Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris-Theo 2 (18 page)

Not having much choice, I did as I was told. Stilton
had
rescued me, even if it had been for unknown reasons.

However, just because I was blindfolded didn't mean my mind had stopped working. I did my best to count turns and pay attention to the direction the carriage went in. Perhaps later, with a map in front of me, I could re-create our route.

With a jingle of a harness, the carriage pulled to a stop. "Here we are," he announced. There was a rustle of movement as he left his seat, then a click and a rush of cold air. The carriage rocked as he hopped out. "Put your hand in mine, Theo. I won't let you fall."

"Really—I promise I won't tell anyone where your temple is." I began grabbing at the blindfold, hoping to rip it off. "I can't possibly climb out of a carriage if I can't see."

A firm hand caught mine and pulled it back. "I'm sorry,
Theo. I can't let you do that. We'd both be in trouble then. Here." Stilton's hand grasped my elbow as he guided me gently out of the carriage. "Watch your step there—one more. There you go," he said as my foot finally connected with terra firma.

We shuffled across the sidewalk, and when we stopped abruptly, I bumped into Stilton. He grabbed my shoulders to steady me, then knocked on something solid. An odd knock, really—it had a strange little pattern to it, almost as if it was ... code. But of course!

With a creak of a hinge, a door swung open. "What took you so long?"

"There was a bit of trouble, but Gerton and Whiting are taking care of it. Watch your step," Stilton warned me. "There're three stairs down."

Feeling helpless, I groped my way along the steps, my nerves strung tight. Then I was led down a maze of corridors—left, then right, then left twice more. I was hopelessly turned around, and just as I thought I was going to come unglued, someone yanked the blindfold from my head.

I blinked. I was standing in a long corridor, lit with black candles in sconces on the wall rather than gaslights.

"Are you all right?" Stilton asked, sounding concerned.

"Yes, just disoriented is all."

"Come along and we'll get you some explanations." He led the way down the hall. I followed, while two hooded men brought up the rear.

We went down a flight of steps that opened up into a huge chamber. It was also lit with candles, but still felt very gloomy. Once my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I noticed that there were a dozen cloaked, hooded figures standing in a semicircle up against the wall. One man stepped out from the shadows. He didn't have a hood, and the candlelight glinted off his shiny bald head.

"Were there any problems?" he inquired.

Stilton bowed low. "None that couldn't be handled, Supreme Master."

Supreme master? Oh, for goodness sake! What rubbish was this? "Who are all these people, Stilton?" I asked.

Ignoring my question, the bald man studied me with his rather wild-looking eyes. "You're quite sure?"

"Positive," Stilton said, his voice full of certainty.

Honestly! If he were half this confident back at the museum, he would have made Second Assistant Curator by now.

"But she is so young. Unmarked in any way."

Stilton shrugged. "Isis was young once, too."

"Isis? The Egyptian goddess? What has all this got to do with her?" I asked, my impatience growing.

"Do you know who we are, child?" the bald man asked.

I nearly stamped my foot in frustration. "How could I? Stilton hasn't told me a thing!"

He nodded in approval at Stilton, then threw his arms in a sweeping gesture. "We are the Arcane Order of the Black Sun." He paused dramatically, as if that should mean something to me. When I said nothing, he continued.

"We are the most secret of societies, dedicated to studying and understanding the wisdom and power of the ancients."

Another secret society? Honestly. Didn't anybody belong to a good old-fashioned club anymore? "Wisdom and power of the ancients?" I repeated. "Exactly which ancients are you referring to? There's so many of them, really."

He frowned at me. "The gods of the pharaohs, of course. We seek to discover their sacred doctrine and divine natures. To approach the temple of their ancient truths."

"Are you off your pins?" I asked.

The bald man looked at Stilton. "Are you sure you aren't mistaken?"

Stilton shook his head. "No, Supreme Master."

Some of the supreme master's fanatical glow faded. "I expected someone older. Taller. With more seriousness about her." He didn't even try to mask the disappointment in his voice.

And I had expected someone thinner, with more hair, but
was too polite to say so. "I'm very serious, Mr.—er, what did you say your name was? I never joke about Egyptian magic."

"My mundane name is Aloysius Trawley."

"It is true, Most Elevated Leader. She takes her magic very seriously."

I whirled around to face Stilton. "What do you know about me and my magic?"

"I know that you perform strong magic to keep the museum safe from the evil spirits who live there. I know you can raise the dead."

"Raise the dead?" Trawley's buggish eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"That creak on the stairs! That was you! Spying on me!"

Stilton had the good grace to blush. "I knew you were doing magic."

"How?" I demanded. "How did you know?" Was he like me, then? Able to detect magic?

But his supreme master interrupted us. "Will you show us your magic?" he asked, rubbing his hands in eagerness.

"No! Of course not. I don't do magic. I only remove curses."

"Perhaps you could do just a tiny bit of magic for us?" Trawley looked very much like my brother, Henry, asking for a second helping of Christmas pudding.

"No. I'm sorry. It's quite impossible." Especially because I
no longer had the staff or the orb. "Is that why I'm here? Because you want me to do magic?"

Trawley bowed his head. "No, no. We only want to worship you, O Light Giver of Heaven."

Light giver of heaven?
What
was
he jawing on about?

Seeing my perplexed look, he tried again. "We want to sit at your feet and learn of your wisdom, O Maker of Sunrise."

"Wisdom? What wisdom are you referring to? I'm only an eleven-year-old girl, and I've been told that wisdom is not my strong point."

Stilton stepped forward, threw himself onto his knees in front of me, and bowed low. Horrified, I backed up until I bumped into the wall behind me. "O Queen of All Gods, we will protect your secret. We will tell no one of your identity and only ask that we may serve you so that your light and wisdom may shine down upon us."

"Stilton," I hissed. "Get up! Get off the floor!"

But instead of Stilton getting to his feet, the others in the room began to drop to their knees as well. The last to do so was Trawley, and when he got to his knees, he didn't bow his head but instead looked me straight in the eye. "It is our greatest wish to serve you, Lady Isis."

"Isis," I echoed, my brain too stunned to work properly.

Stilton looked up from the floor. "Yes. We know your secret, but our lips are sealed. Unto death if it must be."

"My secret? What secret?" My voice squeaked and I cleared my throat, trying to fight the rising panic.

"Why, that you're Isis reincarnated, of course."

My jaw dropped, and I gaped at the Third Assistant Curator on his knees in front of me as I realized he was utterly, barking mad.

Any scholar knows that the Egyptians didn't believe in reincarnation!

T
HERE WAS A COMMOTION
coming from the corridor. Trawley and Stilton jumped to their feet, then stepped in front, as if to shield me.

Three more cloaked figures came into the room. One of them seemed familiar. I was fairly certain it was the fellow who had hauled me like a sack of turnips from the carriage.

When the others saw who the newcomers were, they relaxed. "Report," Trawley said.

The tallest man stepped forward. "They got away. The driver leaped off the coach, and in the ensuing crash the other fellow gave Gerton the slip."

A broad, heavily muscled man spoke next. "He was right handy with a knife, O Great One, and it was close quarters."

Trawley looked at me with concern. "Who were these men, Divine Mistress? Do you know why they wished you harm?"

Did these men know about the Serpents of Chaos, I wondered? Did secret societies know about one another? Best not to risk it. "No, I don't." I decided to stick as close to the truth as possible. "I think the man in the carriage was a former employee of my father's. Someone he had to fire. Perhaps he held a grudge?"

"Ah," Trawley said. "Perhaps you don't trust us yet. Very wise, for one so young. But you may rest assured, we will not compromise you in any way. We shall not reveal your secrets. We wish only for the chance to worship Your Greatness and perhaps share a little in your wisdom."

Why did I think Trawley meant "magic" when he said "wisdom"?

"As a symbol of our trust, we will offer you protection against those who wish you ill."

"No, thank you. Really, I do much better on my own. I'm used to it."

"No, no. It is we who insist. We wish for nothing more than a chance to serve you. The least we can do is offer you some small protection against whoever it is that wishes you
harm. In fact, we will assign seven scorpions to guard you, as of old."

"Yes," Stilton said, his face eager. "I'm Tefen and will walk by your side."

The three figures that had helped to rescue me from Bollingsworth stepped forward, too. "Ned Gerton at your service, miss. Me code name's Befen."

"I," said the tallest of the three, "am Basil Whiting, otherwise known as Mestafet. This gentleman here is Petet."

The man who had driven the carriage while the others whisked me to safety bowed low. "Peter Fell reporting for duty, miss."

Three other figures hopped up from their knees, like deranged jack-in-the-boxes, all shouting their scorpion names at me.

The seven men had, in fact, named the seven scorpions assigned to Isis by Thoth to be her bodyguards. Except I was
not
Isis. And Trawley was most certainly not Thoth.

They had to be joking. Didn't they? But they all stood at the ready, willing to obey my slightest command. I was beginning to get a headache.

"Tell us how we may prove ourselves to you," Trawley murmured. "How may we servest thou?"

"Look. You have it all wrong. I am not Isis." I turned to Stilton. "Whatever gave you that idea, anyway?"

Stilton raised his head. There was a smudge of dirt smack in the middle of his forehead. "I saw you raise the dead with my own eyes."

I paused. "You mean the mouse?" I asked.

He nodded eagerly. "Yes. The mouse, but the mummies, too."

I started to explain, then stopped. What if I managed to convince them I wasn't Isis—what then? They were willing to worship and adore me now, but that was only because they thought I had loads of power. What would they do if they thought me a fraud? Well, I wasn't really a fraud. But I certainly wasn't Isis. They might feel rather duped. Or tricked. Or just plain foolish if I managed to convince them I wasn't the ancient goddess.

Even more worrisome, how would they feel about having shared their secrets with a stranger? Especially an eleven-year-old stranger?

Their security was fairly tight, and they seemed to place great value on their secrecy. How would they treat me if they felt I had breached all that?

The truth was, I might not even make it out of here. I'd always trusted Edgar Stilton, but that had been before I knew he was off his nut.

My best course of action lay in letting them believe what they wanted to believe, commit to nothing, then get away as quickly as possible. I sighed. "Very well. I would be honored to accept your most, er, esteemed offer of help. And security." Besides, with the Serpents of Chaos about, one could never have too many friends on one's side. "But really, I must be getting back to the museum. My parents will be worried."

"She has been gone a long time," Stilton confirmed.

"Very well. Perhaps next time we meet, you will trust us enough to instruct us in the ways of Egyptian magic?" Trawley asked, his jowls trembling in excitement.

"We'll see. It may be difficult to get away. I do have a governess and parents who watch over me, you know. They might have something to say about this whole thing."

"Don't worry. We will be most discreet, O Illuminated One. And we will work at your convenience. Use Tefen here as a messenger and we will answer your calls at once."

***

The minute Stilton and I were alone in the carriage headed for the museum, I turned on him—or at least where I thought he'd be. It was hard to tell through the blindfold. "Just how long have you been spying on me, anyway?"

"Not spying, Theo. It's just that sometimes when I walked by the reading room, I saw you reading the ancient texts. Once in a while, you would even mutter the words out loud."There was a short pause, then he continued. "At first I just wondered what you were up to, but then I began to realize that you were actually using the information, doing magic of your own."

"Not magic. Removing curses. Really, that's all I do."

Stilton nodded. "Removing curses, then." I felt him move forward on his seat, then blinked as he plucked the blindfold from my eyes. "You do realize it's more than that, don't you? I mean, not just anyone could look that stuff up, then read it out loud and have it work. That takes years of study, hours and hours of practice, to master."

"But why did you have to tell that man Trawley all about it?"

"Why, Theo, he's the grand master! He was the one who initiated me into the greater mysteries. I couldn't keep such knowledge to myself. I owe it to him to tell him whenever I encounter something of this nature."

My shoulders twitched. Somewhere out there in the dark, the other six scorpions were following us, trying to ensure my safety. I wondered who would protect me from
them?
Especially once they realized it was the staff that held all the power, not me.