The Sorceress

by Michael Scott

  It was night on Salisbury Plain, but between the stones, a lush sunlit hillside appeared.

  Josh stared in wonder at the scene. He could actually smell grass and greenery, feel summer heat on his face and taste the faintest hint of salt in the air. He turned his head; behind him it was night, stars high in the heavens; before him it was day. “Where?” he whispered.

  “Mount Tamalpais,” Flamel said triumphantly. Pulling Sophie to her feet, he dragged her toward the opening and the light. The moment her fingertips left the pillar, it started to fade.

  “Go,” Shakespeare said. “Go now ….”

  “Tell Palamedes—”

  “I know. Get out of here. Now.”

  “What a play you would have got out of this!” the Alchemyst said, wrapping his arm around Josh’s waist, pulling the twins between the blazing stones and into the grassy landscape on the other side of the world.

  “I never liked writing tragedies,” William Shakespeare whispered.

  The golden light faded the moment Josh’s hand was pulled away, and the smells of orange and vanilla vanished and were replaced by the musky scent of Gabriel and the single surviving Ratchet.

  The Wild Hunt and the Next Generation, the immortals and human attackers immediately faded back into the night, leaving behind them nothing but dust, and green fields tramped to muddy ruin. Palamedes staggered up out of the night. His armor was scratched and dented, his huge claymore snapped in two. Exhaustion thickened his accent. “We need to get out of here before the police arrive.”

  “I know a place,” Shakespeare said. “It’s close by, a perfectly preserved Edwardian barn.”

  Palamedes squeezed the Bard’s shoulder. “Not quite so perfectly preserved, I’m afraid.”

  ount Tam,” Nicholas Flamel said, falling to his knees, breathing in great lungfuls of warm air. “San Francisco.”

  Dizzy and disoriented, Josh too stumbled to his hands and knees and looked around. While there was still brilliant sunshine on the mountainside, swirling tendrils of mist were creeping in farther down the slopes.

  Sophie crouched beside her brother. Her flesh was chalky white, her eyes sunk deep in her head, her blond hair flat and greasy on her skull. “How do you feel?”

  “About as bad as you look, I’m guessing,” he answered.

  Sophie climbed slowly to her feet and then helped her twin up. “Where are we?” she asked, looking around. But there were no landmarks she recognized.

  “North of San Francisco, I believe,” he said.

  A shape moved below them, sending the mist billowing in great sweeping curves. The trio turned to face the figure, knowing that if it was an enemy, they had nothing left to fight it with. They were too tired even to run.

  Perenelle Flamel appeared, looking poised and elegant even though she was dressed in a dirty black coat over a coarse shirt and trousers. “I’ve been waiting here for ages,” she called, a huge smile on her face as she strode up the hillside.

  The Sorceress wrapped her arms around the twins, squeezing them tightly. “Oh, but it is good to see you safe and well. I’ve been so worried.” She touched the bruises on Sophie’s cheek, a scrape on Josh’s forehead, the cuts on his arm. They both felt a tingling crawling heat, and Josh actually watched the bruises fade from his sister’s flesh.

  “It’s good to be back,” Josh said.

  Sophie nodded in agreement. “It’s good to see you again, Perry.”

  Nicholas gathered his wife into his arms, holding her tight for what seemed like a long time. Then he stepped back, his hands on her shoulders, and looked at her critically. “You’re looking good, my love,” he said.

  “Admit it, I’m looking old,” she said. Then her green eyes moved across his face, noting the new lines and deep creases in his skin. Her index finger trailed white aura across his numerous cuts and bruises, healing them. “Though not as old as you. You are a decade younger,” she reminded him, “though today”—she smiled—“for the first time in all our years together, you do look older than me.”

  “It has been an interesting few days,” Flamel admitted. “But how did you get here? The last time we spoke you were a prisoner on Alcatraz.”

  “I can now claim to be one of the very few prisoners to have escaped the Rock.” Slipping her arm into his, she walked him down the mountain through the early-afternoon mist, the twins following a few steps behind. “You should be very proud of me, Nicholas,” she said. “I drove here all by myself.”

  “I’m always proud of you.” He paused. “But we don’t have a car.”

  “I borrowed a rather nice Thunderbird convertible I found at the pier. I knew the owner wouldn’t be using it anytime soon.”

  r. John Dee lay in the soft grass and looked up at the night sky, watching the gold and silver glow fade from the heavens and smelling, even from this distance, the hint of vanilla and orange. Police helicopters vibrated in the air, and sirens sounded everywhere.

  So the twins and Flamel had escaped.

  And they’d taken with them his life and his future. He had been living on borrowed time since the failed attack the previous night; now he was a dead man walking.

  The Magician sat up slowly, cradling his right arm. It felt numb from fingertip to shoulder, where it had taken the full force of the blow from Clarent. He thought it might be broken.

  Clarent.

  He’d seen the boy throw the sword … but he hadn’t seen him pick it up. Dee rolled over in the mud and discovered the blade lying on the ground next to him. Gently, almost reverently, he lifted it out of the dirt and then lay back on the earth, the blade flat on his chest, both hands resting across the hilt.

  Five hundred years he had been searching for this weapon. It was a quest that had taken him all over the world and into the Shadowrealms. He laughed, the sound high-pitched, almost hysterical. And he had finally found it back almost where it started. One of the first places he’d looked for the blade was under the Altar Stone at Stonehenge; he’d been fifteen years old at the time, and Henry VIII had been on the throne.

  Still lying on the ground, Dee reached under his coat and pulled out Excalibur, holding it in his right hand. Then he raised both weapons aloft. The swords moved in his grasp, twitching toward one another, the round hilts rotating, blades gently smoking. An icy chill started up one side of his body; a searing warmth flowed up the other side. His aura popped alight, steaming off his flesh in long yellow tendrils, and he felt his aches fade, his cuts and bruises heal. The Magician brought the two swords close, blade crossing blade.

  And then they suddenly snapped together, as if magnetized. He tried to pull them apart, but they slotted together, fitting one into the other, then clicked and fused, blade to blade, hilt to hilt, to create a single rather ordinary-looking sword, that leaked gray smoke.

  A figure shuffled out of the darkness, an old man bundled up in dozens of coats. Yellow light danced off his wild hair and unkempt beard, and his bright blue eyes were lost and distant. He looked at the sword, focusing, concentrating, remembering. He reached out with one trembling finger to stroke the cold stone, and then his eyes filled with tears. “The two that are one,” he mumbled, “the one that is all.” Then the Ancient of Days turned and shuffled off into the night.

  End of Book Three

  It is nighttime when Sophie and Josh arrive at the prehistoric circle of standing stones on Salisbury Plain, England, and they only catch glimpses of these remnants of a once-great monument, one of the most recognizable archaeological sites in the world.

  Stonehenge was built in three reasonably distinct phases. What remains today are the tumbled ruins of all the stages. Although there is evidence to suggest that humans were active around the area of Salisbury Plain (which would have been wooded at the time) about eight thousand years ago, the first building phase dates back over five thousand years. Using deer antlers, stones and wooden tools, the earliest builders scraped out a huge ring 6 feet wide and 320 feet in diameter. Its center was nearly 7
feet deep in places. One arc was left open and two stones were erected as gateposts. One of these stones survives: the Slaughter Stone.

  The next phase began around five thousand years ago. Nothing from this phase remains visible, but there is archaeological evidence that a wood structure was erected within the circle. Shards of pottery and burnt bone have been found here, and there is a suggestion that Stonehenge may have been a place of burial or possibly sacrifice.

  Over the next thousand years, Stonehenge was enlarged, altered and changed. The great stones that survive today date from this period of building.

  It is estimated that up to eighty bluestone pillars were set up in the center of the circle. The pillars formed two half circles, one inside the other. Each of these huge stones weighed at least four tons and had been quarried from a site in the Preseli Mountains in Wales, more than 240 miles away. Just transporting the huge slabs of stone through densely wooded countryside, across mountains and rivers, was an extraordinary feat and shows how important Stonehenge was to the ancient peoples who built it. The enormous Altar Stone, which Nicholas Flamel lies down on, may well have stood as a huge upright. It weighs six tons.

  Around this time, the entranceway was widened, and sunrise—especially on the morning of the summer solstice—would have sent long shadows spiking deep into the heart of the circle. At sunset in midwinter, the sun would have sunk between the stones.

  Later still, perhaps a little over four thousand years ago, a circle of thirty capped stones was erected. This was another extraordinary feat. Each of the standing stones weighs around twenty-five tons. The stones came from a quarry more than twenty miles north of Stonehenge and were carefully cut, polished and shaped. Within this circle there were five trilithons arranged in a half circle, with the smallest at the outermost edges and the largest in the middle. The “smallest” trilithon was twenty feet tall.

  Over the centuries, the site was abandoned and fell into disarray. Nature, the elements and the great weight of the stones pulled some of them to the ground, and gradually the order and arrangement of the circle became confused and was lost.

  Stonehenge is striking, spectacular and mysterious, and despite centuries of research, we still do not know what it was used for. Was it a burial site or, as many suggest, a place of worship? It is now associated with druidism, the religion of the ancient Celts, and while the Celts certainly used it, and many of the other stone circles and monuments that littered the countryside, they did not construct it. There are countless myths and legends associated with the site; it is even linked with Merlin and the Arthurian cycle.

  One of the most shocking surprises people discover when visiting Stonehenge is just how close the roads are to this ancient monument. The A344—the road where Josh finally abandons the car—runs remarkably close to the original five-thousand-year-old circle.

  Stonehenge is now a World Heritage Site.

  Point Zero also exists.

  The official center of Paris, France, is located on the square in front of Notre Dame Cathedral and is exactly as described in The Sorceress. Set into the cobblestones is a circle composed of four segments. Inscribed on the four segments are the words POINT ZERO DES ROUTES DE FRANCE. In the middle of the circle is a sunburst design with eight spiked arms radiating from its center.

  There are Point Zero or Kilometer Zero markers in many cities around the world, and these are the locations from which all distances in these cities are measured. Some are stones set into the ground, while others are plaques or monuments.

  Standing on the Paris stone at the solar noon is not recommended—you know what happened to Scathach and Joan!

  Excerpt copyright © 2009 by Michael Scott

  Published by Delacorte Press,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  I am frightened.

  Not for myself, but for those I will leave behind: Perenelle and the twins. I am resigned that we will not recover the Codex in time to save my wife. I have perhaps a week left, certainly no more than two, before old age claims me; Perenelle has no more than two weeks.

  I do not want to die. I have lived upon this earth for six hundred and seventy-six years, and there is still so much that I have never done, so much that I wish I still had time to do.

  I am grateful, though, that I have lived long enough to discover the twins of legend, and proud that I began their training in the elemental magics. Sophie has mastered three, Josh just one, but he has demonstrated other skills, and his courage is extraordinary.

  We have returned to San Francisco, having left Dee for dead in London. I am hoping we have seen the last of him. I am disturbed, however, that Machiavelli is here in the city. Perenelle trapped him and his companion on Alcatraz along with the other monsters, but I am unsure how long the Rock can hold someone like the Italian immortal.

  And both Perenelle and I are agreed that Alcatraz is a threat we will have to deal with while we still can. Just knowing that the cells are full of monsters is chilling.

  More disturbing, however, is the news that Scathach and Joan of Arc have gone missing. The Notre Dame leygate should have brought them to Mount Tamalpais, but they never turned up. Saint-Germain is frantic with worry, but I reminded him that Scathach is over two and a half thousand years old, and she is the ultimate warrior.

  My real concern lies with the twins. I am no longer sure how they view me. I always knew Josh harbored reservations about me, but now I am sensing that they are both fearful and mistrustful. It is true that they discovered portions of my history I would have preferred left uncovered. I am not proud of some of the things I did, but I regret nothing. I did what I had to do to ensure the survival of the entire human race, and I would do it all again.

  The twins have gone back to their aunt’s house in Pacific Heights. I will give them a day or two to rest and recuperate. Then we will begin again. Their training needs to be completed; they need to be ready when the Dark Elders return.

  Because that day is almost upon us.

  From the Day Booke of Nicholas Flamel, Alchemyst

  Writ this day, Tuesday, 5th June, in

  San Francisco, my adopted city

  “Never thought I’d see this place again,” Sophie Newman said.

  “Never thought I’d be so happy to see it,” Josh added. “It looks … I don’t know. Different.”

  “It looks the same,” his twin said. “We’re the ones who have changed.”

  Sophie and Josh Newman walked down Scott Street in Pacific Heights, heading for their aunt Agnes’s house on the corner of Sacramento Street. Five days ago—Thursday, May 31—they had left for work, Sophie at the coffee shop, Josh at the bookstore. It had been just an ordinary day … and yet it had been the last ordinary day they would ever experience.

  That day their world had changed forever; they too had changed, both physically and mentally.

  “What do we tell her?” Josh asked nervously. Aunt Agnes was eighty-four, and although they called her aunt, she was not actually related to them by blood. Sophie thought she might have been their grandmother’s sister … or cousin, or maybe just a friend, but she wasn’t sure. She was a sweet but irascible old lady who fussed and worried if the twins were even five minutes late. She drove them both crazy, and reported back to their parents about every single thing they did.

  “We keep it simple,” Sophie said. “We stick to the story we told Mom and Dad—first the bookshop closed because Perenelle wasn’t feeling well, and then, when she got out of the hospital, the Flamels—”

  “The Flemings” Josh corrected her.

  “The Flemings invited us to stay with them in their house in the desert.”

  “And why did the bookshop close?”

  “Gas leak.”

  Josh nodded. “Gas leak. And where’s the house in the desert?”

  “Joshua Tree.”

  “OK, I got it.” He grinned. “You know we’re going to get a gril
ling.”

  “I know. And that’s even before we talk to Mom and Dad.”

  Josh nodded. “I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly. “Maybe we should just tell them the truth.”

  The twins walked across Jackson Street. They could see their aunt’s white wooden Victorian house three blocks away.

  Sophie nodded. “Let me get this straight. You want to tell Mom and Dad that their entire life’s work has been for nothing. That everything they have ever studied—history, archaeology and paleontology—is wrong.” She grinned. “Great idea. You go ahead and do that. I’ll watch.”

  Josh shrugged uncomfortably. “OK, OK, so we don’t tell them.”

  “Not just yet, in any case.”

  “Agreed, but it’ll come out sooner or later. You know how impossible it is to keep secrets from them.”

  A sleek black stretch limousine with tinted windows drove slowly past them, the driver leaning forward, checking house numbers on the tree-lined street. The car signaled and pulled in farther down.

  Josh indicated the limo with a jerk of his chin. “It looks like it’s stopping outside Aunt Agnes’s.”

  Sophie looked up disinterestedly. “I just wish there were someone we could talk to,” she said. “Someone like Gilgamesh.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I hope he’s OK.” The last time she had seen the immortal, he had been wounded by an arrow fired by the Horned God. She looked at her brother, irritated. “You’re not even listening to me.”

  “That car did stop outside Agnes’s house,” Josh said slowly. He watched a slender black-suited driver get out of the car and climb the steps, black-gloved hand trailing lightly on the metal rail.