Rick Riordan - The Throne of Fire

“‘The light of Ra returns,’” I read. I nodded at the heavily curtained windows, and fortunately Bes and Carter got my meaning. They yanked back the curtains, and red light from the Lake of Fire flooded the room. The old man didn’t move. His mouth was pursed like his lips had been sewn together.

I moved to his bedside and kept reading. I described Ra awakening at dawn, sitting in his throne as his boat climbed the sky, the plants turning toward the warmth of the sun.

“It’s not working,” Bes muttered.

I began to panic. There were only two lines left. I could feel the power of the spell backing up, beginning to overheat my body. I was still smoking, and I didn’t like the smell of flame-broiled Sadie. I had to awaken Ra or I’d burn alive.

The god’s mouth…Of course.

I set the scroll on Ra’s bed and did my best to hold it open with one hand. “‘I sing the praises of the sun god.’”

I stretched out my free hand to Carter and snapped my fingers.

Thank goodness, Carter understood.

He rummaged through my bag and passed me the obsidian netjeri blade from Anubis. If ever there was a moment for Opening the Mouth, this was it.

I touched the knife to the old man’s lips and spoke the last line of the spell: “‘Awake, my king, with the new day.’”

The old man gasped. Smoke spiraled into his mouth like he’d become a vacuum cleaner, and the magic of the spell funneled into him. My temperature dropped to normal. I almost collapsed with relief.

Ra’s eyes fluttered open. With horrified fascination, I watched as blood began to flow through his veins again, slowly inflating him like a hot air balloon.

He turned toward me, his eyes unfocused and milky with cataracts. “Uh?”

“He still looks old,” Carter said nervously. “Isn’t he supposed to look young?”

Tawaret curtsied to the sun god (which you should not try at home if you are a pregnant hippo in heels) and felt Ra’s forehead. “He isn’t whole yet,” she said. “You’ll need to complete the night’s journey.”

“And the third part of the spell,” Carter guessed. “He’s got one more aspect, right? The scarab?”

Bes nodded, though he didn’t look terribly optimistic. “Khepri, the beetle. Maybe if we find the last part of his soul, he’ll be reborn properly.”

Ra broke into a toothless grin. “I like zebras!”

I was so tired, I wondered if I’d heard him correctly. “Sorry, did you say zebras?”

He beamed at us like a child who’d just discovered something wonderful. “Weasels are sick.”

“O-h-h-kay,” Carter said. “Maybe he needs these…”

Carter took the crook and flail from his belt. He offered them to Ra. The old god pulled the crook to his mouth and began gumming it like a pacifier.

I started to feel uneasy, and not just because of Ra’s condition. How much time had passed, and where was Vlad Menshikov?

“Let’s get him to the boat,” I said. “Bes, can you—”

“Yep. Excuse me, Lord Ra. I’ll have to carry you.” He scooped the sun god out of bed and we bolted from the room. Ra couldn’t have weighed very much, and Bes didn’t have any difficulty keeping up despite his short legs. We ran down the corridor, retracing our steps, as Ra warbled, “Wheeee! Wheeee! Wheeee!”

Perhaps he was having a good time, but I was mortified. We’d been through so much trouble, and this was the sort of god we’d woken? Carter looked as grim as I felt.

We raced past other decrepit gods, who all got quite excited. Some pointed and made gurgling noises. One old jackal-headed god rattled his IV pole and yelled, “Here comes the sun! There goes the sun!”

We burst into the lobby, and Ra said, “ Uh-oh. Uh-oh on the floor.”

His head lolled. I thought he wanted to get down. Then I realized he was looking at something. On the floor next to my foot lay a glittering silver necklace: a familiar amulet shaped like a snake.

For someone who’d been smoking hot only a few minutes before, I suddenly felt terribly chilly. “Menshikov,” I said. “He was here.”

Carter drew his wand and scanned the room. “But where is he? Why would he just drop that and walk away?”

“He left it on purpose,” I guessed. “He wants to taunt us.”

As soon as I said it, I knew it was true. I could almost hear Menshikov laughing as he continued his journey downriver, leaving us behind.

“We have to get to the boat!” I said. “Hurry, before—”

“Sadie.” Bes pointed to the nurses’ station. His expression was grim.

“Oh, no,” Tawaret said. “No, no, no…”

On the sundial, the needle’s shadow was pointing to eight. That meant even if we could still leave the Fourth House, even if we could get through the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Houses, it wouldn’t matter. According to what Tawaret had told us, the gates of the Eighth House would already be closed.

No wonder Menshikov had left us here without bothering to fight us.

We’d already lost.

AFTER SAYING GOOD-BYE TO Zia at the Great Pyramid, I didn’t think I could possibly get more depressed. I was wrong.

Standing on the docks of the Lake of Fire, I felt like I might as well do a cannonball into the lava.

It wasn’t fair. We’d come all this way and risked so much just to be beaten by a time limit. Game over. How was anyone supposed to succeed in bringing back Ra? It was impossible.

Carter, this isn’t a game, the voice of Horus said inside my head. It isn’t supposed to be possible. You must keep going.

I didn’t see why. The gates of the Eighth House were already closed. Menshikov had sailed on and left us behind.

Maybe that had been his plan all along. He’d let us wake Ra only partially so the sun god remained old and feeble. Then Menshikov would leave us trapped in the Duat while he used whatever evil magic he’d planned to free Apophis. When the dawn came, there would be no sunrise, no return of Ra. Instead Apophis would rise and destroy civilization.

Our friends would have fought all night at Brooklyn House for nothing. Twenty-four hours from now, when we finally managed to leave the Duat, we’d find the world a dark, frozen wasteland, ruled by Chaos. Everything we cared about would be gone. Then Apophis could swallow Ra and complete his victory.

Why should we keep charging forward when the battle was lost?

A general never shows despair, Horus said. He instills confidence in his troops. He leads them forward, even into the mouth of death.

You’re Mr. Cheerful, I thought. Who invited you back into my head?

But as irritating as Horus was, he had a point. Sadie had talked about hope—about believing that we could make Ma’at out of Chaos, even if it seemed impossible. Maybe that was all we could do: keep on trying, keep on believing we could salvage something from the disaster.

Amos, Zia, Walt, Jaz, Bast, and our young trainees…all of them were counting on us. If our friends were still alive, I couldn’t give up. I owed them better than that.

Tawaret escorted us to the sun boat while a couple of her shabti carried Ra aboard.

“Bes, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wish there was more I could do.”

“It’s not your fault.” Bes held out his hand like he wanted to shake, but when their fingers touched, he clasped hers. “Tawaret, it was never your fault.”

She sniffled. “Oh, Bes…”

“Wheee!” Ra interrupted as the shabti set him in the boat. “See zebras! Wheee! ”