Rick Riordan - The Red Pyramid

“I hate portals,” Carter muttered, brushing the sand out of his hair.

Then he looked around and his eyes widened. “This is Luxor! That’s, like, hundreds of miles south of Cairo.”

I sighed. “And that amazes you after teleporting from New York?”

He was too busy checking out our surroundings to answer.

I suppose the ruins were all right, though once you’ve seen one pile of crumbly Egyptian stuff, you’ve seen them all, I say. We stood on a wide avenue flanked by human-headed beasties, most of which were broken. The road went on behind us as far as I could see, but in front of us it ended at a temple much bigger than the one in the New York museum.

The walls were at least six stories high. Big stone pharaohs stood guard on either side of the entrance, and a single obelisk stood on the left-hand side. It looked as if one used to stand on the right as well, but it was now gone.

“Luxor is a modern name,” Zia said. “This was once the city of Thebes. This temple was one of the most important in Egypt. It is the best place for us to practice.”

“Because it’s already destroyed?” I asked.

Zia gave me one of her famous scowls. “No, Sadie-because it is still full of magic. And it was sacred to your family.”

“Our family?” Carter asked.

Zia didn’t explain, as usual. She just gestured for us to follow.

“I don’t like those ugly sphinxes,” I mumbled as we walked down the path.

“Those ugly sphinxes are creatures of law and order,” Zia said, “protectors of Egypt. They are on our side.”

“If you say so.”

Carter nudged me as we passed the obelisk. “You know the missing one is in Paris.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Wikipedia. I thought they were in New York and London.”

“That’s a different pair,” Carter said, like I was supposed to care. “The other Luxor obelisk is in Paris.”

“Wish I was in Paris,” I said. “Lot better than this place.”

We walked into a dusty courtyard surrounded by crumbling pillars and statues with various missing body parts. Still, I could tell the place had once been quite impressive.

“Where are the people?” I asked. “Middle of the day, winter holidays. Shouldn’t there be loads of tourists?”

Zia made a distasteful expression. “Usually, yes. I have encouraged them to stay away for a few hours.”

“How?”

“Common minds are easy to manipulate.” She looked pointedly at me, and I remembered how she’d forced me to talk in the New York museum. Oh, yes, she was just begging for more scorched eyebrows.

“Now, to the duel.” She summoned her staff and drew two circles in the sand about ten meters apart. She directed me to stand in one of them and Carter in the other.

“I’ve got to duel him?” I asked.

I found the idea preposterous. The only thing Carter had shown aptitude for was summoning butter knives and pooping birds. Well, all right, and that bit on the chasm bridge deflecting the daggers, but still-what if I hurt him? As annoying as Carter might be, I didn’t want to accidentally summon that glyph I’d made in Amos’s house and explode him to bits.

Perhaps Carter was thinking the same thing, because he’d started to sweat. “What if we do something wrong?” he asked.

“I will oversee the duel,” Zia promised. “We will start slowly. The first magician to knock the other out of his or her circle wins.”

“But we haven’t been trained!” I protested.

“One learns by doing,” Zia said. “This is not school, Sadie. You cannot learn magic by sitting at a desk and taking notes. You can only learn magic by doing magic.”

“But-”

“Summon whatever power you can,” Zia said. “Use whatever you have available. Begin!”

I looked at Carter doubtfully. Use whatever I have? I opened the leather satchel and looked inside. A lump of wax? Probably not. I drew the wand and rod. Immediately, the rod expanded until I was holding a two-meter-long white staff.

Carter drew his sword, though I couldn’t imagine what he’d do with it. Rather hard to hit me from ten meters away.

I wanted this over, so I raised my staff like I’d seen Zia do. I thought the word Fire.

A small flame sputtered to life on the end of the staff. I willed it to get bigger. The fire momentarily brightened, but then my eyesight went fuzzy. The flame died. I fell to my knees, feeling as if I’d run a marathon.

“You okay?” Carter called.

“No,” I complained.

“If she knocks herself out, do I win?” he asked.

“Shut up!” I said.

“Sadie, you must be careful,” Zia called. “You drew from your own reserves, not from the staff. You can quickly deplete your magic.”

I got shakily to my feet. “Explain?”

“A magician begins a duel full of magic, the way you might be full after a good meal-”

“Which I never got,” I reminded her.

“Each time you do magic,” Zia continued, “you expend energy. You can draw energy from yourself, but you must know your limits. Otherwise you could exhaust yourself, or worse.”

I swallowed and looked at my smoldering staff. “How much worse?”

“You could literally burn up.”

I hesitated, thinking how to ask my next question without saying too much. “But I’ve done magic before. Sometimes it doesn’t exhaust me. Why?”

From around her neck, Zia unclasped an amulet. She threw it into the air, and with a flash it turned into a giant vulture. The massive black bird soared over the ruins. As soon as it was out of sight, Zia extended her hand and the amulet appeared in her palm.

“Magic can be drawn from many sources,” she said. “It can be stored in scrolls, wands, or staffs. Amulets are especially powerful. Magic can also be drawn straight from Ma’at, using the Divine Words, but this is difficult. Or”-she locked eyes with me-“it can be summoned from the gods.”

“Why are you looking at me?” I demanded. “I didn’t summon any gods. They just seem to find me!”

She put on her necklace but said nothing.

“Hold on,” Carter said. “You claimed this place was sacred to our family.”

“It was,” Zia agreed.

“But wasn’t this…” Carter frowned. “Didn’t the pharaohs have a yearly festival here or something?”

“Indeed,” she said. “The pharaoh would walk down the processional path all the way from Karnak to Luxor. He would enter the temple and become one with the gods. Sometimes, this was purely ceremonial. Sometimes, with the great pharaohs like Ramesses, here-” Zia pointed to one of the huge crumbling statues.

“They actually hosted the gods,” I interrupted, remembering what Iskandar had said.

Zia narrowed her eyes. “And yet you claim to know nothing of your family’s past.”

“Wait a second,” Carter protested. “You’re saying we’re related to-”

“The gods choose their hosts carefully,” Zia said. “They always prefer the blood of the pharaohs. When a magician has the blood of two royal families…”

I exchanged looks with Carter. Something Bast said came back to me: “Your family was born to magic.” And Amos had told us that both sides of our family had a complicated history with the gods, and that Carter and I were the most powerful children to be born in centuries. A bad feeling settled over me, like an itchy blanket prickling against my skin.

“Our parents were from different royal lines,” I said. “Dad…he must’ve been descended from Narmer, the first pharaoh. I told you he looked like that picture!”

“That’s not possible,” Carter said. “That was five thousand years ago.” But I could see his mind was racing. “Then the Fausts…” He turned to Zia. “Ramesses the Great built this courtyard. You’re telling me our mom’s family is descended from him?”