The Throne of Fire

by Rick Riordan

  The current accelerated. So did the leaking of the boat. Carter demonstrated his combat magic skill by summoning a bucket and bailing out water, while I concentrated on keeping the crew in line. The deeper we sailed into the Duat, the more rebellious the glowing orbs became. They chafed against my will, remembering how much they wanted to incinerate me.

  It’s unnerving to float down a magic river with voices whispering in your head: Die, traitor, die. Every so often I’d get the feeling we were being followed. I’d turn and think I could see a whitish smudge against the black, like the afterimage of a flash, but I decided it must be my imagination. Even more unnerving was the darkness ahead—no shoreline, no landmarks, no visibility at all. The crew could’ve steered us straight into a boulder or the mouth of a monster, and we would’ve had absolutely no warning. We just kept sailing through the dark empty void.

  “Why is it so…nothing?” I murmured.

  Carter emptied his bucket. He made an odd sight—a boy dressed as a pharaoh with the royal crook and flail, bailing water from a leaky boat.

  “Maybe the Houses of the Night follow human sleep patterns,” he suggested.

  “Human what?”

  “Sleep patterns. Mom used to tell us about them before bedtime. Remember?”

  I didn’t. Then again, I’d only been six when our mum died. She’d been a scientist as well as a magician, and had thought nothing of reading us Newton’s laws or the periodic table as bedtime stories. Most of it had gone over my head, but I wanted to remember. I’d always been irritated that Carter remembered Mum so much better than I did.

  “Sleep has different stages,” Carter said. “Like, the first few hours, the brain is almost in a coma—a really deep sleep with hardly any dreams. Maybe that’s why this part of the river is so dark and formless. Then later in the night, the brain goes through R.E.M.—rapid eye movement. That’s when dreams happen. The cycles get more rapid and more vivid. Maybe the Houses of the Night follow a pattern like that.”

  It seemed a bit far-fetched to me. Then again, Mum had always told us science and magic weren’t mutually exclusive. She’d called them two dialects of the same language. Bast had once told us there were millions of different channels and tributaries to the Duat’s river. The geography could change with each journey, responding to the traveler’s thoughts. If the river was shaped by all the sleeping minds in the world, if its course got more vivid and crazy as the night went along, then we were in for a rough ride.

  The river eventually narrowed. A shoreline appeared on either side—black volcanic sand sparkling in the lights of our magic crew. The air turned colder. The underside of the boat scraped against rocks and sandbars, which made the leaks worse. Carter gave up on the pail and pulled wax from his supply bag. Together we tried to plug the leaks, speaking binding spells to hold the boat together. If I’d had any chewing gum, I would’ve used that as well.

  We didn’t pass any signposts—now entering the third house, services next exit—but we’d clearly entered a different section of the river. Time was slipping away at an alarming rate, and still we hadn’t done anything.

  “Perhaps the first challenge is boredom,” I said. “When will something happen?”

  I should’ve known better than to say that aloud. Right in front of us, a shape loomed out of the darkness. A sandaled foot the size of a water bed planted itself on the prow of our ship and stopped us dead in the water.

  It wasn’t an attractive foot, either. Definitely male. Its toes were splattered with mud, and its toenails were yellow, cracked, and overgrown. The leather sandal straps were covered in lichen and barnacles. In short, the foot looked and smelled very much like it had been standing on the same rock in the middle of the river, wearing the same sandal, for several thousand years.

  Unfortunately, it was attached to a leg, which was attached to a body. The giant leaned down to look at us.

  “You are bored?” his voice boomed, not in an unfriendly way. “I could kill you, if that would help.”

  He wore a kilt like Carter’s, except that the giant’s skirt could have supplied enough fabric to make ten ship sails. His body was humanoid and muscular, covered with man-fur—the sort of gross body hair that makes me want to start a charity waxing foundation for overly fuzzy men. He had the head of a ram: a white snout with a brass ring in his nose and long curly horns hung with dozens of bronze bells. His eyes were set far apart, with luminous red irises and vertical slits for pupils. I suppose that all sounds rather frightening, but the ram man didn’t strike me as devilish. In fact he looked quite familiar, for some reason. He seemed more melancholy than threatening, as if he’d been standing on his little rock island in the middle of the river for so long, he’d forgotten why he was there.

  [Carter asks when I became a ram whisperer. Do shut up, Carter.]

  I honestly felt sorry for the ram man. His eyes were full of loneliness. I couldn’t believe he would hurt us—until he drew from his belt two very large knives with curly blades like his horns.

  “You’re silent,” he noted. “Is that a yes for the killing?”

  “No, thanks!” I said, trying to sound grateful for the offer. “One word and one question, please. The word is pedicure. The question is: Who are you?”

  “Ahhh-ha-ha-ha,” he said, bleating like a sheep. “If you knew my name, we wouldn’t need introductions, and I could let you pass. Unfortunately, no one ever knows my name. A shame, too. I see you’ve found the Book of Ra. You’ve revived his crew and managed to sail his boat to the gates of the Fourth House. No one’s ever gotten this far before. I’m terribly sorry I have to slice you to pieces.”

  He hefted his knives, one in each hand. Our glowing orbs swarmed in a frenzy, whispering, Yes! Slice her! Yes!

  “Just a mo’,” I called up to the giant. “If we name you, we can pass?”

  “Naturally.” He sighed. “But no one ever can.”

  I glanced at Carter. This wasn’t the first time we’d been stopped on the River of Night and challenged to name a guardian on pain of death. Apparently, it was quite a common experience for Egyptian souls and magicians passing through the Duat. But I couldn’t believe we’d get such an easy test. I was sure now that I recognized the ram man. We’d seen his statue in the Brooklyn Museum.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” I asked Carter. “The chap who looks like Bullwinkle?”

  “Don’t call him Bullwinkle!” Carter hissed. He looked up at the giant ram man and said, “You’re Khnum, aren’t you?”

  The ram man made a rumbling sound deep in his throat. He scraped one of his knives against the ship’s rail. “Is that a question? Or is that your final answer?”

  Carter blinked. “Um—”

  “Not our final answer!” I yelped, realizing that we’d almost stepped into a trap. “Not even close. Khnum is your common name, isn’t it? You want us to say your true name, your ren.”

  Khnum tilted his head, the bells on his horns jingling. “That would be nice. But, alas, no one knows it. Even I have forgotten it.”

  “How can you forget your own name?” Carter asked. “And, yes, that’s a question.”

  “I am part of Ra,” said the ram god. “I am his aspect in the underworld—a third of his personality. But when Ra stopped making his nightly journey, he no longer needed me. He left me here at the gates of the Fourth House, discarded like an old coat. Now I guard the gates…I have no other purpose. If I could recover my name, I could yield my spirit to whoever frees me. They could reunite me with Ra, but until then I cannot leave this place.”

  He sounded horribly depressed, like a little lost sheep, or rather a ten-meter-tall lost sheep with very large knives. I wanted to help him. Even more than that, I wanted to find a way not to get myself sliced to bits.

  “If you don’t remember your name,” I said, “why couldn’t we just tell you any old name? How would you know whether it was the right answer or not?”

  Khnum let his knives trail in the water. “I hadn’t thou
ght of that.”

  Carter glared at me as if to say Why did you tell him?

  The ram god bleated. “I think I will know my ren when I hear it,” he decided, “though I cannot be sure. Being only part of Ra, I am not sure of much. I’ve lost most of my memories, most of my power and identity. I am no more than a husk of my former self.”

  “Your former self must’ve been enormous,” I muttered.

  The god might have smiled, though it was hard to tell with the ram face. “I’m sorry you don’t have my ren. You’re a bright girl. You’re the first to make it this far. The first and the best.” He sighed forlornly. “Ah, well. I suppose we should get to the killing.”

  The first and the best. My mind started racing.

  “Wait,” I said. “I know your name.”

  Carter yelped. “You do? Tell him!”

  I thought of a line from the Book of Ra—first from Chaos. I drew on the memories of Isis, the only goddess who had ever known Ra’s secret name, and I began to understand the nature of the sun god.

  “Ra was the first god to rise out of Chaos,” I said.

  Khnum frowned. “That’s my name?”

  “No, just listen,” I said. “You said you’re not complete without Ra, just a husk of your former self. But that’s true of all the other Egyptian gods as well. Ra is older, more powerful. He’s the original source of Ma’at, like—”

  “Like the taproot of the gods,” Carter volunteered.

  “Right,” I said. “I have no idea what a taproot is, but—right.

  All these eons, the other gods have been slowly fading, losing power, because Ra is missing. They might not admit it, but he’s their heart. They’re dependent on him. All this time, we’ve been wondering if it was worth it, to bring back Ra. We didn’t know why it was so important, but now I understand.”

  Carter nodded, slowly warming to the idea. “Ra’s the center of Ma’at. He has to come back, if the gods are going to win.”

  “And that’s why Apophis wants to bring back Ra,” I guessed. “The two are connected—Ma’at and Chaos. If Apophis can swallow Ra while the sun god is old and weak—”

  “All the gods die,” Carter said. “The world crumbles into Chaos.”

  Khnum turned his head so he could study me with one glowing red eye. “That’s all quite interesting,” he said. “But I’m not hearing my secret name. To wake Ra, you must first name me.”

  I opened the Book of Ra and took a deep breath. I began to read the first part of the spell. Now, you may be thinking, Gosh, Sadie. Your big test was to read some words off a scroll? What’s so hard about that?

  If you think that, you’ve clearly never read a spell. Imagine reading aloud onstage in front of a thousand hostile teachers who are waiting to give you bad marks. Imagine you can only read by looking at the backward reflection in a mirror. Imagine all the words are mixed around, and you have to put the sentences together in the right order as you go. Imagine if you make one mistake, one stumble, one mispronunciation, you’ll die. Imagine doing all that at once, and you’ll have some idea what it’s like to cast a spell from a scroll.

  Despite that, I felt strangely confident. The spell suddenly made sense.

  “‘I name you First from Chaos,’” I said. “‘Khnum, who is Ra, the evening sun. I summon your ba to awaken the Great One, for I am—’”

  My first near-fatal mistake: the scroll said something like insert your name here. And I almost read it aloud that way: “For I am insert your name here!”

  Well? It would’ve been an honest mistake. Instead, I managed to say, “‘I am Sadie Kane, restorer of the throne of fire. I name you Breath into Clay, the Ram of Night’s Flock, the Divine—’”

  I almost lost it again. I was sure the Egyptian title said the Divine Pooter. But that made no sense, unless Khnum had magic powers I didn’t want to know about. Thankfully, I remembered something from the Brooklyn Museum. Khnum had been depicted as a potter sculpting a human from clay.

  “‘—the Divine Potter,’” I corrected myself. “‘I name you Khnum, protector of the fourth gate. I return your name. I return your essence to Ra.’”

  The god’s huge eyes dilated. His nostrils flared. “Yes.” He sheathed his knives. “Well done, my lady. You may pass into the Fourth House. But beware the fires, and be prepared for the second form of Ra. He will not be so grateful for your help.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  But the ram god’s body dissolved into mist. The Book of Ra sucked in the wisps of smoke, and it rolled shut. Khnum and his island were gone. The boat drifted on into a narrower tunnel.

  “Sadie,” Carter said, “that was amazing.”

  Normally, I would’ve been happy to astonish him with my brilliance. But my heart was racing. My hands were sweating, and I thought I might throw up. On top of that, I could feel the glowing orb crew coming out of their shock, beginning to fight me again.

  No slice, they complained. No slice!

  Mind your own business, I thought back at them. And keep the boat going.

  “Um, Sadie?” Carter asked. “Why is your face turning red?”

  I thought he was accusing me of blushing. Then I realized he too was red. The whole boat was awash in ruby light. I turned to look ahead of us, and I made a sound in my throat not too different from Khnum’s bleating.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Not this place again.”

  Roughly a hundred meters ahead of us, the tunnel opened into a huge cavern. I recognized the massive boiling Lake of Fire; but the last time I hadn’t seen it from this angle.

  We were picking up speed, heading down a series of rapids like a water slide. At the end of the rapids, the water turned into a fiery waterfall and dropped straight down into the lake about half a mile below. We were hurtling toward the precipice with absolutely no way to stop.

  Keep the boat going, the crew whispered with glee. Keep the boat going!

  We probably had less than a minute, but it seemed longer. I suppose if time flies when you’re having fun, it really creeps when you’re hurtling toward your death.

  “We’ve got to turn around!” Carter said. “Even if that wasn’t fire, we’ll never survive the drop!”

  He began yelling at the orbs of light, “Turn around! Paddle! Mayday!”

  They happily ignored him.

  I stared at the flaming drop to oblivion and the Lake of Fire below. Despite the waves of heat rolling over us like dragon breath, I felt cold. I realized what needed to happen.

  “‘Reborn in fire,’” I said.

  “What?” Carter asked.

  “It’s a line from the Book of Ra. We can’t turn around. We have to go over—straight into the lake.”

  “Are you crazy? We’ll burn up!”

  I ripped open my magic bag and rummaged through my supplies. “We have to take the ship through the fire. That was part of the sun’s nightly rebirth, right? Ra would have done it.”

  “Ra wasn’t flammable!”

  The waterfall was only twenty meters away now. My hands trembled as I poured ink into my writing palette. If you’ve never tried to use a calligraphy set while standing up on a boat, it isn’t easy.

  “What are you doing?” Carter asked. “Writing your will?”

  I took a deep breath and dipped my stylus in black ink. I visualized the hieroglyphs I needed. I wished Zia were with us. Not just because we had hit it off rather well in Cairo—[Oh, stop pouting, Carter. It’s not my fault she realized I’m the brilliant one in the family]—but because Zia was an expert with fire glyphs, and that’s just what we needed.

  “Push up your hair,” I told Carter. “I need to paint your forehead.”

  “I’m not plunging to my death with loser painted on my head!”

  “I’m trying to save you. Hurry!”

  He pushed his hair out of the way. I painted the glyphs for fire and shield on his forehead, and immediately my brother burst into flame.

  I know—it was like a dream come true and
a nightmare, all at once. He danced around, spewing some very creative curse words before realizing that the fire wasn’t hurting him. He was simply encased in a protective sheet of flames.

  “What, exactly—” His eyes widened. “Hold on to something!”

  The boat tipped sickeningly over the edge of the falls. I dashed the hieroglyphs onto the back of my hand, but it wasn’t a good copy. The flames spluttered weakly around me. Alas, I didn’t have time for anything better. I wrapped my arms around the rail, and we plummeted straight down.

  Strange how many things can go through your mind as you fall to certain doom. From up high, the Lake of Fire looked quite beautiful, like the surface of the sun. I wondered if I would feel any pain on impact, or if we would simply evaporate. It was hard to see anything as we plummeted through the ash and smoke, but I thought I spotted a familiar island about a mile away—the black temple where I’d first met Anubis. I wondered if he could see me from there, and if he would rush to my rescue. I wondered if my chances of survival would be better if I pushed away from the boat and fell like a cliff diver, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I held on to the rail with all my might. I wasn’t sure if the magical fire shield was protecting me, but I was sweating fiercely, and I was fairly certain I’d left my throat and most of my internal organs at the top of the waterfall.

  Finally we hit bottom with an understated whooooom.

  How to describe the sensation of plunging into a lake of liquid fire? Well…it burned. And yet it was somehow wet, too. I didn’t dare breathe. After a moment’s hesitation, I opened my eyes. All I could see were swirling red and yellow flames. We were still underwater…or under fire? I realized two things: I was not burning to death, and the boat was moving forward.

  I couldn’t believe my crazy protection glyphs had actually worked. As the boat slid through the swirling currents of heat, the voices of the crew whispered in my mind—more joyful than angry now.