The Final Kingdom Read online

  For the readers:

  To all the awesome TombQuesters who’ve followed me through every twist and turn (and chase and trap and spell) of this epic adventure, this one is definitely for you.

  Contents

  Hieroglyphic Message

  Awaken the Adventure

  Hieroglyphic Alphabet

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1: A World Walled and Dark

  2: Visitors

  3: Tunnel Vision

  4: Treasure Beyond Measure

  5: Deep Trouble

  6: A Whiff of War

  7: The Road Ahead

  8: Deathquake

  9: Legions of the Dead

  10: Road Worrier

  11: A Chaotic Capital

  12: Gone

  13: A Night at the Museum

  14: The Seat of the Soul

  15: To the Afterlife

  16: To the Nile

  17: The Kingdom of the Dead

  18: A Dangerous New Direction

  19: Against the Grain

  20: Guard Crocs

  21: Light in the Darkness

  22: Facing the Founder

  23: The Sensation of Flight

  24: Back Where It All Started

  25: Company

  26: The Day Turns Red

  27: Sacrifices

  28: The Lost Spells

  29: The Devourer

  Epilogue: The Business of Living

  About the Author

  Online Game Code

  TombQuest Game

  Copyright

  Making mummies is an ancient and grisly business, but business was good once again. The bodies lay on low stone tables beneath the timeless sands of Egypt, lit only by flickering torchlight.

  Half a dozen acolytes in ancient dress gathered their implements nervously, the jewels and glass beads of their thick collar necklaces glinting, and the light linen of their shendyt kilts shining a pure, audacious white. They began with the body on the highest platform. For while all men may be created equal, all mummies are not. This body was taller than the others, and broader in the shoulders, with skin the color of wet sand, a hawklike nose, and sharp features that seemed determined even in death.

  The acolytes dipped their cloths in a bucket of cool well water, wrung them out, and got to work washing the corpse.

  Their hands trembled slightly as they put down their rags and picked up their blades. They were nervous as they made the first cuts: Everything had to go perfectly. The blood was drained from the man’s body and taken out in buckets. Once that was done, the internal organs were removed, one by one. Only the steadiest hands made these cuts. The others busied themselves packing the carefully culled pieces into sacred canopic jars for the trip to the afterlife. Only the man’s heart was left in his body: the most vital organ, the home of the soul.

  The clay lid clinked into place on the last of the jars.

  The workers washed their hands in the water buckets and then rubbed the body with natron salt to preserve and dry it. They packed the hollowed-out frame with still more natron and plugged the skull with linen.

  By now, the acolytes’ foreheads and bare chests glowed with sweat. They anointed and sealed the body with a thick, sticky resin. They lifted its shoulders from the stone — the broad torso not nearly so heavy now, filled only with salt — and wrapped it in strips of fresh linen.

  Finally, they placed a heavy mask on the man’s head, transforming his own sharp features into those of an Egyptian vulture. Solid gold, except for the sharp, iron point of the cunning predator’s beak.

  The acolytes repeated their grim work with methodical care, and one by one, the bodies were transformed. As they neared completion on the fifth, blood-spattered and exhausted, a chorus of voices rose in the chamber behind them. Beneath the largest of the torches, a group of three men, priests of The Order, chanted words not heard for millennia. They were reading from the Lost Spells of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, legendary incantations of unimaginable power.

  The priests released their final lines with full-throated fervor, then stood winded and wide-eyed in the sudden silence, in thrall to the unearthly power they’d felt surging through them.

  The priests watched intently. The acolytes barely dared to blink.

  Had it worked?

  Had the ancient Spells accomplished their dark task?

  These were no idle questions. Far more than a day’s work was at stake here. The figures on these slabs had bet their lives on it. They had died for this.

  But they had no intention of staying dead for long. Nor did they intend to remain in these frail human forms. There were other forms waiting for them in the afterlife — if they could get there.

  “Ren!” called Alex, and then, softer, “Ren?”

  Nothing. No response, just like the last time — and the hundred times before that. It was clear that no one could hear him down here. At least no one who felt like responding. He took one last look out the small, square opening in the door and then took his hands off the grimy bars and retreated back into the darkness of his cramped cell.

  He sat on his cot, the only furniture in the room, unless you counted the bucket that served as a bathroom and the small electric lamp that cast a weak yellow glow on the hard sandstone floor. A beam of stronger light from the hall was cut into three even slices by the bars on the door, and Alex watched a bug the size of a D battery skitter diagonally across them, like a winning move in tic-tac-toe.

  Not totally alone after all, he thought as the insect disappeared into the darkness.

  Alex got up and went to the door again. This time he called out for the person he’d traveled halfway across the world to find, whom he’d lost again in the blink of an eye.

  “Mom!” he called. “Mom!”

  He remembered how she had looked, her face overwhelmed with emotion, when his hunt for her and the Spells had finally come to an end in that desert village. He remembered the despair on her face when they were captured by The Order, the Spells stolen from their grasp. Even though he feared the answer, he wondered again: What would the ancient cult do with such awesome power?

  Suddenly, a sound broke through his muddled thoughts: footsteps. It was the guard again. Alex walked over and flicked off his lamp, then returned to the door.

  “Stand back from the door, stupid boy,” called the guard in heavily accented English, “or you get no food.”

  Alex crouched down beside the door. He was hoping that the guard would open it this time and he could catch him by surprise. He flexed his hands, ready for a fight.

  But once again, he was disappointed.

  Flink went the slot in the bottom of the door as it opened. Shhish went the empty tray from the day before as it was pulled out into the corridor. SHHUNNKK went the new tray as it slid across the floor. In the little slice of light, he saw a single piece of the Egyptian pita bread known as aish baladi, a cup, and a handful of dull, shriveled dates.

  The little slot slapped closed again, leaving the tray in darkness. Leaving Alex alone.

  “Wait!” called Alex. “Come back! My bucket needs to be emptied!”

  Which was true — every inch of the small cell stank with its contents. But it was also an excuse, one more attempt to get the door to open, to give himself a fighting chance.

  The guard seemed to understand that, too. A laugh, joyless and cruel, rose in the hallway only to fade along with the slap of the guard’s sandals.

  Silence.

  Darkness.

  Alex flicked the lamp switch again, but it wouldn’t turn back on. With a sigh, he reached down and felt around for the tray. He grabbed the cup and lifted it to his dry, cracked lips. Two big swigs
later, it was empty.

  He squatted down in the darkness and reached around for the bread. It moved under his hand and he let out a screech that would have been embarrassing if there was anyone to hear him. The bug had gotten there first. But he needed his strength: He knew he should eat the bread, anyway — the bread and probably the bug.

  He split the difference, shaking the bug loose. It landed with a clack on the floor behind him. It skittered off, but the silence didn’t return.

  Footsteps.

  Alex held his breath and froze in the darkness by the door.

  Because these footsteps were different.

  They were coming from inside the cell.

  “Alex?” said Ren, and then, louder, “Anyone?”

  Nothing, but she wasn’t surprised. Renata Duran was the kind of girl who always considered the odds. If no one had answered the first ten times she’d called out, what were the odds someone would this time? She decided not to waste any more breath.

  She went back and sat on the edge of her cot, in the soft light of her lamp.

  Before long, a sound echoed through the corridor. She hurried over to the door. Like Alex, Ren was twelve years old. Unlike her best friend, the noise didn’t catch her off guard. In fact, she’d been waiting for it.

  “Did you bring me soup, like I asked?” she said once the guard sounded close enough. “I have a gluten allergy,” she reminded him, even though it wasn’t remotely true. “And problems with fruit, too!”

  She heard a loud sigh from out in the corridor. “Step back, stupid girl,” said the guard as he knelt down to open the slot at the bottom of the door. “I brought your soup.”

  Ren stepped back as the guard retrieved the previous tray and slid the new one into the cell. It held a bowl of dark, lumpy gruel.

  It did not look appetizing, but that wasn’t why she’d asked for it.

  Partly, it was a test. She wanted to see if her captors cared at all about keeping her alive, thus the “dangerous” food allergies she’d concocted. And they did. Not in luxury, clearly, but alive. That had to mean something, though she had no delusions that it would be good. The last time The Order had captured her and her friends, they’d tried to sacrifice them to a Death Walker.

  Ren shuddered, thinking about what she’d learned of the Walkers. They were powerful, evil beings who had clung to the edge of the afterlife for centuries, desperately trying to avoid the weighing of the heart ceremony, where the old gods judged the spirits of the ancient Egyptian dead. Knowing they would fail and be destroyed forever, their souls devoured by Ammit, the Walkers had waited for an opportunity to escape. And Alex’s mom had given them that chance when she’d used the Lost Spells to save his life back in New York — opening a rift between the worlds in the process.

  Which made Ren think of New York, and her own parents there. She missed them desperately — and she definitely missed their clean, bright apartment.

  Which reminded her of the main reason she’d asked for the soup in the first place.

  She knelt down and found the bowl, then held it up to the light from the little window. She slowly shoveled a spoonful of the lumpy gunk into her mouth.

  Dis.

  Gus.

  Ting.

  “Bleck!” she said. Still, she licked the spoon clean and held it up to the light. Metal, just like she’d hoped.

  She dumped the soup into her bathroom bucket. Then she picked up the bucket’s handle, which she’d managed to remove with slow, repeated bending.

  She returned to the door and ran her hand along the side. She felt the heavy plate that guarded the lock and desperately wished she still had her ibis. She’d been the last of the group to get an amulet of her own — and definitely the last to get a handle on its power. If she had the ancient artifact now, she could fill the cell with brilliant light and open the lock with a simple telekinetic click. It might even give her a clue what was waiting for her outside.

  But The Order had taken her amulet, along with her phone and her friends.

  So these were her tools: a metal spoon and bucket handle, a wooden soup bowl, a plastic tray, and a ceramic cup.

  Once more, she thought of home.

  It wasn’t for sentimental reasons this time. Her dad had worked alongside Alex’s mom at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, but he wasn’t an Egyptologist like her. He was a senior engineer: a mechanical wizard and the museum’s go-to Mr. Fix-It. And he’d taught his daughter a lot.

  Ren went to work.

  Even in the dark, with his heart beating like a drum set, Alex knew who’d come for him. He could sense the powerful presence.

  Alex felt the strong urge to say something and confirm his suspicions. But what should he call this man? He’d never really known him, and to the extent that he did, it was as his mortal enemy. And yet when Alex opened his mouth, all he could think to say was: “Hi, Dad.”

  The word felt explosive and unreal. He had found out just days before that the leader of The Order was his father, and there had been no time for explanations after their capture, so he knew no more than the bare, brutal fact of it.

  “Hello, Alex,” said the man.

  It was the same voice he’d heard in the desert, but it was louder, bigger.

  “What do you want?” Alex said. He meant it defiantly, but he ended up sounding like a servant addressing his master. Though he couldn’t see it, he assumed the leader was wearing the golden vulture mask that allowed him to bend people to his will.

  “I want to talk to you,” said the leader. “Now that you understand who I am. We never got to know each other, and that is … a shame.”

  Alex felt the powerful urge to agree with everything the leader said — yes, such a shame — but he knew that was the mask’s magic. He fought it. He fought him. “You already talked to me,” he said, each word a struggle. “When you tried to sacrifice me in that pit.”

  Alex braced for an angry response, but the leader remained calm. “You are your mother’s son,” he said. “I have no doubt about that. And your actions leave no question whose side you’re on. I lost you both, years ago.”

  Alex desperately wished he could fill in the blanks on this strange story. His father had lost them? Or abandoned them? And for what? His head swirled with hurt pride and unasked questions. “You didn’t have to sacrifice me to a —”

  “I don’t have to do anything,” said his father, cutting him off. “I am the leader of this organization, and soon of this world and the next. I chose to sacrifice you, and the others. You are my son, but you have cast yourself as my enemy — and what is one boy’s life, in the face of the glory to come?”

  The glory to come … Alex knew he meant the Final Kingdom. Now that the doors between worlds were open, The Order planned to use the power of the world of the dead to rule the world of the living.

  Still, it wasn’t just one boy’s life.

  “But I’m your son … ” he said. Was it possible he wanted this madman to care about him?

  “And you have chosen to be my enemy.”

  Alex knew he was right. He didn’t know why his mom had married a power-hungry madman — or a man who became one, anyway — but he knew she hadn’t raised one. “So why am I still alive?”

  “Victory is close,” said the leader. “But until then, you might be useful to me. You and the scarab.”

  “I would never help you,” Alex managed, though challenging the leader’s will felt like swimming against a riptide. He desperately wished he had that scarab now, the ancient amulet his mom had left for him when she’d first disappeared with the Spells. After a lifetime of being too sick and weak to do much of anything, it had given him power. The ability to move objects, to summon powerful winds, and activate the spells in the Book of the Dead. It also gave him a radar-like sense for the undead and the dark magic that made them.

  And then the thought occurred to him — if the leader wanted to use Alex’s powers with the scarab, maybe he had the amulet on him right now. Maybe …r />
  The leader let out a little huff of laughter. “It doesn’t matter if you want to help me. You don’t have a choice.”

  Alex knew he was right again. The leader had made him tackle his own mom in the last battle. But if he could get his scarab back, maybe then he’d have a chance. He stalled for time as he tried to peer through the darkness. “So you came to gloat?”

  “I came to express my regrets,” he said. “A useless emotion, really. It changes nothing. And yet —”

  But as he spoke, the floor began to shake. A low, ominous rumble emerged from the stone all around. Soon, the whole room was shaking. Alex heard a few little chunks of the ceiling clink as they fell to the floor. It was another one of the tremors that had rocked the cell over the last few days, but this one was stronger. Alex imagined the whole place coming down around him, crushing him like a bug. But just as abruptly as it had started, it stopped.

  “Another earthquake,” he gasped.

  “They are coming,” said the leader.

  “Wait, who is coming?” said Alex, but he could already feel that the powerful presence that had filled the cell was gone. His father had vanished without a sound — or at least without one his mind-bending mask had allowed Alex to hear.

  But a moment later, Alex did hear something. Soft footsteps, coming from the hallway — had the leader returned? A hushed voice just outside the door answered his question. “Who’s in there? Alex? Todtman? Dr. Bauer?”

  “Ren!” he blurted. “How —”

  “SHHHHHHH!” she hissed. “Hold on a second. I have to try something.”

  He heard a series of metallic clunks and scrapes, followed by a click.

  Light fell across Alex as the big door swung open.

  Alex blinked in the sudden light and saw Ren holding a bizarre device. A pointy, bent piece of metal stuck out of one side of a wooden bowl, while a strip of plastic stuck out of the other, its end shredded into a sort of fork.

  “I am so glad to see you!” he said. He considered hugging her out of sheer gratitude, but it wasn’t really something they did. Plus, she had that pointy thing in her hand.