I stepped toward his voice, finding him leaning over the sarcophagus. “Shine the light in here,” he said.
I held the torch over his head. There was nothing left of the mummy of Ankh-al-Sekhem’s apprentice except a pile of shredded linen at the bottom of the alabaster tomb. “There is no sword, Danilo.”
“Damn!” He banged the side of the sarcophagus with his palms and stared into the dark tomb for several moments before finally speaking. “Well, there’s only one other thing to do, then.” He drew out his blade again. “I will need your hand, Katerina.”
“Absolutely not.”
His sharp teeth gleamed as he smiled. “I’m afraid you have no say in the matter.” He grabbed my wrist and twisted it, wrenching my palm up. With a quick slice, he opened my palm, the blood rushing to fill the cut. My hand throbbed in pain.
Danilo closed his eyes as he raised my hand to his lips. “The strength of Isis, the heart of Isis, the power of Isis is mine,” he said.
As he drank my blood, I felt dizzy, and the room began to spin. The talisman around my neck grew warm.
A horrible moan, low and deep, rose out of the sarcophagus and grew into a screech. All of the black smoke in the room gathered in the center, creating a whirlwind. The smoke was being drawn back into the sarcophagus.
“What are you doing?” I cried as I pulled my hand out of Danilo’s grasp. “We must get out of here!”
“No!” the crown prince shouted. He glared at the smoke. “Apprentice! Show yourself!”
Out of the black smoke, the ancient Egyptian rose. No longer wrapped in the burial linens, he was little more than a shrunken corpse. There were no eyes in the sockets in his face, only black holes. But I could still recognize him. Ankh-al-Sekhem had tricked us. This had been his tomb. Not that of his apprentice.
The smoke turned into a swarm of insects, black moths and scarabs. I tried to shield my face with my arm.
“Konstantin Pavlovich.” The undead Egyptian’s voice was hoarse. “I will have my revenge upon you at last!” He reached for me with a cold, clawlike hand.
I stumbled backward in fright. “Danilo! Do something!”
“He should be under your control, Katerina! Use the talisman! Make him return inside the sarcophagus!”
But the Egyptian was not under my control. I had not raised him from the dead. He had used ancient black magic and my blood to return from the Graylands.
Ankh-al-Sekhem’s laughter was raspy. “You are both powerful, but not that powerful. The prayer your vain crown prince recited brought me back. It needed only your blood to add to the magic and set off the spell.” He climbed out of his sarcophagus, surprising me with his sudden agility. “And now, at last, I can seek my revenge upon you, Konstantin Pavlovich!”
The crown prince pulled me out of the way just in time and ran to the next chamber, a room crowded with stacked piles of sarcophagi. The chamber opened up onto a long hall lined with more mummies. I didn’t know where to run. We were surrounded by the dead.
“You cannot escape me!” the Egyptian wheezed.
We had nowhere left to run.
“Katerina, we must work together if we are to defeat him,” Danilo said. “Give me your hand!”
“No! There must be some other way!” I shouted. “Sheult Anubis!” I raised my hands and drew a cloak of shadows around us. It was the only spell I knew as a necromancer.
But as soon as the shadows began to gather, Ankh-al-Sekhem waved the bony fingers on the hand he had left. “Clever, young duchess. But not clever enough.” His magic caused the shadows to scatter.
I had nothing left with which to protect us. Except the Talisman of Isis. I held it to my bleeding hand and closed my eyes. “The blood of Isis, the strength of Isis, the power of Isis is mine,” I whispered. My hand burned and it took everything I had to hold on to the talisman.
“Katerina, what are you doing?” Danilo shouted. He held his knife out, as if he could defend us against Ankh-al-Sekhem with it. But the Egyptian necromancer smiled as the blade flew out of Danilo’s hand and skittered across the stone floor.
I felt a low, rumbling vibration as the temple shook. Most of the moths and scarabs had scattered, although there were a few with broken wings fluttering helplessly at my feet. With my incantation, the dead insects became my servants. They heralded the arrival of Danilo’s and my new allies, the mummies that had been buried in the temple with Ankh-al-Sekhem.
Hissing and moaning, the mummies shuffled into the burial chamber. Most of them had been sacrificed ritually to accompany the necromancer in his death. They were ready to reap their vengeance upon Ankh-al-Sekhem.
As dozens of scrabbling dried mummies clawed their way toward us, I tried to stay calm. I had to keep them under my control or we’d be dead. “Defend us!” I shouted to my new minions.
The ancient necromancer was able to deflect those first attacks, but the mummies continued to come after him. Danilo laughed. “Very clever, Katerina. Now we must go while he is distracted.” He pulled me by the arm down the long hallway. We saw light at the end and hoped it was a doorway to the outside.
“You will never learn where the Morning Star is hidden!” Ankh-al-Sekhem yelled after us.
As soon as we made it into the fresh air, Danilo pushed the stone door shut and sealed Ankh-al-Sekhem inside his tomb, along with the angry undead mummies. We could no longer hear his screams.
I sank down into the sand, clutching the talisman to me. My breathing was ragged and uneven. Why had I helped Konstantin instead of the Egyptian? Wasn’t one evil necromancer just as bad as the other?
22
Danilo was laughing like a madman. “I didn’t know what else to do,” I began. “I—”
He stopped laughing and helped me up, pulling me into a ferocious embrace. He spun me around until I was dizzy. “You … you were brilliant!”
“But the sword… ”
“We will still find it, Katerina. And without Ankh-al-Sekhem’s meddling.” He placed me gently back on my own two feet. Danilo’s face grew serious. “You will make a wonderful tsarina, my love.”
I pulled out of his arms, uncomfortable that I’d noticed how muscular they were. “I never wanted to be tsarina. All I ever wanted was to be a doctor.”
Danilo laughed again. “Such a small imagination you have. Do you not realize you could conjure up all the ancient teachers of medicine—Hippocrates, Galen, even da Vinci—and have them at your command?”
“How ridiculous! I don’t want to study ancient medicine. I need to know the latest in research. I need to study at a real medical university!”
In an instant, the friendliness was gone from Danilo’s face. The lich tsar had returned and was in complete control of the crown prince. He grabbed my arm painfully. “You need to remember that you are my betrothed, Katerina. You will act accordingly.”
More angry now than afraid, I decided to push back. “You have to be strong, Danilo,” I shouted. “You cannot let Konstantin win.” I searched his face and held my breath. His eyes were still a murky hazel as the two people battled within the same body. Finally, the crown prince’s eyes resumed their normal black.
He nodded toward the road. “We need to get out of here. The Grigori could arrive at any minute.”
In all of the excitement of being attacked by an evil mummy, I’d forgotten about the Grigori. “If they don’t have the sword, how can Papus and the Order of the Black Lily command the Grigori to chase after us?”
He rolled his eyes. “The same way I have persuaded the Grigori to be loyal to me. The promise of freedom.”