The Throne of Fire (Kane Chronicles #2)(97)

“Yes, dear,” Tawaret agreed. “It goes by different names —Sunny Acres, the House of Rest—but it’s also the Fourth House.”

“So how can the sundial be on five?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we be, like, frozen at the fourth hour?”

“Doesn’t work that way, kid,” Bes put in. “Time in the mortal world doesn’t stop passing just because you’re in the Fourth House. If you want to follow the sun god’s voyage, you have to keep in synch with his timing.”

I felt a head-splitting explanation coming on. I was ready to accept blissful ignorance and get on with finding Ra, but Carter, naturally, wouldn’t let it drop.

“So what happens if we get too far behind?” he asked.

Tawaret checked the sundial again, which was slowly creeping past five. “The houses are connected to their times of night. You can stay in each one as long as you want, but you can only enter or exit them close to the hours they represent.”

“Uh-huh.” I rubbed my temples. “Do you have any headache medicine behind that nurses’ station?”

“It’s not that confusing,” said Carter, just to be annoying. “It’s like a revolving door. You have to wait for an opening and jump in.”

“More or less,” Tawaret agreed. “There is a little wiggle room with most of the Houses. You can leave the Fourth House, for instance, pretty much whenever you want. But certain gates are impossible to pass unless you time it exactly right. You can only enter the First House at sunset. You can only exit the Twelfth House at dawn. And the gates of the Eighth House, the House of Challenges…can only be entered during the eighth hour.”

“House of Challenges?” I said. “I hate it already.”

“Oh, you have Bes with you.” Tawaret stared at him dreamily. “The challenges won’t be a problem.”

Bes shot me a panicked look, like, Save me!

“But if you take too long,” Tawaret continued, “the gates will close before you can get there. You’ll be locked in the Duat until tomorrow night.”

“And if we don’t stop Apophis,” I said, “there won’t be a tomorrow night. That part I understand.”

“So can you help us?” Carter asked Tawaret. “Where is Ra?”

The goddess fidgeted with her hair. Her hands were a cross between human and hippo, with short stubby fingers and thick nails.

“That’s the problem, dear,” she said. “I don’t know. The Fourth House is enormous. Ra is probably here somewhere, but the hallways and doors go on forever. We have so many patients.”

“Don’t you keep track of them?” Carter asked. “Isn’t there a map or something?”

Tawaret shook her head sadly. “I do my best, but it’s just me, the shabti and the servant lights…. And there are thousands of old gods.”

My heart sank. I could barely keep track of the ten or so major gods I’d met, but thousands? In this room alone, I counted a dozen patients, six hallways leading off in different directions, two staircases, and three elevators. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed as if some of the hallways had appeared since we’d entered the room.

“All these old folks are gods?” I asked.

Tawaret nodded. “Most were minor deities even in ancient times. The magicians didn’t consider them worth imprisoning. Over the centuries, they’ve wasted away, lonely and forgotten. Eventually they made their way here. They simply wait.”

“To die?” I asked.

Tawaret got a faraway look in her eyes. “I wish I knew. Sometimes they disappear, but I don’t know if they simply get lost wandering the halls, or find a new room to hide in, or truly fade to nothing. The sad truth is it amounts to the same thing. Their names have been forgotten by the world above. Once your name is no longer spoken, what good is life?”

She glanced at Bes, as if trying to tell him something.

The dwarf god looked away quickly. “That’s Mekhit, isn’t it?” He pointed to the old lion woman who was making her way around in a wheelchair. “She had a temple near Abydos, I think. Minor lion goddess. Always got confused with Sekhmet.”

The lioness snarled weakly when Bes said the name Sekhmet. Then she went back to rolling her chair, muttering, “Meow, meow.”

“Sad story,” Tawaret said. “She came here with her husband, the god Onuris. They were a celebrity couple in the old days, so romantic. He once traveled all the way to Nubia to rescue her. They got married. Happy ending, we all thought. But they were both forgotten. They came here together. Then Onuris disappeared. Mekhit’s mind began to go quickly after that. Now she rolls her chair around the room aimlessly all day. She can’t remember her own name, though we keep reminding her.”

I thought about Khnum, whom we’d met on the river, and how sad he’d seemed, not knowing his secret name. I looked at the old goddess Mekhit, meowing and snarling and scooting along with no memory of her former glory. I imagined trying to care for a thousand gods like that—senior citizens who never got better and never died.

“Tawaret, how can you stand it?” I said in awe. “Why do you work here?”

She touched her nurse’s cap self-consciously. “A long story, dear. And we have very little time. I wasn’t always here. I was once a protector goddess. I scared away demons, though not as well as Bes.”