the Paths of Desolation and sates her endless appetite by consuming them. If she gets her hands on him, Amon’s suffering will be eternal, for she can feed off of him continually.
“His connection to you will make him especially desirable to her. It is not often that she has the opportunity to feast upon a heart like Amon’s, a heart that is filled with love. The blackened souls we send to her are never satisfying enough and any remaining energies they retain are consumed too quickly. Her power is held in check simply because we starve her. A juicy heart such as Amon’s, fueled by your bond, would grant her enough energy to escape the confines of the netherworld.”
“I thought you said his heart was missing.”
“That is my…theory.”
“Then how can she eat it?”
Anubis sighed. “The link between Amon and his brothers and between the two of you makes all four of you susceptible, for she can sense you through him. Whatever piece of Amon’s heart remains, whether it’s his memory or his soul, it will be as enticing to her as fresh blood is to a shark.”
Holy Egyptian heaven. My hands shook. I wasn’t sure if I actually understood everything Anubis was explaining, but I couldn’t deny the seriousness of the situation. “Assuming all of this is true, and I believed it and wanted to do something about it, why couldn’t I just use our vision connection to tell him to get out?”
“Because even if you were able to tell him, the netherworld is designed to trap a person once they enter.”
“Then what’s to prevent me from being trapped along with him?”
“We will tether you to the afterlife. The tether will only work with one still living. Once you locate Amon, the tether will become active and you will follow it to an exit point where we will wait to retrieve you.”
“We?”
“Yes, the five of us—Isis, Osiris, myself, Nephthys, and Ma’at.”
“And Asten and Ahmose?”
“They are busy performing their assigned duties.”
“Okay, then what about Amun-Ra or Horus? Don’t they care about what’s going on?”
“Because Amon is imbued with the power of both Horus and Amun-Ra, they cannot intervene directly. To use their power in Amon’s retrieval would alert the Devourer to his presence. Also, Amun-Ra was not fully convinced that the Sons of Egypt were necessary in the first place. It was only with great reluctance that he agreed to share his power. I imagine he considers Amon’s betrayal of their gifts as confirmation that he was correct regarding his original position and likely blames me for selecting a faulty vessel.”
“Good for you. Well, at least the gods won’t throw any thorns in my path, right?” Anubis looked suddenly uncomfortable. “They wouldn’t, right?” I encouraged him to answer.
“All I can tell you is that to enter the afterlife, which is the place you’ll need to begin, you must convince Amun-Ra to allow you to ride his celestial barque.”
“You mean the same one that Isis rode on when she tricked him?”
“Yes. And he’s not likely to fall for the same trick twice.”
“And he won’t just give me permission outright?”
“No. Like I said, he doesn’t see things in the same way we do.”
“How generous of him. So to sum everything up, I need to convince or trick the most powerful god of Egypt to give me a seat in his boat, head into the netherworld with a rope tied around my waist, and fight various monsters and demons, including one that wants to eat my heart, all in the hope that I can navigate a world of traps, locate Amon, and convince him to come back and resume the work he hates without either of us dying a permanent death. Is that about right?”
“The rope is figurative.” I folded my arms across my chest. He winced. “It is a crude, yet not imprecise, summation.”
“And why exactly aren’t you doing all of this yourself?”
“His heart speaks only to you, Lilliana Young. If I were to enter the netherworld, I could spend an eternity seeking him. Then who would fulfill my duties in the centuries it would take to find him? I’d have to cast light upon every bottomless crevice, every dank hole, and every monster-filled bog in the place. The netherworld is so vast, so…distracting…that the likelihood of me finding him before the Devourer does is slim. You, my dear, with a direct line to Amon’s heart, will save us time. You are our best chance.”
I sighed, rubbing my temples. “What if…” I paused.