How It All Goes Down
How Zia Lost Her Eyebrows
- Bucket of ice water in the face: that's how Sadie wakes up.
- Zia is yelling at Sadie to get up. Sadie asks if the ice water was necessary, and Zia admits that it probably wasn't.
- Zia brings Sadie to a large fountain where Carter is waiting. He also looks like he's slept badly, but says he'll tell Sadie about it later.
- Sadie and Carter are supposed to drink this purified water (purified since it came in contact with Thoth).
- Sadie is skeptical until she remembers Iskandar saying that gods could inhabit practically anything. After one sip, she feels amazingly energized and alert, so hey, it works.
- Next, Zia paints tattoos of Ma'at (the symbol of order and harmony) onto their tongues. The blue ink tastes icky.
- Carter keeps their dad's kit of magicians' tools, while Sadie is issued a new one. Sadie is not thrilled with its contents: a rod that turns into a staff, paper, an ink set, twine, and wax.
- Sadie complains that she wants a Doughboy, but Zia says that'll come later, when they determine her specialty. When prodded, Zia lists a few specialties: statuary magic, healer, amulet maker, combat magician, and so on.
- Zia, Sadie, and Carter start with a basic test in the library. The library is full of circular rooms like honeycombs.
- Zia brings Sadie and Carter to a table and gets out a papyrus scroll and stylus. She explains that the Egyptian word shesh can mean scribe or writer but also magician.
- Zia instructs Carter and Sadie to write words, sending power into them to make them real.
- Carter asks if he can write in English, and Zia says any language will work, though hieroglyphs are best, because they're the language of creation and magic. But be careful, Zia warns Carter.
- Right then, Carter draws a hieroglyph of a bird. It lifts itself off the scroll and splatters Carter's head with ink poop. Sadie laughs, of course.
- Zia cautions them to leave one part off if they write the name of anything living, because it could come alive. Carter realizes that this is why his father's statue (Doughboy) has missing legs.
- Next, Carter tries to summon fire and then a sword, but he isn't really successful.
- Sadie asks whether Iskandar was summoning the hieroglyphs that appear around him. Zia replies that Iskandar is powerful enough that he makes the language of the universe visible simply by being present.
- Whatever a magician's specialty is, the goal is to become powerful enough that the magician can alter reality simply by speaking, not by having to use a scroll.
- Sadie asks if that's like saying the word shatter and have a door explode. Yeah, like that, Zia says—except it would take years of practice. Sadie almost says that she's done that, but a warning look from Carter shuts her up.
- Sadie tries to write something powerful, and she writes the English word fire. Zia leans forward to look at it and caution Sadie against—we never know what, since a giant pillar of flame erupts in Zia's face and singes off her eyebrows.
- Zia stares at Sadie, pauses, and says that they're ready to duel.
- Using a portal, Zia takes them to Luxor, which is hundreds of miles from Cairo.
- Sadie is not impressed, since if you've seen one pile of ruins, you've seen them all. Still, she notices rows of sphinxes and a single obelisk.
- Carter informs Sadie that the other obelisk of the pair is in Paris. Sadie doesn't care; she just wishes that she were also in Paris.
- Zia draws two circles in the sand a little distance apart from each other and directs Sadie and Carter to stand in them. The point is to try to use magic to knock each other out of the circles.
- Zia deflects their concerns and says that the only way to learn magic is to do it. Besides, she'll be keeping an eye on them, so nothing too bad can happen, right?
- When Zia gives the signal to begin, Sadie whips out her rod, which extends to a full-length staff. She summons fire with it… and instantly collapses, exhausted.
- According to Zia, Sadie drew on her own reserves rather than on the staff's magic, which is why she's all tired. That's also a big no-no in magic, since you could accidentally use up your life force and literally burn yourself out.
- Magic can also come from the gods—and here Zia stares intensely at Sadie.
- This leads Sadie to protest that she doesn't go looking for gods; they just seem to find her.
- Carter asks about Luxor. This was where the pharaohs would hold ritual processions and host the gods. This place was sacred to his mother's side of the family, apparently.
- Sadie and Carter do the math and realize that their parents were descended from different royal lines (since their dad resembled Narmer, a pharaoh from a different family).
- Stunned, they realize that the House of Life magicians believe that Sadie and Carter are hosting gods, since it was something ancestors on both sides of their family used to do.
- Sadie and Carter confront Zia about this, and she tells them to duel in order to prove to her that their magic is too weak for it to be true.
- This makes Sadie mad. She's had a terrible few days—she's lost her dad, her uncle, and her cat—so she decides: whatever, she's going to do some magic.
- Sadie throws her staff at Zia, and it becomes a lion. The lion attacks Carter.
- Carter summons a giant avatar warrior form like Bast's, but his has the head of a falcon and is golden. He slices up the lion, which turns back into a staff.
- Both Sadie and Carter realize that they're not tired from doing this kind of magic. Neat.
- Zia is shocked. She starts to speak but is interrupted by a young initiate from the First Nome.
- After the initiate gives the news, Zia's eyes are red. She tells Carter and Sadie that Iskandar has died. This is a bummer, but Zia tells them that the real problem is that Desjardins is next in line, and he'll order Sadie and Carter executed for hosting gods.
- Zia is torn, since she knows Desjardins will order her to bring the kids in, and she is loyal to the house, but… as Sadie says, that's not what Iskandar would have wanted.
- Sadie briefly relates the part of her conversation with Iskandar when he told her to trust Zia and look to her for help.
- Zia makes her choice: she tells Sadie and Carter to use the portal to get out of there. They have maybe five minutes before Desjardins has someone kill them.
- As they run toward the portal, Zia reminds Sadie and Carter that the next time they meet, they'll be enemies.