Rick Riordan - The Red Pyramid

“Carter,” Amos said, “the Egyptians would not have been stupid enough to believe in imaginary gods. The beings they described in their myths are very, very real. In the old days, the priests of Egypt would call upon these gods to channel their power and perform great feats. That is the origin of what we now call magic. Like many things, magic was first invented by the Egyptians. Each temple had a branch of magicians called the House of Life. Their magicians were famed throughout the ancient world.”

“And you’re an Egyptian magician.”

Amos nodded. “So was your father. You saw it for yourself last night.”

I hesitated. It was hard to deny my dad had done some weird stuff at the museum-some stuff that looked like magic.

“But he’s an archaeologist,” I said stubbornly.

“That’s his cover story. You’ll remember that he specialized in translating ancient spells, which are very difficult to understand unless you work magic yourself. Our family, the Kane family, has been part of the House of Life almost since the beginning. And your mother’s family is almost as ancient.”

“The Fausts?” I tried to imagine Grandma and Grandpa Faust doing magic, but unless watching rugby on TV and burning cookies was magical, I couldn’t see it.

“They had not practiced magic for many generations,” Amos admitted. “Not until your mother came along. But yes, a very ancient bloodline.”

Sadie shook her head in disbelief. “So now Mum was magic, too. Are you joking?”

“No jokes,” Amos promised. “The two of you…you combine the blood of two ancient families, both of which have a long, complicated history with the gods. You are the most powerful Kane children to be born in many centuries.”

I tried to let that sink in. At the moment, I didn’t feel powerful. I felt queasy. “You’re telling me our parents secretly worshipped animal-headed gods?” I asked.

“Not worshipped,” Amos corrected. “By the end of the ancient times, Egyptians had learned that their gods were not to be worshipped. They are powerful beings, primeval forces, but they are not divine in the sense one might think of God. They are created entities, like mortals, only much more powerful. We can respect them, fear them, use their power, or even fight them to keep them under control-”

“Fight gods?” Sadie interrupted.

“Constantly,” Amos assured her. “But we don’t worship them. Thoth taught us that.”

I looked at Sadie for help. The old guy had to be crazy. But Sadie was looking like she believed every word.

“So…” I said. “Why did Dad break the Rosetta Stone?”

“Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean to break it,” Amos said. “That would’ve horrified him. In fact, I imagine my brethren in London have repaired the damage by now. The curators will soon check their vaults and discover that the Rosetta Stone miraculously survived the explosion.”

“But it was blown into a million pieces!” I said. “How could they repair it?”

Amos picked up a saucer and threw it onto the stone floor. The saucer shattered instantly.

“That was to destroy,” Amos said. “I could’ve done it by magic-ha-di-but it’s simpler just to smash it. And now…” Amos held out his hand. “Join. Hi-nehm.”

A blue hieroglyphic symbol burned in the air above his palm.

The pieces of the saucer flew into his hand and reassembled like a puzzle, even the smallest bits of dust gluing themselves into place. Amos put the perfect saucer back on the table.

“Some trick,” I managed. I tried to sound calm about it, but I was thinking of all the odd things that had happened to my dad and me over the years, like those gunmen in the Cairo hotel who’d ended up hanging by their feet from a chandelier. Was it possible my dad had made that happen with some kind of spell?

Amos poured milk in the saucer, and put it on the floor. Muffin came padding over. “At any rate, your father would never intentionally damage a relic. He simply didn’t realize how much power the Rosetta Stone contained. You see, as Egypt faded, its magic collected and concentrated into its remaining relics. Most of these, of course, are still in Egypt. But you can find some in almost every major museum. A magician can use these artifacts as focal points to work more powerful spells.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

Amos spread his hands. “I’m sorry, Carter. It takes years of study to understand magic, and I’m trying to explain it to you in a single morning. The important thing is, for the past six years your father has been looking for a way to summon Osiris, and last night he thought he had found the right artifact to do it.”

“Wait, why did he want Osiris?”

Sadie gave me a troubled look. “Carter, Osiris was the lord of the dead. Dad was talking about making things right. He was talking about Mum.”

Suddenly the morning seemed colder. The fire pit sputtered in the wind coming off the river.

“He wanted to bring Mom back from the dead?” I said. “But that’s crazy!”

Amos hesitated. “It would’ve been dangerous. Inadvisable. Foolish. But not crazy. Your father is a powerful magician. If, in fact, that is what he was after, he might have accomplished it, using the power of Osiris.”

I stared at Sadie. “You’re actually buying this?”

“You saw the magic at the museum. The fiery bloke. Dad summoned something from the stone.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking of my dream. “But that wasn’t Osiris, was it?”

“No,” Amos said. “Your father got more than he bargained for. He did release the spirit of Osiris. In fact, I think he successfully joined with the god-”

“Joined with?”

Amos held up his hand. “Another long conversation. For now, let’s just say he drew the power of Osiris into himself. But he never got the chance to use it because, according to what Sadie has told me, it appears that Julius released five gods from the Rosetta Stone. Five gods who were all trapped together.”

I glanced at Sadie. “You told him everything?”

“He’s going to help us, Carter.”

I wasn’t quite ready to trust this guy, even if he was our uncle, but I decided I didn’t have much choice.

“Okay, yeah,” I said. “The fiery guy said something like ‘You released all five.’ What did he mean?”

Amos sipped his coffee. The faraway look on his face reminded me of my dad. “I don’t want to scare you.”

“Too late.”

“The gods of Egypt are very dangerous. For the last two thousand years or so, we magicians have spent much of our time binding and banishing them whenever they appear. In fact, our most important law, issued by Chief Lector Iskandar in Roman times, forbids unleashing the gods or using their power. Your father broke that law once before.”

Sadie’s face paled. “Does this have something to do with Mum’s death? Cleopatra’s Needle in London?”

“It has everything to do with that, Sadie. Your parents…well, they thought they were doing something good. They took a terrible risk, and it cost your mother her life. Your father took the blame. He was exiled, I suppose you would say. Banished. He was forced to move around constantly because the House monitored his activities. They feared he would continue his…research. As indeed he did.”

I thought about the times Dad would look over his shoulder as he copied some ancient inscriptions, or wake me up at three or four in the morning and insist it was time to change hotels, or warn me not to look in his workbag or copy certain pictures from old temple walls-as if our lives depended on it.