I got to see it thriving, too. Little glimpses, anyway. The smoke in the air coiled into shapes that, vague and momentary as they were, made me think of farmers harvesting rich fields, busy marketplaces, and crowds in temples singing hymns of thanks. The Thunderbird didn’t stop them from appearing.
That ought to mean that they were harmless, too, except as more distractions. I made a point of refocusing on the cards on the table and the dead guy sitting on the other side of it.
I had nothing. But I stabbed at the pot anyway, and as he’d been doing more often than not, the Pharaoh folded. Maybe Re and I really did have something in common.
The mummy didn’t seem upset that I was steadily nibbling away his stack. It was like the story was distracting him more than me. “But eventually,” he said, “a problem arose. Re had taken on the form of a man, and he gradually aged like one, until he grew senile. Then, as you can imagine, he no longer ruled wisely. In fact, his edicts brought misery and injustice.” The smoke showed me that, too. Floggings, beheadings, battles, and people sitting in the dirt with swollen bellies and skinny arms and legs, too weak with starvation to brush away the flies. “Check.”
“Raise forty thousand. At that point, couldn’t the other gods stage a coup?”
“Fold.” He gathered in the cards. “One would think. But even though his mind was failing, Re was still mightier than all the others combined. And because he was addled, he couldn’t see that the best thing for everyone, himself included, would be for him to abandon earthly life and return to the sky.”
He dealt, looked at his cards, and paused to think. Eventually he raised, I called, and we played on quietly for a while.
Until finally, against my better judgment, I asked, “So what happened? What did the other gods do?” Hell, why not? I was curious, and the story still wasn’t doing me any harm. I was still winning.
“Oh, yes. The story. Well, as it happened, Re had a daughter named Isis. Among other things, she was the goddess of magic, and though her power was less than his, she still contrived a way to use it against him.”
The queen of clubs had come out on the turn, and for a second, it turned into a picture of Isis. She had dark hair, and was so beautiful and queenly that it wasn’t even funny that she was wearing a crazy hat, made of black feathers with horns tacked onto the sides and a golden disk riding in the center of her forehead.
“In his decrepitude,” the Pharaoh said, “Re had begun to drool. Where his spittle reached the ground, it formed mud. Raise fifty thousand.”
“Call.”
“Isis took some of the mud and molded it into the first cobra. The first animal in all the world that Re himself hadn’t created. And her sorcery, combined with the power in his saliva, brought it to life.”
The queen of clubs flickered again, showing me the cobra rearing up at Isis’s feet.
“Isis sent the snake to lie in wait beside a path where Re doddered along every day.” The Pharaoh burned a card before dealing the river. “And the next time he passed that way, it bit him.”
The cobra that struck at me came out of the smoke. I imagine that if I’d been looking at the smoke, it would have come out of the cards instead. At any rate, it formed from a twist of the drifting blue haze, and if the Thunderbird slowed it down any, you sure couldn’t tell it. It shot forward, stabbed its fangs into my cheek, and dissolved, all in a split second. It hurt like hell, like fire burning me from the inside out, and I screamed.
“The venom couldn’t kill almighty Re,” the Pharaoh went on, just like nothing had happened. “But because Isis had used a bit of his own essence to make the cobra, and because he hadn’t created it and didn’t know its name, it caused him extraordinary pain, and so he too let out a bloodcurdling shriek. I bet a hundred and fifty thousand, by the way.”
“You bastard,” I croaked. “Everybody saw you cheat.”
“Who’s ‘everybody?’ If there were any other players left, they would indeed be within their rights to enforce the rules. But in fact, only you and I remain.”
And how was I supposed to enforce anything? The pain was getting so bad that I doubted I could even stand. Even if I could, what good would it do to throw a punch at the Pharaoh? Wotan had ripped his head off and it hadn’t really hurt him.
“You did notice my bet, didn’t you?” the mummy asked. “Have you decided what you want to do?”
I looked at the river. My eyes were so blurry with tears that I wasn’t sure what it was. I wasn’t sure I remembered what I had in the pocket, either.
I struggled to focus despite the pain. I called Red, and he grew and filled me up. He didn’t make me feel all happy and peppy-there was no chance of that with the poison alternately burning and freezing me-but his power dialed back the torment a little.
The Pharaoh patted his withered hands together. “Well done. But I’m afraid it only delayed the inevitable.”
“Screw you.” My vision had cleared enough to show me that the king of diamonds had come out on the river. I managed to check my hole cards and found a king there, too. “All in.”
The Pharaoh folded. “I see I’m still no match for omnipotent Re. Shall I tell what happened to him next?”
“No.”
“I promise to make it short.” He gathered in the cards and did a faro shuffle. “Isis came running when she heard her father scream. She feigned horror at what had happened, and behaved as though she only cared about ending his suffering.”
“And she told him she could only do it if he gave her his secret name.”
“Very astute. That’s exactly what she said. He resisted for a while, and simply recited a string of aliases. Like ‘Billy Fox.’ But ultimately the agony wore him down, and he gave it up. As promised, she used it to purge the venom from his body, but also to set herself above him. She stripped away what was mortal in him and sent him to pilot the boat that is the sun across the heavens by day and through the underworld at night.”
He dealt the cards. Since he was the dealer, and we were heads up, he’d act first before the flop. But he wasn’t in any hurry to look at his hand.
“Of course,” he continued, “one difference between the myth and our current reality is that Re was a god and you’re a man. I’m afraid that means the venom that merely caused him unendurable pain is likely to put an end to you.”
“Unless I give you my real name and the power to make me lose.”
“Indeed.”
A spasm of more intense pain made my muscles clench and wrung a grunt out of me. I called for Red like a patient in a hospital bed hitting the button for a dose of morphine. He came and it helped, but not as much as before.
“I told you,” the Pharaoh said, “that can’t save you. In our mysteries, the spells that recapitulate the primal myths are the most potent of all.”
“Yeah?” I panted, sweat dripping off my face and plopping on the felt. “Well, guess what? This isn’t ancient Egypt. It’s America. And we don’t have myths. We have movies. We put them on DVD’s. And then they have alternate endings.”
He frowned. “I’m afraid the poison is making you delirious. If so, you’re nearly out of time.”
“In
As I said the last word, I poured mojo into the Thunderbird until it glowed like it was white hot. Like I was trying to brand reality with it and make what I’d just said true.
I don’t think the Pharaoh could really see my personal sign. But he sensed the blaze of power somehow, and flinched back slightly in his wheelchair.
But only slightly. Then he smiled and exhaled smoke. “That was… creative. But, like the invocation of your Ka, insufficient.”
“Look at your damn cards. Play the game or forfeit.”
He played. With a lot more nerve and cunning than before, while the venom chewed me up inside. My eyes kept blurring, and my guts cramped. When the chills hit me, my teeth chattered. I played basic poker because I didn’t trust my judgment for anything fancier. I used the chip lead like a sledgehammer because I was afraid it was the only advantage I had left.
