Rick Riordan - The Throne of Fire

“FREEEEK!” said Freak. He and Bast regarded each other as if each was wondering what the other would taste like for lunch.

Bast sniffed. “You’re not going to keep it, are you?”

“Well, he’s not tied up or anything,” I said. “He could leave if he wanted to. I think he likes it here.”

“Wonderful,” Bast muttered. “One more thing that might kill you while I’m gone.”

Personally, I thought Freak and I were getting along pretty well, but I figured nothing I said would reassure Bast.

She was dressed for travel. Over her usual leopard-skin bodysuit she wore a long black coat embroidered with protective hieroglyphs. When she moved, the fabric shimmered, making her fade in and out of sight.

“Be careful,” I told her.

She smiled. “I’m a cat, Carter. I can look after myself. I’m more worried about you and Sadie while I’m gone. If your vision is accurate and Apophis’s prison is close to breaking…? Well, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that. If my vision was accurate, we were all in deep trouble.

“I may be out of touch for a couple of days,” she continued. “My friend should get here before you and Sadie leave on your quest tomorrow. He’ll make sure you two stay alive.”

“Can’t you at least tell me his name?”

Bast gave me a look that was either amused or nervous—possibly both. “He’s a little hard to explain. I’d better let him introduce himself.”

With that, Bast kissed me on the forehead. “Take care, my kit.”

I was too stunned to respond. I thought of Bast as Sadie’s protector. I was just kind of an add-on. But her voice held such affection, I probably blushed. She ran to the edge of the roof and jumped.

I wasn’t worried about her, though. I was pretty sure she’d land on her feet.

I wanted to keep things as normal as possible for the trainees, so I led my usual morning class. I called it Magic Problem-Solving 101. The trainees called it Whatever Works.

I gave the trainees a problem. They could solve it any way they wanted. As soon as they succeeded, they could go.

I guess this wasn’t much like real school, where you have to stay until the end of the day even if you’re just doing busywork; but I’d never been to a real school. All those years homeschooling with my dad, I’d learned at my own pace. When I finished my assignments to my dad’s satisfaction, the school day was over. The system worked for me, and the trainees seemed to like it, too.

I also thought Zia Rashid would approve. The first time Sadie and I trained with Zia, she’d told us that magic couldn’t be learned from classrooms and textbooks. You had to learn by doing. So for Magic Problem-Solving 101, we headed to the training room and blew stuff up.

Today I had four students. The rest of the trainees would be off researching their own paths of magic, practicing enchantments, or doing regular schoolwork under the supervision of our college-age initiates. As our main adult chaperone while Amos was gone, Bast had insisted we keep everyone up-to-speed on the regular subjects like math and reading, although she did sometimes add her own elective courses, such as Advanced Cat Grooming, or Napping. There was a waiting list to get into Napping.

Anyway, the training room took up most of the second floor. It was about the size of a basketball court, which is what we used it for in the evenings. It had a hardwood floor, god statues lining the walls, and a vaulted ceiling with pictures of Ancient Egyptians rocking that sideways walk they always do. On the baseline walls, we’d stuck falcon-headed statues of Ra perpendicular to the floor, ten feet up, and hollowed out their sun-disk crowns so we could use them as basketball hoops. Probably blasphemous—but hey, if Ra didn’t have a sense of humor, that was his problem.

Walt was waiting for me, along with Julian, Felix, and Alyssa. Jaz almost always showed up for these sessions, but of course Jaz was still in a coma…and that was a problem none of us knew how to solve.

I attempted to put on my confident teacher-face. “Okay, guys. Today we’ll try some combat simulations. We’ll start simple.”

I pulled four shabti figurines from my bag and placed them in different corners of the room. I stationed one trainee in front of each. Then I spoke a command word. The four statuettes grew into full-size Egyptian warriors armed with swords and shields. They weren’t super-realistic. Their skin looked like glazed ceramic, and they moved slower than real humans; but they’d be good enough for starters.

“Felix?” I called. “No penguins.”

“Aw, c’mon!”

Felix believed that the answer to every problem involved penguins; but it wasn’t fair to the birds, and I was getting tired of teleporting them back home. Somewhere in Antarctica, a whole flock of Magellanic penguins was undergoing psychotherapy.

“Begin!” I yelled, and the shabti attacked.

Julian, a big seventh grader who’d already decided on the path of Horus, went straight into battle. He hadn’t quite mastered summoning a combat avatar, but he encased his fist in golden energy like a wrecking ball and punched the shabti. It flew backward into wall, cracking to pieces. One down.

Alyssa had been studying the path of Geb, the earth god. Nobody at Brooklyn House was an expert in earth magic, but Alyssa rarely needed help. She’d grown up in a family of potters in North Carolina, and had been working with clay since she was a little girl.

She dodged the shabti ’s clumsy swing and touched it on the back. A hieroglyph glowed against its clay armor:

Nothing seemed to happen to the warrior, but when it turned to strike, Alyssa just stood there. I was about to yell at her to duck, but the shabti missed her completely. Its blade hit the floor, and the warrior stumbled. It attacked again, swinging half a dozen times, but its blade never got close to Alyssa. Finally the warrior turned in confusion and staggered to the corner of the room, where it banged its head against the wall and shuddered to a stop.

Alyssa grinned at me. “Sa-per,” she explained. “Hieroglyph for Miss. ”

“Nice one,” I said.

Meanwhile, Felix found a non-penguin solution. I had no idea what type of magic he might eventually specialize in, but today he went for simple and violent. He grabbed a basketball from the bench, waited for the shabti to take a step, then bounced the ball off its head. His timing was perfect. The shabti lost its balance and fell over, its sword arm cracking off. Felix walked over and stomped on the shabti until it broke to pieces.

He looked at me with satisfaction. “You didn’t say we had to use magic.”

“Fair enough.” I made a mental note never to play basketball with Felix.

Walt was the most interesting to watch. He was a sau, a charm maker, so he tended to fight with whatever magic items he had on hand. I never knew what he was going to do.

As for his path, Walt hadn’t decided which god’s magic to study. He was a good researcher like Thoth, the god of knowledge. He could use scrolls and potions almost as well as Sadie, so he could’ve chosen the path of Isis. He might have even chosen Osiris, because Walt was a natural at bringing inanimate things to life.

Today he was taking his time, fingering his amulets and considering his options. As the shabti approached, Walt retreated. If Walt had a weakness, it was his cautiousness. He liked to think a long time before he acted. In other words, he was Sadie’s exact opposite.