She still looked bewildered, her gaze drifting around the lobby. “N-no…maybe. I’ve been having blackouts. I come to, and I don’t remember what I’ve done.”
“Like just now?”
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She nodded. “Amos said…at first he thought it might be a side effect of my time in that tomb.”
Ah, the tomb. For months, Zia had been trapped in a watery sarcophagus while her shabti ran about impersonating her. The Chief Lector Iskandar had thought this would protect the real Zia—from Set? From Apophis? We still weren’t sure. At any rate, it didn’t strike me as the most brilliant idea for a supposedly wise two-thousand-year-old magician to have come up with. During her slumbers, Zia had endured horrible nightmares about her village burning and Apophis destroying the world. I suppose that might lead to some nasty post-traumatic stress.
“You said Amos thought that at first,” I noted. “There’s more to the story, then?”
Zia gazed at the melted wheelchair. The light from outside turned her hair the color of rusted iron.
“He was here,” she murmured. “He was here for eons, trapped.”
I took a moment to process that. “You mean Ra.”
“He was miserable and alone,” she said. “He had been forced to abdicate his throne. He left the mortal world and lost the will to live.”
I stamped out a smoldering daisy on the carpet. “I don’t know, Zia. He looked quite happy when we woke him up, singing and grinning and so on.”
“No.” Zia walked toward the windows, as if drawn by the lovely view of brimstone. “His mind is still sleeping. I’ve spent time with him, Sadie. I’ve watched his expressions while he naps. I’ve heard him whimpering and mumbling. That old body is a cage, a prison. The true Ra is trapped inside.”
She was starting to worry me now. Fireballs I could deal with. Incoherent rambling—not so much.
“I suppose it makes sense you’d have sympathy with Ra,” I ventured. “You’re a fire elementalist. He’s a fiery sort of god. You were trapped in that tomb. Ra was trapped in a nursing home. Perhaps that’s what caused your blackout just now. This place reminded you of your own imprisonment.”
That’s right—Sadie Kane, junior psychologist. And why not? I’d spent enough time diagnosing my crazed mates Liz and Emma back in London.
Zia stared out at the burning lake. I had the feeling that my attempt at therapy might not have been so therapeutic.
“Amos tried to help me,” she said. “He knows what I’m going through. He cast a spell on me to focus my mind, but…” She shook her head. “It’s been getting worse. This is the first day in weeks that I haven’t taken care of Ra, and the more time I spend with him, the fuzzier my thoughts get. When I summon fire now, I have trouble controlling it. Even simple spells I’ve done for years—I channel too much power. If that happens during a blackout…”
I understood why she sounded frightened. Magicians have to be careful with spells. If we channel too much power, we might inadvertently exhaust our reserves. Then the spell would tap directly into the magician’s life force—with unpleasant consequences.
You will need to advise her, Isis had told me. She must learn the path quickly.
An uncomfortable thought began to form. I remembered Ra’s delight when he had first met Zia, the way he’d tried to give her his last remaining scarab beetle. He’d babbled on and on about zebras…possibly meaning Zia. And now Zia was starting to empathize with the old god, even trying to burn down the nursing home where he’d been trapped for so long.
That couldn’t be good. But how could I advise her when I had no idea what was happening?
Isis’s warnings rattled around in my head: The path of the gods was the answer for all the Kanes. Zia was struggling. Amos was still tainted by his time with Set.
“Zia…” I hesitated. “You said Amos knows what you’re going through. Is that why he asked Bast to watch Ra today? To give you time away from the sun god?”
“I—I suppose.”
I tried to steady my breathing. Then I asked the harder question: “In the war room, Amos said he might have to use other means to fight his enemies. He hasn’t…um, he hasn’t been having trouble with Set?”
Zia wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Sadie, I promised him—”
“Oh, gods of Egypt! He’s calling on Set? Trying to channel his power, after all Set did to him? Please, no.”
She didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself.
“He’ll be overwhelmed!” I cried. “If the rebel magicians find out that the Chief Lector is meddling with the god of evil, just as they suspected—”
“Set isn’t just the god of evil,” Zia reminded me. “He is Ra’s lieutenant. He defended the sun god against Apophis.”