The Throne of Fire

10. An Old Red Friend Comes to Visit

GETTING INSIDE THE HERMITAGE wasn’t a problem.

State-of-the-art security doesn’t protect against magic. Sadie and I had to combine forces to get past the perimeter, but with a little concentration, ink and papyrus, and some tapped energy from our godly friends Isis and Horus, we managed to pull off a short stroll through the Duat.

One minute we were standing in the abandoned Palace Square. Then everything went gray and misty. My stomach tingled like I was in free fall. We slipped out of synch with the mortal world and passed through the iron gates and solid stone into the museum.

The Egyptian room was on the ground floor, just as Bes had said. We re-entered the mortal realm and found ourselves in the middle of the collection: sarcophagi in glass cases, hieroglyphic scrolls, statues of gods and pharaohs. It wasn’t much different from a hundred other Egyptian collections I’d seen, but the setting was pretty impressive. A vaulted ceiling soared overhead. The polished marble floor was done in a white-andgray diamond pattern, which made walking on it kind of like walking on an optical illusion. I wondered how many rooms there were like this in the tsar’s palace, and if it really took eleven days to see them all. I hoped Bes was right about the secret entrance to the nome being somewhere in this room. We didn’t have eleven days to search. In less than seventy-two hours, Apophis would break free. I remembered that glowing red eye beneath the scarab shells—a force of chaos so powerful, it could melt human senses. Three days, and that thing would be unleashed on the world.

Sadie summoned her staff and pointed it at the nearest security camera. The lens cracked and made a sound like a bug zapper. Even in the best of situations, technology and magic don’t get along. One of the easiest spells in the world is to make electronics malfunction. I just have to look at a cell phone funny to make it blow up. And computers? Forget about it. I imagined Sadie had just sent a magical pulse through the security system that would fry every camera and sensor in the network.

Still, there were other kinds of surveillance—magical kinds. I pulled a piece of black linen and a pair of crude wax shabti out of my bag. I wrapped the shabti in the cloth and spoke a command word: “I’mun.”

The hieroglyph for Hide glowed briefly over the cloth. A mass of darkness bloomed from the package, like a squid’s ink cloud. It expanded until it covered both Sadie and me in a gauzy bubble of shadows. We could see through it, but hopefully nothing could see in. The cloud would be invisible to anyone outside.

“You got it right this time!” Sadie said. “When did you master the spell?”

I probably blushed. I’d been obsessed with figuring out the invisibility spell for months, ever since I’d seen Zia use it in the First Nome.

“Actually I’m still—” A gold spark shot out of the cloud like a miniature fireworks rocket. “I’m still working on it.”

Sadie sighed. “Well…better than last time. The cloud looked like a lava lamp. And the time before, when it smelled like rotten eggs—”

“Could we just get going?” I asked. “Where shouldwestart?”

Her eyes locked on one of the displays. She drifted toward it in a trance.

“Sadie?” I followed her to a limestone grave marker—a stele—about two feet by three feet. The description next to it was in Russian and English.

“‘From the tomb of the scribe Ipi,’” I read aloud. “‘Worked in the court of King Tut.’ Why are you interested…oh.”

Stupid me. The picture on the gravestone showed the deceased scribe honoring Anubis. After talking with Anubis in person, Sadie must’ve found it strange to see him in a three-thousand-year-old tomb painting, especially when he was pictured with the head of a jackal, wearing a skirt.

“Walt likes you.”

I have no idea why I blurted that out. This wasn’t the time or the place. I knew I wasn’t doing Walt any favors by taking his side. But I’d started to feel bad for him after Bes kicked him out of the limo. The guy had come all the way to London to help me save Sadie, and we’d dumped him in Crystal Palace Park like an unwanted hitchhiker.

I was kind of angry at Sadie for giving him the cold shoulder and crushing so hard on Anubis, who was five thousand years too old for her and not even human. Plus, the way she snubbed Walt reminded me too much of the way Zia had treated me at first. And maybe, if I was honest with myself, I was also irritated with Sadie because she’d solved her own problems in London without needing our help.

Wow. That sounded really selfish. But I suppose it was true. Amazing how many different ways a younger sister can annoy you at once.

Sadie didn’t take her eyes off the stele. “Carter, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re not giving the guy a chance,” I insisted. “Whatever’s going on with him, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Very reassuring, but that’s not—”

“Besides, Anubis is a god. You don’t honestly think—”

“Carter!” she snapped. My cloaking spell must’ve been sensitive to emotion, because another gold spark whistled and popped from our not-so-invisible cloud. “I wasn’t looking at this stone because of Anubis.”

“You weren’t?”

“No. And I’m certainly not having an argument with you about Walt. Contrary to what you might think, I don’t spend every waking hour thinking about boys.”

“Just most waking hours?”

She rolled her eyes. “Look at the gravestone, birdbrain. It’s got a border around it, like a window frame or—”

“A door,” I said. “It’s a false door. Lots of tombs had those. It was like a symbolic gateway for the dead person’s ba, so it could go back and forth from the Duat.”

Sadie pulled her wand and traced the edges of the stele. “This bloke Ipi was a scribe, which was another word for magician. He could’ve been one of us.”

“So?”

“So maybe that’s why the stone is glowing, Carter. What if this false door’s not false?”

I looked at the stele more closely, but I didn’t see any glow. I thought maybe Sadie was hallucinating from exhaustion or too much potion in her system. Then she touched her wand to the center of the stele and spoke the first command word we’d ever learned: “W’peh.”

Open. A golden hieroglyph burned on the stone:

The grave marker shot out a beam of light like a movie projector. Suddenly, a full-size doorway shimmered in front of us—a rectangular portal showing the hazy image of another room.

I looked at Sadie in amazement. “How did you do that?” I asked. “You’ve never been able to do that before.”

She shrugged as if it were no big deal. “I wasn’t thirteen before. Maybe that’s it.”

“But I’m fourteen!” I protested. “And I still can’t do that.”

“Girls mature earlier.”

I gritted my teeth. I hated the spring months—March, April, May—because until my birthday rolled around in June, Sadie could claim to be only a year younger than me. She always got an attitude after her birthday, as if she’d catch up to me somehow and become my big sister. Talk about a nightmare.

She gestured at the glowing doorway. “After you, brother, dear. You’re the one with the sparkly invisibility cloud.”

Before I could lose my cool, I stepped through the portal.

I almost fell and broke my face. The other side of the portal was a mirror hanging five feet off the floor. I’d stepped onto a fireplace mantel. I caught Sadie as she came through, just in time to keep her from toppling off the ledge.

“Ta,” she whispered. “Someone’s been reading too much Alice Through the Looking Glass.”

I’d thought the Egyptian room was impressive, but it was nothing compared to this ballroom. Coppery geometric designs glittered on the ceiling. The walls were lined with dark green columns and gilded doors. White and gold inlaid marble made a huge octagonal pattern on the floor. With a blazing chandelier above, the golden filigree and green and white polished stone gleamed so brightly, they hurt my eyes.

Then I realized most of the light wasn’t coming from the chandelier. It was coming from the magician casting a spell at the other end of the room. His back was turned, but I could tell it was Vlad Menshikov. Just as Sadie had described, he was a pudgy little man with curly gray hair and a white suit. He stood in a protective circle that pulsed with emerald light. He raised his staff, and the tip burned like a welding torch. To his right, just outside the circle, stood a green vase the size of a grown man. To his left, writhing in glowing chains, was a creature I recognized as a demon. It had a hairy humanoid body with purplish skin, but instead of a head, a giant corkscrew sprouted between its shoulders.

“Mercy!” it screamed in a watery, metallic voice. Don’t ask me how a demon could scream with a corkscrew head—but the sound resonated up the screw like it was a massive tuning fork.

Vlad Menshikov kept chanting. The green vase throbbed with light.

Sadie nudged me and whispered, “Look.”

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “Some kind of summoning ritual.”

“No,” she hissed. “Look there.”

She pointed to our right. In the corner of the room, twenty feet from the fireplace mantel, was an old-fashioned mahogany desk.

Sadie had told me about Anubis’s instructions: We were supposed to find Menshikov’s desk. The next section of the Book of Ra would be in the middle drawer. Could that really be the desk? It seemed too easy. As quietly as we could, Sadie and I climbed off the mantel and crept along the wall. I prayed the invisibility shroud wouldn’t send up any more fireworks.

We were about halfway to the desk when Vlad Menshikov finished his chant. He slammed his staff against the floor, and it stuck there straight up, the tip still burning at a million degrees. He turned his head slightly, and I caught the glint of his white sunglasses. He rummaged in his coat pockets while the big green vase glowed and the demon screamed in his chains.

“Don’t fuss, Death-to-Corks,” Menshikov chided. His voice was even rougher than Sadie had described—like a heavy smoker talking through the blades of a fan. “You know I need a sacrifice to summon such a major god. It’s nothing personal.”

Sadie frowned at me and mouthed, Major god?

I shook my head, baffled. The House of Life didn’t allow mortals to summon gods. It was the main reason Desjardins hated us. Menshikov was supposedly his best bud. So what was he doing, breaking the rules?

“Hurts!” the poor demon wailed. “Served you for fifty years, master. Please!”

“Now, now,” Menshikov said without a trace of sympathy. “I have to use execration. Only the most painful form of banishment will generate enough energy.”

From his suit coat pocket, Menshikov pulled a regular corkscrew and a shard of pottery covered with red hieroglyphics.

He held up both items and began to chant again: “I name you Death-to-Corks, Servant of Vladimir, He Who Turns in the Night.”

As the demon’s names were spoken, the magical chains steamed and tightened around his body. Menshikov held the corkscrew over the flame of his staff. The demon thrashed and wailed. As the smaller corkscrew turned red hot, the demon’s body began to smoke.

I watched in horror. I knew about sympathetic magic, of course. The idea was to make something small affect something large by binding them together. The more alike the items were—like the corkscrew and the demon—the easier they were to bind. Voodoo dolls worked on the same theory.

But execration was serious stuff. It meant destroying a creature utterly—erasing its physical form and even its name from existence. It took some serious magic to pull off that kind of spell. If done wrong, it could destroy the caster. But if done right, most victims didn’t stand a chance. Regular mortals, magicians, ghosts, even demons could be wiped off the face of the earth. Execration might not destroy major powers like gods, but it would still be like detonating a nuclear bomb in their face. They’d be blasted so deep into the Duat, they might never come back.

Vlad Menshikov worked the spell like he did it every day. He kept chanting as the corkscrew began to melt, and the demon melted with it. Menshikov dropped the pottery shard on the floor—the red hieroglyphs that spelled all the demon’s various names. With one final word of power, Menshikov stepped on the shard and crushed it to bits. Death-to-Corks dissolved, chains and all.

Usually I don’t feel sorry for creatures of the underworld, but I couldn’t help getting a lump in my throat. I couldn’t believe the casual way Menshikov had snuffed out his servant just to power a larger spell.

As soon as the demon was gone, the fire on Menshikov’s staff died. Hieroglyphs burned around the summoning circle. The big green jar trembled and a voice from deep inside boomed, “Hello, Vladimir. Long time.”

Sadie inhaled sharply. I had to cover her mouth to keep her from screaming. We both knew that voice. I remembered it all too well from the Red Pyramid.

“Set.” Menshikov didn’t even look tired from the summoning. He sounded awfully calm for someone addressing the god of evil. “We need to talk.”

Sadie pushed my hand away and whispered, “Is he mad?”

“Desk,” I said. “Scroll. Out of here. Now.”

For once, she gave me no argument. She began fishing supplies out of her bag.

Meanwhile the big green jar wobbled as if Set were trying to tip it over.

“A malachite vase?” The god sounded annoyed. “Really, Vladimir. I thought we were on friendlier terms than that.”

Menshikov’s laugh sounded like someone choking a cat. “Excellent at constraining evil spirits, isn’t it? And this room has more malachite than any other place on earth. Empress Alexandra was quite wise to have it built for her drawing room.”

The jar plinked. “But it smells like old pennies in here, and it’s much too cold. Have you ever been stuck in a malachite jar, Vlad? I’m not a genie. I’d be so much more talkative if we could sit face-to-face, perhaps over tea.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Menshikov. “Now, you’ll answer my questions.”

“Oh, very well,” Set said. “I like Brazil for the World Cup. I’d advise investing in platinum and small-cap funds. And your lucky numbers this week are 2, 13—”

“Not those questions!” Menshikov snapped.

Sadie pulled a lump of wax from her bag and worked furiously, fashioning some kind of animal shape. I knew she was going to test the desk for magic defenses. She was better at that kind of spell than I was, but I wasn’t sure how she’d do it. Egyptian magic is pretty open-ended. There are always a thousand different ways to accomplish a task. The trick is being creative with your supplies and picking a way that won’t get you killed.

“You will tell me what I need to know,” Menshikov demanded, “or that jar will become even more uncomfortable.”

“My dear Vladimir.” Set’s voice was full of evil amusement. “What you need to know may be very different from what you want to know. Didn’t your unfortunate accident teach you that?”

Menshikov touched his sunglasses, as if making sure they hadn’t fallen off.

“You will tell me the binding for Apophis,” he said in a steely tone. “Then you will tell me how to neutralize the enchantments on Brooklyn House. You know Kane’s defenses better than anyone. Once I destroy him, I will have no opposition.”

As the meaning of Menshikov’s words sank in, a wave of rage nearly knocked me off my feet. This time, Sadie had to clamp my mouth shut.

“Calm!” she whispered. “You’re going to start the invisibility shield popping again!”

I pushed her hand away and hissed, “But he wants to free Apophis!”

“I know.”

“And attack Amos—”

“I know! So help me get the bloody scroll and let’s get out of here!” She put her wax animal on the desk—a dog, I thought —and began writing hieroglyphs on its back with a stylus.

I took a shaky breath. Sadie was right, but still—Menshikov was talking about freeing Apophis and killing our uncle. What kind of magician makes deals with Set? Except for Sadie and me. That was different.

Set’s laugh echoed inside the green vase. “So: the binding for Apophis and the secrets of Brooklyn House. Is that all, Vladimir? I wonder what your master Desjardins would think if he found out your real plan, and the sort of friends you keep.”

Menshikov snatched up his staff. The carved-serpent tip flared again. “Be careful with your threats, Evil Day.”

The jar trembled. Throughout the room, glass cases shivered. The chandelier jangled like a three-ton wind chime.

I gave Sadie a panicked look. “Did he just—”

“Set’s secret name,” she confirmed, still writing on her wax dog.

“How—”

“I don’t know, Carter. Now, shh!”

A god’s secret name had all kinds of power. It was supposed to be almost impossible to get. To truly learn it, you couldn’t just hear it repeated by some random person. You had to hear it straight from the god himself, or from the person closest to his heart. Once you had it, it gave you serious magical leverage over that god. Sadie had learned Set’s secret name during our quest last Christmas, but how had Menshikov gotten it?

Inside the jar, Set growled with annoyance. “I really hate that name. Why couldn’t it have been Glorious Day? Or the Rockin’ Red Reaper? That’s rather nice. Bad enough when you were the only one who knew it, Vlad. Now I’ve got the Kane girl to worry about—”

“Serve us,” Menshikov said, “and the Kanes will be destroyed. You will be the honored lieutenant of Apophis. You can raise another temple, even grander than the Red Pyramid.”

“Uh-huh,” Set said. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I don’t do well with the whole second-in-command concept. As for Apophis, he’s not one to suffer other gods getting attention.”

“We will free Apophis with or without your help,” Menshikov warned. “By the equinox, he will rise. But if you help us make that happen sooner, you will be rewarded. Your other option is execration. Oh, I know it won’t destroy you completely, but with your secret name I can send you into the abyss for eons, and it will be very, very painful. I’ll give you thirty seconds to decide?”

I nudged Sadie. “Hurry.”

She tapped the wax dog, and it came to life. It started sniffing around the desk, looking for magic traps.

Inside the jar, Set sighed. “Well, Vladimir, you do know how to make an appealing offer. The binding for Apophis, you say? Yes, I was there when Ra cast the Serpent into that prison of scarabs. I suppose I could remember the ingredients he used for the binding. Quite a day that was! I was wearing red, I think. At the victory feast they served the most delicious honey-baked locusts—”

“You have ten seconds,” Menshikov said.

“Oh, I’ll cooperate! I hope you have a pen and paper handy.

It’s a rather long list of ingredients. Let’s see…what did Ra use for a base? Bat dung? Then there were the dried toads, of course. And then…”

Set began rattling off ingredients, while Sadie’s wax dog sniffed around the desk. Finally it lay down on the blotter and went to sleep.

Sadie frowned at me. “No traps.”

“That’s too easy,” I whispered back.

She opened the top drawer. There was the papyrus scroll, just like the one we’d found in Brooklyn. She slipped it into her bag.

We were halfway back to the fireplace when Set caught us by surprise.

He was going on with his list of ridiculous ingredients: “And snakeskins. Yes, three large ones, with a sprinkling of hot sauce—” Then he stopped abruptly, like he’d had a revelation. He spoke in a much louder voice, calling across the room. “And a sacrificial victim would be good! Maybe a young idiot magician who can’t do a proper invisibility spell, like CARTER KANE over there!”

I froze. Vladimir Menshikov turned, and my panic became too much for the invisibility shroud.

Half a dozen golden sparks shot up with a loud happy WHEEEEE! The cloud of darkness dissolved.

Menshikov stared right at me. “My, my…how kind of you to deliver yourselves. Well done, Set.”

“Hmm?” Set asked innocently. “Do we have visitors?”

“Set!” Sadie growled. “I’ll kick you in the ba for that, so help me!”

The voice in the jar gasped. “Sadie Kane? How exciting! Too bad I’m stuck in this jar and no one will let me out.”

The hint wasn’t too subtle, but surely he couldn’t believe we’d free him after he’d blown our cover.

Sadie faced Menshikov, her wand and staff ready. “You’re working with Apophis. You’re on the wrong side.”

Menshikov removed his glasses. His eyes were ruined pits of scar tissue, burned skin, and glistening corneas. Believe me, that’s the least gross way I can describe them.

“The wrong side?” Menshikov asked. “Girl, you have no idea the powers that are in play. Five thousand years ago, Egyptian priests prophesied how the world would end. Ra would grow old and tired, and Apophis would swallow him and plunge the world into darkness. Chaos would rule forever. Now the time is here! You can’t stop it. You can only choose whether you’ll be destroyed, or whether you’ll bow to the power of Chaos and survive.”

“Right,” Set chimed in. “It’s too bad I’m stuck in this jar. Otherwise I might have to take sides and help someone.”

“Shut up, Set,” Menshikov snapped. “No one is crazy enough to trust you. And as for you, children, you are clearly not the threat I imagined.”

“Great,” I said. “So we can go?”

Menshikov laughed. “Would you run to Desjardins and tell him what you’ve heard? He wouldn’t believe you. He’d put you on trial, then execute you. But I’ll spare you that embarrassment. I’ll kill you right now.”

“How fun!” Set said. “Wish I could see it, but I’m stuck in this jar.”

I tried to think. Menshikov was still inside a protective circle, which meant he had a big defensive advantage. I wasn’t sure I could bust through it, even if I could summon a combat avatar. Meanwhile, Menshikov could take his time trying out different ways to destroy us. Would he blast us with elemental magic? Change us into bugs?

He threw his staff to the ground, and I cursed.

Throwing down your staff may sound like a sign of surrender, but in Egyptian magic, it’s bad news. It usually means Hey, I’m going to summon a big nasty thing to kill you while I stand safely inside my circle and laugh!

Sure enough, Menshikov’s staff began to writhe and grow.

Great, I thought. Another serpent.

But something was wrong with this one. Instead of a tail, it had a head on both ends. At first I thought we’d caught some luck, and Menshikov had summoned a monster with a rare genetic birth defect. Then the thing sprouted four dragon legs. Its body grew until it was the size of a draft horse, curved like a U, with mottled red and green scales and a rattlesnake head on either side. It reminded me of that two-headed animal from Doctor Dolittle. You know—the pushmi-pullyu? Except Doctor Dolittle would never have wanted to talk to this thing, and if he had, it would probably have said just Hello, I’m going to eat you.

Both heads turned toward us and hissed.

“I’ve really had enough snakes for one week,” I muttered.

Menshikov smiled. “Ah, but serpents are my specialty, Carter Kane!” He touched a silver pendant hanging over his necktie—an amulet shaped like a snake. “And this particular creature is my favorite: the tjesu heru. Two hungry mouths to feed. Two troublesome children. Perfect!”

Sadie and I looked at each other. We had one of those moments where we could read each other’s expressions perfectly.

We both knew we couldn’t defeat Menshikov. He’d let the pushmi-pullyu snake wear us down, and if we survived that, he’d just blast us with something else. The guy was a pro. We would either die or get captured, and Bes had warned us about not getting taken alive. After seeing what had happened to that demon Death-to-Corks, I took Bes’s warning seriously.

To survive, we’d have to do something crazy—something so suicidal Menshikov would never expect it. We had to get help immediately.

“Should I?” Sadie asked.

“Do it,” I agreed.

The tjesu heru bared its dripping fangs. You wouldn’t think a creature with no back end could move so fast, but it bent both heads toward us like a giant horseshoe and charged.

I pulled my sword. Sadie was faster.

She pointed her staff at Set’s malachite jar and yelled her favorite command word: “Ha-di!”

I was afraid it wouldn’t work. She hadn’t tried the destruction spell since she separated herself from Isis. But just before the monster reached me, the green jar shattered.

Menshikov screamed, “Nyet!”

A sandstorm exploded through the room. Hot winds pushed Sadie and me against the fireplace. A wall of red sand slammed into the tjesu heru and sent it flying sideways into a malachite column. Vlad Menshikov was blasted right out of his protective circle and banged his head on a table. He crumpled to the ground, red sand swirling over him until he was completely buried.

When the storm cleared, a man in a red silk suit stood in front of us. He had skin the color of cherry Kool-Aid, a shaved head, a dark goatee, and glittering black eyes lined with kohl. He looked like an Egyptian devil ready for a night on the town.

He grinned and spread his hands in a ta-da gesture. “That’s better! Thank you, Sadie Kane!”

To our left, the tjesu heru hissed and flailed, trying to get back on its feet. The pile of red sand covering Vlad Menshikov started to move.

“Do something, Evil Day!” Sadie commanded. “Get rid of them!”

Set winced. “No need to get personal with the names.”

“Maybe you’d prefer Rockin’ Red Reaper?” I asked.

Set made a picture frame with his fingers, as if imagining that name on his driver’s license. “Yes…that is nice, isn’t it?”

The tjesu heru staggered to its feet. It shook both heads and glared at us, but it seemed to ignore Set, even though he was the one who’d slammed it against the wall.

“It has beautiful coloration, doesn’t it?” Set asked. “A gorgeous specimen.”

“Just kill it!” I yelled.

Set looked shocked. “Oh, I couldn’t do that! I’m much too fond of snakes. Besides, GETM would have my hide.”

“Get ’em?” I asked.

“Gods for the Ethical Treatment of Monsters.”

“You’re making that up!” I yelled.

Set grinned. “Still…I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with the tjesu heru on your own.”

The monster hissed at us, which probably meant, Sweet! I raised my sword to keep it at bay.

The pile of red sand shifted. Menshikov’s dazed face rose from the top. Set snapped his fingers, and a large ceramic pot appeared in the air, shattering on the magician’s head. Menshikov slipped back into the sand.

“I’ll stay here and entertain Vladimir,” Set said.

“Can’t you execrate him, or something?” Sadie demanded.

“Oh, I wish! Unfortunately, I’m rather limited when someone holds my secret name, especially when they’ve given me specific orders not to kill them.” He stared accusingly at Sadie. “At any rate, I may be able to buy you a few minutes, but Vlad is going to be quite mad when he comes around, so I’d hurry, if I were you. Good luck surviving! And good luck eating them, tjesu heru!”

I wanted to strangle Set, but we had bigger problems. As if encouraged by Set’s pep talk, the tjesu heru lunged at us. Sadie and I sprinted for the nearest door.

We ran through the Winter Palace with Set’s laughter echoing behind us.