Eye of Hecate

Carter

We plunge into the sand tunnel. 

Everything goes dark. My stomach tingles with that top-of-the-rollercoaster weightlessness as I hurtle forward. Hot winds whip around me, and my skin burns. 

Then I tumble out onto a cold tile floor, and Ozzy, Sadie, and Zia crash on top of me.

"Ow!" I grumble.

The first thing I notice is the fine layer of sand covering my body like powdered sugar. Then my eyes adjust to the harsh light. We're in a big building like a shopping mall, with crowds bustling around us.

No...not a mall. It's a two-level airport concourse, with shops, lots of windows, and polished steel columns. Outside, it's dark, so I know we must be in a different time zone. Announcements echo over the intercom in a language that sounds like Arabic.

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

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

I struggle to my feet. People are streaming past—some in Western clothes, some in robes and headscarves. A family arguing in German rushes by and almost runs over me with their suitcases.

Then I turn and see something I recognize. In the middle of the concourse stands 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 say. 

"Yup," Ozzy nods. "Now, let's go!"

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

Zia shakes her head. "An artifact overheats whenever it creates a gate. 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 us now."

She grabs our arms and steers us through the crowd. We must look like beggars in our old-fashioned clothes, covered head-to-toe in sand. People give us a wide berth, but nobody tries to stop us.

"Why are we here?" Sadie demands.

"To see the ruins of Heliopolis," Ozzy says, tying her thick black hair up in a ponytail that bounces as she speed-walks. The lapis lazuli braided into her hair flashes under the fluorescent lights.

"Inside an airport?" Sadie asks.

I remember something Dad told me years ago, and my scalp tingles."Sadie, the ruins are under us." I look at Zia. "That's right, isn't it?"

She nods. "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 asks.

Ozzy kicks open a maintenance door. On the other side is a broom closet. She mutters a command—"Sahad"—and the image of the closet shimmers and disappears, revealing a set of stone steps leading down.

"Because not all Heliopolis is in ruins," Ozzy says. "Stay close. And don't touch anything."

The stairs must lead down about seven million miles, because we descend forever. The passage was made for miniature people, too. We have to crouch and crawl most of the way, and even so, I bonk my head on the ceiling a dozen times. The only light is from two balls of fire in Ozzy and Zia's palms, which make shadows dance across the walls.

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

Finally we reach the bottom. The tunnel opens up, and Zia and Ozzy stop abruptly. After my eyes adjust, I see why. We're standing at the edge of a chasm. 

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

Sadie sighs. "Please, no more psychotic statues."

"Do not joke," Zia warns. "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 looks at Sadie expectantly, which annoys me. First Bast, now Zia—both of them treat Sadie like she should have some kind of superpowers. I mean, okay, so she was able to blast the library doors apart, but why doesn't anyone look at me to do cool tricks?

Plus, I'm still annoyed with Sadie for the comments she made at the museum in New York—how I have it so good traveling the world with Dad. She has no idea how often I wanted to complain about the constant traveling, 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 told me. And he didn't just mean my clothes. He meant my attitude. With Mom gone, I'm 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 doesn't understand that. She has it easy. And now she seems to be getting all the attention, as if she's the special one. It isn't fair.

Then I glance at Ozzy. She radiates an aura of power, as if she's somehow a step above human. The air around her seems to vibrate with energy. She said she got put into the foster system. Dad didn't even bother raising her. He just left her to start a new family with my mom. How can I complain about my situation when she obviously had it so much worse? If anyone should be saying it's not fair, it should be her.

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

I don't know what gets into me, but I draw my sword and march across the plank. It's like my legs are working by themselves, not waiting for my brain. Part of me thinks: This is a really bad idea. But part of me answers: No, we do not fear this. And the voice doesn't sound like mine.

"Carter!" Sadie cries.

I keep walking. I try not to look down at the yawning void under my feet, but the sheer size of the chasm makes me dizzy. I feel like one of those gyroscope toys, spinning and wobbling as I cross the narrow plank.

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

I take a deep breath. Maybe the red light is a portal, like the gate of sand. If I just charge through fast enough...

Then the first dagger shoots out of the tunnel.

My sword is in motion before I realize it. The dagger should impale me in the chest, but somehow I deflect it with my blade and send it sailing into the abyss. Two more daggers shoot out of the tunnel. I've never had the best reflexes, but now they speed up. I duck one dagger and hook the other with the curved blade of my sword, turn the dagger and fling it back into the tunnel. How the heck did I do that?

I advance to the end of the plank and slash through the red light, which flickers and dies. I wait for the statues to come alive, but nothing happens. The only sound is a dagger clattering against the rocks in the chasm far below.

The doorway begins to glow again. The red light coalesces into a strange form: a five-foot-tall bird with a man's head. I raise my sword, but Ozzy yells, "Carter, no!"

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

Then a chilling thought occurs to me: This is a bird with a human head, the same form I imagined taking when I slept in Amos's house, when my soul left my body and flew to Phoenix. I have no idea what that means, but it scares me.

The bird creature scratches at the stone floor. Then, unexpectedly, he smiles.

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

Zia and Ozzy gasp. They and Sadie are standing behind me now, their faces pale. Apparently they managed to cross the chasm without my noticing.

Finally Zia seems to collect herself. She bows to the bird creature, and Ozzy does the same. Sadie follows their example.

The creature winks at me, as if we've just shared a joke. Then he vanishes. The red light fades. The statues retract their arms, uncrossing their spears from the entrance.

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

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

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

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

She and Ozzy both study my face as if I've just developed some terrible rash.

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

"Nothing," Zia says. "We must hurry."

She squeezes by me on the ledge and disappears into the tunnel.

Sadie and Ozzy are still staring at me.

"All right," I say to Ozzy. "What did the bird guy say? You understood it?"

She nodded uneasily. "I think he mistook you for someone else."

"Because?"

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

I'm in a daze after that. We pass through the tunnel and enter a vast underground city of halls and chambers, but I only remember bits and pieces of it.

The ceilings soar to twenty or thirty feet, so it doesn't feel like we're underground. Every chamber is lined with massive stone columns like the ones I saw in Egyptian ruins, but these are in perfect condition, brightly painted to resemble palm trees, with carved green fronds at the top, so I feel like I'm walking through a petrified forest. Fires burn in copper braziers. They don't seem to make any smoke, but the air smells good, like a marketplace for spices—cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and others I can't identify. The city smells like Zia. I realize that this is her home.

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

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

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

Sadie just stares back. I know how she feels. It's too much to process.

We walk through a hall of jackal-headed statues, and I swear their eyes watch us as we pass. A few minutes later, Zia leads 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 cross a path of stones over a dark river teeming with fish. I think they're perch until I see their vicious teeth.

"Are those piranhas?" I ask.

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

I watch my step more closely after that.

We turn a corner and pass an ornate building carved out of black rock. Seated pharaohs are chiseled into the walls, and the doorway is shaped like a coiled serpent.

"What's in there?" Sadie asks.

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

"Our initiates," Zia says, "learning to scry. The First Nome must keep in contact 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 remember what Amos told us about the nomes. "Egypt is the First Nome. New York is the Twenty-first. What's the last one, the Three-hundred-and-sixtieth?"

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

"Magic penguins?"

"Don't ask."

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

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

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

"In the whole world," Zia corrects. "There were more before—" She stops herself.

"Before what?" I ask.

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

"You mean us," I say.

She glances at me apprehensively, and I know she's still thinking about what the bird spirit called me: a good king. It seems so unreal, like our family name in that Blood of the Pharaohs scroll. How can I be related to some ancient kings? And even if I am, I'm certainly not a king. I have no kingdom. I don't even have my single suitcase anymore.

"They'll be waiting for you," Zia says. "Come along."

We walk so far, my feet begin to ache.

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

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

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

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

"Roughly."

"No way we've walked that far."

Zia actually smiles, and I can't help noticing how pretty her eyes are. "Distance changes in magic places, Carter. Surely you've learned that by now."

Sadie clears her throat. "So why is the tunnel closed, then?"

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

"Dad told me about that!" I say. "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 protest.

"That boy king?" Zia rolls her eyes. "Boring. You should see some of the good tombs."

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

Zia turns to face the bronze doors.

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

The hieroglyphs begins to glow, and the doors swing open.

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

Ozzy shoots her a look. "Look, guys, just don't be disrespectful or rude. Follow our lead." She almost looks like she feels bad for us. She must know how it feels to get thrown into all of this out of nowhere. I imagine going from the foster system to living in a giant magical mansion and teleporting to Cairo was a big shock for her. 

She nods her head for us to follow her in, so we do.