, so did Isis.
Isis once used a serpent to poison a VIG (Very Important God). That she was almost a victim of venom herself…well, karma, irony, and all that.—Sadie
But unlike Cleopatra, Isis didn’t want to perish. “Horus!”
Horus heard his mother’s pleas. He deserted Caesarion, flew to Cleopatra’s bedroom, and wrenched Isis from the pharaoh’s dying body. They fled south, away from Egypt and Rome and the magicians who, on Chief Lector Iskandar’s orders, were banishing the gods. Using monuments, artifacts, and temporary hosts like stepping-stones, Horus and Isis reached a distant Nubian settlement called Kush.
I’d been to the ruins of Kush with my father. Now I was seeing it in its glory days. Kush wasn’t as grand as Egypt, but it radiated power. At the center of that power was the settlement’s leader, an intelligent and ferocious warrior kandake named Amanirenas. When Carter related this story to me, I thought he said, “A warrior candy cane named Amana Radar Range.”—Sadie A female warrior—kandake means queen. With her was her son, Prince Akinidad.
Horus appeared before them, the much-weakened Isis cradled in his arms. Amanirenas sized up the situation immediately. “I offer myself as host,” she said. But when Horus gestured for Isis to go to the queen, Amanirenas held up her hand. “Not to her. To you.”
Isis protested. But Horus saw his chance for revenge. “I will combine my strength with the kandake,” he told his mother. “When she faces Octavian’s forces—and she will—we will stop them together. I will fight to avenge Cleopatra, last of the pharaohs. I will fight for what Caesarion was denied. I will defeat them and deliver a blow to Octavian. And you will take the prince as your host, and heal while at my side.”
Prince Akinidad didn’t seem too keen on hosting Isis, but Queen Amanirenas’s eyes gleamed with triumph as Horus merged with her.
I didn’t see what happened next, because Uncle Amos pulled me away from the curtain. Probably a good thing; I was getting a little too involved.
But later, back in the Brooklyn House library, I looked up Amanirenas and Akinidad. The queen did fight the Romans, just as Isis had predicted. She won, too, and took a bronze bust of Octavian—then known as Caesar Augustus, first emperor of the Roman Empire—as a trophy. She buried the bust in the ground beneath her temple door. For years to come, anyone who entered or exited stepped on his head.
Not a bad bit of revenge, Horus, I thought, knowing that some Egyptian magic uses statues to affect people. Augustus probably had headaches for years.
I discovered other hints of Horus in Amanirenas’s history, too. Like the fact that she lost an eye in battle; Horus had lost his left eye when fighting Set. Strabo, an ancient Greek writer, described the kandake as having a “masculine figure.” He could have been seeing Horus without realizing what he was seeing. And there’s a stone etching depicting her as quite large and looming high above her foes. To me, the etching looks like Amanirenas is encased in Horus’s avatar. A bird of prey, possibly a falcon, swoops overhead.
I also learned that Caesarion was killed by Octavian a mere eleven days after Cleopatra’s death. That was sad, but not surprising. After all, he’d lost his mother and the god he’d hosted almost his whole life. That’d be enough to leave anyone vulnerable.
What did surprise me, though, was that Horus abandoned Caesarion to rescue Isis in the first place. I mean, Horus wasn’t exactly the ideal son. He cut off Isis’s head once just because she made him mad. But maybe saving her was his way of apologizing for that. And maybe it explains why he and I melded together so well. If I had been around when my mother’s life was threatened, I would have given up anything to save her. Perhaps he recognized that side of himself in me.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the idea of Horus being hosted by the fearsome warrior queen doesn’t bother me. I like strong women. My mom is one. So is my girlfriend. And Sadie? She just might be the most powerful of them all.
Carter! I take back every mean thing I ever said about you! Which, I grant you, could take some time. It’s a long list.
—Sadie
HORUS MERGED WITH A DAME, HUH? I GOT NO PROBLEM WITH THAT. SEE, I’VE GOT MY EYE ON A LITTLE DUAL-GENDER NUMBER MYSELF. I’D TELL YOU WHO, BUT THAT WOULD WRECK THE SURPRISE I HAVE IN STORE….—SETNE
I once asked Anubis how many funerals he had attended in his life. He gave me a strange look—though maybe it only seemed strange because he was peering at me through Walt’s eyes. His reply was “All of them.”
Fill in the blanks:
1. Anubis is my boyfriend.
While this is technically correct, given that Sadie is the one answering the questions, we were looking for “the god of funerals and death.”
2. You can recognize him by his hotness. Also, his warm brown eyes, which he uses to melt my innards regularly.
Again, though this is true enough in Sadie’s case, the answer we were looking for is “jackal head.”
3. You are most likely to find Anubis not in my bedroom! Honest!
Um…right. The answer is “in graveyards, at funerals, and any other place where death is present.”
For some reason, Carter gave up after this question. He didn’t even have Walt write anything about Anubis! Wonder why?—Sadie
Three words: Best. Dwarf. Ever.
Short answer essay question: In ancient times, the magicians of the House of Life allowed Bes, the dwarf god, to remain in the mortal world when the other gods were banished. Was this a sound decision?
Absolutely! Bes is unique among the gods. For one thing, he doesn’t take a host—at least, I don’t think he does. I’ve never seen him as anything other than his wonderfully hideous self, anyway. Unlike some gods, who use humans for their own purposes, Bes is fiercely loyal to and protective of his mortal friends. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurl his short, potbellied, Speedo-clad, hair-covered body in front of danger to save someone he loves. And that sonic Boo! he blasts out of his enormous rubbery-lipped mouth has kept me alive more than once. If that isn’t enough to convince you, ask anyone who’s seen him with his girlfriend, Tawaret. No question in my mind: Bes is and always has been a class act deserving of special consideration.
You might be wondering how we got this entry, seeing as how the gods aren’t in our world right now. Well, Bes has special privileges, being one of the most beloved gods of the Egyptian people. So he checks in with us now and then.—Sadie
TODAY’S mortals mystify me. You’re so obsessed with beauty, you ignore a source of real power. I’m talking about ugly, of course.
Before I go on, let me be clear. The ugly I’m referring to is on the outside. I’m not into inside ugly, and I don’t associate with anyone who is. So, if you’re reading this to get tips on hurling insults, belittling others to look bigger, or besmirching characters, the exit portal’s over there.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: But, Bes, I have an adorable button nose, naturally tidy hair, and perfect posture. How can I possibly channel the power of ugly? Put your concern to bed, give it a kiss good night, and turn out the light, because I have just the thing: my patented five-step uglification program. And yes, uglification is a word. Or perhaps you have a better term for the opposite of beautification?
Five Steps to an Uglier, More Powerful You!
Step 1: Put your best foot forward.
Toenails make a statement, so don’t be afraid to show them off! For the greatest visual impact, grow them out until they curl, then drag the tips across a rough, dirty surface until they are a ragged, filthy mes
s. If possible, contract a case of toenail fungus. Given enough time and neglect, the thick yellow crud will spread to all ten toes.
Sometimes, it’s not practical to go barefoot. Don’t fret! Shoes, either on their own or paired with the right socks, can de-hance any look. Strut your stuff in Velcro sports sandals with black tube socks, or slip on a pair of Sobek’s namesakes, Crocs, with or without plastic sparkle embellishments. Critics agree: they don’t come any uglier than that!
Psst! Bitten-down fingernails, dry, scaly red hands, and knitted fingerless gloves are this winter’s best-kept ugly secret. Pass it on!
Step 2: Hair you go!
Nothing makes ’em run for cover like body hair in all the right places. So, never shave those legs and underarms. There’s power in your pits—go ahead and let those rugs grow out into full shaggy glory! And never wash them, either. Embrace the musk! Also, over-productive facial follicles are your friends, because no one messes with a guy rocking an untrimmed beard that merges with his eyebrows. Extra points for sweater-thick back and chest hair and curly nose and ear threads!
Psst! False beards are ancient history. But false mutton chops are delish! And not just for men anymore. Pass it on!
Step 3: Get inspired by tired attire.
We’ve all been there—big night out, and nothing to wear. Well, you could wear nothing, but I don’t recommend it for beginners. Instead, try these words on for size: fashion faux pas throwbacks. Mix and mismatch shoulder-padded jackets, bell-bottoms, belly shirts, mom jeans, prairie skirts, and sailor shirts. Dig deep into history’s closets for epaulets, frilly neckwear, clogs, and butt bustles. Or go for the never-fail look of a filthy, half-tied bathrobe over ill-fitting swimwear—baggy and droopy, or ultra-tight for the bulging-fat look, it’s your choice! In the end, the only wrong way to look wrong is to look right. Psst! Beware the Hawaiian shirt. Once the go-to ugly garment, it’s now worn “ironically” by so-called cool people. Pass it on!