The Serpents Shadow

by Rick Riordan

  I looked at Zia. I could tell we were thinking the same thing: terrible idea, but we didn’t have a better one.

  “I can’t believe we’re seriously considering this,” she grumbled.

  Setne grinned. “Hey, you’re being smart. This is your best shot. Besides, I want you to succeed! Like I said, I don’t want Apophis destroying me. You won’t regret it.”

  “I’m pretty sure I will.” I snapped my fingers, and the Ribbons of Hathor unraveled.

  Setne’s brilliant plan? He turned us into demons.

  Well, okay…it was actually just a glamor, so we looked like demons, but it was the best illusion magic I’d ever seen.

  Zia took one look at me and started to giggle. I couldn’t see my own face, but she told me I now had a massive bottle opener for a head. I did notice that my skin was fuchsia, and I had hairy bowed legs like a chimpanzee.

  I didn’t blame Zia for laughing, but she didn’t look much better. She was now a big muscular girl demon with bright green skin, a zebra-hide dress, and the head of a piranha.

  “Perfect,” Setne said. “You’ll blend right in.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  He spread his hands. He was still wearing his jeans, white sneakers, and black jacket. His diamond pinky rings and gold ankh chain flashed in the volcanic firelight. The only difference was that his red T-shirt now read: GO, DEMONS!

  “You can’t improve on perfection, pal. This outfit works anywhere. The demons won’t even bat an eye—assuming they have eyes. Now, come on!”

  He drifted inland, not waiting to see if we would follow.

  Every once in a while, Setne checked the Book of Thoth for directions. He explained that the shadow would be impossible to find in this moving landscape without consulting the book, which served as a combination compass, tourist’s guide, and Farmer’s Almanac timetable.

  He promised us it would be a short journey, but it seemed pretty long to me. Any more time in Demon Land, and I’m not sure I would have come out sane. The landscape was like an optical illusion. We spotted a vast mountain range in the distance, then walked fifty feet and discovered the mountains were so tiny, we could jump over them. I stepped into a small puddle and suddenly found myself drowning in a flooded sinkhole fifty feet wide. Huge Egyptian temples crumbled and rearranged themselves as if some invisible giant were playing with blocks. Limestone cliffs erupted out of nowhere, already carved with monumental statues of grotesque monsters. The stone faces turned and watched us as we passed.

  Then there were the demons. I’d seen lots of them under Camelback Mountain, where Set built his red pyramid, but here in their native environment, they were even larger and more horrible. Some looked like torture victims, with gaping wounds and twisted limbs. Others had insect wings, or multiple arms, or tentacles made from darkness. As for their heads, pretty much every zoo animal and Swiss Army knife attachment was well represented.

  The demons roamed in hordes across the dark landscape. Some built fortresses. Others tore them down. We saw at least a dozen large-scale battles. Winged demons circled through the smoky air, occasionally snatching up unsuspecting smaller monsters and carrying them off.

  But none of them bothered us.

  As we stumbled along, I became more and more aware of the presence of Chaos. A cold churning started in my gut, spreading through my limbs like my blood cells were turning to ice. I’d felt this before at the prison of Apophis, when Chaos sickness had almost killed me, but this place seemed even more poisonous.

  After a while, I realized everything in the Land of Demons was being pulled in the direction we were traveling. The whole landscape was bending and crumbling, the fabric of matter unweaving. I knew the same force was pulling at the molecules of my body.

  Zia and I should have died. But as bad as the cold and the nausea were, I sensed that they should have been worse. Something was protecting us, an invisible layer of warmth keeping the Chaos at bay.

  It is her, said the voice of Horus, with grudging respect. Ra sustains us.

  I looked at Zia. She still appeared to be a piranha-headed green she-demon, but the air around her shimmered like vapor off a hot road.

  Setne kept glancing back. Each time, he seemed surprised to find us still alive. But he shrugged and kept going.

  The demons became fewer and farther between. The landscape got even more twisted. Rock formations, sand dunes, dead trees, even pillars of fire all leaned toward the horizon.

  We came to a cratered field, peppered with what looked like huge black lotus blossoms. They rose up quickly, spread their petals, and burst. Only when we got closer did I realize they were knots of shadowy tendrils, like Sadie had described at the Brooklyn Academy dance. Each time one burst, it spit out a spirit that had been dragged from the upper world. These ghosts, no more than pale bits of mist, clawed desperately for something to anchor them, but they were quickly dispersed and sucked away in the same direction we were traveling.

  Zia frowned at Setne. “You’re not affected?”

  The ghost magician turned. For once his expression was grim. His color was paler, his clothes and jewelry bleached out. “Let’s just keep moving, huh? I hate this place.”

  I froze. Ahead of us stood a cliff I recognized—the same one I’d seen in the vision Apophis had shown me. Except now there were no spirits huddled in its shelter.

  “My mother was there,” I said.

  Zia seemed to understand. She took my hand. “It might be a different cliff. The landscape is always changing.”

  Somehow I knew it was the same place. I had the feeling Apophis had left it intact just to taunt me.

  Setne twisted his pinky rings. “The serpent’s shadow feeds on spirits, pal. None of them last long. If your mom was here—”

  “She was strong,” I insisted. “A magician, like you. If you can fight it, she could too.”

  Setne hesitated. Then he shrugged. “Sure, pal. We’re close now. Better keep going.”

  Soon I heard a roar in the distance. The horizon glowed red. We seemed to be moving faster, as if we’d stepped on an automated walkway.

  Then we came over the crest of a hill, and I saw our destination.

  “There you go,” Setne said. “The Sea of Chaos.”

  Before us spread an ocean of mist, fire, or water—it was impossible to tell which. Grayish-red matter churned, boiling and smoking, surging just like my stomach. It stretched as far as I could see—and something told me it had no end.

  The ocean’s edge wasn’t so much a beach as a reverse waterfall. Solid ground poured into the sea and disappeared. A house-sized boulder trundled over the hill to our right, slid down the beach, and dissolved in the surf. Chunks of solid ground, trees, buildings, and statues constantly flew over our heads and sailed into the ocean, vaporizing as they touched the waves. Even the demons weren’t immune. A few winged ones strayed over the beach, realized too late that they’d flown too close, and disappeared screaming into the swirling misty soup.

  It was pulling us, too. Instead of walking forward, I was instinctively backpedaling now, just to stay in one place. If we got any closer, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Only one thing gave me hope. A few hundred yards to the north, jutting into the waves, was a single solid strip of land like a jetty. At the far end rose a white obelisk like the Washington Monument. The spire glowed with light. I had a feeling it was ancient—even older than the gods. As beautiful as the obelisk was, I couldn’t help thinking of Cleopatra’s Needle on the banks of the River Thames, where my mother had died.

  “We can’t go down there,” I said.

  Setne laughed. “The Sea of Chaos? That’s where we all came from, pal. Haven’t you heard how Egypt was formed?”

  “It rose from this sea,” Zia said, almost in a trance. “Ma’at appeared from Chaos—the first land, creation from destruction.”

  “Yep,” Setne said. “The two great forces of the universe. And there they are.”

&nbs
p; “That obelisk is…the first land?” I asked.

  “Dunno,” Setne said. “I wasn’t there. But it’s the symbol of Ma’at, for sure. Everything else, that’s Apophis’s power, always chewing away at creation, always eating and destroying. You tell me, which force is more powerful?”

  I tried to swallow. “Where is Apophis’s shadow?”

  Setne chuckled. “Oh, it’s here. But to see it, to catch it, you’ll have to cast the spell from out there—at the edge of the jetty.”

  “We’ll never make it,” Zia said. “One false step—”

  “Sure,” Setne agreed cheerfully. “It’ll be fun!”

  C A R T E R

  16. Sadie Rides Shotgun (Worst. Idea. Ever.)

  HERE’S SOME FREE ADVICE: Don’t walk toward Chaos.

  With every step, I felt like I was being dragged into a black hole. Trees, boulders, and demons flew past us and were sucked into the ocean, while lightning flickered through the red-gray mist. Under our feet, chunks of the ground kept cracking and sliding into the tide.

  I grasped the crook and flail in one hand and held Zia’s hand with the other. Setne whistled and floated along beside us. He tried to act cool, but from the way his colors were fading and his greased hair pointed toward the ocean like a comet’s tail, I figured he was having a tough time holding his ground.

  Once I lost my balance. I almost tumbled into the surf, but Zia pulled me back. A few steps later, a fish-headed demon flew out of nowhere and slammed into me. He grabbed my leg, trying desperately to avoid getting sucked in. Before I could decide whether or not to help him, he lost his grip and disappeared into the sea.

  The most horrible thing about the journey? Part of me was tempted to give up and let Chaos draw me in. Why keep struggling? Why not end the pain and the worry? So what, if Carter Kane dissolved into trillions of molecules?

  I knew those thoughts weren’t really mine. The voice of Apophis was whispering in my head, tempting me as it had before. I concentrated on the glowing white obelisk—our lighthouse in the storm of Chaos. I didn’t know if that spire was really the first part of creation, or how that myth jibed with the Big Bang, or with God creating the world in seven days, or whatever else people might believe. Maybe the obelisk was just a manifestation of something larger—something my mind couldn’t comprehend. Whatever the case, I knew the obelisk stood for Ma’at, and I had to focus on it. Otherwise I was lost.

  We reached the base of the jetty. The rocky path felt reassuringly solid under my feet, but the pull of Chaos was strong on either side. As we inched forward, I remembered photos I’d seen of construction workers building skyscrapers back in the old days, fearlessly walking across girders six hundred feet in the air with no safety harnesses.

  I felt like that now, except I wasn’t fearless. The winds buffeted me. The jetty was ten feet wide, but I still felt like I was going to lose my balance and pitch into the waves. I tried not to look down. The stuff of Chaos churned and crashed against the rocks. It smelled like ozone, car exhaust, and formaldehyde mixed together. The fumes alone were almost enough to make me pass out.

  “Just a little farther,” Setne said.

  His form flickered unevenly. Zia’s green demon disguise blinked in and out. I held up my arm and saw my glamor shimmering in the wind, threatening to collapse. I didn’t mind losing the shocking-purple bottle-opening chimp look, but I hoped the wind would tear away only the illusion, not my actual skin.

  Finally, we reached the obelisk. It was carved with tiny hieroglyphs, thousands of them, white on white, so they were almost impossible to read. I spotted the names of gods, enchantments to invoke Ma’at, and some divine words so powerful, they almost blinded me. Around us, the Sea of Chaos heaved. Each time the wind blew, a glowing shield in the shape of a scarab flickered around Zia—the magical carapace of Khepri, sheltering us all. I suspected it was the only thing keeping us from instant death.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Read the spell,” Setne said. “You’ll see.”

  Zia handed me the scroll. I tried to find the right lines, but I couldn’t see straight. The glyphs blurred together. I should have anticipated this problem. Even when I wasn’t standing next to the Sea of Chaos, I’d never been good at incantations. I wished Sadie were there.

  [Yes, Sadie. I actually said that. Don’t gasp so loud.]

  “I—I can’t read it,” I admitted.

  “Let me help.” Zia traced her finger down the scroll. When she found the hieroglyphs she wanted, she frowned.

  “This is a simple summoning spell.” She glared at Setne. “You said the magic was complicated. You said we’d need your help. How could you lie while holding the Feather of Truth?”

  “I didn’t lie!” Setne protested. “The magic is complicated for me. I’m a ghost! Some spells—like summoning spells—I can’t cast at all. And you did need my help to find the shadow. You needed the Book of Thoth for that, and you needed me to interpret it. Otherwise, you’d still be shipwrecked at the river.”

  I hated to admit it, but I said, “He’s got a point.”

  “Sure I do,” Setne said. “Now that you’re here, the rest isn’t so bad. Just force the shadow to show itself, and then I—er—you can capture it.”

  Zia and I exchanged a nervous look. I imagined she felt the same way I did. Standing at the edge of creation, facing an endless Sea of Chaos, the last thing I wanted to do was cast a spell that would summon part of Apophis’s soul. It was like shooting off a flare gun, signaling, Hey, big nasty shadow! Here we are! Come and kill us!

  I didn’t see that we had much choice, though.

  Zia did the honors. It was an easy invocation, the kind a magician might use to summon a shabti, or an enchanted dust mop, or pretty much any minor creature from the Duat.

  When Zia finished, a tremor spread in all directions, as if she’d dropped a massive stone into the Sea of Chaos. The disturbance rippled up the beach and over the hills.

  “Um…what was that?” I asked.

  “Distress signal,” Setne said. “I’m guessing the shadow just called on the forces of Chaos to protect it.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “We’d better hurry, then. Where’s the—? Oh…”

  The sheut of Apophis was so large, it took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. The white obelisk seemed to cast a shadow across the sea; but as the shadow darkened, I realized that it wasn’t the silhouette of the obelisk. Rather, the shadow writhed across the surface of the water like the body of a giant snake. The shadow grew until the head of the serpent almost reached the horizon. It lashed across the sea, darting its tongue, and biting at nothing.

  My hands shook. My insides felt like I’d just chugged a big glass of Chaos water. The serpent’s shadow was so massive, radiating so much power, that I didn’t see how we could possibly capture it. What had I been thinking?

  Only one thing kept me from total panic.

  The serpent wasn’t completely free. Its tail seemed to be anchored to the obelisk, as if someone had driven a spike to keep it from escaping.

  For a disturbing moment, I felt the serpent’s thoughts. I saw things from Apophis’s point of view. It was trapped by the white obelisk—seething and in pain. It hated the world of mortals and gods, which pinned it down and constricted its freedom. Apophis despised creation the way I might despise a rusty nail driven through my foot, keeping me from walking.

  All Apophis wanted was to snuff out the obelisk’s blinding light. He wanted to annihilate the earth, so he could go back to the darkness and swim forever in the unrestricted expanses of Chaos. It took all of my willpower not to feel sorry for the poor little world-destroying, sun-devouring serpent.

  “Well,” I said hoarsely. “We found the shadow. Now what do we do with it?”

  Setne chuckled. “Oh, I can take it from here. You guys did great. Tas!”

  If I hadn’t been so distracted, I might have seen what was coming, but I didn’t. My demon glamor suddenly turned into s
olid bands of mummy linen, covering my mouth first, then wrapping around my body with blinding speed. I toppled and fell, completely encased except for my eyes. Zia hit the rocks next to me, also cocooned. I tried to breathe, but it was like inhaling through a pillow.

  Setne leaned over Zia. He carefully extracted the Book of Thoth from beneath her bindings and tucked it under his arm. Then he smiled down at me.

  “Oh, Carter, Carter.” He shook his head as if he were mildly disappointed. “I like you, pal. I really do. But you are way too trusting. After that business on the riverboat, you still gave me permission to cast a glamor spell on you? Come on! Changing a glamor into a straitjacket is sooo easy.”

  “Mmm!” I grunted.

  “What’s that?” Setne cupped his ear. “Hard to talk when you’re all bound up, isn’t it? Look, it’s nothing personal. I couldn’t cast that invocation spell myself, or I would have done it ages ago. I needed you two! Well…one of you, anyway. I figured I’d be able to kill either you or your girlfriend along the way, make the other one easier for me to handle. I never thought both of you would survive this far. Impressive!”

  I wriggled and almost toppled into the water. For some reason, Setne pulled me back to safety.

  “Now, now,” he chided. “No point killing yourself, pal. Your plan isn’t ruined. I’m just going to alter it. I’ll trap the shadow. That part I can do myself! But instead of casting the execration, I’ll blackmail Apophis, see? He’ll destroy only what I let him destroy. Then he retreats back into Chaos, or his shadow gets stomped, and the big snake goes bye-bye.”

  “Mmm!” I protested, but it was getting harder to breathe.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Setne sighed. “This is the part where you say, ‘You’re mad, Setne! You’ll never get away with it!’ But the thing is, I will. I’ve been getting away with impossible stuff for thousands of years. I’m sure the snake and I can come to a deal. Oh, I’ll let him kill Ra and the rest of the gods. Big deal. I’ll let him destroy the House of Life. I’ll definitely let him tear down Egypt and every cursed statue of my dad, Ramses. I want that blowhard erased from existence! But the whole mortal world? Don’t worry about it, pal. I’ll spare most of it. I’ve gotta have someplace to rule, don’t I?”