Kane 2 - The Throne of Fire (47 page)

“Hey, buddy.” Carter rubbed his head, careful to avoid the monster’s chain-saw wings. “What’s happening, guys?”

“Talking didn’t work,” Zia said drily.

“The enemy’s been trying to break in all night,” Walt said. “Amos and Bast have held them off, but—” He glanced at the sun boat, and his voice faltered. “Is that—that isn’t—”

“Zebra!” Ra called, tottering toward us with a big toothless grin.

He walked straight up to Zia and pulled something out of his mouth—the glowing gold scarab, now quite wet but undigested. He offered it to her. “I like zebras.”

Zia backed up. “This is—this is Ra, the Lord of the Sun? Why is he offering me a bug?”

“And what does he mean about zebras?” Walt asked.

Ra looked at Walt and clucked disapprovingly. “Weasels are sick.”

Suddenly a chill went through me. My head spun as if the Chaos sickness was returning. In the back of mind, an idea started to form—something
very
important.

Zebras…Zia. Weasels…Walt.

Before I could think about this further, a large BOOM! shook the building. Chunks of limestone flew from the side of the mansion and rained down on the warehouse yard.

“They’ve breached the walls again!” Walt said. “Hurry!”

I consider myself fairly scattered and hyper, but the rest of the battle happened too fast even for
me
to keep track of. Ra absolutely refused to be parted from Zebra and Weasel (sorry, Zia and Walt), so we left him in their care at the sun boat while Freak lowered Carter and me to the deck below. We dropped from his claws onto the buffet table and found Bast whirling around with her knives in hand, slicing demons to sand and kicking magicians into the swimming pool, where our albino crocodile, Philip of Macedonia, was only too happy to entertain them.

“Sadie!” she cried with relief. [Yes, Carter, she called
my
name instead of yours, but she’s known me longer, after all.] She seemed to be having a great deal of fun, but her tone was urgent. “They’ve breached the east wall. Get inside!”

We ran through the doorway, dodging a random wombat that went flying over our heads—possibly someone’s spell gone awry—and stepped into complete pandemonium.

“Holy Horus,” Carter said.

In fact, Horus was about the only thing
not
doing battle in the Great Room. Khufu, our intrepid baboon, was riding an old magician around the room, choking him with his own wand and steering him into walls as the mage turned blue. Felix had unleashed a squad of penguins on another magician, who cowered in a magic circle with some sort of posttraumatic stress, screaming, “Not Antarctica again! Anything but that!” Alyssa was summoning the powers of Geb to repair a massive hole the enemy had blasted in the far wall. Julian had summoned a combat avatar for the first time, and was slicing demons with his glowing sword. Even bookish Cleo was dashing about the room, pulling scrolls from her pouch and reading random words of power like “Blind!” “Horizontal!” and “Gassy!” (which, by the way, work wonders to incapacitate an enemy). Everywhere I looked, our initiates were ruling the day. They fought as if they’d been waiting all night for the chance to strike, which I suppose was exactly the case. And there was Jaz—Jaz! Up and looking quite healthy!—knocking an enemy
shabti
straight into the fireplace, where it broke into a thousand pieces.

I felt an overwhelming sense of pride, and not a small amount of amazement. I’d been so worried about our young trainees’ surviving, yet they were quite simply
dominating
a much more seasoned group of magicians.

Most impressive, though, was Amos. I’d seen him do magic, but never like this. He stood at the base of Thoth’s statue, swirling his staff and summoning lightning and thunder, blasting enemy magicians, and flinging them away in miniature storm clouds. A woman magician charged at him, her staff glowing with red flames, but Amos simply tapped the floor. The marble tiles turned to sand at her feet, and the woman sank up to her neck.

Carter and I looked at each other, grinned, and joined the fight.

It was a complete rout. Soon the demons had been reduced to sand piles, and the enemy magicians began scattering in panic. No doubt they’d been expecting to fight a band of untrained children. They hadn’t counted on the full Kane treatment.

One of the women managed to open a portal in the far wall.

Stop them,
the voice of Isis spoke in my mind, which was quite a shock after such a long silence.
They must hear the truth.

I don’t know where I got the idea, but I raised my arms and shimmering rainbow wings appeared on either side of me—the wings of Isis.

I swept my arms. A blast of wind and multicolored light knocked our enemies off their feet, leaving our friends perfectly unharmed.

“Listen!” I bellowed.

Everyone fell silent. My voice normally sounds bossy, but now it seemed magnified by a factor of ten. The wings probably commanded attention as well.

“We’re not your enemies!” I said. “I don’t care if you like us, but the world has changed. You need to hear what’s happened.”

My magic wings faded as I told everyone about our trip through the Duat, Ra’s rebirth, Menshikov’s betrayal, the rising of Apophis, and Desjardins’ sacrifice to banish the Serpent.

“Lies!” An Asian man in charred blue robes stepped forward. From the vision Carter had described, I supposed that he was Kwai.

“It’s true,” Carter said. His avatar no longer surrounded him. His clothes had reverted to the normal mortal ones we’d bought him in Cairo, but somehow he still looked quite imposing, quite confident. He held up the leopard-skin cape of the Chief Lector, and I could feel a ripple of shock spread through the room.

“Desjardins fought at our side,” Carter said. “He defeated Menshikov and execrated Apophis. He sacrificed his life to buy us a little time. But Apophis will be back. Desjardins wanted you to know. With his last words, he told me to show you this cape and explain the truth. Especially you, Amos. He wanted you to know—the path of gods has to be restored.”

The enemy’s escape portal was still swirling. No one had stepped through yet.

The woman who’d summoned it spit on our floor. She had white robes and spiky black hair. She shouted to her comrades, “What are you waiting for? They bring us the Chief Lector’s cape and tell us this crazy story. They’re Kanes! Traitors! They probably killed Desjardins and Menshikov themselves.”

Amos’s voice boomed across the Great Room: “Sarah Jacobi! You of all people know that isn’t true. You’ve devoted your life to studying the ways of Chaos. You can
sense
the unleashing of Apophis, can’t you? And the return of Ra.”

Amos pointed out through the glass doors leading to the deck. I don’t know how he sensed it without looking, but the sun boat was just floating down, coming to rest in Philip’s swimming pool. It was quite an impressive landing. Zia and Walt stood on either side of the throne of fire. They’d managed to prop up Ra so that he looked a bit more regal with his crook and flail in his hands, though he still had a goofy grin on his face.

Bast, who’d been standing on the deck frozen in shock, fell to her knees. “My king!”

“Hel-llo-o-o-o-o,” Ra warbled. “Goood-bye!”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but Bast shot to her feet, suddenly alarmed.

“He’s going to rise into the heavens!” she said. “Walt, Zia, jump off!”

They did, just in time. The sun boat began to glow. Bast turned to me and called, “I’ll escort him to the other gods! Don’t worry. Back soon!” She jumped on board, and the sun boat floated into the sky, turning into a ball of fire. Then it blended with the sunlight and was gone.

“There is your proof,” Amos announced. “The gods and the House of Life must work together. Sadie and Carter are right. The Serpent will not stay down for long, now that he has broken his chains. Who will join us?”

Several enemy magicians threw down their staffs and wands.

The woman in white, Sarah Jacobi, snarled, “The other nomes will never recognize your claim, Kane. You are tainted with the power of Set! We’ll spread the word. We’ll let them know you murdered Desjardins. They’ll never follow you!”

She leaped through the portal. The man in blue, Kwai, studied us with contempt, then followed Jacobi. Three others did as well, but we let them leave in peace.

Reverently, Amos took the leopard-skin cape from Carter’s hands. “Poor Michel.”

Everyone gathered around the statue of Thoth. For the first time, I realized how badly the Great Room had been damaged. Walls had been cracked, windows broken, relics smashed, and Amos’s musical instruments half melted. For the second time in three months, we’d almost destroyed Brooklyn House. That had to be a record. And yet I wanted to give everyone in the room a huge hug.

“You all were brilliant,” I said. “You destroyed the enemy in seconds! If you can fight so well, how were they able to keep you pinned down all night?”

“But we could barely keep them out!” Felix said. He looked mystified by his own success. “By dawn, I was, like, completely out of energy.”

The others nodded grimly.

“And I was in a coma,” said a familiar voice. Jaz pushed through the crowd and embraced Carter and me. It was so good to see her, I felt ridiculous that I’d ever been jealous of her and Walt.

“You’re all right now?” I held her shoulders and studied her face for any sign of sickness, but she looked her usual bubbly self.

“I’m fine!” she said. “Right at dawn, I woke up feeling great. I guess as soon as you arrived…I don’t know. Something happened.”

“The power of Ra,” Amos said. “When he rose, he brought new life, new energy to all of us. He revitalized our spirit. Without that, we would’ve failed.”

I turned to Walt, not daring to ask. Was it possible he’d been cured as well? But the look in his eyes told me
that
prayer had not been answered. I suppose he could feel the pain in his limbs after doing so much magic.

Weasels are sick,
Ra had often repeated. I wasn’t sure why Ra was so interested in Walt’s condition, but apparently it was beyond even the sun god’s power to fix.

“Amos,” Carter said, interrupting my thoughts, “what did Jacobi mean about the other nomes not recognizing your claim?”

I couldn’t help it. I sighed and rolled my eyes at him. My brother can be quite thick sometimes.

“What?” he demanded.

“Carter,” I said, “do you remember our talking about the most powerful magicians in the world? Desjardins was the first. Menshikov was the third. And you were worried about who the second might be?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But—”

“And now that Desjardins is dead, the
second
-most powerful magician is the
most
powerful magician. And who do you think that is?”

Slowly, his brain cells must’ve fired, which is proof that miracles can happen. He turned to stare at Amos.

Our uncle nodded solemnly.

“I’m afraid so, children.” Amos draped the leopard-skin cape around his shoulders. “Like it or not, the responsibility of leadership falls to me. I am the new Chief Lector.”

S A D I E

I
DON’T LIKE GOOD-BYES
, and yet I have to tell you about so many of them.

[No, Carter. That wasn’t an invitation to take the microphone. Push off!]

By sunset, Brooklyn House was back in order. Alyssa took care of the masonry almost single-handedly with the power of the earth god. Our initiates knew the
hi-nehm
spell well enough to fix most of the other broken things. Khufu showed as much dexterity with rags and cleaning fluid as he did with a basketball, and it’s truly amazing how much polishing, dusting, and scrubbing one can accomplish by attaching large dusting cloths to the wings of a griffin.

We had several meetings during the day. Philip of Macedonia kept guard in the pool, and our
shabti
army patrolled the grounds, but no one tried to attack—neither the forces of Apophis nor our fellow magicians. I could almost feel the collective shock spreading throughout the three hundred and sixty nomes as they learned the news: Desjardins was dead, Apophis had risen, Ra was back, and Amos Kane was the new Chief Lector. Which fact was most alarming to them, I didn’t know, but I thought we’d have at least a little breathing space while the other nomes processed the turn of events and decided what to do.

Just before sunset, Carter and I were back on the roof as Zia opened a portal to Cairo for herself and Amos.

With her black hair freshly cut and a new set of beige robes, Zia looked like she hadn’t changed a bit since we first spoke with her at the Metropolitan Museum, even though so much had happened since then. And I suppose, technically speaking, that hadn’t been her at the museum at all, since it was her
shabti.

[Yes, I know. Horribly confusing to keep track of all that. You should learn the spell for summoning headache medicine. It works wonders.]

The swirling gate appeared, and Zia turned to say her good-byes.