“Horus and recreational drugs. That’s it for me, remember?”
“Well, you said there were a few other things you knew about. I thought prasada might be one of those,” M joked. “It’s when food is prepared as an offering for Krishna, then it has a spiritual quality when you eat it. It isn’t just food.” M pushed a stray strand of hair away from her face. “Coming here, to that temple, the sibyl’s cave, and Philae so close together … I don’t know, it feels like maybe they’re all the same. Not the same, exactly, but good in similar ways. In intent, maybe.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m sleep deprived.”
“I know what you’re saying. You went from the piscina to communion to foods that are holy,” Ash told her. “When I was young, I read the Chronicles of Narnia. I’m embarrassed to admit, I had no idea it was Christian allegory. I just liked books with magic in them. They made me feel less like the aberrant little freak I thought I was.”
“You really felt that way?” M asked.
“Hear it enough times, and you believe it,” he replied, not quite meeting her eye. “In one of the books, the last one I think, Aslan, the Christ-figure, tells a character that a good deed done in the name of the evil god is actually devotion to Aslan. And vice-versa. Basically, it was the intent that mattered, not the god.”
She smiled. It was so weirdly normal to hear him talking about books. “I guess that’s what I was trying to say. But is that sacrilegious to you?”
“We don’t talk much about other religions. Philip barely acknowledged their existence.” Ash shrugged. “Ask me whatever you want,” he added. “We don’t try to convert people, which is obvious, since most people don’t even know there is present-day Horus worship. But I can say that I’ve never felt anything like the power Horus gives me.”
If she had the power to stop a crocodile attack, she’d probably feel that way too. “It’s getting late.” She gestured to the windows. The colors were brighter now. “We don’t know when someone will be coming. There could be an early service.”
“I think we’ve covered this floor as well as we can,” Ash said. “There are stairs behind the door over by the organ. Let’s check it out.” He led the way over, opening the door for her. M stepped through and began to climb up the narrow circular staircase. The first thing she noticed was a depression carved into one of the thick walls. Holes had been punched all the way through in two places.
“This has to be the solitary confinement cell we read about,” Ash said, joining her.
“It’s so small. I know people used to be smaller, but still.” M squeezed into the cell. “I can see the altar from this side.”
“So the monk being punished could hear the service,” Ash said. “A few days with you and I’m learning all kinds of new things.”
“Same with you. Like how to dance in the sewer.” He cracked a grin as she scrambled back to the floor. Together they studied the cell from the outside. There were no cracks, no seams, nothing that looked out of place.
“I don’t see anything up here,” Ash said. “We’re sure this is where the signpost led, right?”
“As sure as I can be.” M turned in a slow circle, searching hopelessly. “But we’ve looked everywhere and there’s just no piece here,” she admitted. “It’s a dead end.”
CHAPTER 16
M sat on a bench beside the church, leaning against the wall. The pieces of the Set animal dug into her back, so she took off her backpack and cradled it in her arms. She must have dozed off for a few minutes, because she jerked awake as Ash dropped down onto the bench beside her.
“Provisions, as promised, from the best street cart in the city.” He opened the brown paper bag he held, pulled out something wrapped in greasy paper, and sniffed it appreciatively. “Ah, sausage roll, I’ve missed you.”
A guilty expression flashed across his face. Was he one of these people who never ate junk? She took her own sausage roll out of the bag. It smelled amazing. She took a big bite and chewed happily.
“Somehow food tastes better outdoors,” she remarked. Ash hadn’t started in on his breakfast yet. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem.” He took a bite, but his enthusiasm seemed to have drained away.
“Not enough ketchup?” she asked, though she knew it likely wasn’t anything quite that simple.
“No it’s fine.” He took another bite, a bigger one.
“What happened to the guy who was practically writing an Ode to the Sausage Roll ten seconds ago?” M asked.
Ash glanced at her, and she raised an eyebrow.
“You’re not going to stop, are you?”
“Do I ever?”
“Fine,” he said. “Part of my duty as a devotee of Horus is to control my appetites.”
“You mean like fasting?”
“Sometimes I fast,” Ash agreed. “But it’s more than that. I need to keep my—” He seemed to be searching for the right word, then started again. “Physical pleasures can pull me away from my connection to Horus.”
“You’re talking asceticism,” M said. “Does Horus think pleasure is wrong?”
“It’s not that. It’s about self-discipline,” Ash explained. “It’s about clearing the way for Horus to enter. It’s part of my … gift. Part of accepting it.”
“Is body mortification part of it?” she asked without thinking, remembering the scars on his back. She’d met monks who would sleep on a bed of nails as religious duty.
“Not as much anymore,” Ash replied easily. “In my training, yes, sometimes. It helped me control my power—Horus’s power,” he corrected himself. “It helped me see that the power should be Horus acting through me. I had to be open to understanding his intentions.”
“Those scars on your back helped you understand Horus’s intentions?” M couldn’t keep the sharpness out of her voice. She’d always had a hard time with gods who wanted their followers to be in pain. Was that really what Horus required? Or was that Philip’s interpretation?
“No, those are— They were from before I joined the Eye.” Ash took another bite.
So his parents, then. M put down the sausage roll, suddenly not hungry. They’d had a little fresh air, eaten, it was time to get back to work. “I’m not sure what to do about our missing piece. We’ve searched everywhere.”
Ash seemed relieved at the subject change. “There was the bombing. But the pieces of the artifact are indestructible. So it couldn’t have been destroyed.”
He was right. It was time to stop explaining things away with rational thought. The Set pieces were magic. Ash was magic, or had magic, anyway. Hiding the pieces from him in her backpack was silly. He could take them whenever he wanted. Her bo staff was nothing against the power he could channel. Although now that they were kind of friends, she had a feeling he would think it was rude to just grab the pieces. And he was far too British to do something rude.
“I suppose the bombing might have destroyed the hiding place, though,” Ash went on. “In that case, somebody could have found it.”
“And currently has it on their mantel,” she agreed. “Or is using it as a doorstop.”
“It may have ended up in a museum or a private collection,” Ash suggested.
“Way to be an optimist. In any case, how are we supposed to track it down?”
“We’ll come up with something,” he said.
M felt itchy—they’d been here for too long. Every wasted second could mean Dad’s life. She only had a week, that’s what Liza had said. She stood up, bouncing on her toes. “We’re wasting time. I’ll ask Mike to track down any artifacts found in this church, or any known fragments of a Set animal. If it was sold or ended up in a collection, there will be some kind of trail.”
Ash looked skeptical. “Your boyfriend’s a multitalented kid. Is there anything he can’t do?”
M’s lips twitched at the annoyance in his voice. He really was jealous. “Honestly? Mike can do pretty much anything,” she answered, just to go
ad him. “We should move on to the next location and try to find that piece. Well, signpost, anyway.”
“And where is that?” he asked.
“Indonesia. What’s the fastest way to Heathrow? Tube?” M slung on her backpack.
“This time of day it’s quicker to take a cab,” he answered. “Come on.” He ate the rest of his sausage roll in a few bites. He was fueling up, nothing more. No pleasure in the food. It made her feel sad for him.
As they stepped out of the churchyard, M felt movement in her pack. “The pieces are back together. Again.” She frowned. “They separated when we went onto the temple grounds in India, and separated when we got here, to the church. But as soon as we stepped off the grounds, they fused back together. In both places.” She flashed back to Kerala. “And as soon as Bob got through the gopura, his piece went crazy trying to burst its way out of the briefcase. The very second he stepped off temple grounds.”
“Trying to get to our pieces,” Ash said. “Trying to fuse with them. Our two were back together then, yes? So they must have had more pull than his one. That’s why his was trying to get out of his bag, instead of ours trying to get in.”
“Whatever the pull is, it was deactivated on the church and temple grounds and switched back on as soon as we left them,” M said. “In Philae, once we freed the piece from the stone, it responded to the pull of our piece on the boat.”
“Sacred places.” Ash looked at M, eyes wide. “They were all sacred places—the Temple Church, the Thrissivaperoor Vadakkunnathan Temple, Philae.”
“And we found the first piece in the ruins of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. The Set pieces have all been hidden on sacred ground.” Excitement coursed through M like electricity, energizing her. “There’s no way that’s a coincidence.”
“But they’re not sacred to Horus,” Ash said. “Philae was, of course. But the others … none of these gods were even known when Horus and Set ruled in Egypt.”
M shrugged. “The pieces have been moved many times through the years, you said. And the places on the map, the old hiding spots, those were sacred too. The sibyl cave and an oak sacred to Thor!”
“In Indonesia, where are we going?” he asked.
“The Borobudur Temple.” She grinned. “A sacred place.”
“The members of the Eye must have known sacred ground neutralized the pieces. It’s what keeps Set from taking form.” Ash shook his head. “More lost knowledge.”
“Well, it wasn’t lost when they moved the pieces a thousand years ago,” M pointed out. “When they couldn’t find places sacred to Horus anymore, they improvised.”
“And I can do that too,” he said, relief flooding his voice. “I can prevent the pieces from fusing together just by going to a holy place.”
“Black cab.” M pointed to the car coming toward them. The “taxi” light was on.
Ash stuck out his hand to hail it. When they were inside, he turned to her. “M, Borobudur is one of the places your father sent”—he glanced at the driver—“people. If we’re right about why they found us in India, it means they’re going to be there. Waiting.”
* * *
“Too bad the hotel closest to the temple is such a dive,” M said sarcastically. She slid off her backpack and flopped down on the cushy bed near the window, then looked over at him. “The chilled towel and complimentary beverage on arrival didn’t offend Horus, did it?”
“It’s not about offending Horus. It’s about making myself an empty vessel that the power of Horus can pass through,” Ash explained. Again. “Worldly pleasures can become a distraction, that’s all.” He lay back on the other bed—he had been relieved they had a room with two available—and stared up at the dark wood ceiling fan slowly turning overhead. It was safer than looking at M. She was becoming a fairly big distraction in her own right. He focused his attention on the fan, letting the circling settle him.
“Sorry,” M said. “I shouldn’t tease you. It’s the obnoxious American in me.”
“Yeah, it is,” Ash joked, eyes on the fan. “You only do it because you know it doesn’t actually bother me.”
“You’ve discovered my secret,” she agreed. “I don’t mock people unless they can take it.” He heard her stand and slide back the sheer curtains. “We have an amazing view of the rice fields. So green, the greenest green.”
He used the toes of one foot to push off the shoe on the other, then switched feet. Next he used his feet to slide off his socks.
“You do know what separates us from other beasts is opposable thumbs, right?” M asked. A second later a pillow bounced off his chest. “And don’t fall asleep. We have work to do.”
“We haven’t even been here five minutes,” he grumbled. But he knew she was worried. She was doing a good job pretending to be okay after what his mother said. But she wasn’t. She wouldn’t be all right until she knew her father was safe.
And that was never going to happen.
He sat up.
M was rummaging through the drawers of the desk. She pulled out a thick binder of information for hotel guests. “I know it’s the temple, but there were other glyphs too. Dad thought they marked a specific spot inside, a place for rituals. He got taken before we could figure it out.”
“The hiding spot,” he guessed.
She nodded. “We need to figure out those glyphs, so we need to know as much about the temple as possible.”
She brought the binder over to Ash and climbed on to the bed next to him, her knee resting on his. “I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff in here. The glyphs we’re trying to figure out are sun, road, speak, and god.”
M had worked on the translation on the plane, consulting her father’s notes, the annoyingly ever-present Mike, and the jottings she’d made over the last year. As far as he could tell, she’d spent most of her time while living with his parents translating the map. He got the feeling she hadn’t had much time left over for a social life. He also got the feeling she didn’t care. She wasn’t exactly the type of girl who wanted to spend her time making small talk at keggers.
What had it been like for her, living with them? It seemed as if they had made an effort to create some kind of normal life for her. It had only been a pretense, making a home for M was just their way of guarding her, a vital asset for the cult of Set. But he resented that they were able to give a stranger even sham affection and caring, when they’d never bothered to do it for him.
The old scars on his back started to itch, the way they often did when he thought of his childhood in England. His parents had tried to beat the power of Horus out of him, exorcise it. When it hadn’t worked, the beatings had only gotten more severe. As far as they were concerned, that he had been chosen by Horus was a sign of his poisoned soul.
“Are you listening?” M demanded, grabbing his face and bringing it close to hers.
“What? Yes! Of course.” He fidgeted. She was way too close.
“Ash, any of this could be important. You never know which bit will lead you to an understanding of a glyph,” she said, releasing him. She resumed reading him highlights about the temple. “It was buried for centuries under volcanic ash. Only local people knew about it.”
“If it had stayed buried, the Set piece probably would never have been found,” Ash said. “It would have been better that way.”
“Well, one of your countrymen is to blame. The British ruler of Java heard people talking about an ancient monument and investigated.” M snorted. “And after he had workers dig it out, the Dutch colonial government gave eight containers of statues from Borobudur to King Chulalongkorn of Siam. That was in 1896. I guess when the investigation started, the Brits were in charge, but by the time everything was dug up, it had gone back to the Dutch.”
“Let’s just hope our signpost wasn’t in those eight containers,” Ash said.
“Seriously. But this says it’s all still in the National Museum of Bangkok. We could do a little B and E, right?” M asked.
“Prison time in Ban
gkok is not on my bucket list,” he replied. “But if it comes to that, we’ll figure it out. The museum part, not the prison part,” he added. “Go on.”
“It’s not a completely Buddhist temple,” M read. “It was planned by Hindus as a Shiva temple in around 775 C.E. They completed the first two terraces, then Buddhists finished it.”
She paused. “Sun, road, speak, god. That’s what we’re trying to get to. The god part won’t be much help in giving us an exact location. Not with a thousand images of Buddha. Nothing so far has made me think of the other glyphs.”
She stood, walked to the window, stared out for a few seconds, and then sat in the desk chair briefly before returning to her place next to him on the bed. He’d seen her like this before, so filled with nerves and the need to do something that she could hardly stay still.
“Let’s go down to the dining room,” he suggested. He knew it wouldn’t help. M wouldn’t feel settled until she got her father back. It was different for him. They had two pieces of the Set animal. The pieces weren’t completely safe, but knowing the cult of Set didn’t have them allowed him to relax in a way M couldn’t—especially now that he knew how to keep them from sealing together permanently.
“We don’t have time,” M protested. “You said the Set people would be here. What if they find the signpost before we even figure out where to look?”
“They don’t know they’re looking for a signpost,” Ash reminded her.
“But if they see hieroglyphics in a Buddhist temple, they’re going to know they have something to do with the piece,” M argued. “Although not all the signposts have been in hieroglyphics. But the ones here could be.” She jumped up again and began pacing.
“The signposts have been so well hidden in the other locations that I didn’t even know you were finding them,” he said. He picked up the binder. “And they aren’t just going to stumble on them. The temple is huge. This says it’s made of nine stacked platforms, plus the central dome.” He grabbed her hands to still her.
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