The Throne of Fire

“Was it Vlad?” I asked. “Was he the one who captured you?”

It didn’t seem so far-fetched. I’d met several magicians who were centuries old. But Bes shook his head.

“His grandfather, Prince Alexander Menshikov.” Bes said the name like it was a major insult. “He was secretly the head of the Eighteenth Nome. Powerful. Cruel. A lot like his grandson. I’d never dealt with a magician like that. It was the first time I’d been captured.”

“But didn’t the magicians lock all you gods in the Duat after Egypt fell?”

“Most of us,” Bes agreed. “Some slept the entire two millennia until your dad unleashed us. Others broke out from time to time and the House of Life would track them down and put them back. Sekhmet broke out in 1918. Big influenza epidemic. But a few of the gods like me stayed in the mortal world the entire time. Back in the ancient days, I was just, you know, a friendly guy. I scared away spirits. The commoners liked me. So when Egypt fell, the Romans adopted me as one of their gods. Then, in the Middle Ages, the Christians modeled gargoyles after me, to protect their cathedrals and whatnot. They made up legends about gnomes, dwarves, helpful leprechauns—all based on me.”

“Helpful leprechauns?”

He scowled. “You don’t think I’m helpful? I look good in green tights.”

“I didn’t need that image.”

Bes huffed. “Anyway, the House of Life was never serious about tracking me down. I just kept a low profile and stayed out of trouble. I was never captured until Russia. Probably still be a prisoner there if it wasn’t for—” He stopped himself, as if realizing he’d said too much.

He turned off the road. The truck rattled over hard-packed sand and rocks, heading for the river.

“Someone helped you escape?” I guessed. “Bast?”

The dwarf’s neck turned bright red. “No…not Bast. She was stuck in the abyss fighting Apophis.”

“Then—”

“The point is, I got free, and I got my revenge. I managed to get Alexander Menshikov convicted on corruption charges. He was disgraced, stripped of his wealth and titles. His whole family was shipped off to Siberia. Best day of my life. Unfortunately, his grandson Vladimir made a comeback. Eventually he moved back to St. Petersburg, rebuilt his grandfather’s fortune, and took over the Eighteenth Nome. If Vlad had the chance to capture me…”

Bes shifted in the driver’s seat like the springs were getting uncomfortable. “I guess why I’m telling you this…You’re okay, kid. The way you stood up for your sister on Waterloo Bridge, ready to take me on—that took guts. And trying to ride a tjesu heru? That was plenty brave. Stupid, but brave.”

“Um, thanks.”

“You remind me of myself,” Bes continued, “back when I was a young dwarf. You got a stubborn streak. When it comes to girl problems, you’re clueless.”

“Girl problems?” I thought nobody could embarrass me as much as Sadie did when she learned my secret name, but Bes was doing a pretty good job. “This isn’t just a girl problem.”

Bes regarded me like I was a poor lost puppy. “You want to save Zia. I get that. You want her to like you. But when you rescue somebody…it complicates things. Don’t get starry-eyed about somebody you can’t have, especially if it blinds you to somebody who’s really important. Don’t…don’t make my mistakes.”

I heard the pain in his voice. I knew he was trying to help, but it still felt weird getting guy advice from a four-foot-tall god in an ugly hat.

“The person who rescued you,” I said. “It was a goddess, wasn’t it? Someone besides Bast—somebody you were involved with?”

His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “Kid.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad we had this talk. Now, if you value your teeth—”

“I’ll shut up.”

“That’s good.” Bes put his foot on the brake. “Because I think we’re here.”

The sun was going down at our backs. Everything in front of us was bathed in red light—the sand, the water of the Nile, the hills on the horizon. Even the fronds of the palm trees looked like they were tinged with blood.

Set would love this place, I thought.

There was no sign of civilization—just a few gray herons flying overhead and an occasional splash in the river: maybe fish or a crocodile. I imagined this part of the Nile hadn’t looked too different in the time of the pharaohs.

“Come on,” Bes said. “Bring your stuff.”

Bes didn’t wait for me. When I caught up to him, he was standing on the riverbank, sifting sand through his fingers.

“It’s not just the light,” I realized. “That stuff is really red.”

Bes nodded. “You know why?”

My mom would have said iron oxide or something like that. She’d had a scientific explanation for everything. But something told me Bes wasn’t looking for that kind of answer.

“Red is the color of evil,” I said. “The desert. Chaos. Destruction.”

Bes dusted off his hands. “This was a bad place to build a village.”

I looked around for any sign of a settlement. The red sand stretched in either direction for about a hundred yards. Thick grass and willow trees bordered the area, but the sand itself was completely barren. The way it glittered and shifted under my feet reminded me of the mounds of dried scarab shells in the Duat, holding back Apophis. I really wished I hadn’t thought of that.

“There’s nothing here,” I said. “No ruins. Nothing.”

“Look again.” Bes pointed to the river. Old dead reeds stuck up here and there over an area the size of a soccer field. Then I realized the reeds weren’t reeds—they were decaying boards and wooden poles, the remains of simple dwellings. I walked to the edge of the water. A few feet out, it was calm and shallow enough that I could make out a line of submerged mud bricks: the foundation of a wall slowly dissolving into silt.

“The whole village sank?”

“It was swallowed,” Bes said. “The Nile is trying to wash away the evil that happened here.”

I shivered. The fang wounds on my shoulder started throbbing again. “If it’s such an evil place, why would Iskandar hide Zia here?”

“Good question,” Bes said. “You want to find the answer, you’ll have to wade out there.”

Part of me wanted to run back to the truck. The last time I’d waded into a river—the Rio Grande in El Paso— it hadn’t gone so well. We’d battled the crocodile god Sobek and barely gotten away with our lives. This was the Nile. Gods and monsters would be much stronger here.

“You’re coming too, aren’t you?” I asked Bes.

The corner of his eye twitched. “Running water’s not good for gods. Loosens our connection to the Duat…”

He must have seen the look of desperation on my face.

“Yeah, okay,” he sighed. “I’m right behind you.”

Before I could chicken out, I put one boot in the river and sank up to my ankle.

“Gross.” I waded out, my feet making sounds like a cow chewing gum.

A little too late, I realized how poorly prepared I was. I didn’t have my sword, because I’d lost it in St. Petersburg. I hadn’t been able to summon it back. For all I knew, the Russian magicians had melted it down. I still had my wand, but that was mostly for defensive spells. If I had to go on the offense, I’d be at a serious disadvantage.

I pulled an old stick out of the mud and used it to poke around. Bes and I trudged through the shallows, trying to find anything useful. We kicked over some bricks, discovered a few intact sections of walls, and brought up some pottery shards. I thought about the story Zia had told me—how her dad caused the destruction of the village by unearthing a demon trapped in a jar. For all I knew, these were shards of that same jar.

Nothing attacked us except mosquitoes. We didn’t find any traps. But every splash in the river made me think of crocodiles (and not the nice albino kind like Philip back in Brooklyn) or the big toothy tiger fish Zia had shown me once in the First Nome. I imagined them swimming around my feet, trying to decide which leg looked the