Chapter I

Katya

I walked into Brooklyn House to be greeted by running, monsters, and strangers. Serpopards were attacking Phillip. I ran onto the balcony to also find a boy and a girl trying to figure out what Khufu was saying.

Phillip rose above the water and came down on the Serpopards. I thought he was going to make it and the Serpopards weren't but I guess I was wrong. The Serpopards came back up, I clicked my bracelet and it formed into a bow and a quiver full of arrows, I shot one arrow distracting the two beasts away from the boy and girl.

"Who are you?" The boy yelled.

"Not the time!" I yelled back. I swung the bow across my chest and pulled out my sword and swung at the monster. I usually didn't go for killing animals, but this was a monster trying to kill us. I dodged quickly there long necks tangling themselves with one another.

"I order you to protect us!" I heard. The cat suddenly turned into a goddess and she helped me finish off the Serpopards.

"M-Muffin? Who are you, and why are you my cat?" The girl asked.

"Carter, Sadie, we should leave. Worse will be coming," she said.

Carter made a choking sound. "Worse? Who—how—what—"

"All in good time." The woman stretched her arms above her head with great satisfaction. "So good to be in human form again! Now, Sadie, can you open us a door through the Duat, please?"

"Um… no. I mean—I don't know how."

"How about you Katya?" She asked clearly disappointed.

"Nope, just a Nature Magician," I replied shrugging. I knew what this was about. Julius Kane let loose Set. Now he is either dead or in a sarcophagus. His children hosted gods. Horus, and Iris.

"Shame. We'll need more power, then. An obelisk."

"But that's in London," Sadie protested. "We can't—"

"There's a nearer one in Central Park. I try to avoid Manhattan, but this is an emergency. We'll just pop over and open a portal."

"Portal to where?" She demanded. "Who are you, and why are you my cat?"

The woman smiled. "For now we just want a portal out of danger. As for my name, it is not Muffin, thank you very much. It's—"

"Bast," Carter interrupted. "Your pendant—it's the symbol of Bast, goddess of cats. I thought it was just decoration but… that's you, isn't it?"

"Very good, Carter," Bast said. "Now come, while we can still make it out of here alive."

Carter

So, yeah. Our cat was a goddess.

What else is new?

Bast didn't give us much time to talk about it. Or the very scary girl with emerald eyes that helped defeat the Serpopards. She ordered me to the library to grab my dad's magic kit, and when I came back she was arguing with Sadie about Khufu and Phillip.

"We have to search for them!" She insisted.

"They'll be fine," said Bast. "However, we will not be, unless we leave now."

"The house was sabotaged. We need to get out of here. And Bast is right they will be fine," Katya said. Bast grabbed our arms and led us out the front door. She'd sheathed her knives, but she still had some sharp claws for fingernails that hurt as they dug into my skin. Katya followed behind us.

We were about to the obelisk when we were attacked by the Scorpion Goddess. Bast stayed behind and Katya led us to the obelisk. We also ran into the girl from the British Museum, We went through and she passed out. I think it was from the exhaustion of fighting the Serpopards, running for her life, and using a ton of magical energy to open up a magic portal. I held onto her as Sadie spoke. I looked like Katya was having a nightmare but I couldn't wake her up.

Katya

Percy and I fell down in front of Artemis. We looked up to see her straining body, struggling to hold up the weight of the sky.

"Give me the sky." I ordered.

"No, you must run." She said.

"We cannot defeat Atlas. But you can. Let us hold the sky together." Percy said urgently Atlas was coming closer and electricity crackled in front of us. Without waiting for an answer we cut her chains and we lifted the sky from her. It was the heaviest thing I have ever lifted. Even with Percy and I combining efforts I still wanted to black out from the pain. Artemis battled Atlas and Thalia and Luke fought.

"Let's see how well the girl does without you, shall we?" The blunt side of Atlas' spear came and knocked him out from under the sky. No, this was the heaviest thing I have ever felt. Percy yelled and tried to reach me but Atlas cut him off. "You shall not reach her," he said. Annabeth still struggled to communicate with us, and Thalia and Luke still fought. I could hear my joints cracking and my ribs cracked. I let out a strangled cry. The pain became increasingly stronger every moment. But I blinked back tears and lifted my arms higher. Red encircled my blurry vision. I saw Zoë get thrown back and onto the rocks. My bones cracked under the extreme weight. I saw Artemis fight and throw Atlas back at me. He was going to take the burden he once had. Atlas threw me back and I crashed into Percy.

"Katya," he cried. I looked up at him, my ice blue eyes fighting to keep focus on his sea green ones. "Hey, stay with me, stay with me okay." I was breathing raggedly and snow began to fall softly around the cavern. Ice spread around the room centering in my heart.

Carter

"Ow!" I grumbled.

The first thing I noticed was the fine layer of sand covering my body like powdered sugar as I held onto Katya's unconscious body. Then my eyed adjusted to the harsh light. We were in a big building like a shopping mall, with crowds bustling around us.

No… not a mall. It was a two-level airport concourse, with shops, lots of windows, and polished columns. Outside, it was dark, so I knew we must be in a different time zone. Announcements echoed over the intercom in a language that sounded like Arabic.

Sadie spit sand out of her mouth. "Yuck!"

"The girl," said Zia. "Who is she?"

"We don't know. She just came into Brooklyn House as we were being attacked. Bast seems to trust her, and she saved our lives, so…" Sadie trailed off.

"I see," Zia said. "This girl has been through things we can only imagine. She is burdened with a power that she does not want."

"How'd you figure that out?" Sadie asked disbelievingly. Zia stayed quiet and looked away. Sadie rolled her eyes.

"Come on," Zia said. "We can't stay here."

I struggled to my feet. People were streaming past—some in Western clothes, some in robes and head scarves. A family arguing in German rushed by and almost knocked me over with their suitcases.

Then I turned and saw something I recognized. In the middle of the concourse stood a life-size replica of an Ancient Egyptian boat. Made from glowing display cases—a sales counter for perfume and jewelry.

"This is the Cairo airport," I said. Suddenly Katya woke up and stood on her feet though she supported herself on Sadie's shoulder.

"Yes," Zia said. "Now, let's go!"

"Why the rush? Can Serqet… can she follow us through that sand gate?"

Zia shook her head. "An artifact overheats whenever it creates a gat. It requires a twelve-hour cooldown before it can be used again. But we still have to worry about airport security. Unless you'd like to meet the Egyptian police, you'll come with me now."

She grabbed our arms and steered us through the crowd. We must've looked like beggars in our old-fashioned clothes, covered head-to-toe in sand. People gave us a wide berth, but nobody tried to stop us.

"Why are we here?" Sadie demanded.

"To see the ruins of Heliopolis," Zia said. Katya stayed silent she looked like she was back to normal. She pulled out what looked like brownies out of her backpack and shoved some into her mouth and she immediately looked better. Her skin seemed to glow and her hair didn't seem so dull.

"Inside an airport?" Sadie asked.

I remembered something Dad had told me years ago, and my scalp tingled.

"Sadie, the ruins are under us." I looked at Zia. "That's right, isn't it?"

She nodded. "The ancient city was pillaged centuries ago. Some of its monuments were carted away, like Cleopatra's two needles. Most of its temples were broken down to make new buildings. What was left disappeared under Cairo's suburbs. The largest section is under this airport."

"And how does that help us?" Sadie asked.

Zia kicked open a maintenance door. On the other side was a broom closet. Zia muttered a command—"Sahad"—and the image of the closet disappeared, revealing a set of stone steps leading down.

"Because not all Heliopolis is in ruins," Zia said. "Follow closely. And touch nothing."

The stairs must've led down about seven million miles, because we descended forever. The passage had been made for miniature people, too. We had to crouch and crawl moat of the way, and even so, I bonked my head on the ceiling a dozen times. The only light was from a ball of fire in Zia's palm, which made shadows dance across the walls.

I'd been places like this before—tunnels inside pyramids, tombs my dad had excavated—but I've never liked them. Millions of tons of rock above me seemed to crush the air out of my lungs.

Finally we reached the bottom. The tunnel opened up, and Zia and Katya stopped abruptly, I saw why. We were standing at the edge of the chasm.

A single wooden plank spanned the void. On the opposite ledge, two jackal-headed granite warriors flanked a doorway, their spears crossed over the entrance.

Sadie sighed. "Please no more psychotic statues."

"Do not joke," Zia warned. "This is an entrance to the First Nome, the oldest branch of the House of Life, headquarters for all magicians. My job was to bring you here safely, but I cannot help you cross. Each magician must unbar the path for herself, and the challenge is different for each supplicant."

She looked at Sadie expectantly, which annoyed me. First Bast, now Zia—both of them treated Sadie like she should have superpowers. I mean, okay, so she'd been able to blast the library doors apart, but why didn't anyone look at me to do cool tricks?

Plus, I was still annoyed with Sadie for the comments she'd made the museum in New York—how often I wanted to complain about the constant travelling, how many days I wanted to complain about the constant travelling, how many days I wished I didn't have to get on a plane and could just be like a normal kid going to school and making friends. But I couldn't complain. You always have to look impeccable, dad had told me. And he didn't just mean my clothes. He meant my attitude. With Mom gone, I was all he had. Dad needed me to be strong. Most days, I didn't mind. I loved my dad. But it was also hard.

Sadie didn't understand that. She had it easy. And now she seemed to be getting all the attention, as if she were the special one. It wasn't fair.

Then I heard Dad's voice in my head: "Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get that is to make it happen yourself."

I didn't know what got into me, but I drew my sword and marched across the plank. It was like my legs were working by themselves, not waiting for my brain. Part of me thought: This is a really bad idea. But part of me answered: No, we do not fear this. And the voice didn't sound like mine.

"Carter!" Sadie cried.

I kept walking. I tried not to look down at the yawning void under my feet, but the sheer size of the chasm made me dizzy. I felt like one of those gyroscope toys, spinning and wobbling as I crossed the narrow plank.

As I got closer to the opposite side, the doorway between the two statues began to glow, like a curtain of red light.

I took a deep breathe. Maybe the red light was a portal, like the gate of sand. If I just charged through fast enough…

Then the first dagger shot out of the tunnel.

My sword was in motion before I realized it. The dagger should've impaled me in the chest, but somehow I deflected it with my blade and sent it sailing into the abyss. Two more daggers shot out of the tunnel. I'd never had the best reflexes, but now they sped up. I ducked one dagger and hooked the other with the curved blade of my sword, turned the dagger and flung it back into the tunnel. How the heck did I do that?

I advanced to the plank and slashed through the red light, which flickered and died. I waited for the statues to come alive, but nothing happened. The only sound was a dagger clattering against the rocks in the chasm below.

The doorway began to glow again. The red light coalesced into a strange form: a five-foot tall bird with a man's head. I raised my sword, but Zia yelled," Carter, no!"

The bird creature folded his wings. His eyes, lined with kohl, narrowed as they studied me. A black ornamental wig glistened on its head, and his face was etched with wrinkles. One of those fake braided pharaoh beards was stuck in his chin like a backward ponytail. He didn't look hostile, except, for the red flickering light all around him, and the fact that from the neck down he was the world's largest killer turkey.

Then a chilling thought occurred to me: This was a bird with a human head, the same form I'd imagined taking when I slept in Amos' house, when my soul left my body and flew to Phoenix. I had no idea what that meant, but it scared me.

The bird creature scratched at the stone floor. Then unexpectedly, he smiled.

"Pari, niswa nafeer," he told me, or at least that's what it sounded like.

Zia gasped. She, Katya and Sadie were standing behind me now, their faces pale. Apparently they'd been able to cross the chasm without my noticing.

Finally Zia seemed to collect herself. She bowed to the bird creature. Sadie followed her example.

The creature winked at me, as if we'd just shared a joke. Then he vanished. The red light faded. The statues retracted their arms, uncrossing their spears from the entrance.

"That's it?" I asked. "What did the turkey say?"

Zia looked at me with something like fear. "That was not a turkey, Carter. That was a ba,"

I'd heard my dad use that word before, but I couldn't place it. "Another monster?"

"A human soul," Zia said. "In this case, a spirit of the dead. A magician from ancient times, come back to serve as s guardian. They watch the entrances of the House."

She studied my face as if I'd just developed some terrible rash.

"What?" I demanded. "Why are you looking at me that way?"

"Nothing," she said. "We must hurry."

She squeezed me on the ledge and disappeared into the tunnel.

Sadie was staring at me too.

"All right," I said. "What did the bird guy ask? You understood it?"

She nodded uneasily. "He mistook you for someone else. He must have had bad eyesight."

"Because?"

"Because he said, 'Go forth, good king.'" Katya said.

I was in a daze after that. We passed through the tunnel and entered a vast underground city of halls and chambers, but I only remember bits and pieces of it.

The ceilings soared to twenty or thirty feet, so it didn't feel like we were underground. Every chamber was lined with massive columns like the ones I'd seen in Egyptian ruins, but these were in perfect condition, brightly painted to look like palm trees, with carved green fronds at the top, so I felt like I was walking through a petrified forest. Fires burned in copper braziers. They didn't seem to make any smoke, but the air smelled good, like a marketplace for spices—cinnamon, clove, and others I couldn't identify. The city smelled like Zia. I realized this was her home. I noticed Katya took her time and stayed a few feet away from the fires, like they would hurt her if she got to close. Well they would, but like, a foot away was too close for her.

We saw a few other people—mostly older men and women. Some wore linen robes, some modern clothes. One guy in a business suit walked past with a black leopard on a leash, as if that were completely normal. Another guy barked orders to a small army of brooms, mops, and buckets that were scuttling around, cleaning up the city.

"Like that cartoon," Sadie said. "Where Mickey Mouse tries to do magic and the brooms keep splitting and toting water."

"'The Sorcerer's Apprentice,'" Zia said. "You do know that was based on an Egyptian story, don't you?"

Sadie just stared back. I knew how she felt. It was too much to process.

"Annabeth would love this," Katya said.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh, my friend Annabeth. She loves architecture, particularly Ancient Greek. But this would be just as fascinating for her." I nodded not knowing what else to say. I barely knew her but it felt like we spent a lifetime together, with all that was happening, it felt like a lifetime. Like when you've gone to elementary, middle, and high school together but you barely know them. At least that's what I think it would have felt like. I hadn't been able to know people for that long.

We walked through a hall of jackal-headed statues, and I could swear their eyes watched us as we past. A few minutes later, Zia led us through an open-air market—if you can call anything "open-air" underground—with dozens of stalls selling weird items like boomerang wands, animated clay dolls, parrots, cobras, papyrus scrolls, and hundreds of different glittering amulets.

Next we crossed a path of stones over a dark river teeming with fish. I thought they were perch until I saw their vicious teeth.

"Are those piranhas?" I asked.

"Tiger fish from the Nile," Zia said. "Like piranhas, except these can weigh up to sixteen pounds."

I watched my step closely after that.

We turned the corner and passed an ornate building carved out of black rock. Seated pharaohs were chiseled into the walls, and the doorway was shaped like a coiled serpent.

"What's in there?" Sadie asked.

We peeked inside and saw rows of children—maybe two dozen in all, about six to ten years old or so—sitting cross-legged on cushions. They were hunched over brass bowls, peering intently into some sort of liquid and speaking under their breath. At first I thought it was a classroom, but there was no sign of a teacher, and the chamber was lit only by a few candles. Judging by the number of empty seats, the room was meant to hold twice as many kids.

"Our initiates," Zia said, "learning to scry. The First Nome must keep in touch with our brethren all over the world. We use our youngest as… operators, I suppose you would say."

"So you've got bases like this all over the world?"

"Most are much smaller, but yes."

I remembered what Amos had told us about the nomes. "Egypt is the First Nome. New York is the Twenty-first. What's the Three-hundred-and-sixtieth?"

"That would be Antarctica," Zia said. "A punishment assignment. Nothing there but a couple of cold magicians and some magic penguins."

"Magic penguins?"

"Don't ask."

Sadie pointed to the children inside. "How does it work? They see images in the water?"

"It's oil," Zia said. "But yes."

"So few," Sadie said. "Are these the only initiates in the whole city?"

"In the whole world," Zia corrected. "There were more before—"She stopped herself.

"Before what?" I asked.

"Nothing," Zia said darkly. "Initiates do our scrying because young minds are most receptive. Magicians being trained no later than the age of ten… with a few dangerous exceptions."

"You mean me and Sadie," I said.

"And Katya," Zia finished off.

"Actually I have already been trained. By Amos. He found me and took me in. I didn't want to look into oil all day, and you didn't offer help for my… capabilities."

"And what do you specialize in?" Zia asked.

"Ice magic." Zia rose an eyebrow but said nothing about it. That's why she was staying far away from the fire it wasn't her element.

"They'll be waiting for you. Come along."

We walked so far my feet began to ache.

Finally we arrive at a crossroads. On the right was a massive set of bronze doors with fire blazing on either side; on the left, a twenty-foot-tall sphinx carved into the wall. A doorway nestled between it's paws, but it was bricked in and covered in cobwebs.

"That looks like the Sphinx at Giza," I said.

"That's because we are directly under the real Sphinx," Zia said. "That tunnel leads straight up to it. Or it used to before it was sealed."

"But…" I did some quick calculations in my head. "The Sphinx is, like, twenty miles away from the Cairo Airport."

"Roughly."

"No way we've walked that far."

Zia actually smiles, and I couldn't help but notice how pretty her eyes were. "Distance changes in magical places, Carter. Surely you've learned that by now."

Sadie cleared her throat. "So why is this tunnel closed, then?"

"The Sphinx was too popular with archaeologists," Zia said. "They kept digging around. Finally, in the 1980's, they discovered the first part of the tunnel under the Sphinx."

"Dad told me about that!" I said. "But he said the tunnel was a dead end."

"It was when we got through with it. We couldn't let the archaeologists know how much they're missing. Egypt's leading archaeologist recently speculated that they've only discovered thirty percent of the ancient ruins in Egypt. In truth, they've only discovered one tenth, and not even the interesting tenth."

"What about King Tut's tomb?" I protested.

"That boy king?" Zia rolled her eyes. "Boring. You should have seen the good tombs."

I felt a little hurt. Dad named me after Howard Carter, the guy who discovered King Tut's tomb, so I'd always felt a personal attachment to it. If that wasn't a "good" tomb, I wondered what was.

"I've always found Greek mythology far more interesting than Egyptian. At least the Greeks made their gods realistic. Not with animal heads and human bodies."

"Well it isn't real, so why bother with it?" Zia asked.

"You'd be surprised," Katya murmured as Zia faced the bronze doors.

"This is the Hall of Ages." She placed her palm against the seal, which bore the symbol of the House of Life.

The hieroglyphs began to glow, and the doors swung open.

Zia turned to us, her expression deadly serious. "You are about to meet the Chief Lector. Behave yourselves, unless you wish to be turned into insects."

Katya

The Hall of Ages had two rows of stone pillars that held the ceiling up so high that Zeus could stand up in his original form and not hit his head. A shimmering blue carpet that looked like the creek that Percy swims in with me ran down the hall to the end that I could not see. Balls of fire the size of basketballs floated around giving of light and changing color when they bumped into one another. Millions of hieroglyphic symbols also floated around the room combining into words then breaking apart.

Carter grabbed a pair of legs, they just walked across his hand and jumped off. But on the sidelines, flat funnels swirled giving off images that focus in and out.

"Come on," Zia said. "And don't spend too much time looking."

We walked on and I could tell we were seeing the Age of the Gods. Sadie started walking towards one of the funnels, she reached out to touch it.

"Stay on the carpet!" Zia grabbed Sadie's hand and pulled her back to the center of the hall. "You are seeing the Age of the Gods. No mortal should dwell on these images."

"But… They're only pictures, aren't they?"

"Memories," Zia said. "So powerful they could destroy your mind."

"Oh," was all Sadie could say. I smiled at her hoping she didn't feel too bad. She only found out about this stuff a day or two ago. I remember when I was brought to Camp Half-Blood.

We kept walking and the images turned to silver. We saw Narmer; the king who united Upper and Lower Egypt place a crown on his head.

"This is the Old Kingdom," Carter guessed. "The first great age of Egypt."

Zia nodded and we kept walking. We saw the pyramids being built and the workers who built it knelt before the pharaoh, who raised his hands to the sun and dedicated his own tomb. Who dedicates their own tomb?

"Khufu," Carter said.

"The baboon?" Sadie asked.

"No the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid. It was the world's tallest structure for almost four-thousand years." The images turned from silver to copper.

"The Middle Kingdom," Zia announced. "A bloody, chaotic time. And yet this is when the House of Life came to maturity."

"Dark times bring people together, or split them apart," I said shocking everyone. We watched armies clash and soon the light turned bronze.

"The New Kingdom," Carter guessed. "The last time Egypt was ruled by Egyptians."

We watched Hatshepsut ruling Egypt, and Ramesses the Great leading his chariots into battle. We watched magicians duel in a palace. A man in tattered robes, with a shaggy beard and wild eyes, threw down his staff, which turned into a serpent and devoured a dozen other snakes.

"Moses," Katya said.

"The only foreigner to defeat the House in a magic duel."

"You're kidding right?" Carter stared disbelievingly at Zia.

"We would not kid over such a thing."
We passed Alexander the Great ruling over the known world. We past more familiar scenes and soon we reached the end of the hall. Desjardins spoke for Iskandar as Iskandar could not speak in English. I blocked out most of the conversation but I stayed present.