see.”
He scowled at Carter. “So you’re Horus. And you’re…” His finger drifted towards me.
“I’m-I’m, um-” I stammered. Quite unlike me to be tongue-tied, I’ll admit, but looking at Anubis, I felt as if I’d just gotten a large shot of Novocain from the dentist. Carter looked at me as if I’d gone daft.
“I’m not Isis,” I managed. “I mean, Isis is milling about inside, but I’m not her. She’s just…visiting.”
Anubis tilted his head. “And the two of you intend to challenge Set?”
“That’s the general idea,” Carter agreed. “Will you help?”
Anubis glowered. I remembered Thoth saying Anubis was only in a good mood once an eon or so. I had the feeling this was not one of those days.
“No,” he said flatly. “I’ll show you why.”
He turned into a jackal and sped back the way he’d come. Carter and I exchanged looks. Not knowing what else to do, we ran after Anubis, deeper into the gloom.
In the center of the temple was a large circular chamber that seemed to be two places at once. On the one hand, it was a great hall with blazing braziers and an empty throne at the far end. The center of the room was dominated by a set of scales-a black iron T with ropes linked to two golden dishes, each big enough to hold a person-but the scales were broken. One of the golden dishes was bent into a V, as if something very heavy had jumped up and down on it. The other dish was hanging by a single rope.
Curled at the base of the scales, fast asleep, was the oddest monster I’d seen yet. It had the head of crocodile with a lion’s mane. The front half of its body was lion, but the back end was sleek, brown, and fat-a hippo, I decided. The odd bit was, the animal was tiny-I mean, no larger than an average poodle, which I suppose made him a hippodoodle.
So that was the hall, at least one layer of it. But at the same time, I seemed to be standing in a ghostly graveyard-like a three-dimensional projection superimposed on the room. In some places, the marble floor gave way to patches of mud and moss-covered paving stones. Lines of aboveground tombs like miniature row houses radiated from the center of the chamber in a wheel-spokes pattern. Many of the tombs had cracked open. Some were bricked up, others ringed with iron fences. Around the edges of the chamber, the black pillars shifted form, sometimes changing into ancient cypress trees. I felt as if I were stepping between two different worlds, and I couldn’t tell which one was real.
Khufu loped straight over to the broken scales and climbed to the top, making himself right at home. He paid no attention to the hippodoodle.
The jackal trotted to the steps of the throne and changed back into Anubis.
“Welcome,” he said, “to the last room you will ever see.”
Carter looked around in awe. “The Hall of Judgment.” He focused on the hippodoodle and frowned. “Is that…”
“Ammit the Devourer,” Anubis said. “Look upon him and tremble.”
Ammit apparently heard his name in his sleep. He made a yipping sound and turned on his back. His lion and hippo legs twitched. I wondered if netherworld monsters dreamed of chasing rabbits.
“I always pictured him…bigger,” Carter admitted.
Anubis gave Carter a harsh look. “Ammit only has to be big enough to eat the hearts of the wicked. Trust me, he does his job well. Or…he did it well, anyway.”
Up on the scales, Khufu grunted. He almost lost his balance on the central beam, and the dented saucer clanged against the floor.
“Why are the scales broken?” I asked.
Anubis frowned. “Ma’at is weakening. I’ve tried to fix them, but…” He spread his hands helplessly.
I pointed to the ghostly rows of tombs. “Is that why the, ah, graveyard is butting in?”
Carter looked at me strangely. “What graveyard?”
“The tombs,” I said. “The trees.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He can’t see them,” Anubis said. “But you, Sadie-you’re perceptive. What do you hear?”
At first I didn’t know what he meant. All I heard was the blood rushing through my ears, and the distant rumble and crackle of the Lake of Fire. (And Khufu scratching himself and grunting, but that was nothing new.)
Then I closed my eyes, and I heard another distant sound-music that triggered my earliest memories, my father smiling as he danced me round our house in Los Angeles.
“Jazz,” I said.
I opened my eyes, and the Hall of Judgment was gone. Or not gone, but faded. I could still see the broken scales and the empty throne. But no black columns, no roar of fire. Even Carter, Khufu, and Ammit had disappeared.
The cemetery was very real. Cracked paving stones wobbled under my feet. The humid night air smelled of spices and fish stew and old mildewed places. I might’ve been back in England-a churchyard in some corner of London, perhaps-but the writing on the graves was in French, and the air was much too mild for an English winter. The trees hung low and lush, covered with Spanish moss.
And there was music. Just outside the cemetery’s fence, a jazz band paraded down the street in somber black suits and brightly colored party hats. Saxophonists bobbed up and down. Cornets and clarinets wailed. Drummers grinned and swayed, their sticks flashing. And behind them, carrying flowers and torches, a crowd of revelers in funeral clothes danced round an old-fashioned black hearse as it drove along.
“Where are we?” I said, marveling.
Anubis jumped from the top of a tomb and landed next to me. He breathed in the graveyard air, and his features relaxed. I found myself studying his mouth, the curve of his lower lip.
“New Orleans,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“The Drowned City,” he said. “In the French Quarter, on the west side of the river-the shore of the dead. I love it here. That’s why the Hall of Judgment often connects to this part of the mortal world.”
The jazz procession made its way down the street, drawing more onlookers into the party.
“What are they celebrating?”
“A funeral,” Anubis said. “They’ve just put the deceased in his tomb. Now they’re ‘cutting the body loose.’ The mourners celebrate the dead one’s life with song and dance as they escort the empty hearse away from the cemetery. Very Egyptian, this ritual.”
“How do you know so much?”
“I’m the god of funerals. I know every death custom in the world-how to die properly, how to prepare the body and soul for the afterlife. I live for death.”
“You must be fun at parties,” I said. “Why have you brought me here?”
“To talk.” He spread his hands, and the nearest tomb rumbled. A long white ribbon shot out of a crack in the wall. The ribbon just kept coming, weaving itself into some kind of shape next to Anubis, and my first thought was, My god, he’s got a magic roll of toilet paper.
Then I realized it was cloth, a length of white linen wrappings-mummy wrappings. The cloth twisted itself into the form of a bench, and Anubis sat down.
“I don’t like Horus.” He gestured for me to join him. “He’s loud and arrogant and thinks he’s better than me. But Isis always treated me like a son.”
I crossed my arms. “You’re not my son. And I told you I’m not Isis.”
Anubis tilted his head. “No. You don’t act like a godling. You remind me of your mother.”
That hit me like a bucket of cold water (and sadly, I knew exactly what that felt like, thanks to Zia). “You’ve met my mother?”
Anubis blinked, as if realizing he’d done something wrong. “I-I know all the dead, but each spirit’s path is secret. I should not have spoken.”
“You can’t just say something like that and then clam up! Is she in the Egyptian afterlife? Did she pass your little Hall of Judgment?”
Anubis glanced uneasily at the golden scales, which shimmered like a mirage in the graveyard. “It is not my hall. I merely oversee it until Lord Osiris returns. I’m sorry if I upset you, but I can’t say anything more. I don’t know why I said anything at all. It’s just…your soul has a similar glow. A strong glow.”
