Josh swallowed hard. I didn't know .
No reason why you should have except that your ignorance could have gotten
you killed or worse.
But what did you do to the table? Sophie asked. She looked at the ruin of
the circular table: it was split down the middle where Scatty had cut it with
her knife. The wood on either side of the split looked dry and dusty.
Iron, Scatty said simply.
One of the surprising side effects of the artificial metal, Flamel'said,
is its ability to nullify even the most powerful magics. The discovery of
iron really signaled the end of the Elder Race s power in this world. He
held up the black stone arrowhead. That'swhy I was using this. The Elders
get nervous in the presence of iron.
But you re carrying iron, Sophie said to Scatty.
I m Next Generation not pure Elder like Hekate. I can bear to be around
iron.
Josh licked his dry lips. He was still remembering the green light buzzing in
Hekate's palms. When you said turned into green slime, you didn't really
mean
Scathach nodded. Sticky green slime. Quite disgusting. And I understand the
victim retains some measure of consciousness for a while. She glanced at
Flamel. I cannot remember the last person to cross one of the Elders and
live, can you?
Flamel'stood. Let s hope she doesn't remember in the morning. Get some
rest, he said to the twins. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.
Why? Sophie and Josh asked simultaneously.
Because tomorrow, I m hoping I can convince Hekate to Awaken your magical
potential. If you are going to have any chance of surviving the days to come,
I will have to train you to become magicians.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
N icholas Flamel watched Sophie and Josh follow Scathach into the tree. Only
when the door had closed behind them did his colorless eyes betray the worry
he felt. That had been close: another heartbeat or two and Hekate would have
reduced Josh to bubbling liquid. He wasn't sure if she would have been able
to reconstitute him in the morning when she had taken on her maiden form. He
had to get the twins away from her before their ignorance got them into
trouble.
Flamel walked away from the ruined table and followed the slope of the tree
limb down to the pool. He stepped off the branch and onto a narrow unpaved
path. There were a multitude of marks in the mud some were boar tracks,
others looked more like human feet and some were a curious mixture of both.
He knew he was being followed, that his every movement was being tracked by
creatures he couldn t see, and he guessed that the Torc Allta were probably
the least of Hekate's guards.
Crouching by the water s edge, he took a deep breath and allowed himself a
moment to relax. It would be true to say that this had been one of the more
eventful days in his long life, and he was exhausted.
From the moment Dee had snatched Perry and the Codex and the twins had
appeared, Flamel knew that one of the first prophecies he had read in the
Book half a millennium previously was beginning to come true.
The two that are one, the one that is all.
The Codex was full of cryptic phrases and incomprehensible sayings. Most of
them were concerned with the annihilation of Danu Talis, the ancient homeland
of the Elder Race, but there was also a series of prophecies that had to do
with the return of the Dark Elders and the destruction and enslavement of the
humani.
There will come a time when the Book is taken
Well, that was fairly self-explanatory.
And the Queen s man is allied with the Crow .
That had to refer to Dr. John Dee. He had been Queen Elizabeth s personal
magician. And the Crow was clearly the Crow Goddess.
Then the Elder will step out of the Shadows
Flamel knew that Dee had been working for centuries with the Dark Elders to
bring about their return. He had heard unconfirmed reports that more and more
of the Dark Elders had left their Shadowrealms and begun to explore the world
of the humani again.
And the immortal must train the mortal. The two that are one must become
the one that is all.
Nicholas Flamel was the immortal of the prophecy. He was sure of it. The
twins the two that are one must be the mortal who needed to be trained. But
he had no idea what the last phrase referred to: the one that is all.
Circumstances had placed the twins in his care, and he was determined that no
harm should come to them, especially now that he believed they were destined
to play a critical role in the war against the Dark Elders. Nicholas knew
that bringing Josh and Sophie to the Goddess with Three Faces had been an
incredible risk especially in the company of Scathach. The Warrior s feud
with the goddess was older than most civilizations. Hekate was one of the
most dangerous of the Elders. Immensely powerful, one of her many skills
enabled her to Awaken the magical powers that existed in every sentient
creature. However, like many of the Elders, her metabolism was linked to a
solar or lunar cycle. She aged during the day, and effectively died when the
sun went down, but was then reborn with the sunrise as a young woman. This
peculiar trait clouded and colored her thinking, and sometimes, as had
happened earlier, the older Hekate forgot the promises her younger selves had
made. Flamel was hoping he would be able to reason with the maiden Hekate in
the morning and convince her to Awaken the twins extraordinary potential.
The Alchemyst knew that everyone had the possibility for magic within them.
Once it had been sparked into life, it tended to become increasingly powerful
of its own accord. Sometimes very rarely children suddenly exhibited
extraordinary powers, usually either telepathy or telekinesis or a
combination of both. Some children realized what was happening and managed to
control their growing powers, while others never fully understood it. Left
untrained and unchecked, magical energy radiated off the children in waves,
moving furniture around, knocking people to the ground, gouging marks in
walls and ceilings. This was often reported as poltergeist activity. He knew
that if Hekate Awakened the twins dormant magical powers, then he could use
what he had learned over six hundred years of study to increase their skills.
Not only would he give them the means of protecting themselves, but he would
also be able to begin preparing them for whatever lay ahead.
Still crouching by the pool, he stared into the green-tinged water. Red and
white koi moved just below the surface, while deeper down, humanlike faces
peered up, eyes huge and blank, mouths filled with needle-pointed teeth. He
decided against dipping his fingers into the water.
It was commonly held in all the ancient magical books that there were four
elements of magic: Air and Water, Earth and Fire. But centuries of study had
revealed to Nicholas that there were, in fact, five elemental forces of
magic. The fifth force was the magic of Time, the greatest of all magics. The
Elders could control all the other elements, but the secret of the fifth was
&
nbsp; contained only in the Codex and that was one of the many reasons why Dee, and
the Dark Elders he sided with, wanted the Codex. With it in their possession,
they would be able to control time itself.
Along with Perenelle, Nicholas Flamel had spent most of his long life
studying the elemental forces. While Perry had trained herself in different
styles of magic, he had concentrated on the formulae and theorems from the
Codex. These formed the basis of the study of alchemy, which was a type of
science. Using the formulae, he had learned how to turn base metal into gold
and coal into diamonds, but there was very little magic involved. True, it
was a remarkably complex formula and required months of preparation, but the
process itself was almost ridiculously simple. One day he had been poor, the
next wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Taking Perry s advice, he had founded
hospitals, established orphanages and funded schools in his native Paris.
Those had been good times no, more than that they had been great times. Life
had been so much simpler then. They had not known about the Elder Race, had
not begun to suspect even the tiniest portion of dark knowledge the Codex
contained.
In recent years, Nicholas would sometimes awaken at the quietest hour of
night with a single thought spinning round and round in his head: if he had
known then what he knew now about the Codex, would he have continued his
research into the philosopher s stone? That path had ultimately brought him
into contact with the Elder Race notably the Dark Elders and had brought Dr.
John Dee into his life. It had forced Perry and him to fake their own deaths
and flee Paris and ultimately to spend the next half millennium in hiding.
But the study of the Codex had also made them both immortal. Most nights he
answered yes: even knowing all he knew now, he would still have continued his
studies and become the Alchemyst.
But there were rare occasions, like today, when the answer was no. Now he
stood to lose Perenelle, probably the lives of the innocent twins and the
not-so-innocent Scathach though she would not be so easy to kill and there
was also a chance that he had doomed the world.
Nicholas felt himself grow cold at the thought. The Book of Abraham was full
of what he had first assumed to be stories, legends, myths and tales. Over
the centuries, his research had revealed that all the stories were true, all
the tales were based on fact, and what he believed to be legends and myths
were simply reports of real beings and actual events.
The Elder Race existed.
They were creatures that looked human sometimes but had the powers of gods.
They had ruled for tens of thousands of years before the creatures they
called the humani humankind appeared on the earth. The first primitive humani
worshipped the Elder Race as gods and demons and over generations had
constructed whole mythologies and belief systems based around an individual
or a collection of Elders. The gods and goddesses of Greece and Egypt, of
Sumeria and the Indus Valley, of the Toltec and the Celt, existed. They
weren t different gods, however; they were simply the same Elders called by
different names.
The Elder Race divided into two groups: those who worked with the humani and
those who regarded them as little better than slaves and, in some cases,
food. The Elders warred against one another in battles that took centuries to
complete. Occasionally humani would fight on one side, and their exploits
were recalled in great legends like those of Gilgamesh and Cuchulain, Atlas
and Hippolytus, Beowulf and Ilya of Murom.
Finally, when it became clear that these wars might destroy the planet, the
mysterious Abraham, using a powerful collection of spells, forced all of the
Elder Race even those who supported the humani to retreat from the earth.
Most were like Hekate and went willingly, settling into a Shadowrealm of
their own creation, and afterward had little or no contact with the humani.
Others, like the Morrigan, though she was greatly weakened, continued to
venture out into the humani world and worked to restore the old ways. Others
still, like Scathach, lived anonymously among humankind. Flamel eventually
came to understand that the Codex, which contained the spells that had driven
the Elder Race from this world and into their Shadowrealms, also contained
the spells that would allow them to return.
And if the Dark Elders returned, then the civilization of the twenty-first
century would be wiped away in a matter of hours as the godlike creatures
warred among themselves. It had happened before; mythology and history
recorded the event as the Flood.
Now Dee had the Book. All he needed were the two pages Flamel could feel
pressed against his flesh. And Nicholas Flamel knew that Dee and the Morrigan
would stop at nothing to get those pages.
Flamel hung his head and wished he knew what to do. He wished Perenelle were
with him; she would surely have a plan.
A bubble burst on the surface of the water. The lady asks me to tell you
Another bubble popped and burst. that she is unharmed.
Flamel'scrambled back from the pool s edge. Tendrils of mist were rising from
the surface of the water, tiny bubbles popping and snapping. A shape began to
form out of the mist cloud a surprising shape: that of an elderly man in a
security guard s uniform. The shape hovered, twisting and curling over the
pond. The late-evening sunshine shone through the water drops, turning each
one into a brilliant rainbow of light. You are a ghost? Nicholas asked.
Yes, sir, I am. Or I was until Mrs. Flamel freed me.
Do you know me? Nicholas Flamel asked. He wondered quickly if this might be
a trick of Dee s, but then he dismissed the idea: the sorcerer was powerful,
but there was no way he could penetrate Hekate's defenses.
The mist shifted and thickened. Yes, sir, I believe I do: you are Nicholas
Flamel, the Alchemyst. Mrs. Flamel asked me to go in search of you. She
suggested that I would find you here, in this particular Shadowrealm. She
overheard Dee mention that you were here.
She is unharmed? Flamel asked eagerly.
She is. The small man they call John Dee is terrified of her, though the
other woman is not.
What woman?
A tall woman, wearing a cloak of black feathers.
The Morrigan, Flamel'said grimly.
Aye, and That'sthe message A fish leapt out of the pond and the figure
dissolved into a thousand water droplets that hung frozen in the air, each
one a tiny portion of a jigsaw that made up the ghost. Mrs. Flamel'says you
have to leave and leave now. The Crow Goddess is gathering her forces to
invade the Shadowrealm.
SHe'll not succeed. She is Next Generation; she has not the power.
The fish leapt again, scattering the water droplets, and the ghost s voice
drifted and whispered away, dying with each bursting bubble. Mrs. Flamel
instructed me to tell you that the Crow Goddess intends to awaken Bastet.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
S cathach stood by the door to Sophie s room and regarded the twins with her
grass gr
een eyes. Get some rest, she said, repeating Flamel's advice. Stay
in your rooms, she added. You may hear strange sounds from outside just
ignore them. You are completely safe so long as you remain within these
walls.
What sort of sounds? Josh asked. His imagination was working overtime, and
he was beginning to regret all those hours he d spent playing Doom and Quake,
scaring himself silly.
Scathach took a moment to consider. Screams, maybe. Animal howls. Oh, and
laughter. She smiled. And believe me, you don't want to find out what s
laughing, she said, and added, without a trace of irony, Sleep tight.
Josh Newman waited until Scathach had rounded the end of the corridor before
turning to his sister. we've got to get out of here.
Sophie chewed her bottom lip hard enough to leave the impression of her two
front teeth in the flesh, and then nodded. I ve been thinking the same
thing.
I think we re in some pretty serious danger, Josh said urgently.
Sophie nodded again. Events had moved so fast that afternoon that she d
barely had time to catch her breath. One moment she d been working in the
coffee shop, the next they were racing across San Francisco in the company of
a man who claimed to be a six-hundred-year-old alchemyst and a girl who
looked no older than herself and yet who Flamel'swore was a
two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old female warrior. And a vampire. I keep
looking for the hidden cameras, she muttered, glancing around the room.
Cameras? Josh looked startled. He immediately picked up on his twin s
thoughts. You mean like Candid Camera? He looked uncomfortable and felt
color flood his face: what if he d managed to make an idiot of himself in
front of the entire nation? He d never be able to show his face at school
again. He peered up into the corners of the room, looking for the cameras.
They were usually behind mirrors. There were no mirrors in the room, but Josh
knew that didn't mean anything; the new generation of cameras were so small
that they were virtually invisible. A sudden thought struck him. What about
the birds?
Sophie nodded once more. I keep coming back to the birds. Everything else
could be special effects: the Torc Allta could be trained animals and men in
prosthetic makeup, what happened in Scathach s dojo could be some sort of
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