I rolled my eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Wikipedia. I thought they were in New York and London.”
“That’s a different pair,” Carter said, like I was supposed to care. “The other Luxor obelisk is in Paris.”
“Wish I was in Paris,” I said. “Lot better than this place.”
We walked into a dusty courtyard surrounded by crumbling pillars and statues with various missing body parts. Still, I could tell the place had once been quite impressive.
“Where are the people?” I asked. “Middle of the day, winter holidays. Shouldn’t there be loads of tourists?”
Zia made a distasteful expression. “Usually, yes. I have encouraged them to stay away for a few hours.”
“How?”
“Common minds are easy to manipulate.” She looked pointedly at me, and I remembered how she’d forced me to talk in the New York museum. Oh, yes, she was just begging for more scorched eyebrows.
“Now, to the duel.” She summoned her staff and drew two circles in the sand about ten meters apart. She directed me to stand in one of them and Carter in the other.
“I’ve got to duel him?” I asked.
I found the idea preposterous. The only thing Carter had shown aptitude for was summoning butter knives and pooping birds. Well, all right, and that bit on the chasm bridge deflecting the daggers, but still—what if I hurt him? As annoying as Carter might be, I didn’t want to accidentally summon that glyph I’d made in Amos’s house and explode him to bits.
Perhaps Carter was thinking the same thing, because he’d started to sweat. “What if we do something wrong?” he asked.
“I will oversee the duel,” Zia promised. “We will start
slowly. The first magician to knock the other out of his or her circle wins.”
“But we haven’t been trained!” I protested.
“One learns by doing,” Zia said. “This is not school, Sadie. You cannot learn magic by sitting at a desk and taking notes. You can only learn magic by doing magic.”
“But—”
“Summon whatever power you can,” Zia said. “Use whatever you have available. Begin!”
I looked at Carter doubtfully. Use whatever I have? I opened the leather satchel and looked inside. A lump of wax? Probably not. I drew the wand and rod. Immediately, the rod expanded until I was holding a two-meter-long white staff.
Carter drew his sword, though I couldn’t imagine what he’d do with it. Rather hard to hit me from ten meters away.
I wanted this over, so I raised my staff like I’d seen Zia do. I thought the word Fire.
A small flame sputtered to life on the end of the staff. I willed it to get bigger. The fire momentarily brightened, but then my eyesight went fuzzy. The flame died. I fell to my knees, feeling as if I’d run a marathon.
“You okay?” Carter called.
“No,” I complained.
“If she knocks herself out, do I win?” he asked.
“Shut up!” I said.
“Sadie, you must be careful,” Zia called. “You drew from your own reserves, not from the staff. You can quickly deplete your magic.”
I got shakily to my feet. “Explain?”
“A magician begins a duel full of magic, the way you might be full after a good meal—”
“Which I never got,” I reminded her.