Setne’s laugh echoed through the hall. I figured that if there were any sleeping monsters in this place, they were awake now.
“These are the burial chambers for the Apis Bull.” Setne gestured around him proudly. “I built all this, you know, back when I was Prince Khaemwaset.”
Zia ran her hand along the white stone lid of the sarcophagus. “The Apis Bull. My ancestors thought it was an incarnation of Osiris in the mortal world.”
“Thought?” Setne snorted. “It was his incarnation, doll. At least some of the time—like on festival days and whatnot. We took our Apis Bull seriously back then.”
He patted the coffin like he was showing off a used car. “This bad boy here? He had the perfect life. All the food he could eat. Got a harem of cows, burnt offerings, a special gold cloth for his back—all the perks. Only had to show himself in public a few times a year for big festivals. When he turned twenty-five, he got slaughtered in a big ceremony, mummified like a king, and put down here. Then a new bull took his place. Nice gig, huh?”
“Killed at twenty-five,” I said. “Sounds awesome.”
I wondered how many mummified bulls were down that hallway. I didn’t want to find out. I liked being right here, where I could still see the exit and the sunlight outside. “So why is this place called a—what was it?”
“Serapeum,” Zia answered. Her face was illuminated with golden light—probably just the electrical bulbs reflecting off the stone, but it seemed like she was glowing. “Iskandar, my old teacher—he told me about this place. The Apis Bull was a vessel for Osiris. In later times, the names were merged: Osiris-Apis. Then the Greeks shorted it to Serapis.”
Setne sneered. “Stupid Greeks. Moving in on our territory. Taking over our gods. I’m telling you, I got no love for those guys. But yeah, that’s how it happened. This place became known as a serapeum—a house for dead bull gods. Me, I wanted to call it the Khaemwaset Memorial of Pure Awesomeness, but my dad wouldn’t go for it.”
“Your dad?” I asked.
Setne waved aside the question. “Anyway, I hid the Book of Thoth down here before I died because I knew no one would ever disturb it. You’d have to be frothing-at-the-mouth crazy to mess with the sacred tomb of the Apis Bull.”
“Great.” I felt like I was turning back into liquid.
Zia frowned at the ghost. “Don’t tell me—you hid the book in one of these sarcophagi with a mummified bull, and the bull will come to life if we disturb it?”
Setne winked at her. “Oh, I did better than that, doll. Archaeologists have discovered this part of the complex.” He gestured at the electric lights and metal support beams. “But I’m gonna take you on a behind-the-scenes tour.”
The catacombs seemed to go on forever. Hallways split off in different directions, all of them lined with sarcophagi for holy cows. After descending a long slope, we ducked through a secret passage behind an illusionary wall.
On the other side, there were no electric lights. No steel beams braced the cracked ceiling. Zia summoned fire at the tip of her staff and burned away a canopy of cobwebs. Our footprints were the only marks on the dusty floor.
“Are we close?” I asked.
Setne chuckled. “It’s just getting good.”
He led us farther into the maze. Every so often, he stopped to deactivate traps with a command or a touch. Sometimes he made me do it—supposedly because he couldn’t cast certain spells, being dead—though I got the feeling he thought it would be incredibly funny if I failed and died.
“How come you can touch some things but not other things?” I asked. “You seem to have a real selective ability.”
Setne shrugged. “I don’t make the rules of the spirit world, pal. We can touch money and jewelry. Picking up trash and messing with poison spikes, no. We get to leave that dirty work to the living.”
Whenever the traps were disabled, hidden hieroglyphs glowed and vanished. Sometimes we had to jump over pits that opened in the floor, or swerve when arrows shot from the ceiling. Paintings of gods and pharaohs peeled off the walls, formed i
nto ghostly guardians, and faded. The whole time, Setne kept a running commentary.
“That curse would’ve made your feet rot off,” he explained. “This one over here? That summons a plague of fleas. And this one—oh, man. This is one of my favorites. It turns you into a dwarf! I hate those short little guys.”
I frowned. Setne was shorter than me, but I decided to let it go.
“Yes, indeed,” he continued. “You’re lucky to have me along, pal. Right now, you’d be a flea-bitten dwarf with no feet. And you haven’t even seen the worst of it! Right this way.”
I wasn’t sure how Setne remembered so many details about this place from so long ago, but he was obviously proud of these catacombs. He must have relished designing horrible traps to kill intruders.
We turned down another corridor. The floor sloped again. The ceiling got so low, I had to stoop. I tried to stay calm, but I was having trouble breathing. All I could think about were those tons of stone over my head, ready to collapse at any moment.
Zia took my hand. The tunnel was so narrow, we were walking single file; but I glanced back at her.
“You okay?” I asked.