The Magician

by Michael Scott

  The tiny Frenchwoman grabbed her sword and leapt out of the car.

  “More humani with swords,” the Disir spat, blade falling toward the woman.

  “Not just any humani,” Joan said, easily turning the weapon aside, her own sword then flicking out to clink against the remains of the rusted mail on the Disir’s shoulders. “I am Joan of Arc!” The longsword in her hands twirled and twisted, creating a spinning wheel of steel that drove the Disir back with the ferocity of its attack. “I am the Maid of Orléans.”

  Sophie and Nicholas moved cautiously toward Nidhogg. Sophie noted that its entire tail was coated with heavy black stone, which had now started to creep up its back and down its hind legs. The weight of the stone tail anchored the creature to the ground, and Sophie saw its huge muscles bunching and rippling as it tugged itself toward the water. She could see where its claws and dragging tail left deep indentations in the pavement.

  “Sophie,” Flamel shouted, “I need some help!”

  “But Josh…,” she began, distracted.

  “Josh is gone,” he snapped. He swooped in to snatch Clarent off the ground, hissing in surprise at the heat of the weapon. Darting forward, he slapped at Nidhogg with the sword. The blade bounced harmlessly off the stone-sheathed skin. “Sophie, help me free Scatty and then we’ll go after Josh. Use your powers.”

  The Alchemyst hacked at Nidhogg again but without any effect. His worst fears had been realized: Dee had gotten his hands on Josh…and Josh had the last two pages from the Codex. Nicholas looked over his shoulder. Sophie was standing still, looking frightened and completely bemused.

  “Sophie! Help me.”

  Sophie obediently raised her hands, pressed her thumb against her tattoo and tried to call on her Fire magic. Nothing happened. She couldn’t concentrate; she was too worried about her brother. What was he doing? Why had he gone with Dee and Machiavelli? It didn’t look as though they had forced him to—he’d been driving them!

  “Sophie!” Nicholas called.

  But she knew he’d been in danger—real and terrible danger. She’d felt the emotion deep within her, recognized it for what it was. Whenever Josh was in trouble, she knew. When he’d nearly drowned off Pakala Beach on Kauai, she’d woken up breathless and gasping; when he’d broken his ribs on the football field in Pittsburgh, she’d distinctly felt the sharp pain in her left side, felt the sting with every breath she took.

  “Sophie!”

  What had happened? One moment he was in mortal danger…and the next…?

  “Sophie!” Flamel snarled.

  “What?” she snapped, turning on the Alchemyst. She felt a quick surge of anger; Josh was right—he’d been right all along. This was the Alchemyst’s fault.

  “Sophie,” he said more gently. “I need you to help me. I can’t do this on my own.”

  Sophie turned to look at the Alchemyst. He was crouched on the ground, cool green vapor puddling around him. A thick emerald cord of smoke wrapped around one of Nidhogg’s huge legs and disappeared deep into the earth, where it looked as if Flamel had attempted to trap it. Another rope of smoke, thinner, less substantial than the first, was loosely wrapped around one of the creature’s hind legs. Nidhogg inched forward and the green cord snapped and dissolved into the air. Another few steps and it would carry Scathach—her friend—into the river. Sophie wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Her fear and anger lent her focus. When she pressed her tattoo, flames popped alight on each finger. She splashed silver fire across Nidhogg’s back, but it had no effect. Then she peppered the monster with tiny fiery hailstones, but it didn’t even seem to notice. It continued to edge nearer to the water.

  Fire didn’t work, so she tried wind. But the miniature tornados she threw bounced harmlessly off the creature. Scouring the Witch’s memories, she tried a trick Hekate had used against the Mongol Horde. She whipped up a sharp wind that drove stinging grit and dirt into Nidhogg’s eyes. The creature merely blinked and a second, protective eyelid slid down over its huge eye.

  “Nothing’s working!” she screamed as the monster dragged Scatty ever closer to the edge. “Nothing’s working!”

  The Disir’s sword slashed out. Joan ducked, and the heavy blade whistled over her head and sliced into the Citroën, turning the windshield into white powder, popping off the tiny windshield wipers.

  Joan was furious; she loved her 2CV Charleston. Francis had wanted to buy her a new car for her birthday, in January. He’d given her a pile of glossy car catalogs and told her to pick one. She’d pushed the catalogs aside and told him she’d always wanted the little classic French car. He’d searched all over Europe for the perfect model and then spent a small fortune having it restored to its original pristine condition. When he’d presented it to her, it had been wrapped in three thick ribbons of blue, white and red.

  Another wide slash from the Disir scored a rent on the hood of the car, and then another cut off the small round headlight that perched over the right front wheel arch like an eye. The light bounced away and shattered.

  “Do you know,” Joan asked, her huge eyes dark with fury, renewing her attack on the Disir, every word matched by a hammer blow from her sword, “how difficult it is to find original parts for this car?”

  The Disir fell back, desperately trying to defend herself from Joan’s whirling blade, pieces of her rotting chain mail flying away as the small Frenchwoman’s sword struck closer and closer. She kept trying different fighting styles to defend herself, but nothing was effective against the ferocious onslaught.

  “You will notice,” Joan continued, pushing the warrior back toward the river, “that I have no fighting style. That is because I was trained by the greatest warrior of all. I was trained by Scathach the Shadow.”

  “You may defeat me,” the Disir said grimly, “but my sisters will avenge my death.”

  “Your sisters,” Joan said, with a final savage cut that snapped the Disir’s blade in two. “Would they be the two Valkyries currently frozen into their own personal iceberg?”

  The Disir faltered, swaying on the edge of the wall along the river. “Impossible. We are undefeatable.”

  “Everyone can be defeated.” The flat of Joan’s blade clanged against the Disir’s helmet, stunning her. Then Joan darted forward, her shoulder catching the swaying Disir in the chest, knocking her backward into the Seine. “Only ideas are immortal,” she whispered.

  Still clutching the broken remains of her sword, the Valkyrie disappeared into the murky river in a huge splash that drenched Joan from head to toe.

  Sophie was puzzled. Her magic had failed against Nidhogg…but how had Josh…? He had no powers.

  The sword: he had the sword.

  Sophie snatched Clarent from Flamel’s hand. And instantly her aura snapped to life, sparking, crackling, long streamers of icy light spinning around her body. She felt a rush of emotions, a swirling mess of thoughts, ugly thoughts, dark thoughts, the memories and emotions of those men and women who had carried the sword in ages past. She was about to fling the weapon away in disgust, but she knew it was probably Scatty’s only chance. Nidhogg’s tail was wounded, so Josh must have cut it there. But she’d seen the Alchemyst hack at the tough hide with no result.

  Unless…

  Racing up to the monster, she plunged the weapon point first into its shoulder.

  The effect was immediate. Red-black fire burned along the length of the blade, and the monster’s skin immediately started to harden. Sophie’s aura blazed brighter than it had ever been before, and instantly her brain was filled with impossible visions and incredible memories. Then her aura overloaded and winked out in an explosion that picked her up and sent her sailing through the air. She managed to scream once before she came crashing down onto the canvas roof of Joan’s Citroën, which slowly and gently ripped along its seams and deposited her neatly in the front passenger seat.

  Nidhogg spasmed, great claws opening as its flesh hardened.

  Joan of Arc darted thr
ough the monster’s legs, grabbed Scatty around the waist and jerked her free, oblivious to the creature’s huge feet stamping inches from her head.

  Nidhogg bellowed, a sound that set house alarms clanging across the city. Every car alarm in the parking lot burst to life. The beast attempted to turn its head, to follow Joan as she dragged Scatty away, but its ancient flesh was solidifying into thick black stone. Its mouth opened, revealing its daggerlike teeth.

  Abruptly, a huge section of the quayside cracked; rock pulverized to dust, crumpling to powder beneath the creature’s weight. Nidhogg tilted forward and crashed down through the moored tourist boat, snapping it in two, disappearing into the Seine in an enormous explosion of water that sent a huge wave racing down the river.

  Lying on the quayside, close to the water’s edge, soaked through, Scathach came slowly, groggily awake. “I haven’t felt this bad in centuries,” she mumbled, attempting but failing to sit up. Joan eased her into a sitting position and held her tightly. “The last thing I remember…” Scatty’s green eyes snapped open. “Nidhogg…Josh.”

  “He tried to save you,” Flamel said, limping up to Scatty and Joan. He snatched Clarent from the quayside. “He stabbed Nidhogg, slowed it down long enough for us to get here. Then Joan fought the Disir for you.”

  “We all fought for you,” Joan said. She put her arm around Sophie, who had staggered from the wrecked car, bruised and battered, with a long scrape along her forearm but otherwise unharmed. “Sophie finally defeated Nidhogg.”

  The Warrior slowly got to her feet, turning her head from side to side, working her stiff neck muscles. “And Josh?” she asked, looking around. Her eyes went wide with alarm. “Where’s Josh?”

  “Dee and Machiavelli have him,” Flamel said, his face gray with exhaustion. “We’re not sure how.”

  “We have to go after them now,” Sophie said urgently.

  “Their car’s not in good shape, they cannot have gotten far,” Flamel said. He turned to look at the Citroën. “I’m afraid yours has taken a battering as well.”

  “And I did so love that car…,” Joan murmured.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Scatty said decisively. “We’re about to be inundated with police.”

  And then, like a shark erupting from the waves, Dagon exploded out of the Seine. Rearing up, more fish now than man, gills open on his long neck, round eyes bulging, he wrapped webbed claws around Scathach and dragged her backward into the river. “Finally, Shadow. Finally.”

  They disappeared into the water with barely a splash and didn’t reappear.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Perenelle followed de Ayala’s ghost as he led her through the maze of Alcatraz’s ruined buildings. She tried to keep to the shadows, ducking under shattered walls and empty doorways, constantly alert for creatures moving in the night. She didn’t think the sphinx would dare venture out of the prison—despite their terrifying appearance, sphinxes were cowardly creatures, fearful of the dark. However, many of the beings she’d seen in the spiderwebbed cells below were creatures of the night.

  The entrance to the tunnel was almost directly under the tower that had once held the island’s only fresh water supply. Its metal framework was rusted, eaten away by the salt sea, acid bird droppings and countless tiny leaks from the huge water tank. However, the ground directly beneath the tower was lush with growth, fed by the same dripping water.

  De Ayala pointed out an irregular patch of earth close to one of the metal legs. “You will find a shaft leading down to the tunnel under here. There is another entrance to the tunnel cut into the cliff face,” he said, “but it is only accessible by boat at low tide. That is how Dee brought his prisoner to the island. He doesn’t know about this entrance.”

  Perenelle found a rusted length of metal and used it to scrape away the dirt, revealing broken and cracked concrete beneath the soil. Using the edge of the metal bar, she began to dig away at the dirt. She kept glancing up, trying to gauge how close the birds had come to the island, but with the wind whipping in over the ruined buildings and keening through the rusted metal struts of the water tower, it was impossible to make out any other noises. Tendrils of the thick fog that had claimed San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge had now reached the island, coating everything in a dripping, salt-smelling cloud.

  When she had scraped back the earth, de Ayala drifted over one particular spot. “Just here,” he said, his voice a breath in her ear. “The prisoners discovered the existence of the tunnel and managed to dig a shaft down to it. They understood that decades of water dripping from the tower had softened the soil and even eaten away at the stones beneath. But when they eventually broke through to the tunnel below, it was at high tide, and they found that it was flooded. They abandoned their efforts.” He showed his teeth in a perfect smile he had not possessed in life. “If only they had waited until the tide turned.”

  Perenelle scraped away more soil, revealing more broken stone. Jamming the metal bar under the edge of a block, she leaned hard on it. The stone didn’t budge. She pressed again with both hands, and then, when that didn’t work, lifted a boulder and hammered once on the metal bar: the clink rang out across the island, tolling like a bell.

  “Oh, this is impossible,” she muttered. She was reluctant to use her powers, since it would reveal her location to the sphinx, but she had no other choice. Cupping her right hand, she allowed her aura to gather in her palm, where it puddled like mercury. She rested her hand lightly, almost gently, on the stone, then turned her hand over and allowed the raw power to pour from her palm and seep into the granite. The stone turned soft and soapy and then melted like candle wax. Thick globs of liquid rock fell away and disappeared into the darkness below.

  “I’ve been dead a long time; I thought I’d seen wonders, but I’ve never seen anything like that,” de Ayala said in awe.

  “A Scythian mage taught me the spell in return for saving his life. It’s quite simple, really,” she said. She leaned over the hole and then jerked back, eyes watering. “Oh my: it stinks!”

  The ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala hovered directly over the hole. He turned and smiled, showing his perfect teeth again. “I can’t smell anything.”

  “Trust me, be glad you cannot,” Perenelle muttered, shaking her head; ghosts often had a peculiar sense of humor. The tunnel reeked of rotting fish and ancient seaweed, of rancid bird and bat droppings, of pulped wood and rusting metal. There was another scent also, bitter and acrid, almost like vinegar. Bending down, she tore a strip off the bottom of her dress and wrapped it around her nose and mouth as a crude mask.

  “There is a ladder of sorts,” de Ayala said, “but be careful, I’m sure it’s rusted through.” He suddenly glanced up. “The birds have reached the southern end of the island. And something else. Something evil. I can feel it.”

  “The Morrigan.” Perenelle leaned over the hole and snapped her fingers. A slender feather of soft white light peeled off her fingertips and drifted down the hole, disappearing into the gloom below, shedding a flickering milky light on the streaked and dripping walls. The light had also revealed the narrow ladder, which turned out to be little more than spikes driven at irregular angles into the wall. The spikes, each no longer than four inches, were thick with rust and dripping moisture. Leaning over, she caught the first spike and tugged hard. It seemed solid enough.

  Perenelle twisted around and slid one leg into the opening. Her foot found one of the spikes and immediately slipped off. Drawing her leg back out of the hole, she tugged off her sandals and tucked them into her belt. She could hear the flapping of birds—thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of them—drawing closer. She knew her tiny expenditure of power to melt the stone and light up the interior of the tunnel would have alerted the Morrigan to her position. She had only moments before the birds arrived….

  Perenelle put her leg into the shaft again, her bare foot touching the spike. It was cold and slimy beneath her skin, but at least she was able to get a better
grip. Grasping handfuls of tough grass, she lowered herself, her foot finding another spike, and then she reached down and caught a spike in her left hand. She winced. It felt disgusting, squelching beneath her fingers. And then she smiled; how she’d changed. When she was a girl, growing up in Quimper in France all those years ago, she’d gone paddling in rock pools, picking and eating raw shellfish. She’d wandered barefoot through streets that were ankle deep in mud and filth.

  Testing each step, Perenelle climbed down the length of the shaft. At one point a spike broke away beneath her foot and went clanging into the darkness. It seemed to fall for a long time. She lay back against the foul wall, feeling the damp soak through her thin summer dress. Holding on desperately, she sought another spike. She felt the metal nail in her hand shift, and for a heart-stopping moment, she thought it was going to pull free of the wall. But it held.

  “A close call. I thought you were going to be joining me,” the ghost of de Ayala said, materializing out of the gloom directly before her face.

  “I’m not that easy to kill,” Perenelle said grimly, continuing to climb down. “Though it would be funny if, having survived decades of concentrated attacks from Dee and his Dark Elders, I was to die in a fall.” She looked at the vague shape of the face before her. “What’s happening up there?” She jerked her head in the direction of the opening of the shaft, visible only because of the wisps of gray fog that curled and dribbled into it.

  “The island is covered with birds,” de Ayala said. “Perhaps a hundred thousand of them; they are perched on every available surface. The Crow Goddess has gone into the heart of the prison, no doubt in search of the sphinx.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Perenelle warned. She took another step and her foot sank up to the ankle in thick gooey mud. She had reached the bottom of the shaft. The mud was icy cold, and she could feel the chill seeping into her bones. Something crawled over her toes. “Which way?”