19. Welcome to the Fun House of Evil.

SADIE SAYS I LOOKED CONFIDENT?.

Good one.

Actually, being offered kingship of the universe (or supreme command over G.o.ds and magicians, or whatever) pretty much had me shaking in my shoes.

I was grateful that it had happened as we headed into combat, so I didn't have time to think about it too much or freak out.

Go with it, Horus said. Use my courage.

For once I was glad to let him take the lead. Otherwise when we reached the surface and I saw how bad things were, I would've run back inside, screaming like a kindergartner.

(Sadie says that's not fair. Our kindergartners weren't screaming. They were more anxious for combat than I was.) Anyway, our little band of magicians popped out of a secret tunnel halfway up Khafre's pyramid and stared down at the end of the world.

To say Apophis was huge would be like saying the t.i.tanic took on a little water. Since we'd been underground, the serpent had grown. Now he coiled under the desert for miles, wrapping around the pyramids and tunneling under the outskirts of Cairo, lifting entire neighborhoods like old carpeting.

Only the serpent's head was above ground, but it rose almost as tall as the pyramids. It was formed of sandstorm and lightning, like Sadie described; and when it fanned out its cobra's crest, it displayed a blazing hieroglyph no magician would ever write: Isfet, the sign of Chaos: The four G.o.ds battling Apophis looked tiny in comparison. Sobek straddled the serpent's back, chomping down again and again with his powerful crocodile jaws and smashing away with his staff. His attacks connected, but they didn't seem to bother Apophis.

Bes danced around in his Speedo, swinging a wooden club and yelling, "Boo!" so loudly, the people in Cairo were probably cowering under the beds. But the giant Chaos snake did not look terrified.

Our cat friend Bast wasn't having much luck either. She leaped onto the serpent's head and slashed wildly with her knives, then jumped away before Apophis could shake her off; but the serpent only seemed interested in one target.

Standing in desert between the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, Zia was surrounded in brilliant golden light. It was hard to look directly at her, but she was shooting fireb.a.l.l.s like a Roman candle-each one exploding against the serpent's body and disrupting his form. The serpent retaliated, biting chunks out of the desert, but he couldn't seem to find Zia. Her location shifted like a mirage-always several feet away from wherever Apophis struck.

Still, she couldn't keep this up forever. Looking into the Duat, I could see the four G.o.ds' auras weakening, and Apophis kept getting larger and stronger.

"What do we do?" Jaz asked nervously.

"Wait for my signal," I said.

"Which is what?" Sadie asked.

"I don't know yet. I'll be back."

I closed my eyes and sent my ba into the heavens. Suddenly I stood in the throne room of the G.o.ds. Stone columns soared overhead. Braziers of magical fire stretched into the distance, their light reflecting on the polished marble floor. In the center of the room, Ra's sun boat rested on its dais. His throne of fire sat empty.

I seemed to be alone-until I called out.

"Come to me." Horus and I spoke in unison. "Fulfill your oath of loyalty."

Trails of glowing smoke drifted into the room like slow-motion comets. Lights blazed to life, swirling between the columns. All around me, the G.o.ds materialized.

A swarm of scorpions scuttled across the floor and merged to form the G.o.ddess Serqet, who glared at me distrustfully from beneath her scorpion-shaped crown. Babi the baboon G.o.d climbed down from the nearest column and bared his fangs. Nekhbet the vulture G.o.ddess perched on the prow of the sun boat. Shu the wind G.o.d blew in as a dust devil, then took the appearance of a World War II pilot, his body created entirely from dust, leaves, and sc.r.a.ps of paper.

There were dozens more: the moon G.o.d Khonsu in his silver suit; the sky G.o.ddess Nut, her galactic blue skin glimmering with stars; Hapi the hippie with his green fish-scale skirt and his crazy smile; and a severe-looking woman in camouflage hunting clothes, a bow at her side, grease paint on her face, and two ridiculous palm fronds sticking out of her hair-Neith, I a.s.sumed.

I'd hoped for more friendly faces, but I knew Osiris couldn't leave the Underworld. Thoth was still stuck in his pyramid. And many other G.o.ds-probably the ones most likely to help me-were also under siege from the forces of Chaos. We'd have to make do.

I faced the a.s.sembled G.o.ds and hoped my legs weren't shaking too badly. I still felt like Carter Kane, but I knew that when they looked at me, they were seeing Horus the Avenger.

I brandished the crook and flail. "These are the symbols of the pharaoh, given to me by Ra himself. He has named me your leader. Even now, he is facing Apophis. We must join the battle. Follow me and do your duty."

Serqet hissed. "We only follow the strong. Are you strong?"

I moved with lightning speed. I lashed the flail across the G.o.ddess, cutting her into a flaming pile of baked scorpions.

A few live critters scuttled out of the wreckage. They moved to a safe distance and began to re-form, until the G.o.ddess was whole again, cowering behind a brazier of blue flames.

The vulture G.o.ddess Nekhbet cackled. "He is strong."

"Then come," I said.

My ba returned to earth. I opened my eyes.

Above Khafre's pyramid, storm clouds gathered. With a clap of thunder they parted, and the G.o.ds charged into battle-some riding war chariots, some in floating warships, some on the backs of giant falcons. The baboon G.o.d Babi landed atop the Great Pyramid. He pounded his chest and howled.

I turned to Sadie. "How's that for a signal?"

We clambered down the pyramid to join the fight.

First tip on fighting a giant Chaos serpent: Don't.

Even with a squadron of G.o.ds and magicians at your back, it's not a battle you're likely to win. I got clued in to this as we charged closer and the world seemed to fracture. I realized Apophis wasn't just coiling in and out of the desert, wrapping himself around the pyramids. He was coiling in and out of the Duat, splintering reality into different layers. Trying to find him was like running through a fun house full of mirrors, each mirror leading to another fun house filled with more mirrors.

Our friends began to split up. All around us, G.o.ds and magicians became isolated, some sinking deeper into the Duat than others. We fought a single enemy, but we were each fighting only a fragment of his power.

At the base of the pyramid, snaky coils encircled Walt. He tried to force his way out, blasting the serpent with gray light that turned his scales to ashes; but the serpent just regenerated, closing tighter and tighter around Walt. A few hundred feet away, Julian had summoned a full Horus avatar, a giant green hawk-headed warrior with a khopesh in either hand. He sliced away at the serpent's tail-or at least one version of it-while the tail lashed around and tried to impale him. Deeper in the Duat, the G.o.ddess Serqet stood in nearly the same place. She had turned herself into a giant black scorpion and was confronting another image of the serpent's tail, parrying it with her stinger in a bizarre sword fight. Even Amos had been waylaid. He faced the wrong direction (or so it looked to me) and sliced his staff through the empty air, shouting command words at nothing.

I hoped that we were weakening Apophis by forcing him to deal with so many of us at once, but I couldn't see any sign of the serpent's power decreasing.

"He's dividing us!" Sadie shouted. Even standing right next to me, she seemed to be speaking from the other side of a roaring wind tunnel.

"Grab hold!" I held out the pharaoh's crook. "We have to stay together!"

She took the other end of the crook, and we forged ahead.

The closer we got to the serpent's head, the harder it was to move. I felt like we were running through layers of clear syrup, each thicker and more resistant than the last. I looked around us and realized most of our allies had fallen away. Some I couldn't even see because of the Chaos distortion.

Ahead of us, a bright light shimmered as if through fifty feet of water.

"We have to get to Ra," I said. "Concentrate on him!"

What I was really thinking: I have to save Zia. But I was pretty sure Sadie knew that without my spelling it out.

I could hear Zia's voice, summoning waves of fire against her enemy. She couldn't be much farther-maybe twenty feet in mortal distance? Through the Duat it might have been a thousand miles.

"Almost there!" I said.

You're too late, little ones, the voice of Apophis hummed in my ears. Ra will be my breakfast today.

A snake coil as big as a subway car slammed into the sand at our feet, almost crushing us. The scales rippled with Chaos energy, making me want to double over with nausea. Without Horus shielding me, I'm pretty sure I would have been vaporized just standing so close to it. I swung my flail. Three lines of fire cut through the snake's hide, blasting it to shreds of red and gray fog.

"Okay?" I asked Sadie.

She looked pale, but nodded. We trudged on.

A few of the most powerful G.o.ds still fought around us. Babi the baboon was riding one version of the serpent's head, pounding his ma.s.sive fists between Apophis's eyes, but the serpent seemed only mildly annoyed. The hunter G.o.ddess Neith hid behind a pile of stone blocks, sniping at another snakehead with her arrows. She was pretty easy to spot because of the palm fronds in her hair, and she kept yelling something about a Jelly Baby conspiracy. Farther on, another serpent's mouth sank its fangs into Nekhbet the vulture G.o.ddess, who shrieked in pain and exploded into a pile of black feathers.

"We're running out of G.o.ds!" Sadie cried.

Finally we reached the middle of the Chaos storm. Walls of red and gray smoke swirled around us, but the roar died in the center as if we'd stepped into the eye of a hurricane. Above us rose the true head of the serpent-or at least the manifestation that held most of his power.

How did I know this? His skin looked more solid, glistening with golden red scales. His mouth was a pink cavern with fangs. His eyes glowed, and his cobra's hood spread so wide, it blocked a quarter of the sky.

Before him stood Ra, a shining apparition too bright to look at directly. If I glanced from the corner of my eye, however, I could see Zia at the center of the light. She now wore the clothes of an Egyptian princess-a silky dress of white and gold, a golden necklace and armbands. Even her staff and wand were gilded. Her image danced in the hot vapor, causing the serpent to misjudge her location every time he struck.

Zia shot tracers of red flame toward Apophis-blinding his eyes and burning away patches of his skin-but the damage seemed to heal almost instantly. He was growing stronger and larger. Zia wasn't so fortunate. If I concentrated, I could sense her life force, her ka, growing weaker. The luminous glow at the center of her chest was becoming smaller and more concentrated, like a flame reduced to a pilot light.

Meanwhile, our feline friend Bast was doing her best to distract her old enemy. Over and over she jumped on the serpent's back, slashing with her knives and mewling in anger, but Apophis just shook her off, throwing her back into the storm.

Sadie scanned the area with alarm. "Where's Bes?"

The dwarf G.o.d had disappeared. I was beginning to fear the worst when a small grumpy voice near the edge of the storm called, "Some help, maybe?"

I hadn't paid much attention to the ruins around us. The plains of Giza were littered with big stone blocks, trenches, and old building foundations from previous excavations. Under a nearby car-sized wedge of limestone, the dwarf G.o.d's head was sticking out.

"Bes!" Sadie cried as we ran to his side. "Are you all right?"

He glared up at us. "Do I look all right, kid? I have a ten-ton block of limestone on my chest. Snake-breath over there knocked me flat and dropped this thing on top of me. Most blatant act of dwarf cruelty ever!"

"Can you move it?" I asked.

He gave me a look almost as ugly as his Boo! face. "Gee, Carter, I didn't think of that. It's so comfortable under here. Of course I can't move it, you dolt! Blocks of stone don't scare easily. Help a dwarf out, huh?"

"Stand back," I told Sadie.

I summoned the strength of Horus. Blue light encased my hand, and I karate-chopped the stone. It cracked right down the middle, falling on either side of the dwarf G.o.d.

It would've been more impressive if I hadn't yelped like a puppy and cradled my fingers. Apparently I needed to work on the karate trick more, because my hand felt like it was boiling in oil. I was pretty sure I'd broken some bones in there.

"All right?" Sadie asked.

"Yeah," I lied.

Bes climbed to his feet. "Thanks, kid. Now it's time for some snake-bashing."

We ran to help Zia, which turned out to be a bad idea. She glanced over and saw us-and, just for a moment, she was distracted.

"Carter, thank the G.o.ds!" She spoke in two-part harmony-partly her, partly the deep commanding voice of Ra, which was a little hard to take. Call me close-minded, but hearing my girlfriend talk like a five-thousand-year-old male G.o.d was not on my top ten list of Things I Find Attractive. Still, I was so glad to see her, I almost didn't care.

She lobbed another fireball down the throat of Apophis. "You're just in time. Our snaky friend is getting stro-"

"Look out!" Sadie screamed.

This time, Apophis wasn't fazed by the fire. He struck immediately-and he didn't miss. His mouth hit like a wrecking ball.

When Apophis rose again, Zia was gone. There was a crater in the sand where she'd been standing, and a human-sized lump illuminated the snake's gullet from the inside, glowing as it traveled down his throat.

Sadie tells me that I went a little insane. Honestly, I don't remember. The next thing I can recall, my voice was raw from screaming, and I was staggering away from Apophis, my magic almost exhausted, my broken hand throbbing, my crook and flail smoking with red-gray ooze-the blood of Chaos.

Apophis had three gashes in his neck that weren't closing. Otherwise, he looked fine. It's hard to tell if a snake has an expression, but I was pretty sure he was gloating.

"As it was foretold!" He spoke aloud, and the earth shook. Cracks spread across the desert as if it had suddenly become thin ice. The sky turned black, lit only by stars and streaks of red lightning. The temperature began to drop. "You cannot cheat destiny, Carter Kane! I have swallowed Ra. Now the end of the world is at hand!"

Sadie fell to her knees and sobbed. Despair swept over me, worse than the cold. I felt Horus's power fail, and I was just Carter Kane again. All around us, in different levels of the Duat, G.o.ds and magicians stopped battling as terror spread through their ranks.

With catlike agility, Bast landed next to me, breathing hard. Her hair was puffed out so much, it looked like a sea urchin covered with sand. Her bodysuit was ripped and torn. She had a nasty bruise on the left side of her jaw. Her knives were steaming and pitted with corrosion from the serpent's poison.

"No," she said firmly. "No, no, no. What's our plan?"

"Plan?" I tried to make sense of her question. Zia was gone. We'd failed. The ancient prophecy had come true, and I would die knowing that I was a complete and utter loser. I looked at Sadie, but she seemed just as sh.e.l.l-shocked.

"Wake up, kid!" Bes waddled up to me and kicked me in the kneecap, which was as high as he could reach.

"Ow!" I protested.

"You're the leader now," he growled. "So you'd better have a plan. I didn't come back to life to get killed again!"

Apophis hissed. The ground continued to crack, shaking the foundations of the pyramids. The air was so cold, my breath turned to mist.

"Too late, poor children." The serpent's red eyes stared down at me. "Ma'at has been dying for centuries. Your world was only a temporary speck in the Sea of Chaos. All that you built meant nothing. I am your past and your future! Bow to me now, Carter Kane, and perhaps I will spare you and your sister. I will enjoy having survivors to witness my triumph. Is that not preferable to death?"

My limbs felt heavy. Somewhere inside, I was a scared little boy who wanted to live. I'd lost my parents. I'd been asked to fight a war that was way too big for me. Why should I keep going when it was hopeless? And if I could save Sadie...

Then I focused on the serpent's throat. The glow of the swallowed sun G.o.d sank lower and lower into Apophis's gullet. Zia had given her life to protect us.

Never fear, she'd said. I will hold Apophis until you come.

Anger cleared my thoughts. Apophis was trying to sway me, the way he'd corrupted Vlad Menshikov, Kwai, Sarah Jacobi, and even Set, the G.o.d of evil himself. Apophis was the master of eroding reason and order, of destroying everything that was good and admirable. He was selfish, and he wanted me to be selfish as well.

I remembered the white obelisk rising from the Sea of Chaos. It had stood for thousands of years, against all odds. It represented courage and civilization, making the right choice instead of the easy choice. If I failed today, that obelisk would finally crumble. Everything humans had built since the first pyramids of Egypt would be for nothing.

"Sadie," I said, "you have the shadow?"