by Rick Riordan
“You mean us,” I said.
She glanced at me apprehensively, and I knew she was still thinking about what the bird spirit had called me: a good king. It seemed so unreal, like our family name in that Blood of the Pharaohs scroll. How could I be related to some ancient kings? And even if I was, I certainly wasn’t a king. I had no kingdom. I didn’t even have my single suitcase anymore.
“They’ll be waiting for you,” Zia said. “Come along.”
We walked so far, my feet began to ache.
Finally we arrived at a crossroads. On the right was a massive set of bronze doors with fires blazing on either side; on the left, a twenty-foot-tall sphinx carved into the wall. A doorway nestled between its paws, but it was bricked in and covered in cobwebs.
“That looks like the Sphinx at Giza,” I said.
“That’s because we are directly under the real Sphinx,” Zia said. “That tunnel leads straight up to it. Or it used to, before it was sealed.”
“But...” I did some quick calculations in my head. “The Sphinx is, like, twenty miles from the Cairo Airport.”
“Roughly.”
“No way we’ve walked that far.”
Zia actually smiled, and I couldn’t help noticing how pretty her eyes were. “Distance changes in magic places, Carter. Surely you’ve learned that by now.”
Sadie cleared her throat. “So why is the tunnel closed, then?”
“The Sphinx was too popular with archaeologists,” Zia said. “They kept digging around. Finally, in the 1980s, they discovered the first part of the tunnel under the Sphinx.”
“Dad told me about that!” I said. “But he said the tunnel was a dead end.”
“It was when we got through with it. We couldn’t let the archaeologists know how much they’re missing. Egypt’s leading archaeologist recently speculated that they’ve only discovered thirty percent of the ancient ruins in Egypt. In truth, they’ve only discovered one tenth, and not even the interesting tenth.”
“What about King Tut’s tomb?” I protested.
“That boy king?” Zia rolled her eyes. “Boring. You should see some of the good tombs.”
I felt a little hurt. Dad had named me after Howard Carter, the guy who discovered King Tut’s tomb, so I’d always felt a personal attachment to it. If that wasn’t a “good” tomb, I wondered what was.
Zia turned to face the bronze doors.
“This is the Hall of Ages.” She placed her palm against the seal, which bore the symbol of the House of Life.
The hieroglyphs began to glow, and the doors swung open.
Zia turned to us, her expression deadly serious. “You are about to meet the Chief Lector. Behave yourselves, unless you wish to be turned into insects.”
C A R T E R
14. A French Guy Almost Kills Us
THE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS I’d seen a lot of crazy things, but the Hall of Ages took the prize.
Double rows of stone pillars held up a ceiling so high, you could’ve parked a blimp under it with no trouble. A shimmering blue carpet that looked like water ran down the center of the hall, which was so long, I couldn’t see the end even though it was brightly lit. Balls of fire floated around like helium basketballs, changing color whenever they bumped into one another. Millions of tiny hieroglyphic symbols also drifted through the air, randomly combining into words and then breaking apart.
I grabbed a pair of glowing red legs.
They walked across my palm before jumping off and dissolving.
But the weirdest things were the displays.
I don’t know what else to call them. Between the columns on either side of us, images shifted, coming into focus and then blurring out again like holograms in a sandstorm.
“Come on,” Zia told us. “And don’t spend too much time looking.”
It was impossible not to. The first twenty feet or so, the magical scenes cast a golden light across the hall. A blazing sun rose above an ocean. A mountain emerged from the water, and I had the feeling I was watching the beginning of the world. Giants strode across the Nile Valley: a man with black skin and the head of a jackal, a lioness with bloody fangs, a beautiful woman with wings of light.
Sadie stepped off the rug. In a trance, she reached toward the images.
“Stay on the carpet!” Zia grabbed Sadie’s hand and pulled her back toward the center of the hall. “You are seeing the Age of the Gods. No mortal should dwell on these images.”
“But...” Sadie blinked. “They’re only pictures, aren’t they?”
“Memories,” Zia said, “so powerful they could destroy your mind.”
“Oh,” Sadie said in a small voice.
We kept walking. The images changed to silver. I saw armies clashing—Egyptians in kilts and sandals and leather armor, fighting with spears. A tall, dark-skinned man in red-and-white armor placed a double crown on his head: Narmer, the king who united Upper and Lower Egypt. Sadie was right: he did look a bit like Dad.
“This is the Old Kingdom,” I guessed. “The first great age of Egypt.”
Zia nodded. As we walked down the hall, we saw workers building the first step pyramid out of stone. Another few steps, and the biggest pyramid of all rose from the desert at Giza. Its outer layer of smooth white casing stones gleamed in the sun. Ten thousand workers gathered at its base and knelt before the pharaoh, who raised his hands to the sun, dedicating his own tomb.
“Khufu,” I said.
“The baboon?” Sadie asked, suddenly interested.
“No, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid,” I said. “It was the tallest structure in the world for almost four thousand years.”
Another few steps, and the images turned from silver to coppery.
“The Middle Kingdom,” Zia announced. “A bloody, chaotic time. And yet this is when the House of Life came to maturity.”
The scenes shifted more rapidly. We watched armies fighting, temples being built, ships sailing on the Nile, and magicians throwing fire. Every step covered hundreds of years, and yet the hall still went on forever. For the first time I understood just how ancient Egypt was.
We crossed another threshold, and the light turned bronze.
“The New Kingdom,” I guessed. “The last time Egypt was ruled by Egyptians.”
Zia said nothing, but I watched scenes passing that my dad had described to me: Hatshepsut, the greatest female pharaoh, putting on a fake beard and ruling Egypt as a man; Ramesses the Great leading his chariots into battle.
I saw magicians dueling in a palace. A man in tattered robes, with a shaggy black beard and wild eyes, threw down his staff, which turned into a serpent and devoured a dozen other snakes.
I got a lump in my throat. “Is that—”
“Musa,” Zia said. “Or Moshe, as his own people knew him. You call him Moses. The only foreigner ever to defeat the House in a magic duel.”
I stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“We would not kid about such a thing.”
The scene shifted again. I saw a man standing over a table of battle figurines: wooden toy ships, soldiers, and chariots. The man was dressed like a pharaoh, but his face looked oddly familiar. He looked up and seemed to smile right at me. With a chill, I realized he had the same face as the ba, the bird-faced spirit who’d challenged me on the bridge.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Nectanebo II,” Zia said. “The last native Egyptian king, and the last sorcerer pharaoh. He could move entire armies, create or destroy navies by moving pieces on his board, but in the end, it was not enough.”
We stepped over another line and the images shimmered blue. “These are the Ptolemaic times,” Zia said. “Alexander the Great conquered the known world, including Egypt. He set up his general Ptolemy as the new pharaoh, and founded a line of Greek kings to rule over Egypt.”
The Ptolemaic section of the hall was shorter, and seemed sad compared to all the others. The temples were smaller. The kings and queens looked desperate,
or lazy, or simply apathetic. There were no great battles...except toward the end. I saw Romans march into the city of Alexandria. I saw a woman with dark hair and a white dress drop a snake into her blouse.
“Cleopatra,” Zia said, “the seventh queen of that name. She tried to stand against the might of Rome, and she lost. When she took her life, the last line of pharaohs ended. Egypt, the great nation, faded. Our language was forgotten. The ancient rites were suppressed. The House of Life survived, but we were forced into hiding.”
We passed into an area of red light, and history began to look familiar. I saw Arab armies riding into Egypt, then the Turks. Napoleon marched his army under the shadow of the pyramids. The British came and built the Suez Canal. Slowly Cairo grew into a modern city. And the old ruins faded farther and farther under the sands of the desert.
“Each year,” Zia said, “the Hall of Ages grows longer to encompass our history. Up until the present.”
I was so dazed I didn’t even realize we’d reached the end of the hall until Sadie grabbed my arm.
In front of us stood a dais and on it an empty throne, a gilded wooden chair with a flail and a shepherd’s crook carved in the back—the ancient symbols of the pharaoh.
On the step below the throne sat the oldest man I’d ever seen. His skin was like lunch-bag paper—brown, thin, and crinkled. White linen robes hung loosely off his small frame. A leopard skin was draped around his shoulders, and his hand shakily held a big wooden staff, which I was sure he was going to drop any minute. But weirdest of all, the glowing hieroglyphs in the air seemed to be coming from him. Multicolored symbols popped up all around him and floated away as if he were some sort of magic bubble machine.
At first I wasn’t sure he was even alive. His milky eyes stared into space. Then he focused on me, and electricity coursed through my body.
He wasn’t just looking at me. He was scanning me—reading my entire being.
Hide, something inside me said.
I didn’t know where the voice came from, but my stomach clenched. My whole body tensed as if I were bracing for a hit, and the electrical feeling subsided.
The old man raised an eyebrow as if I’d surprised him. He glanced behind him and said something in a language I didn’t recognize.
A second man stepped out of the shadows. I wanted to yelp. He was the guy who’d been with Zia in the British Museum—the one with the cream-colored robes and the forked beard.
The bearded man glared at Sadie and me.
“I am Desjardins,” he said with a French accent. “My master, Chief Lector Iskandar, welcomes you to the House of Life.”
I couldn’t think what to say to that, so of course I asked a stupid question. “He’s really old. Why isn’t he sitting on the throne?”
Desjardins’ nostrils flared, but the old dude, Iskandar, just chuckled, and said something else in that other language.
Desjardins translated stiffly: “The master says thank you for noticing; he is in fact really old. But the throne is for the pharaoh. It has been vacant since the fall of Egypt to Rome. It is...comment dit-on? Symbolic. The Chief Lector’s role is to serve and protect the pharaoh. Therefore he sits at the foot of the throne.”
I looked at Iskandar a little nervously. I wondered how many years he’d been sitting on that step. “If you...if he can understand English...what language is he speaking?”
Desjardins sniffed. “The Chief Lector understands many things. But he prefers to speak Alexandrian Greek, his birth tongue.”
Sadie cleared her throat. “Sorry, his birth tongue? Wasn’t Alexander the Great way back in the blue section, thousands of years ago? You make it sound like Lord Salamander is—”
“Lord Iskandar,” Desjardins hissed. “Show respect!”
Something clicked in my mind: back in Brooklyn, Amos had talked about the magicians’ law against summoning gods—a law made in Roman times by the Chief Lector...Iskandar. Surely it had to be a different guy. Maybe we were talking to Iskandar the XXVII or something.
The old man looked me in the eyes. He smiled, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. He said something else in Greek, and Desjardins translated.
“The master says not to worry. You will not be held responsible for the past crimes of your family. At least, not until we have investigated you further.”
“Gee...thanks,” I said.
“Do not mock our generosity, boy,” Desjardins warned. “Your father broke our most important law twice: once at Cleopatra’s Needle, when he tried to summon the gods and your mother died assisting him. Then again at the British Museum, when your father was foolish enough to use the Rosetta Stone itself. Now your uncle too is missing—”
“You know what’s happened to Amos?” Sadie blurted out.
Desjardins scowled. “Not yet,” he admitted.
“You have to find him!” Sadie cried. “Don’t you have some sort of GPS magic or—”
“We are searching,” Desjardins said. “But you cannot worry about Amos. You must stay here. You must be...trained.”
I got the impression he was going to say a different word, something not as nice as trained.
Iskandar spoke directly to me. His tone sounded kindly.
“The master warns that the Demon Days begin tomorrow at sunset,” Desjardins translated. “You must be kept safe.”
“But we have to find our dad!” I said. “Dangerous gods are on the loose out there. We saw Serqet. And Set!”
At these names, Iskandar’s expression tightened. He turned and gave Desjardins what sounded like an order. Desjardins protested. Iskandar repeated his statement.
Desjardins clearly didn’t like it, but he bowed to his master. Then he turned toward me. “The Chief Lector wishes to hear your story.”
So I told him, with Sadie jumping in whenever I stopped to take a breath. The funny thing was, we both left out certain things without planning to. We didn’t mention Sadie’s magic abilities, or the encounter with the ba who’d called me a king. It was like I literally couldn’t mention those things. Whenever I tried, the voice inside my head whispered, Not that part. Be silent.
When I was done, I glanced at Zia. She said nothing, but she was studying me with a troubled expression.
Iskandar traced a circle on the step with the butt of his staff. More hieroglyphs popped into the air and floated away.
After several seconds, Desjardins seemed to grow impatient. He stepped forward and glared at us. “You are lying. That could not have been Set. He would need a powerful host to remain in this world. Very powerful.”
“Look, you,” Sadie said. “I don’t know what all this rubbish is about hosts, but I saw Set with my own eyes. You were there at the British Museum—you must have done, too. And if Carter saw him in Phoenix, Arizona, then...” She looked at me doubtfully. “Then he’s probably not crazy.”
“Thanks, Sis,” I mumbled, but Sadie was just getting started.
“And as for Serqet, she’s real too! Our friend, my cat, Bast, died protecting us!”
“So,” Desjardins said coldly, “you admit to consorting with gods. That makes our investigation much easier. Bast is not your friend. The gods caused the downfall of Egypt. It is forbidden to call on their powers. Magicians are sworn to keep the gods from interfering in the mortal world. We must use all our power to fight them.”
“Bast said you were paranoid,” Sadie added.
The magician clenched his fists, and the air tingled with the weird smell of ozone, like during a thunderstorm. The hairs on my neck stood straight up. Before anything bad could happen, Zia stepped in front of us.
“Lord Desjardins,” she pleaded, “there was something strange. When I ensnared the scorpion goddess, she re-formed almost instantly. I could not return her to the Duat, even with the Seven Ribbons. I could only break her hold on the host for a moment. Perhaps the rumors of other escapes—”
“What other escapes?” I asked.
She glanced at me reluctantly. “Other gods,
many of them, released since last night from artifacts all over the world. Like a chain reaction—”
“Zia!” Desjardins snapped. “That information is not for sharing.”
“Look,” I said, “lord, sir, whatever—Bast warned us this would happen. She said Set would release more gods.”
“Master,” Zia pleaded, “if Ma’at is weakening, if Set is increasing chaos, perhaps that is why I could not banish Serqet.”
“Ridiculous,” Desjardins said. “You are skilled, Zia, but perhaps you were not skilled enough for this encounter. And as for these two, the contamination must be contained.”
Zia’s face reddened. She turned her attention to Iskandar. “Master, please. Give me a chance with them.”
“You forget your place,” Desjardins snapped. “These two are guilty and must be destroyed.”
My throat started closing up. I looked at Sadie. If we had to make a run for it down that long hall, I didn’t like our chances....
The old man finally looked up. He smiled at Zia with true affection. For a second I wondered if she were his great-great-great-granddaughter or something. He spoke in Greek, and Zia bowed deeply.
Desjardins looked ready to explode. He swept his robes away from his feet and marched behind the throne.
“The Chief Lector will allow Zia to test you,” he growled. “Meanwhile, I will seek out the truth—or the lies—in your story. You will be punished for the lies.”
I turned to Iskandar and copied Zia’s bow. Sadie did the same.
“Thank you, master,” I said.
The old man studied me for a long time. Again I felt as if he were trying to burn into my soul—not in an angry way. More out of concern. Then he mumbled something, and I understood two words: Nectanebo and ba.
He opened his hand and a flood of glowing hieroglyphs poured out, swarming around the dais. There was a blinding flash of light, and when I could see again, the dais was empty. The two men were gone.
Zia turned toward us, her expression grim. “I will show you to your quarters. In the morning, your testing begins. We will see what magic you know, and how you know it.”