“Another gift from your ancestors?”
“Maybe.”
“So which way do we go?” Orpheus held his torch in the entrance to the left passageway.
Nothing, although the smooth stone corridor soon became jagged with rubble. It appeared as if the walls themselves were crumbling. That might be hard to navigate.
He swung his torch around and pointed it toward the right. A skeleton dangled from the far wall, held in place by an arrow through the skull and what remained of decaying flesh. Another skeleton was propped in the corner, its lower jaw open in an eternal scream.
“Left,” he said. “This may come as a surprise to you, but I’m a magician, not a warrior. Considering I don’t have a weapon aside from this torch, our chances of survival seem better in the land of the dead.”
She nodded, swallowing hard at the sight of the skeleton. “Agreed. I don’t know the first thing about fighting. Death we may have a chance against.”
She raised her torch and turned left. They picked their way through the fallen stones as the pathway turned and descended.
“What do you know about the underworld?” Orpheus asked.
“It depends. The Egyptian concept of the underworld is called Duat, and it is a place where souls are judged by Osiris and either given a peaceful afterlife or destroyed.”
“I’m beginning to think we should have gone right.”
“I don’t think this place is ruled by Egyptian gods. So far everything we’ve faced has aligned more closely with the Greek gods than the Egyptian ones.”
“The sphinx is Egyptian.”
“In Egypt, they believe the sphinx to be benevolent. Only the Greek sphinx tells riddles and kills as the one we faced did.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I never knew.”
“Also, the cursed stream. That’s very like Athena. She would know who my mother was and take pride in transforming me into an ass if I had fallen for it. Now we’re in a labyrinth leading to the underworld. I have a feeling this is Hades’s doing.”
“Athena and Hades are Greek gods. Why would Greek gods be protecting a secret grimoire that was promised to Cleopatra by the Egyptian gods?”
“I have no idea. Although, Cleopatra’s ancestors were originally from Macedonia. She is Greek. She thought the golden peacock represented the Eye of Horus, but what if that was a misinterpretation?”
“If it is, it explains why we, two Greek sorcerers, have been successful where Cleopatra’s priests were not.”
The passage narrowed, and the air grew close and hot. Orpheus had to walk sideways to fit his shoulders through and held the torch in front of him as if the fire could scare away the dark feeling that had permeated his bones.
“Before this, have you ever thought the gods were testing you?”
He glanced back at Alena, her pale blue eyes twinkling at him in the firelight. “A few times.”
“Tell me.”
He cleared his throat, thinking about where to begin. “When I was seven, I was tending our sheep for my father. My mother was ill, and he needed to see to her. He didn’t normally leave me with the sheep, so I was nervous, afraid I wouldn’t do a good job. Sure enough, one of my charges became entangled inside some brambles on the side of the mountain. If the lamb freed itself, it would likely fall to its death. If it stayed where it was, I needed to find a way to rescue it.”
“What did you do?”
“I knew I was different by that point. My father used to call me blessed. He’d told me about Medea, and I knew my power was somehow linked with my voice. But I didn’t know what to do. And then I had the strongest feeling that someone was watching me. Judging me. That it was a test by the gods to see if I was worthy of my power. So I sang. I sang and watched the sheep free itself and climb up the side of the mountain to me. And when it was finally in my arms, I could have sworn I saw a man fly toward the heavens, wearing winged shoes.”
Alena grinned. “Hermes!”
He nodded, reached another fork in the labyrinth, and after checking with her, led her left. “When I was sixteen, my mother died.” He heard her inhale sharply. “My father built a funeral pyre, and we watched her body burn. I got the same feeling, standing next to my father as her body went up in smoke. I was being watched. Watched and judged.”
“What did you do?”
“I sang, and the animals did too. Crickets chirped, birds sang, dogs howled. It was sad and wonderful. It scared my father a little. It’s not often you see animals sing for the dead. And when I was done, I saw a woman watching me, a glowing woman as bright as a star, with an owl on her shoulder.”
