I glanced at Walt. “Do you want to kill him, or should I?”
“Now, now,” Thoth said. “I can guide you a little. But you’ll have to connect the freckles, as they say.”
“Dots,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “You’re on the right track. The sheut could be used to destroy a god, or even Apophis himself. And yes, like all sentient beings, Apophis has a shadow, though he keeps that part of his soul well hidden and well guarded.”
“So where is it?” I asked. “How do we use it?”
Thoth spread his hands. “The second question I can’t answer. The first question I’m not allowed to answer.”
Walt shoved his plate aside. “I’ve been trying to get it out of him, Carter. For a god of knowledge, he isn’t very helpful.”
“Come on, Thoth,” I said. “Can’t we do a quest for you or something? Couldn’t we blow up Elvis’s house again?”
“Tempting,” the god said. “But you must understand, giving a mortal the location of an immortal’s shadow—even Apophis’s—would be a grave crime. The other gods already think I’m a sell-out. Over the centuries, I’ve divulged too many secrets to mankind. I taught you the art of writing. I taught you magic and founded the House of Life.”
“Which is why magicians still honor you,” I said. “So help us one more time.”
“And give humans knowledge that could be used to destroy the gods?” Thoth sighed. “Can you understand why my brethren might object to such a thing?”
I clenched my fists. I thought about my mother’s spirit huddling beneath a cliff, fighting to stay put. The dark force had to be Apophis’s shadow. Apophis had shown me that vision to make me despair. As his power grew, his shadow grew stronger too. It was pulling in the spirits of the dead, consuming them.
I could guess the shadow was somewhere in the Duat, but that didn’t help. It was like saying somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The Duat was huge.
I glared at Thoth. “Your other option is not to help us and let Apophis destroy the world.”
“Point taken,” he admitted, “which is why I’m still talking to you. There is a way you could find the shadow’s location. Long ago, when I was young and naïve, I wrote a book—a field study, of sorts—called the Book of Thoth.”
“Catchy name,” Walt muttered.
“I thought so!” Thoth said. “At any rate, it described every form and disguise each god can take, their most secret hiding places—all sorts of embarrassing details.”
“Including how to find their shadows?” I asked.
“No comment. At any rate, I never meant for humans to read the book, but it was stolen in ancient times by a crafty magician.”
“Where is it now?” I asked. Then I held up my hands. “Wait…let me guess. You can’t tell us.”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Thoth said. “This crafty magician hid the book. Fortunately he died before he could take full advantage of it, but he did use its knowledge to formulate a number of spells, including the shadow execration. He wrote down his thoughts in a special variation of the Book of Overcoming Apophis.”
“Setne,” I said. “That’s the magician you’re talking about.”
“Indeed. His spell was only theoretical, of course. Even I never had that knowledge. And as you know, all copies of his scroll have now been destroyed.”
“So it’s hopeless,” I said. “Dead end.”
“Oh, no,” Thoth said. “You could ask Setne himself. He wrote the spell. He hid the Book of Thoth that, ahem, may or may not describe the shadow’s location. If he were so inclined, he could help you.”
“But hasn’t Setne been dead for thousands of years?”
Thoth grinned. “Yes. And that’s only the first problem.”
Thoth told us about Setne, who’d apparently been pretty famous in An
cient Egypt—like Robin Hood, Merlin, and Attila the Hun rolled into one. The more I heard, the less I wanted to meet him.
“He was a pathological liar,” Thoth said. “A scoundrel, a traitor, a thief, and a brilliant magician. He prided himself on stealing books of knowledge, including mine. He battled monsters, adventured in the Duat, conquered gods, and broke into sacred tombs. He created curses that couldn’t be lifted and unearthed secrets that should have stayed buried. He was quite the evil genius.”