The Sorceress

by Michael Scott

  Tapping the stone blade against the palm of his left hand, he looked around, eyes narrowing. How would he attack a place like this? Scathach would know; the Warrior Maid would be able to tell him what they were up against and where the first attack would occur. He was guessing that the attackers had not brought siege engines, so storming the walls would be both time-consuming and costly. The Horned God would need to create an opening ….

  And then Josh suddenly realized that he didn’t need the Warrior Maid to instruct him. He already knew. Sophie had been right: when Mars had Awakened him, he’d passed on his martial knowledge.

  Josh turned to watch Palamedes and Shakespeare. The Gabriel Hounds had clambered up along the metal walls and joined those others already on the metal parapets. In total there were perhaps a hundred warriors, and Josh knew that there were not enough. They were all armed with bows and arrows, crossbows and spears. Why no modern weapons? he wondered. The archers had a handful of arrows in their quivers, the spearmen two or three spears apiece. Once they had fired their arrows and thrown their spears, they were useless. They would have to stand and wait for their attackers.

  Josh found himself turning toward the gate, and almost of its own accord his hand came up, pointing the tip of the sword at the entrance. He knew that the weakest part of any fortress was its gate. Josh’s lips twisted in an ugly smile. “He will concentrate his attack here,” he said to no one in particular, staring hard at the gate, and a coil of gray-black smoke curled off the blade, almost in agreement. This was where the Horned God would attempt to create its opening.

  At that moment a blow struck the gates with enough force to set the walls ringing. Cars shifted and moved in their tall stacks. Another blow, as if from a battering ram, vibrated through the night. Somewhere off to the right, a car toppled and crashed to the ground. Glass shattered.

  The stag cried out again, a sound of raw power.

  Clarent seemed to react to the sound. It twitched and actually turned in Josh’s palm. Heat coiled around his wrist, and suddenly his aura crackled orange.

  “Josh …,” Sophie whispered.

  Josh turned to look at his twin and saw that she was staring at his hands. He looked down. A pair of gauntlets had appeared on his hands where they gripped the hilt of the stone sword. They looked like soft leather gloves, and they were stained and worn, the leather scraped, dappled with what looked like dirt and mud.

  Another tremendous blow struck the gate.

  “We don’t have enough troops to hold the walls,” Josh said, thinking aloud. He pointed with Clarent. “Palamedes and Shakespeare should open the gates. The Gabriel Hounds can pick off the attackers as they bunch up in the narrow entrance.”

  Flamel stepped forward and reached out for Josh. “We need to get out of here.”

  The moment his fingers touched the boy’s shoulder, Josh’s aura intensified around him, yellow threads of power crawling across his chest and arms. The Alchemyst jerked his fingers back as if they had been burned. The stone sword glowed briefly gold, then faded to an ugly red-speckled black as a wash of emotions took Josh by surprise.

  Fear. A terrible all-consuming fear of beastlike creatures and shadowy humans.

  Loss. Countless faces, men, women and children, family, friends and neighbors. All dead.

  Anger. The overriding emotion was one of anger—a simmering, all-consuming rage.

  The boy slowly turned to look at the immortal. Their eyes locked. Josh immediately knew that these new emotions had nothing to do with the sword. He had held Clarent before and had come to recognize the peculiarly repulsive nature of its memories and impressions. He knew that what he’d just experienced were the Alchemyst’s thoughts. When the man had touched him, he’d felt Flamel’s fear, loss and anger, and something else also: for a single instant there had been the vaguest ghostly impression of children … lots of children, in the clothes and costumes of a dozen countries from across the centuries. And as the immortal human had jerked his hand away, Josh had been left with the impression that all the children had been twins.

  Josh took a step toward the Alchemyst and stretched out his hand, fingers spread wide. Perhaps if he just touched Nicholas and held on tightly, he’d finally have some answers. He would know the truth about the immortal Nicholas Flamel.

  The Alchemyst took a step back from Josh. Although his lips still curled into a smile, Josh saw the older man’s hands close into fists and caught the suggestion of light as his fingernails turned green. A suggestion of mint touched the air, but it was sour and bitter.

  Another crash shook the car yard and the gate vibrated in its frame. Metal screeched and sang as the Wild Hunt launched themselves, scratching and clawing at the walls. Josh hesitated, torn between forcing a confrontation with the Alchemyst and dealing with the assault. Something his father had once said to him popped into his head. They’d been walking on the banks of the Tennessee River and talking about the Civil War Battle of Shiloh. “It’s always best to fight just one battle at a time, son,” he’d said. “You win more that way.”

  Josh turned away. He needed to talk to Sophie, tell her what he’d experienced, and then, together, they would confront Flamel. He darted toward Palamedes. “Wait,” he called, “don’t fire!”

  But before he could stop Palamedes, Josh heard the Saracen Knight’s deep voice, loud and clear across the junkyard.

  “Fire!”

  The archers on the parapets released their arrows, which keened and whispered as they cut through the air and disappeared into the night.

  Josh bit his lip. They should be conserving their ammunition, but he had to acknowledge that the Saracen Knight knew his tactics. Arrows first, then spears, with the powerful but short-range crossbows held in reserve for close-quarters combat.

  “Spears,” the Saracen Knight called. “Fire!”

  The Gabriel Hounds flung their tall leaf-bladed spears down from the walls.

  Josh tilted his head, listening, focusing with his enhanced senses, but he heard no sound from the attacking forces. It seemed incredible, but the Wild Hunt were moving and fighting in absolute silence.

  “We need to go,” Nicholas said urgently.

  Josh ignored him. Then he heard ragged talons and teeth tear at the metal, ripping away fencing, slashing at the piled cars.

  “Arrows,” Shakespeare called from another section of the wall. “Loose!”

  Another tremendous blow shook the gate.

  “The gate,” Josh shouted, his voice strong and commanding. “They’re going to come in through the gate!”

  Both Palamedes and William Shakespeare turned to look at the boy.

  Clarent blazed red-black in the boy’s hand as he pointed. “Concentrate on the gate. That’s where they will try and break through.”

  Palamedes shook his head, but the Bard immediately started moving the Gabriel Hounds under his command toward the gate.

  Clarent glowed bright red, twitching in his hand, and Josh unwittingly took a step forward, almost as if the sword was pulling him closer to the enemy.

  “One more blow,” he murmured.

  ne more blow,” Dee muttered.

  Dee and Bastet had stood in silence and watched the Wild Hunt fling themselves at the metal walls. Unlike normal wolves, these creatures moved without barking or even growling; the only sound was the clicking of their claws on the pavement. Most loped on four legs, but some ran on two, stooped and hunched over, and Dee wondered if here was the source of the werewolf legend. The dogs, the Gabriel Hounds, had always protected the humani; the wolves of the Wild Hunt had always hunted them.

  About a hundred of the more agile wolves had clawed their way over the fence and up along the stacked cars. And then the defenders had appeared at the parapets. Arrows whistled into the first row of the Wild Hunt, and the moment the arrows touched the human-faced wolves, the creatures changed. Dee glimpsed apemen, Roman centurions, Mongol warriors, Neanderthal cavemen, Prussian officers and English Roundheads … and then the
y crumbled to dust on the air.

  “Cernunnos is wasting his troops,” Bastet said shortly. She had stepped back into the shadows and was almost completely invisible, bundled up in a long black leather coat.

  “It’s a distraction,” the Magician said aloud, not looking at the Elder. It was the first time she had spoken since she had been shamed by the Archon, and Dee could almost feel the rage coming off her in slow waves. The Magician doubted that anyone—or anything—had ever spoken to the Elder like that and survived. He was also conscious that he had witnessed her humiliation; Bastet would never forget that. From the corner of his eye, he could see the great cat head turning to look down on him.

  “Those attacking the walls are just a distraction,” he added quickly, explaining himself. “The main assault will take place at the gate.” He paused, then asked: “I am presuming nothing can harm the Archon?”

  Bastet’s eyes narrowed to slits. “It lives,” she hissed. “And so it can die.”

  “I thought the Archons were only stories,” he said quickly. Dee wondered just how much the cat-headed goddess knew about the creature.

  The Elder was quiet for a moment before she answered. “In my youth I was taught that at the heart of every story is a grain of truth,” she said.

  Dee found it hard to imagine the cat-headed goddess as a youngster; he had a sudden absurd image of a fluffy white kitten. Had Bastet ever been young—or had she been born, or hatched, fully grown? There was so much he wanted to know. His eyes narrowed as he looked across the street toward Cernunnos. And now here was a new mystery: the Archon. Dee had spent several lifetimes investigating the legends of the Elders. Occasionally, he had come across fragments of stories about the mysterious race who had ruled the earth in the very distant past, long before the Great Elders raised Danu Talis from the seabed. It was said that the Elders had built their empires upon fragments of Archon technology and had even taken possession and settled some of the cites abandoned by the ancient race. But how had one become indebted to an Elder? Surely the Archons were more powerful than those who had come after them? The Elders, even the Next Generation, were infinitely more powerful than the humani who had followed them into the world.

  The Magician watched the Archon lift its huge club and bring it around in a tremendous blow against the solid-looking metal door. The sound exploded into the night and a screech of white-hot sparks spewed into the air. The door shuddered and creaked, and when Cernunnos jerked the club free, it ripped away long strips of metal, leaving them dangling. The huge horned creature dropped the club, gripped both sides of the torn door and wrenched it apart, peeling back the metal as if it were as thin as paper.

  Standing back, Cernunnos allowed the Wild Hunt to pour through the ragged opening. The creature turned to look at Dee and Bastet and its beautiful face lit up with a radiant smile. “Dinnertime,” it said.

  osh darted forward, taking up a position where he could watch the gate. He saw the thick metal bulge inward, then rip open, and caught a glimpse—a fleeting impression—of the huge horned creature that had torn the defenses apart with its bare hands. Clarent jerked in his grip again, attempting to pull him forward, closer to the action; Josh had to make an effort to stand still.

  And then the Wild Hunt appeared.

  They were smaller than he had imagined, but still bigger and broader than any wolves he had ever seen before. And behind the fur and filth, their faces were unquestionably human. The savage creatures surged through the opening, boiling over one another, teeth and claws slashing as they raced forward, but the narrow metal walls kept them bunched close together. There were no barks or growls; the only sounds were the clicking of their claws and the snapping of teeth.

  “Arrows,” Josh whispered.

  “Loose!” Palamedes called from the left-hand parapet, almost as if he’d heard.

  A second wave of arrows rained down on the Wild Hunt. For an instant the creatures winked back into the forms they had worn as humans: Spartan warriors, blue-painted Celts, massive Vikings and tall Masai hunters. Then fur, flesh and bones dissolved into age-old dust. Those who came behind blinked grit from their yellow eyes, sneezing as it coated their muzzles.

  “Fire!” Shakespeare shouted from the right-hand side.

  A third wave of arrows scythed into the wolves. Samurai in full armor, ferocious Gurkas in jungle camouflage and primitive hominids turned from wolves to humans to dust in a heartbeat. Crusader knights in metal and German World War II officers in gray, French legionnaires in blue and savage Vandals in furs briefly assumed their human forms before they disappeared. Josh noticed that they all had smiles on their faces, as if they were relieved to finally be free.

  “Three volleys: the Gabriel Hounds are out of arrows,” Josh murmured.

  “We’ve got to go now,” Flamel snapped, coming around to stand in front of Josh.

  “No,” Josh answered quietly. “We’re not leaving.”

  “You agreed it was better if we left,” Flamel began. “We will fight them, but not today.”

  “I changed my mind,” Josh said shortly. On one level—thinking coldly, practically, logically—he knew that it made sense to run, hide and regroup. He looked for Shakespeare, finding him on a parapet, surrounded by the Gabriel Hounds. The Bard had been prepared to sacrifice himself, to buy time to allow the others to escape. That had nothing to do with logic; that had been an emotional decision. And sometimes emotion won more battles than logic. Clarent shivered in his grip and for the first time Josh caught momentary impressions of the lineage of warriors who had held the ancient blade, who had faced down terrible odds, fought monsters and demons, battled entire armies. Some—many—had died. But none had run. The stone blade whispered agreement in Josh’s mind. A warrior didn’t run.

  “Josh …” Anger had crept into the Alchemyst’s voice.

  “We’re staying!” Josh barked. He turned to look at Flamel, and something in the boy’s face and eyes made the Alchemyst step back.

  “Then you are putting yourself and your twin in terrible danger,” Flamel said icily.

  “I think we’ve been in terrible danger from the moment we met you,” Josh said. Unconsciously, he lifted the smoking blade, moving it in the air between them, tracing two waving lines in the air. “We’ve spent the last couple of days running with you from danger to danger.” His lips pulled back from his teeth in a frightening grin. “I think we should have been running from you.”

  The Alchemyst folded his arms, but not before Josh once again smelled bitter peppermint. “I am going to pretend you did not say that.”

  “But I did. And I meant it.”

  “You are overtired,” Nicholas said quietly. “You have only recently been Awakened and have not had a chance to deal with that. Maybe a little of Mars’s knowledge leaked into you, confusing you, and,” he added, nodding to the sword, “you are carrying the Coward’s Blade. I know what it can do, the dreams it brings, the promises it makes. It can even make a boy think he’s a man.” He stopped and took a quick breath and changed his tone, forcing the bitterness from his voice. “Josh, you’re not thinking clearly.”

  “I disagree,” Josh retorted. “For the first time I’m thinking very clearly. This—all this—is because of us.” He looked over the Alchemyst’s shoulder, concentrating on the Wild Hunt.

  Flamel followed Josh’s gaze and glanced behind him. “Yes,” he agreed. “But not because of you, not because of Sophie and Josh Newman. This is because of what you are, and what you can become. This is just another battle in a war that has raged for millennia.”

  “Winning battles wins wars,” Josh said. “My father once told me it’s always best to fight one battle at a time. We’re fighting this one.”

  “Maybe you should ask your sister,” Flamel countered.

  “He doesn’t need to,” Sophie said quietly. Drawn by the argument, she had come to stand behind her brother.

  “So you’re in agreement about this?” Flamel demanded.

 
“The two that are one,” Sophie said, watching the Alchemyst’s face. “Isn’t that what we are?”

  Josh turned to focus on the attack. The Gabriel Hounds had thrown their spears and fired the last of their crossbow bolts. The metal corridor was now thick with swirling, cloying dust. Vague shapes moved in the cloud, but none of the enemy had broken through yet. Palamedes and Shakespeare had come down from the walls and were marshaling the hounds around the entrance to the alleyway. Josh suddenly looked up, realizing that the walls were vulnerable, and was unsurprised to see the first of the wolf heads appear over the parapets.

  “If anything happens to either of you now,” Flamel said desperately, turning away from Josh, concentrating on Sophie, “then everything we have done, everything we have achieved will have been for naught. Sophie, you have the Witch’s memories. You know what the Dark Elders did to humanity in the past. And if they capture you and your brother and retrieve the last two pages of the Codex, then they will do that, and worse—much worse—to this world.”

  The immortal’s words stirred horrible memories within Sophie, and she blinked away nightmare images of a devastated flooded earth. She took a deep breath and nodded. “But before they can do anything, the Dark Elders have to capture us.” She held out her left hand and it turned into a solid silver glove. “And we’re no longer ordinary, no longer entirely human, either,” she added bitterly.

  “Pull everyone back!” Josh yelled, and when he turned to look at his sister, she was shocked to see that his pupils had turned gold and were speckled with black and red that matched the hues on the stone sword he held. Mars’s eyes had been red, she remembered. Josh reached out and, before she could say anything, caught her arm. “We’ll pull them back behind the moat,” he said. “Then we’ll set the moat on fire.”

  Sophie blinked. She saw Josh, standing tall and straight, Clarent blazing in his left hand, and then her eyes silvered as the Witch’s memories flooded her and she saw the ghostly image of Mars in red and gold armor superimposed over her brother. He too carried his sword in his left hand.