Rick Riordan - The Serpent's Shadow

I didn’t need anyone to tell me that. All I had to do was lower my vision into the Duat. A gray sickly aura swirled around Walt, growing weaker and weaker. How long, I wondered, before he turned into the mummified vision I’d seen in Dallas?

Then again, there was the other vision I’d seen at the Hall of Judgment. After talking to the jackal guardian, Walt had turned to me, and just for a moment, I thought he was…

“Anubis wanted to be there,” Walt interrupted my thoughts. “I mean, in the Hall of Judgment—he wanted to be there for you, if that’s what you were wondering about.”

I scowled. “I was wondering about you , Walt Stone. You’re running out of time, and we haven’t had a proper talk about it.”

Even saying that much was difficult.

Walt trailed his feet in the water. He’d set his shoes to dry on Philip’s tail. Boys’ feet are not something I find attractive, especially when they’ve just been removed from mucky trainers. However, Walt’s feet were quite nice. His toes were almost the same color as the swirling silt in the Nile.

(Carter is complaining about my comments on Walt’s feet. Well, pardon me . It was easier to focus on his toes than on the sad look on his face!)

“Tonight at the latest,” he said. “But, Sadie, it’s okay.”

Anger swelled inside me, taking me quite by surprise.

“Stop it!” I snapped. “It’s not anywhere close to okay! Oh, yes, you’ve told me how grateful you are to have known me, and learned magic at Brooklyn House, and helped with the fight against Apophis. All very noble. But it’s not—” My voice broke. “It’s not okay.”

I pounded my fist on Philip’s scaly back, which wasn’t fair to the crocodile. Yelling at Walt wasn’t fair either. But I was tired of tragedy. I wasn’t designed for all this loss and sacrifice and horrible sadness. I wanted to throw my arms around Walt, but there was a wall between us—this knowledge that he was doomed. My feelings for him were so mixed up, I didn’t know whether I was driven by simple attraction, or guilt, or (dare I say it) love—or stubborn determination not to lose someone else I cared about.

“Sadie…” Walt gazed across the marshes. He looked quite helpless, and I suppose I couldn’t blame him. I was being rather impossible. “If I die for something I believe in…that’s okay with me. But death doesn’t have to be the end. I’ve been talking with Anubis, and—”

“Gods of Egypt, not that again!” I said. “ Please don’t talk about him. I know exactly what he’s been telling you.”

Walt looked startled. “You do? And…you don’t like the idea?”

“Of course not!” I yelled.

Walt looked absolutely crestfallen.

“Oh, come off it!” I said. “I know Anubis is the guide for the dead. He’s been preparing you for the afterlife. He’s told you that it’ll be right. You’ll die a noble death, get a speedy trial, and go straight into Ancient Egyptian Paradise. Bloody wonderful! You’ll be a ghost like my poor mother. Perhaps it’s not the end of the world for you . If it makes you feel better about your fate, then fine. But I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t need another…another person I can’t be with.”

My face was burning. It was bad enough that my mother was a spirit. I could never properly hug her again, never go shopping with her, never get advice about girl sorts of things. Bad enough that I’d been cut off from Anubis—that horribly frustrating gorgeous god who’d wrapped my heart into knots. Deep down, I’d always known a relationship with him was impossible given our age difference—five thousand years or so—but having the other gods decree him off-limits just rubbed salt in the wound.

Now to think of Walt as a spirit, out of reach as well—that was simply too much.

I looked up at him, afraid my bratty behavior would have made him feel even worse.

To my surprise, he broke into a smile. Then he laughed.

“What?” I demanded.

He doubled over, still laughing, which I found quite inconsiderate.

“You find this funny?” I shouted. “Walt Stone!”

“No…” He hugged his sides. “No, it’s just…You don’t understand. It’s not like that.”

“Well, then, what is it like?”

He got control of himself. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts when his white ibis dived out of the sky. It landed on Philip’s head, flapped its wings, and cawed.

Walt’s smile melted. “We’re here. The ruins of Saïs.”

Philip carried us ashore. We put on our shoes and waded across the marshy ground. In front of us stretched a forest of palm trees, hazy in the afternoon light. Herons flew overhead. Orange-and-black bees hovered over the papyrus plants.

One bee landed on Walt’s arm. Several more circled his head.

Walt looked more perplexed than worried. “The goddess who’s supposed to live around here, Neith…didn’t she have something to do with bees?”

“No idea,” I admitted. For some reason, I felt the urge to speak quietly.

[Yes, Carter. It was a first for me. Thanks for asking.]

I peered through the palm forest. In the distance, I thought I saw a clearing with a few clumps of mud brick sticking above the grass like rotten teeth.

I pointed them out to Walt. “The remains of a temple?”

Walt must have felt the same instinct for stealth that I did. He crouched in the grass, trying to lower his profile. Then he glanced back nervously at Philip of Macedonia. “Maybe we shouldn’t have a three-thousand-pound crocodile trampling through the woods with us.”

“Agreed,” I said.

He whispered a command word. Philip shrank back to a small wax statuette. Walt pocketed our croc, and we began sneaking toward the ruins.

The closer we got, the more bees filled the air. When we arrived at the clearing, we found an entire colony swarming like a living carpet over a cluster of crumbling mud-brick walls.

Next to them, sitting on a weathered block of stone, a woman leaned on a bow, sketching in the dirt with an arrow.

She was beautiful in a severe way—thin and pale with high cheekbones, sunken eyes, and arched eyebrows, like a supermodel walking the line between glamorous and malnourished. Her hair was glossy black, braided on either side with flint arrowheads. Her haughty expression seemed to say: I’m much too cool to even look at you.

There was nothing glamorous about her clothes, however. She was dressed for the hunt in desert-colored fatigues—beige, brown, and ochre. Several knives hung from her belt. A quiver was strapped to her back, and her bow looked like quite a serious weapon—polished wood carved with hieroglyphs of power.

Most disturbing of all, she seemed to be waiting for us.

“You’re noisy,” she complained. “I could’ve killed you a dozen times already.”

I glanced at Walt, then back at the huntress. “Um…thanks? For not killing us, I mean.”

The woman snorted. “Don’t thank me. You’ll have to do better than that if you want to survive.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, but generally speaking, I don’t ask heavily armed women to elaborate on such statements.

Walt pointed to the symbol the huntress was drawing in the dirt—an oval with four pointy bits like legs.

“You’re Neith,” Walt guessed. “That’s your symbol—the shield with crossed arrows.”

The goddess raised her eyebrows. “Think much? Of course I’m Neith. And, yes, that’s my symbol.”

“It looks like a bug,” I said.

“It’s not a bug!” Neith glowered. Behind her, the bees became agitated, crawling over the mud bricks.