The Red Pyramid

12. A Jump Through the Hourglass

WELL, THAT WAS ALL VERY IMPRESSIVE, I suppose. You should’ve seen Carter’s face-he looked like an excited puppy. [Oh, stop shoving me. You did!]

But I felt much less sure of Miss Zia “I’m-So-Magical” Rashid when the army of scorpions scuttled towards us. I wouldn’t have thought it possible so many scorpions existed in the world, much less in Manhattan. The glowing circle round us seemed like insignificant protection against the millions of arachnids crawling over one another, many layers deep, and the woman in brown, who was even more horrible.

From a distance she looked all right, but as she got closer I saw that Serqet’s pale skin glistened like an insect shell. Her eyes were beady black. Her long, dark hair was unnaturally thick, as if made from a million bristling bug antennae. And when she opened her mouth, sideways mandibles snapped and retracted outside her regular human teeth.

The goddess stopped about twenty meters away, studying us. Her hateful black eyes fixed on Zia. “Give me the younglings.”

Her voice was harsh and raspy, as if she hadn’t spoken in centuries.

Zia crossed her staff and wand. “I am mistress of the elements, Scribe of the First Nome. Leave or be destroyed.”

Serqet clicked her mandibles in a gruesome foamy grin. Some of her scorpions advanced, but when the first one touched the glowing lines of our protective circle, it sizzled and turned to ashes. Mark my words, nothing smells worse than burned scorpion.

The rest of the horrible things retreated, swirling round the goddess and crawling up her legs. With a shudder, I realized they were wriggling into her robes. After a few seconds, all the scorpions had disappeared into the brown folds of her clothes.

The air seemed to darken behind Serqet, as if she were casting an enormous shadow. Then the darkness rose up and took the form of a massive scorpion tail, arcing over Serqet’s head. It lashed down at us at blazing speed, but Zia raised her wand and the sting glanced off the ivory tip with a hissing sound. Steam rolled off Zia’s wand, smelling of sulfur.

Zia pointed her staff towards the goddess, engulfing her body in fire. Serqet screamed and staggered backwards, but the fire died almost instantly. It left Serqet’s robes seared and smoking, but the goddess looked more enraged than hurt.

“Your days are past, magician. The House is weak. Lord Set will lay waste to this land.”

Zia threw her wand like a boomerang. It smashed into the shadowy scorpion tail and exploded in a blinding flash of light. Serqet lurched back and averted her eyes, and as she did, Zia reached into her sleeve and brought out something small-something closed inside her fist.

The wand was a diversion, I thought. A magician’s sleight of hand.

Then Zia did something reckless: she leaped out of the magic circle-the very thing she’d warned us not to do.

“Zia!” Carter called. “The gate!”

I glanced behind me, and my heart almost stopped. The space between the two columns at the temple’s entrance was now a vertical tunnel of sand, as if I were looking into the funnel of an enormous sideways hourglass. I could feel it tugging at me, pulling me towards it with magical gravity.

“I’m not going in there,” I insisted, but another flash of light brought my attention back to Zia.

She and the goddess were involved in a dangerous dance. Zia twirled and spun with her fiery staff, and everywhere she passed, she left a trail of flames burning in the air. I had to admit it: Zia was almost as graceful and impressive as Bast.

I had the oddest desire to help. I wanted-very badly, in fact-to step outside the circle and engage in combat. It was a completely mad urge, of course. What could I possibly have done? But still I felt I shouldn’t-or couldn’t-jump through the gate without helping Zia.

“Sadie!” Carter grabbed me and pulled me back. Without my even realizing it, my foot had almost stepped across the line of chalk. “What are you thinking?”

I didn’t have an answer, but I stared at Zia and mumbled in a sort of trance, “She’s going to use ribbons. They won’t work.”

“What?” Carter demanded. “Come on, we’ve got to go through the gate!”

Just then Zia opened her fist and small red tendrils of cloth fluttered into the air. Ribbons. How had I known? They zipped about like living things-like eels in water-and began to grow larger.

Serqet was still concentrating on the fire, trying to keep Zia from caging her. At first she didn’t seem to notice the ribbons, which grew until they were several meters long. I counted five, six, seven of them in all. They zipped around, orbiting Serqet, ripping through her shadow scorpion as if it were a harmless illusion. Finally they wrapped around Serqet’s body, pinning her arms and legs. She screamed as if the ribbons burned her. She dropped to her knees, and the shadow scorpion disintegrated into an inky haze.

Zia spun to a stop. She pointed her staff at the goddess’s face. The ribbons began to glow, and the goddess hissed in pain, cursing in a language I didn’t know.

“I bind you with the Seven Ribbons of Hathor,” Zia said. “Release your host or your essence will burn forever.”

“Your death will last forever!” Serqet snarled. “You have made an enemy of Set!”

Zia twisted her staff, and Serqet fell sideways, writhing and smoking.

“I will…not…” the goddess hissed. But then her black eyes turned milky white, and she lay still.

“The gate!” Carter warned. “Zia, come on! I think it’s closing!”

He was right. The tunnel of sand seemed to be moving a bit more slowly. The tug of its magic did not feel as strong.

Zia approached the fallen goddess. She touched Serqet’s forehead, and black smoke billowed from the goddess’s mouth. Serqet transformed and shrank until we were looking at a completely different woman wrapped in red ribbons. She had pale skin and black hair, but otherwise she didn’t look anything like Serqet. She looked, well, human.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“The host,” Zia said. “Some poor mortal who-”

She looked up with a start. The black haze was no longer dissipating. It was getting thicker and darker again, swirling into a more solid form.

“Impossible,” Zia said. “The ribbons are too powerful. Serqet can’t re-form unless-”

“Well, she is re-forming,” Carter yelled, “and our exit is closing! Let’s go!”

I couldn’t believe he was willing to jump into a churning wall of sand, but as I watched the black cloud take the shape of a two-story-tall scorpion-a very angry scorpion-I made my decision.

“Coming!” I yelled.

“Zia!” Carter yelled. “Now!”

“Perhaps you’re right,” the magician decided. She turned, and together we ran and plunged straight into the swirling vortex.

C A R T E R