“They’ll be waiting for you,” Zia said. “Come along.”
We walked so far, my feet began to ache.
Finally we arrived at a crossroads. On the right was a massive set of bronze doors with fires blazing on either side; on the left, a twenty-foot-tall sphinx carved into the wall. A doorway nestled between its 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 from the Cairo Airport.”
“Roughly.”
“No way we’ve walked that far.”
Zia actually smiled, and I couldn’t help noticing how pretty her eyes were. “Distance changes in magic places, Carter. Surely you’ve learned that by now.”
Sadie cleared her throat. “So why is the tunnel closed, then?”
“The Sphinx was too popular with archaeologists,” Zia said. “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 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 see some of the good tombs.”
I felt a little hurt. Dad had 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.
Zia turned to face 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.”
C A R T E R
14. A French Guy Almost Kills Us
THE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS I’d seen a lot of crazy things, but the Hall of Ages took the prize.
Double rows of stone pillars held up a ceiling so high, you could’ve parked a blimp under it with no trouble. A shimmering blue carpet that looked like water ran down the center of the hall, which was so long, I couldn’t see the end even though it was brightly lit. Balls of fire floated around like helium basketballs, changing color whenever they bumped into one another. Millions of tiny hieroglyphic symbols also drifted through the air, randomly combining into words and then breaking apart.
I grabbed a pair of glowing red legs.
They walked across my palm before jumping off and dissolving.
But the weirdest things were the displays.
I don’t know what else to call them. Between the columns on either side of us, images shifted, coming into focus and then blurring out again like holograms in a sandstorm.
“Come on,” Zia told us. “And don’t spend too much time looking.”
It was impossible not to. The first twenty feet or so, the magical scenes cast a golden light across the hall. A blazing sun rose above an ocean. A mountain emerged from the water, and I had the feeling I was watching the beginning of the world. Giants strode across the Nile Valley: a man with black skin and the head of a jackal, a lioness with bloody fangs, a beautiful woman with wings of light.
Sadie stepped off the rug. In a trance, she reached toward the images.
“Stay on the carpet!” Zia grabbed Sadie’s hand and pulled her back toward the center of the hall. “You are seeing the Age of the Gods. No mortal should dwell on these images.”
“But…” Sadie blinked. “They’re only pictures, aren’t they?”
“Memories,” Zia said, “so powerful they could destroy your mind.”
“Oh,” Sadie said in a small voice.
We kept walking. The images changed to silver. I saw armies clashing-Egyptians in kilts and sandals and leather armor, fighting with spears. A tall, dark-skinned man in red-and-white armor placed a double crown on his head: Narmer, the king who united Upper and Lower Egypt. Sadie was right: he did look a bit like Dad.
“This is the Old Kingdom,” I guessed. “The first great age of Egypt.”
Zia nodded. As we walked down the hall, we saw workers building the first step pyramid out of stone. Another few steps, and the biggest pyramid of all rose from the desert at Giza. Its outer layer of smooth white casing stones gleamed in the sun. Ten thousand workers gathered at its base and knelt before the pharaoh, who raised his hands to the sun, dedicating his own tomb.
“Khufu,” I said.
“The baboon?” Sadie asked, suddenly interested.
“No, the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid,” I said. “It was the tallest structure in the world for almost four thousand years.”
Another few steps, and the images turned from silver to coppery.
“The Middle Kingdom,” Zia announced. “A bloody, chaotic time. And yet this is when the House of Life came to maturity.”
The scenes shifted more rapidly. We watched armies fighting, temples being built, ships sailing on the Nile, and magicians throwing fire. Every step covered hundreds of years, and yet the hall still went on forever. For the first time I understood just how ancient Egypt was.
We crossed another threshold, and the light turned bronze.
“The New Kingdom,” I guessed. “The last time Egypt was ruled by Egyptians.”
Zia said nothing, but I watched scenes passing that my dad had described to me: Hatshepsut, the greatest female pharaoh, putting on a fake beard and ruling Egypt as a man; Ramesses the Great leading his chariots into battle.
I saw magicians dueling in a palace. A man in tattered robes, with a shaggy black beard and wild eyes, threw down his staff, which turned into a serpent and devoured a dozen other snakes.
I got a lump in my throat. “Is that-”
“Musa,” Zia said. “Or Moshe, as his own people knew him. You call him Moses. The only foreigner ever to defeat the House in a magic duel.”
I stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“We would not kid about such a thing.”
The scene shifted again. I saw a man standing over a table of battle figurines: wooden toy ships, soldiers, and chariots. The man was dressed like a pharaoh, but his face looked oddly familiar. He looked up and seemed to smile right at me. With a chill, I realized he had the same face as the ba, the bird-faced spirit who’d challenged me on the bridge.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Nectanebo II,” Zia said. “The last native Egyptian king, and the last sorcerer pharaoh. He could move entire armies, create or destroy navies by moving pieces on his board, but in the end, it was not enough.”
We stepped over another line and the images shimmered blue. “These are the Ptolemaic times,” Zia said. “Alexander the Great conquered the known world, including Egypt. He set up his general Ptolemy as the new pharaoh, and founded a line of Greek kings to rule over Egypt.”
The Ptolemaic section of the hall was shorter, and seemed sad compared to all the others. The temples were smaller. The kings and queens looked desperate, or lazy, or simply apathetic. There were no great battles…except toward the end. I saw Romans march into the city of Alexandria. I saw a woman with dark hair and a white dress drop a snake into her blouse.