The Serpent's Shadow

Most upsetting of all: a small alabaster statue of our friend Bes, the dwarf god. The carving was eons old, but I recognized that pug nose, the bushy sideburns, the potbelly, and the endearingly ugly face that looked as if it had been hit repeatedly with a frying pan. We’d only known Bes for a few days, but he’d literally sacrificed his soul to help us. Now, each time I saw him I was reminded of a debt I could never repay.



I must have lingered at his statue longer than I realized. The rest of the group had passed me and were turning into the next room, about twenty meters ahead, when a voice next to me said, “Psst!”



I looked around. I thought the statue of Bes might have spoken. Then the voice called again: “Hey, doll. Listen up. Not much time.”



In the middle of the wall, eye-level with me, a man’s face bulged from the white, textured paint as if trying to break through. He had a beak of a nose, cruel thin lips, and a high forehead. Though he was the same color as the wall, he seemed very much alive. His blank eyes managed to convey a look of impatience.



“You won’t save the scroll, doll,” he warned. “Even if you did, you’d never understand it. You need my help.”



I’d experienced many strange things since I’d begun practicing magic, so I wasn’t particularly startled. Still, I knew better than to trust any old white-spackled apparition who spoke to me, especially one who called me doll. He reminded me of a character from those silly Mafia movies the boys at Brooklyn House liked to watch in their spare time—someone’s Uncle Vinnie, perhaps.



“Who are you?” I demanded.



The man snorted. “Like you don’t know. Like there’s anybody who doesn’t know. You’ve got two days until they put me down. You want to defeat Apophis, you’d better pull some strings and get me out of here.”



“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.



The man didn’t sound like Set the god of evil, or the serpent Apophis, or any of the other villains I’d dealt with before, but one could never be sure. There was this thing called magic, after all.



The man jutted out his chin. “Okay, I get it. You want a show of faith. You’ll never save the scroll, but go for the golden box. That’ll give you a clue about what you need, if you’re smart enough to understand it. Day after tomorrow at sunset, doll. Then my offer expires, ’cause that’s when I get permanently—”



He choked. His eyes widened. He strained as if a noose were tightening around his neck. He slowly melted back into the wall.



“Sadie?” Walt called from the end of the corridor. “You okay?”



I looked over. “Did you see that?”



“See what?” he asked.



Of course not, I thought. What fun would it be if other people saw my vision of Uncle Vinnie? Then I couldn’t wonder if I were going stark raving mad.



“Nothing,” I said, and I ran to catch up.



The entrance to the next room was flanked by two giant obsidian sphinxes with the bodies of lions and the heads of rams. Carter says that particular type of sphinx is called a criosphinx. [Thanks, Carter. We were all dying to know that bit of useless information.]



“Agh!” Khufu warned, holding up five fingers.



“Five minutes left,” Carter translated.



“Give me a moment,” JD said. “This room has the heaviest protective spells. I’ll need to modify them to let you through.”



“Uh,” I said nervously, “but the spells will still keep out enemies, like giant Chaos snakes, I hope?”



JD gave me an exasperated look, which I tend to get a lot.



“I do know a thing or two about protective magic,” he promised. “Trust me.” He raised his wand and began to chant.



Carter pulled me aside. “You okay?”



I must have looked shaken from my encounter with Uncle Vinnie. “I’m fine,” I said. “Saw something back there. Probably just one of Apophis’s tricks, but…”



My eyes drifted to the other end of the corridor. Walt was staring at a golden throne in a glass case. He leaned forward with one hand on the glass as if he might be sick.



“Hold that thought,” I told Carter.



I moved to Walt’s side. Light from the exhibit bathed his face, turning his features reddish brown like the hills of Egypt.



“What’s wrong?” I asked.



“Tutankhamen died in that chair,” he said.



I read the display card. It didn’t say anything about Tut dying in the chair, but Walt sounded very sure. Perhaps he could sense the family curse. King Tut was Walt’s great-times-a-billion granduncle, and the same genetic poison that killed Tut at nineteen was now coursing through Walt’s bloodstream, getting stronger the more he practiced magic. Yet Walt refused to slow down. Looking at the throne of his ancestor, he must have felt as if he were reading his own obituary.



“We’ll find a cure,” I promised. “As soon as we deal with Apophis…”



He looked at me, and my voice faltered. We both knew our chances of defeating Apophis were slim. Even if we succeeded, there was no guarantee Walt would live long enough to enjoy the victory. Today was one of Walt’s good days, and still I could see the pain in his eyes.



“Guys,” Carter called. “We’re ready.”



The room beyond the criosphinxes was a “greatest hits” collection from the Egyptian afterlife. A life-sized wooden Anubis stared down from his pedestal. Atop a replica of the scales of justice sat a golden baboon, which Khufu immediately started flirting with. There were masks of pharaohs, maps of the Underworld, and loads of canopic jars that had once been filled with mummy organs.



Carter passed all that by. He gathered us around a long papyrus scroll in a glass case on the back wall.



“This is what you’re after?” JD frowned. “The Book of Overcoming Apophis? You do realize that even the best spells against Apophis aren’t very effective.”



Carter reached in his pocket and produced a bit of burned papyrus. “This is all we could salvage from Toronto. It was another copy of the same scroll.”



JD took the papyrus scrap. It was no bigger than a postcard and too charred to let us make out more than a few hieroglyphs.



“‘Overcoming Apophis…’” he read. “But this is one of the most common magic scrolls. Hundreds of copies have survived from ancient times.”



“No.” I fought the urge to look over my shoulder, in case any giant serpents were listening in. “Apophis is after only one particular version, written by this chap.”



I tapped the information plaque next to the display. “‘Attributed to Prince Khaemwaset,’” I read, “‘better known as Setne.’”



JD scowled. “That’s an evil name…one of most villainous magicians who ever lived.”



“So we’ve heard,” I said, “and Apophis is destroying only Setne’s version of the scroll. As far as we can tell, only six copies existed. Apophis has already burned five. This is the last one.”



JD studied the burned papyrus scrap doubtfully. “If Apophis has truly risen from the Duat with all his power, why would he care about a few scrolls? No spell could possibly stop him. Why hasn’t he already destroyed the world?”



We’d been asking ourselves the same question for months.



“Apophis is afraid of this scroll,” I said, hoping I was right. “Something in it must hold the secret to defeating him. He wants to make sure all copies are destroyed before he invades the world.”



“Sadie, we need to hurry,” Carter said. “The attack could come any minute.”



I stepped closer to the scroll. It was roughly two meters long and a half-meter tall, with dense lines of hieroglyphs and colorful illustrations. I’d seen loads of scrolls like this describing ways to defeat Chaos, with chants designed to keep the serpent Apophis from devouring the sun god Ra on his nightly journey through the Duat. Ancient Egyptians had been quite obsessed with this subject. Cheery bunch, those Egyptians.



I could read the hieroglyphs—one of my many amazing talents—but the scroll was a lot to take in. At first glance, nothing struck me as particularly helpful. There were the usual descriptions of the River of Night, down which Ra’s sun boat traveled. Been there, thanks. There were tips on how to handle the various demons of the Duat. Met them. Killed them. Got the T-shirt.



“Sadie?” Carter asked. “Anything?”



“Don’t know yet,” I grumbled. “Give me a moment.”



I found it annoying that my bookish brother was the combat magician, while I was expected to be the great reader of magic. I barely had the patience for magazines, much less musty scrolls.



You’d never understand it, the face in the wall had warned. You need my help.



“We’ll have to take it with us,” I decided. “I’m sure I can figure it out with a little more—”



The building shook. Khufu shrieked and leaped into the arms of the golden baboon. Felix’s penguins waddled around frantically.



“That sounded like—” JD Grissom blanched. “An explosion outside. The party!”



“It’s a diversion,” Carter warned. “Apophis is trying to draw our defenses away from the scroll.”



“They’re attacking my friends,” JD said in a strangled voice. “My wife.”



“Go!” I said. I glared at my brother. “We can handle the scroll. JD’s wife is in danger!”



JD clasped my hands. “Take the scroll. Good luck.”



He ran from the room.



I turned back to the display. “Walt, can you open the case? We need to get this out of here as fast—”



Evil laughter filled the room. A dry, heavy voice, deep as a nuclear blast, echoed all around us: “I don’t think so, Sadie Kane.”



My skin felt as if it were turning to brittle papyrus. I remembered that voice. I remembered how it felt being so close to Chaos, as if my blood were turning to fire, and the strands of my DNA were unraveling.



“I think I’ll destroy you with the guardians of Ma’at,” Apophis said. “Yes, that will be amusing.”



At the entrance to the room, the two obsidian criosphinxes turned. They blocked the exit, standing shoulder to shoulder. Flames curled from their nostrils.



In the voice of Apophis, they spoke in unison: “No one leaves this place alive. Good-bye, Sadie Kane.”



2. I Have a Word with Chaos



WOULD YOU BE SURPRISED TO LEARN that things went badly from there?



I didn’t think so.



Our first casualties were Felix’s penguins. The criosphinxes blew fire at the unfortunate birds, and they melted into puddles of water.



“No!” Felix cried.



The room rumbled, much stronger this time.



Khufu screamed and jumped on Carter’s head, knocking him to the floor. Under different circumstances that would’ve been funny, but I realized Khufu had just saved my brother’s life.



Where Carter had been standing, the floor dissolved, marble tiles crumbling as if broken apart by an invisible jackhammer. The area of disruption snaked across the room, destroying everything in its path, sucking artifacts into the ground and chewing them to bits. Yes…snaked was the right word. The destruction slithered exactly like a serpent, heading straight for the back wall and the Book of Overcoming Apophis.