The Red Pyramid

by Rick Riordan

  I rose, groaning, but my feet were like lead. I staggered up the slope, but before I’d closed even half the distance, Set placed the capstone and completed the structure. Red light flowed down the sides of the pyramid with a sound like the world’s largest bass guitar, shaking the entire mountain and making my whole body go numb.

  “Thirty seconds to sunrise!” Set yelled with glee. “And this land will be mine forever. You can’t stop me alone, Horus—especially not in the desert, the source of my strength!”

  “You’re right,” said a nearby voice.

  I glanced over and saw Sadie rising from the air vent—radiant with multicolored light, her staff and wand glowing.

  “Except Horus is not alone,” she said. “And we’re not going to fight you in the desert.”

  She struck her staff against the pyramid and shouted a name: the last words I’d ever expect her to utter as a battle cry.

  S A D I E

  39. Zia Tells Me a Secret

  CHEERS, CARTER, FOR MAKING ME LOOK dramatic and all that.

  The truth was a bit less glamorous.

  Back up, shall we? When my brother, the crazy chicken warrior, turned into a falcon and went up the pyramid’s chimney with his new friend, the fruit bat, he left me playing nurse to two very wounded people—which I didn’t appreciate, and which I wasn’t particularly good at.

  Poor Amos’s wounds seemed more magical than physical. He didn’t have a mark on him, but his eyes were rolled up in his head, and he was barely breathing. Steam curled from his skin when I touched his forehead, so I decided I’d best leave him for the moment.

  Zia was another story. Her face was deathly pale, and she was bleeding from several nasty cuts on her leg. One of her arms was twisted at a bad angle. Her breath rattled with a sound like wet sand.

  “Hold still.” I ripped some cloth from the hem of my pants and tried to bind her leg. “Maybe there’s some healing magic or—”

  “Sadie.” She gripped my wrist feebly. “No time. Listen.”

  “If we can stop the bleeding—”

  “His name. You need his name.”

  “But you’re not Nephthys! Set said so.”

  She shook her head. “A message...I speak with her voice. The name—Evil Day. Set was born, and it was an Evil Day.”

  True enough, I thought, but could that really be Set’s secret name? What Zia was talking about, not being Nephthys but speaking with her voice—it made no sense. Then I remembered the voice at the river. Nephthys had said she would send a message. And Anubis had made me promise I would listen to Nephthys.

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Look, Zia—”

  Then the truth hit me in face. Some things Iskandar had said, some things Thoth had said—they all clicked together. Iskandar had wanted to protect Zia. He’d told me if he’d realized Carter and I were godlings sooner, he could’ve protected us as well as...someone. As well as Zia. Now I understood how he’d tried to protect her.

  “Oh, god.” I stared at her. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  She seemed to understand, and she nodded. Her face contorted with pain, but her eyes remained as fierce and insistent as ever. “Use the name. Bend Set to your will. Make him help.”

  “Help? He just tried to kill you, Zia. He’s not the helping type.”

  “Go.” She tried to push me away. Flames sputtered weakly from her fingers. “Carter needs you.”

  That was the one thing she might’ve said to spur me on. Carter was in trouble.

  “I’ll be back, then,” I promised. “Don’t...um, go anywhere.”

  I stood and stared at the hole in the ceiling, dreading the idea of turning into a kite again. Then my eyes fixed on Dad’s coffin, buried in the red throne. The sarcophagus was glowing like something radioactive, heading for meltdown. If I could only break the throne...

  Set must be dealt with first, Isis warned.

  But if I can free Dad...I stepped towards the throne.

  No, Isis warned. What you might see is too dangerous.

  What are you talking about? I thought irritably. I put my hand on the golden coffin. Instantly I was ripped from the throne room and into a vision.

  I was back in the Land of the Dead, in the Hall of Judgment. The crumbling monuments of a New Orleans graveyard shimmered around me. Spirits of the dead stirred restlessly in the mist. At the base of the broken scales, a tiny monster slept—Ammit the Devourer. He opened one glowing yellow eye to study me, then went back to sleep.

  Anubis stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed in a black silk suit with his tie unknotted, like he’d just come back from a funeral or possibly a convention for really gorgeous undertakers. “Sadie, you shouldn’t be here.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, but I was so glad to see him, I wanted to sob with relief.

  He took my hand and led me towards the empty black throne. “We have lost all balance. The throne cannot be empty. The restoration of Ma’at must begin here, in this hall.”

  He sounded sad, as if he were asking me to accept something terrible. I didn’t understand, but a profound sense of loss crept over me.

  “It’s not fair,” I said.

  “No, it’s not.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ll be here, waiting. I’m sorry, Sadie. I truly am...”

  He started to fade.

  “Wait!” I tried to hold on to his hand, but he melted into mist along with the graveyard.

  I found myself back in the throne room of the gods, except it looked like it had been abandoned for centuries. The roof had fallen in, along with half of the columns. The braziers were cold and rusty. The beautiful marble floor was as cracked as a dry lakebed.

  Bast stood alone next to the empty throne of Osiris. She gave me a mischievous smile, but seeing her again was almost too painful to bear.

  “Oh, don’t be sad,” she chided. “Cats don’t do regret.”

  “But aren’t you—aren’t you dead?”

  “That all depends.” She gestured around her. “The Duat is in turmoil. The gods have gone too long without a king. If Set doesn’t take over, someone else must. The enemy is coming. Don’t let me die in vain.”

  “But will you come back?” I asked, my voice breaking. “Please, I never even got to say good-bye to you. I can’t—”

  “Good luck, Sadie. Keep your claws sharp.” Bast vanished, and the scenery changed again.

  I stood in the Hall of Ages, in the First Nome—another empty throne—and Iskandar sat at its feet, waiting for a pharaoh who hadn’t existed for two thousand years.

  “A leader, my dear,” he said. “Ma’at demands a leader.”

  “It’s too much,” I said. “Too many thrones. You can’t expect Carter—”

  “Not alone,” Iskandar agreed. “But this is your family’s burden. You started the process. The Kanes alone will heal us or destroy us.”

  “I don’t know what you mean!”

  Iskandar opened his hand, and in a flash of light, the scene changed one more time.

  I was back at the Thames. It must’ve been the dead of the night, three o’clock in the morning, because the Embankment was empty. Mist obscured the lights of the city, and the air was wintry.

  Two people, a man and a woman, stood bundled against the cold, holding hands in front of Cleopatra’s Needle. At first I thought they were a random couple on a date. Then, with a shock, I realized I was looking at my parents.

  My dad lifted his face and scowled at the obelisk. In the dim glow of the streetlamps, his features looked like chiseled marble—like the pharaoh statues he loved to study. He did have the face of a king, I thought—proud and handsome.

  “You’re sure?” he asked my mother. “Absolutely sure?”

  Mum brushed her blond hair out of her face. She was even more beautiful than her pictures, but she looked worried—eyebrows furrowed, lips pressed together. Like me when I was upset, when I looked in the mirror and tried to convince myself things weren’t so bad. I wanted to call to her, to let her know I was
there, but my voice wouldn’t work.

  “She told me this is where it begins,” my mother said. She pulled her black coat around her, and I caught a glimpse of her necklace—the amulet of Isis, my amulet. I stared at it, stunned, but then she pulled her collar closed, and the amulet disappeared. “If we want to defeat the enemy, we must start with the obelisk. We must find out the truth.”

  My father frowned uneasily. He’d drawn a protective circle around them—blue chalk lines on the pavement. When he touched the base of the obelisk, the circle began to glow.

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “Won’t you call on her help?”

  “No,” my mother insisted. “I know my limits, Julius. If I tried it again...”

  My heart skipped a beat. Iskandar’s words came back to me: She saw things that made her seek advice from unconventional places. I recognized the look in my mother’ eyes, and I knew: my mother had communed with Isis.

  Why didn’t you tell me? I wanted to scream.

  My father summoned his staff and wand. “Ruby, if we fail—”

  “We can’t fail,” she insisted. “The world depends on it.”

  They kissed one last time, as if they sensed they were saying good-bye. Then they raised their staffs and wands and began to chant. Cleopatra’s Needle glowed with power.

  I yanked my hand away from the sarcophagus. My eyes stung with tears.

  You knew my mother, I shouted at Isis. You encouraged her to open that obelisk. You got her killed!

  I waited for her to answer. Instead, a ghostly image appeared in front of me—a projection of my father, shimmering in the light of the golden coffin.

  “Sadie.” He smiled. His voice sounded tinny and hollow, the way it used to on the phone when he’d call me from far away—from Egypt or Australia or god knows where. “Don’t blame Isis for your mother’s fate. None of us understood exactly what would happen. Even your mother could only see bits and pieces of the future. But when the time came, your mother accepted her role. It was her decision.”

  “To die?” I demanded. “Isis should’ve helped her. You should’ve helped her. I hate you!”

  As soon as I said it, something broke inside me. I started to cry. I realized I’d wanted to say that to my dad for years. I blamed him for Mum’s death, blamed him for leaving me. But now that I’d said it, all the anger drained out me, leaving me nothing but guilt.

  “I’m sorry,” I sputtered. “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t apologize, my brave girl. You have every right to feel that way. You had to get it out. What you’re about to do—you have to believe it’s for the right reasons, not because you resent me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He reached out to brush a tear from my cheek, but his hand was just a shimmer of light. “Your mother was the first in many centuries to commune with Isis. It was dangerous, against the teachings of the House, but your mother was a diviner. She had a premonition that chaos was rising. The House was failing. We needed the gods. Isis could not cross the Duat. She could barely manage a whisper, but she told us what she could about their imprisonment. She counseled Ruby on what must be done. The gods could rise again, she said, but it would take many hard sacrifices. We thought the obelisk would release all the gods, but that was only the beginning.”

  “Isis could’ve given Mum more power. Or at least Bast! Bast offered—”

  “No, Sadie. Your mother knew her limits. If she had tried to host a god, fully use divine power, she would have been consumed or worse. She freed Bast, and used her own power to seal the breach. With her life, she bought you some time.”

  “Me? But...”

  “You and your brother have the strongest blood of any Kane in three thousand years. Your mother studied the lineage of the pharaohs—she knew this to be true. You have the best chance at relearning the old ways, and healing the breach between magicians and gods. Your mother began the stirring. I unleashed the gods from the Rosetta Stone. But it will be your job to restore Ma’at.”

  “You can help,” I insisted. “Once we free you.”

  “Sadie,” he said forlornly, “when you become a parent, you may understand this. One of my hardest jobs as a father, one of my greatest duties, was to realize that my own dreams, my own goals and wishes, are secondary to my children’s. Your mother and I have set the stage. But it is your stage. This pyramid is designed to feed chaos. It consumes the power of other gods and makes Set stronger.”

  “I know. If I break the throne, maybe open the coffin...”

  “You might save me,” Dad conceded. “But the power of Osiris, the power inside me, would be consumed by the pyramid. It would only hasten the destruction and make Set stronger. The pyramid must be destroyed, all of it. And you know how that must be done.”

  I was about to protest that I didn’t know, but the feather of truth kept me honest. The way was inside me—I’d seen it in Isis’s thoughts. I’d known what was coming ever since Anubis asked me that impossible question: “To save the world, would you sacrifice your father?”

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “Please.”

  “Osiris must take his throne,” my father said. “Through death, life. It is the only way. May Ma’at guide you, Sadie. I love you.”

  And with that, his image dissipated.

  Someone was calling my name.

  I looked back and saw Zia trying to sit up, clutching weakly at her wand. “Sadie, what are you doing?”

  All around us, the room was shaking. Cracks split the walls, as if a giant were using the pyramid as a punching bag.

  How long had I been in a trance? I wasn’t sure, but I was out of time.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated. The voice of Isis spoke almost immediately: Do you see now? Do you understand why I could not say more?

  Anger built inside me, but I forced it down. We’ll talk about that later. Right now, we have a god to defeat.

  I pictured myself stepping forward, merging with the soul of the goddess.

  I’d shared power with Isis before, but this was different. My resolve, my anger, even my grief gave me confidence. I looked Isis straight in the eye (spiritually speaking), and we understood one another.

  I saw her entire history—her early days grasping for power, using tricks and schemes to find the name of Ra. I saw her wedding with Osiris, her hopes and dreams for a new empire. Then I saw those dreams shattered by Set. I felt her anger and bitterness, her fierce pride and protectiveness for her young son, Horus. And I saw the pattern of her life repeating itself over and over again through the ages, through a thousand different hosts.

  Gods have great power, Iskandar had said. But only humans have creativity, the power to change history.

  I also felt my mother’s thoughts, like an imprint on the goddess’s memory: Ruby’s final moments and the choice she’d made. She’d given her life to start a chain of events. And the next move was mine.

  “Sadie!” Zia called again, her voice weakening.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m going now.”

  Zia studied my face, and obviously didn’t like what she saw. “You’re not fine. You’ve been badly shaken. Fighting Set in your condition would be suicide.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We have a plan.”

  With that, I turned into a kite and flew up the airshaft towards the top of the pyramid.

  S A D I E

  40. I Ruin a Rather Important Spell

  I FOUND THAT THINGS WEREN’T GOING WELL UPSTAIRS.

  Carter was a crumpled heap of chicken warrior on the slope of the pyramid. Set had just placed the capstone and was shouting, “Thirty seconds to sunrise!” In the cavern below, magicians from the House of Life waded through an army of demons, fighting a hopeless fight.

  The scene would’ve been frightening enough, but now I saw it as Isis did. Like a crocodile with eyes at water level—seeing both below and above the surface—I saw the Duat entwined with the regular world. The demons had fiery souls in the
Duat that made them look like an army of birthday candles. Where Carter stood in the mortal world, a falcon warrior stood in the Duat—not an avatar, but the real thing, with feathered head, sharp bloodstained beak, and gleaming black eyes. His sword rippled with golden light. As for Set—imagine a mountain of sand, doused with petrol, set on fire, spinning in the world’s largest blender. That’s what he looked like in the Duat—a column of destructive force so powerful that the stones at his feet bubbled and blistered.

  I’m not sure what I looked like, but I felt powerful. The force of Ma’at coursed through me; the Divine Words were at my command. I was Sadie Kane, blood of the pharaohs. And I was Isis, goddess of magic, holder of the secret names.

  As Carter struggled his way up the pyramid, Set gloated: “You can’t stop me by yourself, Horus—especially not in the desert, the source of my strength!”

  “You’re right!” I called.

  Set turned, and the look on his face was priceless. I raised my staff and wand, gathering my magic.

  “Except that Horus is not alone,” I said. “And we’re not going to fight you in the desert.”

  I slammed my staff against the stones and shouted, “Washington, D.C.!”

  The pyramid shook. For a moment, nothing else happened.

  Set seemed to realize what I was doing. He let out a nervous laugh. “Magic one-oh-one, Sadie Kane. You can’t open a portal during the Demon Days!”

  “A mortal can’t,” I agreed. “But a goddess of magic can.”

  Above us, the air crackled with lightning. The top of the cavern dissolved into a churning vortex of sand as large as the pyramid.

  Demons stopped fighting and looked up in horror. Magicians stammered midspell, their faces slack with awe.

  The vortex was so powerful that it ripped blocks off the pyramid and sucked them into the sand. And then, like a giant lid, the portal began to descend.

  “No!” Set roared. He blasted the portal with flames, then turned on me and hurled stones and lightning, but it was too late. The portal swallowed us all.