He dealt the flop. It had the king of hearts in it. “Re took on human form and ruled as the first pharaoh,” the mummy said.
The card flickered. Just for an instant, the crown turned into a King Tut headdress, and the sword, into a hooked stick. The fancy robes disappeared and left the king with a bare chest and a loincloth.
“Hey!” I said. I flashed the Thunderbird, but I wasn’t fast enough on the draw. The king already looked normal again by the time the emblem appeared.
“Is something wrong?” the Pharaoh asked.
“You changed the king. The way it looked.”
“Not intentionally, I assure you. But sometimes, when people like us speak of the sacred mysteries, a bit of power stirs and plays on its own.”
“Then maybe you should ‘speak of’ something else.”
“I could. But then you’d miss out on acquiring one of the keys you need to unlock your abilities.”
“A free sample of what you’ll teach me if I throw the game?”
He smiled. And when he continued the story, I let him.
Maybe that was stupid. But really, if he insisted, how was I supposed to stop him? Anyway, I couldn’t see how that one little blink of magic had hurt me. The picture on the card had changed, but it had never stopped being what it was, with red K’s and heart symbols in the corners. So I just kept the silver bird with its long straight wings hanging in the air.
“For hundreds of years,” the Pharaoh said, “Re was a great monarch. He ruled well, and his kingdom thrived in peace and plenty.”
I got to see it thriving, too. Little glimpses, anyway. The smoke in the air coiled into shapes that, vague and momentary as they were, made me think of farmers harvesting rich fields, busy marketplaces, and crowds in temples singing hymns of thanks. The Thunderbird didn’t stop them from appearing.
That ought to mean that they were harmless, too, except as more distractions. I made a point of refocusing on the cards on the table and the dead guy sitting on the other side of it.
I had nothing. But I stabbed at the pot anyway, and as he’d been doing more often than not, the Pharaoh folded. Maybe Re and I really did have something in common.
The mummy didn’t seem upset that I was steadily nibbling away his stack. It was like the story was distracting him more than me. “But eventually,” he said, “a problem arose. Re had taken on the form of a man, and he gradually aged like one, until he grew senile. Then, as you can imagine, he no longer ruled wisely. In fact, his edicts brought misery and injustice.” The smoke showed me that, too. Floggings, beheadings, battles, and people sitting in the dirt with swollen bellies and skinny arms and legs, too weak with starvation to brush away the flies. “Check.”
“Raise forty thousand. At that point, couldn’t the other gods stage a coup?”
“Fold.” He gathered in the cards. “One would think. But even though his mind was failing, Re was still mightier than all the others combined. And because he was addled, he couldn’t see that the best thing for everyone, himself included, would be for him to abandon earthly life and return to the sky.”
He dealt, looked at his cards, and paused to think. Eventually he raised, I called, and we played on quietly for a while.
Until finally, against my better judgment, I asked, “So what happened? What did the other gods do?” Hell, why not? I was curious, and the story still wasn’t doing me any harm. I was still winning.
“Oh, yes. The story. Well, as it happened, Re had a daughter named Isis. Among other things, she was the goddess of magic, and though her power was less than his, she still contrived a way to use it against him.”
The queen of clubs had come out on the turn, and for a second, it turned into a picture of Isis. She had dark hair, and was so beautiful and queenly that it wasn’t even funny that she was wearing a crazy hat, made of black feathers with horns tacked onto the sides and a golden disk riding in the center of her forehead.
“In his decrepitude,” the Pharaoh said, “Re had begun to drool. Where his spittle reached the ground, it formed mud. Raise fifty thousand.”
“Call.”
“Isis took some of the mud and molded it into the first cobra. The first animal in all the world that Re himself hadn’t created. And her sorcery, combined with the power in his saliva, brought it to life.”
The queen of clubs flickered again, showing me the cobra rearing up at Isis’s feet.
“Isis sent the snake to lie in wait beside a path where Re doddered along every day.” The Pharaoh burned a card before dealing the river. “And the next time he passed that way, it bit him.”
The cobra that struck at me came out of the smoke. I imagine that if I’d been looking at the smoke, it would have come out of the cards instead. At any rate, it formed from a twist of the drifting blue haze, and if the Thunderbird slowed it down any, you sure couldn’t tell it. It shot forward, stabbed its fangs into my cheek, and dissolved, all in a split second. It hurt like hell, like fire burning me from the inside out, and I screamed.
“The venom couldn’t kill almighty Re,” the Pharaoh went on, just like nothing had happened. “But because Isis had used a bit of his own essence to make the cobra, and because he hadn’t created it and didn’t know its name, it caused him extraordinary pain, and so he too let out a bloodcurdling shriek. I bet a hundred and fifty thousand, by the way.”
“You bastard,” I croaked. “Everybody saw you cheat.”
“Who’s ‘everybody?’ If there were any other players left, they would indeed be within their rights to enforce the rules. But in fact, only you and I remain.”
And how was I supposed to enforce anything? The pain was getting so bad that I doubted I could even stand. Even if I could, what good would it do to throw a punch at the Pharaoh? Wotan had ripped his head off and it hadn’t really hurt him.
“You did notice my bet, didn’t you?” the mummy asked. “Have you decided what you want to do?”
I looked at the river. My eyes were so blurry with tears that I wasn’t sure what it was. I wasn’t sure I remembered what I had in the pocket, either.
I struggled to focus despite the pain. I called Red, and he grew and filled me up. He didn’t make me feel all happy and peppy—there was no chance of that with the poison alternately burning and freezing me—but his power dialed back the torment a little.
The Pharaoh patted his withered hands together. “Well done. But I’m afraid it only delayed the inevitable.”
“Screw you.” My vision had cleared enough to show me that the king of diamonds had come out on the river. I managed to check my hole cards and found a king there, too. “All in.”
The Pharaoh folded. “I see I’m still no match for omnipotent Re. Shall I tell what happened to him next?”
“No.”
“I promise to make it short.” He gathered in the cards and did a faro shuffle. “Isis came running when she heard her father scream. She feigned horror at what had happened, and behaved as though she only cared about ending his suffering.”
“And she told him she could only do it if he gave her his secret name.”
“Very astute. That’s exactly what she said. He resisted for a while, and simply recited a string of aliases. Like ‘Billy Fox.’ But ultimately the agony wore him down, and he gave it up. As promised, she used it to purge the venom from his body, but also to set herself above him. She stripped away what was mortal in him and sent him to pilot the boat that is the sun across the heavens by day and through the underworld at night.”
He dealt the cards. Since he was the dealer, and we were heads up, he’d act first before the flop. But he wasn’t in any hurry to look at his hand.
“Of course,” he continued, “one difference between the myth and our current reality is that Re was a god and you’re a man. I’m afraid that means the venom that merely caused him unendurable pain is likely to put an end to you.”
“Unless I give you my real name and the power to make me lose.”
“Indeed.”
A
spasm of more intense pain made my muscles clench and wrung a grunt out of me. I called for Red like a patient in a hospital bed hitting the button for a dose of morphine. He came and it helped, but not as much as before.
“I told you,” the Pharaoh said, “that can’t save you. In our mysteries, the spells that recapitulate the primal myths are the most potent of all.”
“Yeah?” I panted, sweat dripping off my face and plopping on the felt. “Well, guess what? This isn’t ancient Egypt. It’s America. And we don’t have myths. We have movies. We put them on DVD’s. And then they have alternate endings.”
He frowned. “I’m afraid the poison is making you delirious. If so, you’re nearly out of time.”
“In my version of the movie, Re sees through his bitch daughter’s lies, and he doesn’t give in to the pain. He gets up and slaps her around until she gives him the antidote. In other words, I’m going to win this God damn game, and when I do, it will break your hex.”
As I said the last word, I poured mojo into the Thunderbird until it glowed like it was white hot. Like I was trying to brand reality with it and make what I’d just said true.
I don’t think the Pharaoh could really see my personal sign. But he sensed the blaze of power somehow, and flinched back slightly in his wheelchair.
But only slightly. Then he smiled and exhaled smoke. “That was… creative. But, like the invocation of your Ka, insufficient.”
“Look at your damn cards. Play the game or forfeit.”
He played. With a lot more nerve and cunning than before, while the venom chewed me up inside. My eyes kept blurring, and my guts cramped. When the chills hit me, my teeth chattered. I played basic poker because I didn’t trust my judgment for anything fancier. I used the chip lead like a sledgehammer because I was afraid it was the only advantage I had left.
At some point, I glanced around and noticed Wotan laughing at all my struggling and pain. Considering that it was the Pharaoh who’d busted him, that struck me as stupid. He should have hated the mummy worse than me. But apparently me being an upstart human bugged him even more.
I thought about flipping him off. Then the cramps hit again, harder, and I twisted so I wouldn’t throw up on the table.
Somehow, that tipped me off balance. I fell out of the chair and overturned it, too. I ended up retching while lying on my stomach. You get a good view of your puke when it’s landing just a few inches away. Some of it splashes back into your face.
“Davis,” the Pharaoh said, “please assist the gentleman.”
The chauffeur trotted over and tried to lift me to my feet. I feebly pushed his hands away, grabbed the edge of the table, and dragged myself up.
I let him pick up the chair, though. I was pretty sure that if I tried to do that, I’d fall down again.
“You can end this,” the Pharaoh said.
I tried to work up some spit and then swallow away the hot, foul taste in my mouth. “I’m working on it.”
“You can end it right now. I promise to be the best master any apprentice wizard could hope to find. I promise to rule Tampa with kindness and generosity.”
“Says the guy who was willing to murder all of Queen’s babies just to win a game.”
He sighed. “If that’s your final word, on your own head be it. You realize, at this point I can simply play conservatively and wait for you to die.”
He probably could have, too. Except that I hung on for a few more minutes. Until the clock struck four, and the blinds jumped again.
They’d been big enough to matter before. Now they were finally so big that you just couldn’t sit out more than one or two hands in a row. Your stack would shrink to nothing if you did.
I didn’t plan to sit out any of them. I meant to shove all in every time pre-flop, without even looking at my cards. Because I knew that with five more to come, any starting hand, no matter how shitty, can beat any other. And I was out of time.
I got away with it once. The second time, the Pharaoh peeked at his down cards and smiled. He had something good, and so, of course, he called.
I looked at what I had in the hole. Eight-three off-suit, about as rotten a starting hand as there is. I don’t know how I could have suddenly felt sicker than I did already, but it sure seemed like it.
But then my luck kicked in. A three came out as part of a rainbow flop, and an eight came on the turn. I’d lucked my way into two pair, and I was almost positive the Pharaoh hadn’t improved.
By then, I don’t suppose I was able to keep what I felt from showing in my face. Anyway, the Pharaoh somehow realized I was ahead. I could tell it from the way his dry, sunken eyes narrowed, and the way his mouth tightened. A speck of dry rot dropped from his lower lip.
As he dealt the last card, I was suddenly sure he was going to use magic to turn things around. Maybe to change the river into something that matched a pocket pair and made trips. I flashed the Thunderbird and poured energy into it. Timon had said that defense was my strength, and I just willed my power to protect me.
It took so much out of me that I passed out. When I came to, it was to the sound of chips rattling and clinking.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I realized I was slumped across the table. I shoved at it and groggily lifted my head. It looked like I’d only been out a few seconds. The Pharaoh was raking chips from the pot.
The pot that didn’t belong to him. Because he’d turned over pocket jacks, and the river was a blank. Which meant he’d never improved.
“No,” I wheezed, and spit dripped out of my mouth. Heart pounding like it was going to tear itself apart, hand shaking, I fumbled over my cards. “Two pair. I win. You’re out.”
“If I simply take the chips anyway,” he answered, “do you think that you can stop me?”
“‘There’s gamesmanship,’” I quoted, “‘and then there’s mere brutality.’”
He looked for me for a second, and then laughed. “Touché, mortal, touché. The pot and the tournament are yours.”
And just like that, the pain and the sickness disappeared. In fact, I felt great. It was like all the life the hex had sucked out of me flooded back in an instant.
I stood up and shook the mummy’s hand. His fingers felt light and brittle like papier-mâché, and even though I’d figured out he wasn’t as fragile as he looked, I still made sure I didn’t really squeeze.
The spectators applauded, some politely, some like they meant it. A’marie was one of the ones with a big grin on her face. I winked at her.
Then I noticed the one guy who wasn’t clapping. No points for guessing it was Wotan. His bloodshot eyes glared at me, and his hairy, tattooed hands repeatedly clenched on the scabbard of the ruined sword lying across his thighs.
I didn’t like all that hatred coming my way, but I told myself that with the tournament over, it didn’t really matter. Timon was my problem now. I looked at his face, but his polite little tight-lipped smile wasn’t easy to read.
Whatever he was feeling, satisfaction, relief, resentment, or, most likely, a mix of all of them, I guessed I ought to say something to him. I nodded and said, “There you go. We did it.”
Wotan stood up. “‘We?’”
“Yeah,” I said, “we. Timon coached me. He taught me magic. I couldn’t have made it without him.”
Wotan shrugged those ginormous shoulders. “I’m sure that’s true, human. I just wonder whether you really believe it. Because, if you respected Timon as is his due, how could you ever have dared to treat him as you did?”
Leticia glided up to him and touched him on the forearm. I felt a little tingle in my arm just from imagining how it felt. “The game’s over, darling man,” she purred. “It’s time to relax and share a toast.”
“And for Timon to take possession of his winnings,” said the Pharaoh.
The Tuxedo Team brought in a little wooden chest. One guy carried it, while four others surrounded it like guards. They set it on the poker table and then brought out six musty-smelling rol
ls of parchment tied with faded ribbon. I figured they were the deeds to the fiefs.
The lords gathered around in the pool of light under the chandelier, and then everybody but Timon swore an oath renouncing all claim to whatever he or she had bet. The Pharaoh gave up Pedernales, in the Dominican Republic; Wotan, Dubois, Wyoming, and a bunch of land surrounding it; Queen, a piece of Mexico City; and Leticia, Cincinnati. She also read a statement Gimble had left behind forfeiting Toms River, New Jersey. It was quite a haul, and Timon’s tight little smile gradually changed to a smirk.
At the end of the ceremony, the same servant who’d taken the deeds out of the box started putting them back in. But Wotan picked up one of them before he could get to it. “Tampa,” he said.
Timon scowled at him. “Yes. Tampa. One of my dominions.”
“For now, at least,” Wotan said. But he didn’t take the hint and put down the deed. “An interesting place. Now that I’ve seen it, I’d have to say you staked the finest fief of any of us. I hate to think of it passing into the hands of someone undeserving.”
“It’s not ‘passing’ anywhere!” Timon snapped. “The fool hasn’t got a chance!”
“I understand why you feel that way,” Wotan said. “It would be astonishing if a human could beat you, especially in dream. But then again, he beat the rest of us.”
“Look,” I said to Wotan. “Timon and I made a deal, and we’re going through with it no matter what you say. So mind your own damn business.”
“Billy has a point,” said Queen. “He and the dream walker did agree. We all witnessed it.”
Wotan smiled an ugly smile. “True enough. I was just making conversation. Apparently no one else wants to hear it, so let’s drink instead.” He tossed the parchment back into the box.
A’marie brought in a dusty old bottle of champagne. It turned out to be for lords only. Even the stooge who’d actually won the tournament didn’t rate a glass. And they could have given me Queen’s share, because she only took a couple drops, dribbled over the gray sludge in the bottom of her flute.
The other lords toasted Timon, and the rest of us served up a second little round of applause. When it died down, Wotan said, “Now the tournament is really finished. That means the human isn’t Timon’s champion anymore.”
Blind God's Bluff: A Billy Fox Novel Page 23