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‘Charge!’ Sadie barrelled into the clearing, her staff in one hand and her Greek scroll in the other.
I glanced at Annabeth. ‘Your new friend is awesome.’
Then I followed Sadie.
My plan was pretty simple: run at Setne and kill him. Even with my heavy new sword, I outpaced Sadie. Two vultures dived at me. I sliced them out of the air.
I was five feet from Setne and imagining the satisfaction of slicing him in half when he turned and noticed me. The magician vanished. My blade cut through empty air.
I stumbled, off-balance and angry.
Ten feet to my left, Sadie smacked a vulture with her staff. The bird exploded into white sand. Annabeth jogged towards us, giving me one of those annoyed expressions like, If you get yourself killed, I’m going to murder you. Carter, being invisible, was nowhere to be seen.
With a bolt of white fire, Sadie blasted another vulture out of the sky. The remaining birds scattered in the storm.
Sadie scanned the field for Setne. ‘Where is the skinny old git?’
The skinny old git appeared right behind her. He spoke a single word from his scroll of nasty surprises, and the ground exploded.
When I regained my senses, I was still standing, which was a minor miracle. The force of the spell had pushed me away from Setne, so my shoes had made trenches in the mud.
I looked up, but I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. Around Setne, the earth had ruptured in a ten-foot-diameter ring, splitting open like a seedpod. Plumes of dirt had sprayed outward and were frozen in midair. Tendrils of red sand coiled around my legs and brushed against my face as they snaked in all directions. It looked like somebody had stopped time while slinging red mud from a giant salad spinner.
Sadie lay flat on the ground to my left, her legs buried under a blanket of mud. She struggled but couldn’t seem to get free. Her staff was knocked out of reach. Her scroll was a muddy rag in her hand.
I stepped towards her, but the coils of sand pushed me back.
Somewhere behind me, Annabeth yelled my name. I turned and saw her just outside the explosion zone. She was trying to charge in, but the earthen tendrils moved to block her, whipping around like octopus arms.
There was no sign of Carter. I could only hope he hadn’t got caught in this stupid web of floating dirt.
‘Setne!’ I yelled.
The magician brushed the lapels of his smoking jacket. ‘You really should stop interrupting me, demigod. The deshret crown was originally a gift to the pharaohs from the earth god Geb, you know. It can defend itself with some cool earth magic!’
I gritted my teeth. Annabeth and I had recently done battle with Gaia the Earth Mother. More dirt sorcery was the last thing I needed.
Sadie struggled, her legs still encased in mud. ‘Clean up all this dirt right now, young man. Then give us that crown and go to your room.’
The magician’s eyes glittered. ‘Ah, Sadie. Delightful as always. Where’s your brother? Did I accidentally blow him up? You can thank me for that later. Right now, I must get on with business.’
He turned his back on us and resumed chanting.
The wind picked up. Rain whipped around him. The floating lines of sand began to stir and shift.
I managed to step forward, but it was like wading through wet cement. Behind me, Annabeth wasn’t having much more luck. Sadie managed to pull one of her legs free, minus her combat boot. She cursed worse than my immortal horse friend Arion (which is pretty bad) as she retrieved the boot.
Setne’s weird earth spell was loosening, but not fast enough. I’d only managed two more steps when Setne finished his incantation.
In front of him, a wisp of darkness grew into the form of a queenly woman. Rubies embroidered the collar of her black dress. Gold bands circled her upper arms. Her face had an imperious, timeless quality that I’d learned to recognize. It meant I’m a goddess; deal with it. Perched atop her braided black hair was a white conical crown, and I couldn’t help wondering why a powerful immortal being would choose to wear a headpiece shaped like a bowling pin.
‘You!’ she snarled at Setne.
‘Me!’ he agreed. ‘Wonderful to see you again, Nekhbet. Sorry we don’t have longer to chat, but I can’t keep these mortals pinned down forever. We’ll have to make this brief. The hedjet, please.’
The vulture goddess spread her arms, which grew into huge black wings. Around her, the air turned dark as smoke. ‘I do not yield to upstarts like you. I am the protector of the crown, the shield of the pharaoh, the –’
‘Yes, yes,’ Setne said. ‘But you’ve yielded to upstarts plenty of times. The history of Egypt is basically a list of which upstarts you’ve yielded to. So let’s have the crown.’
