Rick Riordan - The Red Pyramid

“I don’t think so, Horus,” he laughed. “You won’t ruin this party.”

We both summoned our weapons to our hands and fought with renewed ferocity, slicing and dodging. I brought my sword down in a deadly arc, but Set ducked aside and my blade hit stone, sending a shock wave through my whole body. Before I could recover, Set spoke a word: “Ha-wi!”

Strike.

The hieroglyphs exploded in my face and sent me tumbling down the side of the pyramid.

When my vision cleared, I saw Face of Horror and the snake-headed giants far above me, lugging their golden load up the side of the monument, only a few steps from the top.

“No,” I muttered. I tried to rise, but my avatar form was sluggish.

Then out of nowhere a magician catapulted into the midst of the demons and unleashed a gale of wind. Demons went flying, dropping the capstone, and the magician struck it with his staff, stopping it from sliding. The magician was Desjardins. His forked beard and robes and leopard-skin cape were singed with fire, and his eyes were full of rage. He pressed his staff against the capstone, and its golden shape began to glow; but before Desjardins could destroy it, Set rose up behind him and swung his iron rod like a baseball bat.

Desjardins tumbled, broken and unconscious, all the way down the pyramid, disappearing into the mob of demons. My heart twisted. I’d never liked Desjardins, but no one deserved a fate like that.

“Annoying,” Set said. “But not effective. This is what the House of Life has reduced itself to, eh, Horus?”

I charged up the slope, and again our weapons clanged together. We fought back and forth as gray light began to seep through the cracks in the mountain above us.

Horus’s keen senses told me we had about two minutes until sunrise, maybe less.

Horus’s energy kept surging through me. My avatar was only mildly damaged, my attacks still swift and strong. But it wasn’t enough to defeat Set, and Set knew it. He was in no hurry. With every minute, another magician went down on the battlefield, and chaos got closer to winning.

Patience, Horus urged. We fought him for seven years the first time.

But I knew we didn’t have seven minutes, much less seven years. I wished Sadie were here, but I could only hope she’d managed to free Dad and keep Zia and Amos safe.

That thought distracted me. Set swept his staff at my feet, and instead of jumping, I tried to back up. The blow cracked against my right ankle, knocking me off balance and sending me somersaulting down the pyramid’s side.

Set laughed. “Have a nice trip!” Then he picked up the capstone.

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

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.”