The Necromancer

by Michael Scott

  Then, finally, eight or nine years ago, I visited Alcatraz. I knew, almost from the moment I stepped off the boat, that it was perfect. And that single decision shaped everything else. Choosing the island meant that the series had to be set in San Francisco, and from that flowed all the other West Coast locations. Not only did Alcatraz become a key location, it became almost another character in the series. Here was a tiny island—only twenty-two acres—that was also rich in history. Juan Manuel de Ayala became its “voice.”

  I have been back to Alcatraz countless times over the years, and every time, I discover something new. If you get a chance to visit the Rock, go at night: that’s when you’ll hear the whispers of the ghosts of Alcatraz.…

  A special preview of

  THE

  WARLOCK

  Book Five of

  Excerpt copyright © 2010 by Michael Scott

  Published by Delacorte Press,

  An imprint of Random House Children’s Books,

  A division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Nicholas Flamel is dying.

  This is the time I have feared for so long, the night when I may become a widow.

  Even though he was aged and weakened, utterly exhausted, Nicholas sat with Prometheus and me this evening and poured the last of his strength into the crystal skull as we tracked Josh into the heart of San Francisco, to Dr. John Dee’s lair.

  We watched in horror as the boy willingly called forth Coatlicue, the hideous Archon called the Mother of All the Gods. We tried to warn him, but Dee was too strong and cut the boy off from us. And when Aoife, Niten and Sophie arrived, instead of fighting with them, Josh sided with Dee and his deadly companion, Virginia Dare.

  Watching Josh—our last hope, our only chance to defeat the Dark Elders and protect the world—leave with the enemy was too much for my husband, and he collapsed into unconsciousness. He has not awakened, and I no longer have the strength to revive him. What little power remains I must conserve for what is to come.

  One by one, we have lost those who might have fought alongside us: Aoife is gone, trapped in a Shadowrealm, forever locked in combat with the Archon. Scathach and Joan are in the distant past, there has been no communication from Saint-Germain, and we have lost contact with Palamedes and Shakespeare. Prometheus is so weakened after using the skull that his Shadowrealm is beginning to disintegrate around him.

  Only Sophie remains, and she is utterly distraught by her brother’s betrayal. She is somewhere in San Francisco—I cannot locate her, but at least she has Niten to protect her.

  So it comes down to me, as I have always known it would.

  More than six hundred and eighty years ago, when I was a child, my grandmother introduced me to a hooded man with a hook in place of his left hand. He told me my future, and the future of the world. And then he swore me to secrecy. I have carried that secret with me across the centuries.

  Now that the end is almost upon us, I know what I have to do.

  From the Day Booke of Nicholas Flamel, Alchemyst

  Writ this day, Wednesday, 6th June, by

  Perenelle Flamel, Sorceress,

  in the Shadowrealm of the Elder Prometheus,

  adjoining San Francisco, my adopted city

  CHAPTER ONE

  The warriors appeared first, tall jackal-headed creatures with solid red eyes and saber-teeth, wearing highly polished black glass armor. They poured out of a smoking cave mouth and spread around Xibalba, some taking positions before the nine gates that led into the enormous cave, others sweeping through the primitive Shadowrealm, ensuring that it was empty. They moved in complete silence; the anpu remained mute until the moment they charged into battle, and then their howls were terrifying.

  Then the couple appeared.

  Like their anpu, they were wearing glass and ceramic armor, though theirs was ornate rather than practical, and in a style that had last been seen in the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt.

  Minutes earlier, the couple had left an almost perfect copy of Danu Talis and traveled across a dozen linking Shadowrealms, through worlds that were remarkably similar to earth and through others that were completely alien. And although they were both by nature intensely curious about the myriad worlds they ruled, they did not linger but raced through the complex network of leygates that would bring them to the Crossroads.

  There was so little time left.

  Nine gates opened into Xibalba, little more than roughly carved openings in the black rock wall. Avoiding the bubbling pits of lava that spat sticky strings of molten rock across their path, the couple crossed the width of the Shadowrealm from the ninth gate to the third, the Gate of Tears. Even the anpu, which were fearless, refused to approach the cave. Ancient memories rooted deep in their DNA warned them that inside this cave was the place where their race had almost been exterminated after they’d fled the world of the humani.

  As the couple neared the cave mouth, the crude and blocky glyphs carved over the opening began to glow with a faint white light. It reflected off their mirrored armor, illuminating the interior of the cave, painting the couple in stark black and white. In that instant—briefly—they were beautiful.

  Without a backward glance, the couple stepped into the cave …

  … and less than a heartbeat later, a couple dressed identically in white jeans and plain white T-shirts winked into existence on the circular stone known as Point Zero before Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. The man took the woman’s hand in his and together they set off at a brisk pace, picking their way through the debris of stones and broken statues that littered the square.

  And because this was Paris, no one gave a second glance at a couple wearing sunglasses at night.

  “Mars Ultor.”

  Mars Ultor had been imprisoned for so long now that he had lost the ability to tell whether he was dreaming or remembering. Were these images and thoughts swirling around inside his head really his, or were they thoughts implanted by Clarent? Were they the memories of the sword, or of those who had carried the sword?

  He remembered his sons, Romulus and Remus. They had never left him. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not recall his wife’s face. He had wiped it from his memory.

  “Mars.”

  He could relive certain battles in exquisite detail. He knew the name of every king and every peasant he had fought, every hero he had slain and every coward who had run from him. He remembered the voyages of discovery, when he and Prometheus had traveled across the unknown world, and even out into the newly created Shadowrealms.

  “Lord Mars.”

  He had witnessed wonders and horrors. He had fought Elders and Archons, Ancients, even the scattered remnants of the legendary Earthlords themselves.

  “Mars. Wake up.”

  He did not like to wake, because that brought the pain, but worse than the pain was the realization that he was a prisoner, and would remain one until the end of time.

  “Wake up.”

  The voice was insistent, irritating and vaguely familiar. In his prison of bone, deep in the Catacombs below Paris, the Elder opened his eyes. They were bright blue for a single instant before they blazed red. “What now?” he snarled, voice echoing inside the helmet that never left his head.

  And then he stopped.

  He was facing what looked like a humani couple. They were tall and slender, their deeply tanned skin stark against pristine white T-shirts and white jeans, and they were both wearing white sneakers. The woman wore her hair cropped close to her skull, whereas the man’s head was smooth shaven, and their eyes were hidden behind matching wraparound sunglasses.

  Mars felt—rather than saw—their auras, and knew these were no humani.

  The couple simultaneously took off their glasses and looked at him. Their eyes were a brilliant blue. Even through the pain of his perpetually burning and hardening aura, Mars Ultor remembered this couple. “Isis?” he rasped in the ancient language of Danu Talis.

  “It is good to see you, ol
d friend,” the woman said.

  “Osiris?”

  “We have been searching for you for a very long time,” the man added. “And now we’ve found you.”

  “But look at what they’ve done to you,” Isis said, obviously distressed, her eyes filling with silver tears.

  The Witch of Endor had trapped Mars in a prison cell deep in the Catacombs beneath Paris. The skull of a creature that had never roamed the earth had been hollowed out and shaped into his prison. Then the Witch had added an extra torment: she had caused Mars’s aura to constantly burn and harden on the surface of his skin, like lava bubbling from the earth’s core, leaving him trapped and in agony beneath a heavy crust.

  Mars Ultor attempted to laugh, but the sound came out like a growl. “For millennia I see no one, and now it seems I am popular again.”

  Isis and Osiris separated and moved to either side of what looked like a huge gray statue forever in the act of trying to rise. The lower half of Mars’s body, from the waist down, was sunk deep into the ground where Dee had turned the floor to liquid bone and then frozen it solid again. Mars’s outstretched left arm dripped stalactites of ivory. Clinging to the Elder’s back were the hideous satyrs, Phobos and Deimos, their jaws gaping wide. Behind him was a long rectangular stone plinth, now cracked in two.

  “We know Dee was here,” Isis said, trailing her fingers over the ivory. Gray-white smoke coiled off her flesh.

  “He found me. Did he tell you were I was?” Mars asked eagerly.

  “No, Dee has told us nothing. He has betrayed you. He has betrayed all of us,” Osiris said. He was standing behind Mars, examining in almost minute detail the statues of the satyrs.

  “He asked me to Awaken a boy, a Gold.”

  “And he used the Gold to summon Coatlicue to this Shadowrealm.”

  Red-black smoke curled from the Elder’s eyes. A spasm wracked his body and huge chunks of hardened aura fell off, only to be instantly replaced again. “I fought the Archon the last time she ravaged the Shadowrealms,” he gasped through the pain of his burning aura. “I lost many good friends.”

  “The doctor somehow discovered her location and called her,” Isis said.

  “But why? There are not enough Elders on this earth to satisfy her appetite.”

  Osiris rapped on the Elder’s back with his knuckle. Sparks crackled. “We believe he wanted to loose her onto that Shadowrealm. We have declared Dee utlaga for his many failures. Now he seeks revenge, and his vengeance will destroy all the Shadowrealms and ultimately this world. His madness will destroy us all.”

  Isis and Osiris had walked full circle around the Elder and now stood facing him again. “But by following his stink, we were able to track him here … to you,” Isis said.

  “Free me,” Mars pleaded. “Let me loose to hunt the doctor.”

  The couple shook their heads in unison. “We cannot. When Zephaniah bound you, she used a combination of Archon lore and Earthlord spells that Abraham taught her. They are unknown to us.”

  “Then why are you here?” Mars growled. “What brings you from your island Shadowrealm? Are you here to mock me?”

  “I asked them here.”

  An elderly woman in a neat gray blouse and skirt stepped into the cave. She was short and round, and her blue-tinged hair was tightly permed. Overlarge black glasses covered much of her face, and there was a white cane in her right hand.

  Mars Ultor’s eyes smoked red fire. “Who are you?”

  “What—you do not recognize me?” Slowly the bone cell began to fill with an odor like autumn woodsmoke.

  Mars’s eyes blinked blue.

  “Husband,” the Witch of Endor said very softly, “do you know me now?”

  Mars’s eyes flickered red to blue to red again; smoke poured from beneath his helmet and his stone-hard skin ran with countless burning cracks. The Elder howled and raged and the cave stank of his fear, a fetid mixture that reeked of burnt meat. Finally, when he was exhausted and the red had leached from his eyes, leaving them blue again, he looked at the woman who had been his wife, the woman who had bound him to this eternity of suffering. “What do you want, Zephaniah?”

  “Why, husband,” the old woman said with a gap-toothed smile. “I have come to free you. It is time: this world is in need of a Warlock again.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again I am indebted to all of those people who make this series happen. The list grows bigger with each book, but some names remain:

  I will always be indebted to Beverly Horowitz and Krista Marino at Delacorte Press, who allow me the time and space and offer continued and indeed continuous support, as well as to Colleen Fellingham.

  To Barry Krost and Richard Thompson, who attempt (usually successfully) to keep me on the straight and narrow.

  To Sherrod Turner and Jim Di Bella, who provided the getaway.

  To Jill Gascoine and Alfred Molina for the retreat and safe haven.

  And to the many others who, in their various ways, made this book happen, especially Colette Freedman and Robert and Sharon Freedman. With sincere thanks to: Melanie Rose, Julie Blewett Grant, Michael Carroll, Patrick Kavanagh and Garth Nichols.

  And, of course, to Claudette Sutherland.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  An authority on mythology and folklore, Michael Scott is one of Ireland’s most successful authors. A master of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and folklore, he has been hailed by the Irish Times as “the King of Fantasy in these isles.” The Necromancer is the fourth book in the series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. Look for book one, The Alchemyst; book two, The Magician; and book three, The Sorceress, all available from Delacorte Press.

  You can visit Michael Scott at www.dillonscott.com.

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Michael Scott

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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