The Throne of Fire (Kane Chronicles #2)(57)

The shopper also managed to find some supplies for our magic bags—blocks of wax, twine, even some papyrus and ink—though I doubt Bes explained to her what they were for.

After she left, Bes, Carter and I ordered more food from room service. We sat on the deck and watched the afternoon go by. The breeze from the Mediterranean was cool and pleasant. Modern Alexandria stretched out to our left—an odd mix of gleaming high-rises, shabby, crumbling buildings, and ancient ruins. The shoreline highway was dotted with palm trees and crowded with every sort of vehicle from BMWs to donkeys. From our penthouse suite, it all seemed a bit unreal—the raw energy of the city, the bustle and congestion below —while we sat on our veranda in the sky eating fresh fruit and the last melting bits of Lenin’s head.

I wondered if this was how the gods felt, watching the mortal world from their throne room in the Duat.

As we talked, I set the two scrolls from the Book of Ra on the patio table. They looked so plain and harmless, yet we’d almost died retrieving them. Still one more to find, then the real fun would begin—figuring out how to use them to awaken Ra. It seemed impossible we could do so much in forty-eight hours, yet here we sat, sidelined and exhausted, forced to rest until the morning. Carter and his bloody heroics, getting bitten by that Doctor Dolittle snake…and he calls me impulsive. Meanwhile, Amos and our rookie initiates were left alone at Brooklyn House, preparing to defend against Vlad Menshikov, a magician so ruthless, he was on a secret-name basis with the god of evil.

I told Carter what had happened in St. Petersburg after he got poisoned—how I’d given up Set’s name in exchange for the location of the last scroll: someplace called Bahariya. I described my vision of Anubis and Walt, my chat with Jaz’s spirit, and my trip back in time to Ra’s sun barge. The only thing I held back: what Set had said about Zia’s village being named al-Hamrah Makan. And yes, I know that was wrong —but I’d just been inside Carter’s head. I now understood how important Zia was to him. I knew how badly any information about her would rattle him.

Carter sat in his lounge chair and listened intently. His color had returned to normal. His eyes were clear and alert. It was hard to believe he’d been on death’s door only hours before. I wanted to credit my healing powers, but I had a feeling his recovery had just as much to do with rest, several ginger ales, and a room-service cheeseburger with chips.

“Bahariya…” He looked at Bes. “I know that name. Why do I know that name?”

Bes scratched his beard. He’d been glum and silent since I’d recounted our conversation with Set. The name Bahariya seemed especially to bother him.

“It’s an oasis,” he said, “way out in the desert. The mummies buried there were a secret until 1996. Then some fool donkey put its leg through a hole in the ground and broke open the top of a tomb.”

“Right!” Carter beamed at me, that Gee, history is cool! light in his eyes, so I knew he must be feeling better. “It’s called the Valley of the Golden Mummies.”

“I like gold,” I said. “Mummies—not so much.”

“Oh, you just haven’t met enough mummies,” Bes said.

I couldn’t tell if he was joking, and I decided not to ask. “So the last scroll is hidden there?”

Bes shrugged. “It would make sense. The oasis is out of the way. Wasn’t found until recently. There are also powerful curses in place to prevent portal travel. The mortal archaeologists have excavated some of the tombs, but there’s still a huge network of tunnels and chambers no one’s opened in thousands of years. Lots of mummies.”

I imagined horror film mummies with their arms out and their linen wraps coming undone, groaning as they chased screaming starlets and strangled archaeologists.

“When you say lots of mummies,” I ventured, “how many is lots?”

“They’ve uncovered a few hundred,” Bes said, “out of maybe ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand?” I looked at Carter, who didn’t seem bothered by this at all.

“Sadie,” he said, “it’s not like they’re going to come to life and kill you.”

“No,” Bes agreed. “Probably not. Almost for sure not.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. “I feel much better.”

(Yes, I know what I said earlier about dead people and cemeteries not bothering me. But ten thousand mummies? That was pushing it.)

“Anyway,” Bes said, “most of the mummies are from Roman times. They’re not even properly Egyptian. Bunch of Latin wannabes trying to get into our afterlife because it’s cooler. But some of the older tombs…well, we’ll just have to see. With two parts of the Book of Ra, you should be able to track down the third part once you get close enough.”

“How, exactly?” I asked.

Bes shrugged. “When magic items get broken up, the pieces are like magnets. The closer they get, the more they attract each other.”

That didn’t necessarily make me feel better. I imagined myself running through a tunnel with flaming scrolls stuck to both hands.

“Right,” I said. “So all we have to do is creep through a network of tombs past ten thousand golden mummies, who probably, almost for sure, won’t come to life and kill us.”

“Yeah,” Bes said. “Well, they’re not really solid gold. Most of them are just painted with gold. But, yeah.”