The Sorceress

by Michael Scott

  “There might be some salad inside,” the immortal said vaguely. “Neither Palamedes nor I are vegetarians. There’s fruit,” he added. “Lots of fruit.”

  Josh nodded. “Fruit would be perfect.” Even the thought of meat set his stomach churning.

  Shakespeare seemed to notice the sword in Josh’s hand for the first time. “Keep up your bright swords,” he murmured. Stepping forward, he produced a surprisingly pristine white handkerchief, pulled off his glasses and started to polish them. Without the thick lenses, Sophie noticed, he looked more like the image of the famous playwright she’d seen in her textbooks. He put his glasses back on and looked at Josh. “It is Clarent?”

  Josh nodded. He could feel it tremble slightly in his hands and was aware of a slow warmth soaking into his flesh.

  Shakespeare leaned forward, his long narrow nose inches from the tip of the blade, but he made no attempt to touch it. “I saw its twin many times,” he said absently. “The blades are identical, but the hilts are slightly different.”

  “Was this when you were with Dee?” Sophie asked shrewdly.

  Shakespeare nodded. “When I was with the doctor,” he agreed. He reached out and tentatively touched the tip of the blade with his index finger. The dark stone sparkled and rippled with a tracery of pale yellow, as if a liquid had been poured down the blade, and there was a hint of lemon in the air. “Dee inherited Excalibur from his predecessor, Roger Bacon, but this was really the weapon he wanted to find. The twin blades are older than the Elders and were ancient long before Danu Talis was raised from the seas. Individually, the swords are powerful, but legend has it that together they have the power to destroy the very fabric of the earth itself.”

  “I’m surprised Dee didn’t find it,” Josh said a little breathlessly. He could feel the sword buzzing in his hands, and strange images floated at the edge of his consciousness. Somehow he knew that these were Shakespeare’s memories.

  A circular building in flames …

  A pitifully small grave, and a young girl standing over the opening, tossing in a handful of dirt …

  And Dee. A little younger than Josh remembered him; his face unlined, his hair dark and full, his goatee without a hint of gray.

  “The Magician always believed the sword had been lost in a lake deep in the Welsh mountains,” Shakespeare continued. “He spent decades hunting for it there.”

  “Flamel found it in a cave in Andorra,” Sophie said. “He believed Charlemagne hid it there in the ninth century.”

  Shakespeare smiled. “So the Magician was wrong. It is gratifying to know that the doctor is not always correct.”

  Sophie stepped out from behind Josh and pushed down his arm. The wind coming across the sword blade moaned. “Are you really … really William Shakespeare? The Bard?” she asked. Even after all she had seen and experienced over the past few days, she still found the idea awe-inspiring.

  The man stepped back and executed a surprisingly elegant sweeping bow, leg outstretched, head bent almost to waist level. “Your servant, my lady.” The whole effect was slightly ruined by the stench of stale body odor that rolled off him. “Please call me Will.”

  Sophie wasn’t sure how to react. “I’ve never met anyone famous before …,” she started, and then stopped when she realized what she was saying.

  Shakespeare straightened. Josh coughed and backed away, eyes watering. “You have met Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel,” Shakespeare said in his precise English, “Dr. John Dee, the Comte de Saint-Germain and, of course, Niccolò Machiavelli,” he continued. “And no doubt you encountered the charming Jeanne d’Arc.”

  “Yes,” Sophie said with a shy smile, “we met all of them. But none of them are as famous as you are.”

  William Shakespeare took a moment to consider, and then he nodded. “I am sure Machiavelli and certainly Dee would disagree. But yes, you are correct, of course. None of them would have my”—he paused—“my profile. My work has thrived and survived, whereas theirs is not quite so popular.”

  “And did you really serve Dee?” Josh asked suddenly, realizing that here was an opportunity to get some answers.

  Shakespeare’s smile faded. “I spent twenty years in Dee’s service.”

  “Why?” Josh asked.

  “Have you ever met him?” Shakespeare replied.

  Josh nodded.

  “Then you will know that Dee is that most dangerous of enemies: he truly believes that what he is doing is right.”

  “That’s what Palamedes said,” Josh murmured.

  “And it’s true. Dee is a liar, but I came to understand that he believes the lies he tells. Because he wants to believe, he needs to believe.”

  A quick spattering of rain rattled across the junkyard, pinging off the crushed metal cars.

  “But is he right?” Josh asked quickly, ducking as big drops of rain hit the side of the metal hut. He reached out and grabbed the man’s arm, and instantly his aura flared bright brilliant orange, while a pale yellow aura outlined the man’s body. Orange and lemon mingled, and while the results should have been pleasant, the two odors were sour and tainted by Shakespeare’s unwashed smell.

  Dee, younger, his face unlined, hair and beard dark, staring into an enormous crystal, a young wide-eyed William Shakespeare by his side.

  Images in the crystal …

  Lush green fields …

  Orchards laden down with fruit …

  Seas churning with fish …

  “Wait—you think Dee should bring the Elders back to this world?”

  William Shakespeare started for the stairs. “Yes,” he said, without turning around. “My own research has led me to believe it may be the right decision.”

  “Why?” the twins demanded.

  The Bard rounded on them. “Most of the Elders have abandoned this world. The Next Generation toy with humani and use the earth as both a playground and a battleground, but the most dangerous of all are we humani. We are destroying this world. I believe we need the Dark Elders to return so that they can save the earth from our destruction.”

  Stunned, the twins looked at one another, completely confused now. Josh spoke first. “But Nicholas said the Dark Elders want humans as food.”

  “Some do. But not all Elders eat flesh; some feed off memories and emotions. It seems a small price to pay for a paradise without famine, without disease.”

  “Why do we need the Dark Elders?” Sophie asked. “Between the Alchemyst and Dee and the others like them, surely they must possess enough power and knowledge to save the world?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  “But Dee is powerful …,” Josh began.

  “You cannot ask me anything about Dee; I have no answers.”

  “You spent twenty years with him; you must know him better than anyone on this earth,” Sophie protested.

  “No one truly knows the Magician. I loved him like a father, like an older brother. He was all that I admired, all that I wanted to be.” A single tear suddenly appeared under the immortal’s thick glasses and rolled down his cheek. “And then he betrayed me and killed my son.”

  n the catacombs deep beneath the city of Paris, Dr. John Dee fastidiously brushed dust off the arm of his suit, tugged at his cuffs and straightened his bow tie. He snapped his fingers and a sulfurous yellow ball blossomed before him, bobbing at head height. It exuded the smell of rotten eggs, but its stench was so familiar that Dee no longer even registered the foul odor. Dirty yellow light splashed across two arching columns of polished bones that had been shaped to resemble a doorframe. Beyond the opening there was utter blackness.

  Dee stepped into the underground chamber to face a frozen god.

  In his long lifetime the Magician had experienced wonders. He had come to accept the extraordinary as ordinary, the strange and wonderful as commonplace. Dee had seen the legends of the Arabian Nights come to life, had fought with monsters from Greek and Babylonian myth, had traveled through realms that people believed were lies creat
ed by the travelers Marco Polo and Ibn Battutah. He knew that the myths of the Celts and the Romans, the Gauls and the Mongols, the Rus, the Viking and even the Maya, were more than stories—they were based on fact. The gods of Greece and Egypt, the spirits of the American plains, the jungle totems and the Japanese Myo-o had once lived. Now they were remembered as little more than fragments of myths and snatches of legend, but John Dee knew that they had once walked this earth. They were part of an Elder race who had ruled the world for millennia.

  One of the greatest of the Elders was Mars … and less than twenty-four hours earlier, Dee had encased him in a tomb of solid bone.

  The Magician stepped into a vast but low-ceilinged circular chamber, the floating light painting everything sallow, the color of pale butter, and looked around the chamber. Although he’d known about its location for decades, he’d never had a reason to venture down to face the Sleeping God before, and everything had happened so quickly yesterday that he hadn’t had a chance to examine the sepulchre. He ran his hand down a section of the smooth wall beside the door, the scientist within him recognizing the materials: collagen fiber and calcium phosphate. The walls here were not stone—they were bone. Dee spotted two indentations against the far wall. Between them were two dimpled depressions, and suddenly he knew what he was seeing and realized where he was. He was looking at a set of eyes and a nose. The chamber had not been hollowed from a single piece of bone, as he’d thought—he was inside an enormous skull. Terrifyingly, the skull looked almost human. Dee felt a shiver run down his spine; he’d never encountered them, but he’d heard stories of Shadow-realms inhabited by cannibal giants. Yesterday, the walls had been smooth and polished; today they looked like a candle that had been left too close to a fire. Long-frozen stalactites of bone dripped like sticky toffee from the ceiling; huge bubbles had been caught and frozen as they popped; dribbles and streams of thick liquid curled in ornate patterns.

  In the center of the room was a long rectangular raised stone plinth splashed and spattered with globules of what looked like yellow wax. The ancient slab was cracked in two.

  And on the floor before the plinth was a gray statue partially encased in yellow. It depicted an enormous man on hands and knees, caught as he attempted to climb to his feet. The figure was dressed as a warrior, wearing the metal and leather armor of the ancient past, his left arm outstretched, fingers splayed wide, while his right arm was buried in the floor up to his wrist. His body from the waist down also disappeared into the ground. On the figure’s back, two hideous child-sized creatures had been frozen as they’d attempted to leap forward on goatlike hooves. Stick-thin, ribs and bones visible, their mouths gaped to reveal maws filled with jagged teeth, and their outstretched hands were tipped with dagger-sharp claws.

  Gathering up his coat so that it would not brush the floor, and hitching up his trousers, Dee hunkered down for a closer look at the statues. The piece looked like something from a museum, a classical sculpture by Michelangelo or Bernini, perhaps—Phobos and Deimos on the back of Mars Ultor. Dee moved his hand and the ball of light floated over the satyrs’ heads. The detail was incredible; every strand of hair had been preserved, the drool caught on their chins, and one of them—Phobos, he thought—even had a cracked nail. But these were no statues; yesterday, they had been savage living creatures, and Mars had loosed them on him. It would have been a terrible death. The satyrs fed off panic and fear … and over the centuries Dee had learned that there was much to fear. The knowledge of what the Elders could do to him always sent queasy swells of panic through his stomach. Phobos and Deimos would have feasted for months.

  The Magician leaned forward to look at the helmet that completely covered Mars’s head. Beneath the yellow coating of hardened bone, the gray stone was still visible. It sparkled like granite, but this was no natural rock. For a single instant, Dee felt something like pity for the Dark Elder. The Witch of Endor had caused his aura to become visible and to harden, stonelike, around his body, trapping him within an impossibly heavy crust. If the god peeled it off, his aura bubbled up like lava and hardened again immediately. Mars, who had once roamed the world and been worshipped as a god by a dozen nations under scores of names, had been practically immobile for millennia. Dee found himself wondering what crime the God of War had committed that had so offended the Witch that she had condemned him to this lingering undeath. It must have been terrible indeed. Then the Magician’s lips twitched in a smile as a thought struck him. Reaching out, he rapped his knuckles on the helmeted head. The sound was dull and flat in the bone-wrapped chamber. “I know you can hear me,” Dee said conversationally. “I was just thinking that this seems to be your destiny,” he continued. “First the Witch trapped you in your own aura, and then I wrapped you in solid bone.”

  Wisps of black smoke suddenly curled from the Dark Elder’s helmet.

  “Ah, good,” Dee murmured. “For a moment there I thought I’d lost you.”

  Eyes blazed crimson in the blackness behind the helmet. “I am not so easy to kill.” Mars’s voice was a gravelly rasp, touched with an indefinable accent.

  Dee straightened and dusted off his spotless knees. “You know, every Elder I’ve killed has said that. But there is blood in your veins. And what lives can be slain.” He showed his small teeth in a tiny smile. “Admittedly, you are difficult—in fact, well-nigh impossible—to kill, but it can be done. I know. I’ve done it. Why, less than a week ago, I slew Hekate.”

  The interior of the helmet glowed bright red for an instant and the glow faded. Locked in place by granite and bone, Mars could not move, and yet Dee could clearly feel the Elder’s eyes on him. Black smoke curled up out of the slit in his helmet, and where his eyes should have been were now two crimson balls flecked with blue. “Have you come back to gloat, Magician?”

  “Not intentionally.” Dee walked behind the trio of statues, examining them from every angle. “But now that I’m here, I might as well gloat anyway.” He ran his hands across the Elder’s shoulder, and Dee felt his own aura flicker as the merest buzz of energy crackled through him. Even buried beneath a sheath of stone and bone, the Elder’s aura was powerful.

  “When I escape,” Mars rumbled, “as I surely will, you will be my first priority. Even before I discover the whereabouts of the Witch of Endor, I will find you, and my vengeance will be terrible.”

  “I’m scared,” Dee said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “The Witch has kept you locked in stone for millennia. You’ve not managed to shake off that curse yet. And you know that if anything happens to the Witch, then the spell dies with her, leaving you trapped like this forever.” The Magician moved around in front of the Elder again. “Perhaps I should have the Witch killed. Then you will never escape.”

  There was a peculiar snuffling sound within the helmet, and it took the Magician a few moments to realize that the Elder was laughing. “You! Kill the Witch? I was called the God of War; my powers were terrible. And yet I could not kill her. If you move against her, Magician, she will do something horrible to you—and ensure that your agony lasts a millennium. She once reduced an entire Roman legion to figures about the size of her fingernail, and then strung them together on a silver wire so that she could wear them as a necklace. She kept them alive for centuries.” The Elder chuckled, a sound like grinding stone. “She used to collect amber paperweights; within each one was a person who had displeased her. So yes, go and attack the Witch! I am sure she will be particularly creative with your punishment.”

  Dee crouched down before the Elder’s head. He laced the fingers of his hands together and stared into the smoking dark interior of the stone helmet. Two crimson dots glowed back at him. The Magician moved his fingers and the globe of yellow light came down and settled behind his head. He hoped the harsh light would blind Mars, but the two red orbs stared at him, unblinking. With a flick of his wrist, Dee dismissed the light, sending it bobbing close to the ceiling, where it softened and faded, painting the room in sepia. “I have come here to
make you an offer,” Dee said after a long moment of silence.

  “There is nothing you can offer me.”

  “There is one thing,” Dee said confidently.

  “Did you come of your own accord, or were you sent by your masters?” Mars asked.

  “No one knows I am here.”

  “Not even the Italian?”

  Dee shrugged. “He may suspect, but there is nothing he can do.” He stopped and then waited. Dee was a great believer in silence. In his experience, people often spoke to fill the quiet.

  “What do you want?” Mars asked eventually.

  The Magician dipped his head to hide a smile. With that single question, Dee knew that the Elder would give him exactly what he wanted. The Englishman had always prided himself on his imagination—it was part of what made him one of the most powerful magicians and necromancers in the world—but even he could not comprehend what it must be like to be trapped for centuries in a hard stone shell. He had heard the desperation in the God of War’s voice the previous day when he had pleaded with Sophie to lift the curse, and it had given him an idea.

  “You know that I am a man of my word,” Dee began.

  Mars said nothing.

  “True, I have lied, cheated, stolen and killed, but all with one single intention: to bring the Elders back to this world.”

  “The end justifies the means,” Mars grumbled.

  “Just so. And you know that if I give you my word, my oath, then I will carry through with my promise. Yesterday, you said you could read my intent clearly.”

  “I know that in spite of your faults—or possibly even because of them—you are an honorable man, though it is a peculiar definition of honor,” Mars said. “So yes, if you give me your word, I will believe you.”

  Dee stood up quickly and walked around behind the statue, so that Mars could not see the triumphant grin on his face. “The Witch of Endor will never lift your curse, will she?”

  Mars Ultor remained quiet for a long time, but Dee made no move to break the silence. He wanted to give the Elder time to think through what he’d just said; he needed him to admit that he was doomed for all eternity to wear the stone shell.