Ren stared at the tiny symbols covering Tut’s tightly wrapped frame. She’d seen the Book of the Dead printed on mummy wrappings before, but those had been covering dried-out husks in glass cases or on scraps of linen that had been flattened out and framed — not wrapped around moving legs and muscular shoulders. But there was a problem. A big one: “We still don’t know what spell,” she said.

“You have to use the ibis!” Alex said.

Ren scanned the room: the brilliant, unnatural sunlight; the heat so intense she felt like she was being microwaved; Tut unarmed and dressed only in bandages; Luke near the door in a wide sports stance but with nowhere to run; Alex badly injured; and the Death Walker stepping forward.

Akhenotra’s first step was hesitant and unsure. The sword strike had taken something out of him. But by his second step he was already recovering.

Ren’s first move was hesitant and unsure, too. She reached slowly for the ibis, dreading the flood of images. It had both helped them and hurt them. She still remembered stepping forward and confidently waving the Walker over in the desert. How was she supposed to know that image had been a warning? It’s not like the thing had an answer key.

Akhenotra advanced on Tut, who took a step back.

She had no choice. She closed her hand around the ibis and felt the warm, white stone against her palm.

Ren had never been as smart as she’d wanted to be — not as brilliant as her dad or as effortlessly gifted as her brightest classmates — but she’d always closed the gap with effort. She did the extra work to prepare and attacked the extra credit. She always crushed those questions, because they could only help and not hurt, so she could relax.

There’d be no relaxing now. This test could hurt; this test could kill. She held her breath, closed her eyes, and tried her absolute hardest to grab each image as it passed.

A stone ram, eyes open, curled horns forward …

A simple but elegant boat, two painted oars at the back …

A gold and blue falcon, at rest, as if nesting …

A circle of fire …

Her eyes snapped open — she’d seen too much fire already. The amulet fell from her hand. “What am I looking for?” said Alex. “Something to do with fire, maybe?”

She blinked over at him, refocusing her eyes. He’d taken a few steps toward Tut and was already scanning the wrappings. “I …” she began. “I’m not …”

Why couldn’t the amulet just show me Tut’s stomach or armpit or wherever the right spell was? she thought. What did a boat have to do with it?

“Hurry!” said Alex.

Akhenotra took another step forward, much surer on his feet now, and raised the sword.

Ren saw Alex wince as he grasped his amulet and pointed his hand at the approaching enemy. Wind shot forth and knocked Akhenotra back a few steps.

Alex tried another blast, but this time the Walker leaned into it. Alex was weakening, and she watched in horror as the wind died down and the blade of the sword suddenly burst into flame. The sun priest slashed the air with the fiery blade, admiring his work. He had made the weapon his own.

She parsed the images again. A ram? A falcon? A boat? Fire? Were these clues, she wondered, or warnings? Was the answer in there … somewhere?

“Which spell?” called Alex.

“There’s a ram and a bird — a falcon, I think,” she called, “a boat, some fire …”

“Which one?” shouted Alex. “What exactly am I looking for?”

Her pulse pounding in her ears, her head full of too much information and too little context, she finally called out the horrible truth: “I don’t know!”

Alex stared at Ren in disbelief. It seemed so strange to see a straight-A student straight up fail, but there was no denying it: Plus Ten Ren was minus ten in magic.

If they were going to live, it was up to him. He quickly scanned Tut’s wrappings. Falcon, she’d said, but that was useless. The falcon symbol was part of half a dozen common hieroglyphs — there was a flock of them scattered over Tut’s wrappings. What was the other thing, a ram?

Before Alex could get a good look, Tut backed up quickly and nearly shoulder checked him. Alex wasn’t used to his books moving. He ducked his head around the undead monarch and saw the Death Walker raise his flaming sword for another chop. The first one had missed, but …

“We need to buy some time!” Alex shouted to his friends.

“With what?” said Luke. “There’s nothing in here.”

But that wasn’t exactly true.

“I got your jar, Mister Blister!” called Ren.

She had circled around the fighting and was once again standing behind the stone altar in the center of the chamber. This time she was holding up the single, ancient jar that had rested atop it. It was one of the few artifacts in the room and located in a position of honor. Alex figured it was worth a shot — but he didn’t expect it to provoke such a strong reaction.

Akhenotra whirled around, the curved sword still raised above his head in wood-chopping position. “Put that down, girl!” he shouted, extending the sword toward her menacingly as he began striding toward the altar. “That is for the Aten!”

Ren’s eyes grew huge, and Alex knew she hadn’t expected quite so strong a reaction, either. “Uh,” she said.

“End around!” shouted Luke. With his sprinter’s speed, he crossed the chamber in no time flat and cut behind Ren with his hands out.

Ren had seen enough football games to know what to do. She turned and executed a perfect handoff into Luke’s gut. Luke took the jar and sped toward the far side of the chamber. The Death Walker followed, breaking into a run of his own. Whatever was in that jar was important, but Alex had no time to wonder why that was.

He got to work. Ram, falcon, boat, fire: He saw all of those things, as hieroglyphs or in the paintings. Too many choices. He looked for them all in the same spell, but it was hard — Tut wouldn’t stop moving. As Akhenotra traced a sandal-slapping circle around the room in pursuit of Luke, Tut turned to watch. He had developed a sudden interest in the jar himself.

“Uh, Tut?” said Alex. No response. “Your, um, majesty?” he ventured. Still nothing. He gave up and started turning along with the text, trying to keep up despite the heat and pain. But then he saw something he hadn’t expected among the symbols.

Is that … an Aten? he wondered. His brain told him it was, but his amulet told him something else. It was a sun disk, but not the Aten. It was a symbol of Amun-Re, the sun god that reigned before and after the short-lived cult. Amun-Re was “one of the biggies,” as his mom liked to say, and Alex knew plenty about him. He knew that Tut had changed his own name from Tut-Ankh-Aten to Tut-Ankh-Amun in the sun god’s honor. He also knew that the symbols for Amun-Re included both the falcon and the ram.

He quickly read the title of the prayer: “For sailing in the Great Boat of Amun-Re and passing safely over …”

“Uh, your majesty-ness,” he said to Tut, tapping one shoulder. “Could you raise your arm?”

“Hmmm?” said Tut. “Oh, certainly.”

Tut raised his right arm and Alex read the rest: “… the circle of flame.”

Fire. This is it, thought Alex. It has to be … And Amun-Re will definitely want a word with this dude.

Alex risked a quick glance up and saw Akhenotra barely a sword-length behind Luke, who was red-faced and gasping in the intense heat. Alex filled his lungs with overheated air and began to recite the words:

“For this is the flame which burns behind Re …”

The words hit Akhenotra like a cramp in the side, and his steady stride faltered. Luke pulled away. Akhenotra called out to him, a note of desperation slipping into his voice, “Give me the offering, child.”

Luke looked back: “Yeah, right!”

The anger rushed back into the Death Walker’s blister-scarred visage: “Give me the heart!” he bellowed.

Tut turned again, and Alex barely managed to keep his place. The boy king uttered an ancient expression that loosely translated to: “Say what, now?”

Alex wanted to plead with him to hold still, but he couldn’t break his chant or he’d have to start over. And there’d be no time for that. The Walker had identified the threat now, and was striding straight back toward them. Alex grabbed Tut’s shoulder with his free hand, holding him in place, and surrendered himself to the ancient text. “A path is laid for me …”

His chant gained strength and a phantom chorus rose up to whisper along. “My protection is that of Re …”

As he neared the end, the text shook, nearly jarring him out of his trance. Instead, he gripped Tut’s shoulder tighter and sang the next word louder. He was too close now. Another sudden shudder, faint voices screaming at him from another world, but he dared not look away.

He completed the spell. “… For I am He who travels, the Greater God.”

He blinked his eyes, the color returning to them. He released Tut and stepped back as the world of the living slowly came into focus.

Tut was standing with his own bronze sword buried deep in his chest, the blade no longer aflame but still sizzling slightly. Now Alex understood why the text had shaken so much. And Akhenotra — Alex gazed at the space in front of Tut — Akhenotra wasn’t standing at all.

The Death Walker was on his back, his knees and hands pulling up and back above him as his carcass aged hundreds of years with each second, the skin drying and shriveling into the dark, taut leather of a mummy.

Alex stepped around to get a better look at Tut, and the others rushed over to join him. He grasped his amulet once more, despite the pounding headache that using it for so long was beginning to cause him. “Are you okay?” he asked doubtfully, staring at the sword embedded in Tut’s chest and a second large gash next to it. Sliced and burned wrappings peeled away from either side.

“I’m not sure,” said Tut, his voice soft. He tried to take a small step and his knees buckled slightly. “But it doesn’t matter now. Let me see the jar.”

Huffing and puffing and gaping openly at the sword-wound, Luke handed it over.

“Thank you,” said Tut, the imperious teen surprising them all by bowing slightly. “You have a strange name, Duuuuude, but fast feet.”

Luke couldn’t understand a word of it, but Ren answered for him. “And you’ve got …” she began. She paused as Tut lifted the ancient lid, and then completed her sentence: “… a lot of heart.”

A broad smile blossomed on Tut’s face as he replaced the lid. He stepped forward, touched Alex lightly on his injured shoulder, and said, “I am sorry for your pain.”

To Alex’s surprise the touch didn’t hurt his scorched shoulder at all. As he looked down, he saw why: The black-edged hole burned into his shirt now framed healthy skin, no tanner — or redder — than usual.

“How —” he began but was cut off by a soft, metallic clang.

He looked up and saw that the sword had fallen to the ground.

There was nothing left to hold it up.

King Tutankhamun was gone.

A moment later, the room went dark.