06 The Enchantress

by Michael Scott

  “Mother …,” Anubis sighed.

  The cat-headed Elder turned her back on him, leaned her furry forearms on the window ledge and stared out over the city. Her ragged claws dug gouges in the stone. “Do you know how long I have schemed to bring us to this particular moment in time?”

  “Mother.”

  “The sacrifices I’ve made?”

  Anubis knew when to admit defeat. “Yes, Mother.”

  The huge Elder went to stand alongside Bastet. He pressed his back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. When she was in this sort of mood, it was easier—and safer—not to argue. And although he commanded one of the largest armies in the world, and had created the anpu—which he was now starting to resemble as the Change took him—he was still in awe of his mother. “I’m just nervous,” he admitted, his teeth pressing against his chin.

  Bastet relented. “You have nothing to be nervous about. You are of the house of Amenhotep. I ruled with your father, your brother ruled, it is only right that you should rule. Very few of the Elders will oppose you. Why, even Isis and Osiris are coming tonight. They will support us,” she said confidently.

  Anubis looked around. He had grown up with his brothers in this palace, and they’d spent more time in this room than in any other part of the house. It was their father’s library, the long stone shelves overflowing with books, piled high with the treasures of a hundred Shadowrealms, while tables and drawers were stacked with fragments, scraps and hints of the earth’s distant history. It was in this room that his brother Aten had discovered his fascination with the past.

  “Will I really have to kill him?” he asked suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “My brother.”

  Bastet moved back from the window. She could hear the distant braying of a mob, and it was starting to annoy her. Where were the guards? Why was she not hearing screams as the humani were dispersed?

  “No, you will not have to kill Aten yourself,” she said. “You will simply sign his death warrant. Someone else will push him into the volcano.” She looked her son up and down and nodded approvingly. “The black armor is a nice touch.”

  Anubis was wearing ornate black armor etched with red on every joint and seam. The rivets looked like drops of blood.

  “I wasn’t sure about the color,” he said. “It was either this or the purple, and with my skin beginning to change, I though the red and black would look more dramatic.”

  “The purple would have clashed,” Bastet agreed.

  The texture and hue of Anubis’s copper-colored skin was undergoing the Change. In some places it was coal black, lined with tiny red veins; one hand had begun to stiffen into a claw, and the cartilage of both ears was beginning to thicken and extend upward

  “What will I say at the council meeting?” he asked.

  “As little as possible,” Bastet directed. “You will be the strong silent type. I will speak for you.”

  There was a swell in sound and the streets and alleyways on the other side of the canal suddenly boiled with a humani mob. They were all howling Aten’s name. Some were carrying sticks or brooms; a few carried long knives. Most were unarmed.

  “They want their leader,” Anubis said, joining his mother at the window. The crowd was about a hundred strong, and there were at least twice that many heavily armed guards on the bridges.

  “Your brother was weak,” Bastet snapped. “He began to see the humani as our equals. They are little better than animals. Just because he abolished servitude, they think he is their savior. Now look at what his weakness has spawned. They are burning the city in protest.” She shook her head in astonishment. “Do they honestly think this display will force us to release him?”

  Smoke curled from scores of fires across the city.

  “My officers tell me that hundreds are streaming toward the jail,” Anubis said. “There are even wild reports that anpu were attacked, and I’ve heard stories of rioting in the humani slums. A rumor raced through the marketplace today that a humani defeated a dozen guards and crossed the canal.”

  “Ridiculous!”

  “What will the humani do if we do execute Aten?” Anubis asked.

  “Run wild for a few days. Let them burn their wooden houses and the grain stores. When they get cold and start to grow hungry, they’ll begin to come to their senses. And when you are the ruler here, I expect you to deal harshly with this disconnected, lazy rabble.”

  “I hope I’ll be a good ruler,” Anubis said sincerely.

  “Of course you will,” Bastet snapped. “You’ll do exactly as I say.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Mars, Odin and Hel prepared to make their final stand in the corridors of Alcatraz.

  “There are just too many of them!” Mars shouted. The Elder was standing in a corridor facing down a host of gray Moss People. Short and stunted, their skin the texture of tree bark, they were covered in thick moss, and although they were armed only with wooden swords and spears, their weapons were deadly. Mars’s armor was scratched and torn, and he was bleeding from a score of minor wounds.

  Behind and to his left, he heard Odin grunt and knew the one-eyed Elder had sustained another wound. He was facing off with a dozen filthy vetala.

  “There is no shame in running away to live and fight another day,” Odin grunted in the lost language of Danu Talis.

  Behind them, propped against a wall, lay Hel. She had managed to drive back a hairy minotaur with her long metal whip, but not before its horns had opened a deep gash in her side and along her left arm. “Running would be good,” she grunted, “if we had somewhere to run to.”

  Realizing that if they remained in the exercise yard they would eventually be overwhelmed, the three Elders had fought their way through the prison corridors. Attacked on all sides by nightmarish creatures, they had defeated scores, but for every one they killed, another three appeared. Each creature was different: some fought with weapons, others with teeth and claws, but curiously, they did not fight with one another. They were focused solely on attacking the three Elders.

  “They’re hungry,” Hel said. “Look at them: most are skin and bones. They’ve probably been in these cells for months in a deep sleep. And now, like animals coming out of hibernation, they need to eat. Unfortunately, we’re the only things here they can eat.”

  “I wonder why they don’t turn on one another,” Mars said.

  “They have to be under some sort of binding spell,” Odin said.

  “I think it is simpler than that,” Hel lisped. “I don’t think they can see one another. They can only see us.”

  “Of course!” Odin answered. “They’re under a glamour.”

  Mars hacked at a pair of Moss Men—or they could have been women; it was hard to tell under the moss and hair—and they staggered back, unperturbed by the slashes across their woody skin. “If we could lift the spell …,” he began.

  “… they would attack one another,” Hel said. “That would make our job easier.”

  As the Elders fought their way down a corridor lined with stacks of cells, they were cut, stabbed and bitten, their flesh scraped and torn. It was difficult for them to use their auras to heal the wounds as they ran and fought. And now they were tiring, their auras were fading and they were starting to discover that some of the wounds had been infected by the monsters’ poisonous teeth and claws.

  A howling cucubuth dropped from one of the upper cells and landed on top of Mars. Long teeth snapped at the Elder’s head, biting into his ears. Odin caught the creature by the tail, spun it once, twice, then sent it sailing the entire length of the corridor. It hit the wall hard enough to crack the stonework.

  Hel was swarmed by a dozen horned Domovi. Each creature was about the size of a small child, completely covered in hair, except for circles around the eyes. They bit and snapped, bending their heads to gore her with their short, razor-sharp horns. Mars grabbed two by the legs and used them as clubs to beat t
he others away from her. The two he held wriggled and twisted, screaming and scratching at his hands, jabbering in a language that set his teeth on edge.

  Odin faced the vetala. Their faces were those of beautiful young men and women; their bodies were skeletal, and they walked on talons that were a cross between human feet and birds’ claws. They fought with leathery bats’ wings, which were tipped with one long hooked finger. The vetala were blood drinkers and had the enormous savage teeth of their kind.

  “Wish I had my wolves with me now,” Odin muttered. “They’d make short work of these filthy things.” He hissed in pain as a spike-tipped wing ripped his arm open from wrist to elbow.

  And then Mars’s sword sliced apart the attacking vetala’s wings as if they were paper, and Hel’s whip punctured holes through another.

  Odin called up his aura. The air buzzed with ozone, and gray smoke shimmered over his flesh. He focused on the wound in his arm. The blood stopped pumping out, but the wound didn’t heal. “My aura is almost completely depleted,” he muttered. The Elder slumped back against a wall, exhausted.

  Hel pressed her claws to her uncle’s torn arm and squeezed. Her bloodred aura flickered once, then faded to pink smoke. “Nothing. Something is draining us,” she said.

  A shiver ran through the assembled monsters, but instead of crowding in, they started to pull back. The minotaur pointed to Hel and deliberately licked his thick lips. She bared her fangs and stuck out her tongue at him.

  “They’re backing away,” Odin said. He tried to raise his aura again, but only the merest veil of gray danced over his skin.

  “I’ll wager that is not good news,” Mars said. A shadow danced along the wall. “Something’s coming,” he said.

  The monsters parted and a sphinx stepped forward. The body was that of an enormous lion with the wings of an eagle. The head belonged to a young woman who was beautiful until she opened her mouth to reveal her sharp teeth and serpent’s tongue. The sphinx smiled and tilted her head to one side. Her long black forked tongue flickered, tasting the air. “Oh, I can taste all your auras. They are very sweet.” She licked her lips as she approached, her claws digging into the stones at her feet. “I’ve waited my entire lifetime to eat an Elder’s memories and suddenly three Elders come along together. What wonders will you reveal to me?”

  “I knew something was draining our auras,” Hel muttered. The sphinx had the ability to drink any aura and drain its energy.

  “So you are Mars, Odin and Hel. My mother sometimes spoke of you. She did not like any of you. But you,” she said to Hel. “She especially disliked you: she said you were ugly.”

  The Elder laughed. “You think I look ugly …” She moved her mouth, and the fangs jutting up from beneath her bottom lip made her look astonishingly like the boar she had just eaten. “I knew your mother both before and after the Change took her. She was ugly before and, let me tell you, there was little difference afterward. Your mother was so ugly that even the magic mirrors would not talk to her. Your mother was so ugly, she—” Hel was about to continue, but Odin leaned a hand on her arm and shook his head.

  “Enough!”

  “But, it’s true,” Hel protested. “Her mother was so ugly—”

  “You are a daughter of Echidna,” Mars said evenly. He planted his sword point-first in the ground and rested his arms across the pommel. “We knew her. She was kin to us. Which makes you kin to us also.” He spread one arm. “I wonder if you are not fighting on the wrong side?”

  The sphinx shook her beautiful human head. “I am on the right side. The winning side.”

  “Dee is gone,” Mars said.

  “I do not work for Dee,” the sphinx said quickly. “Dee is a fool, a dangerous fool. He attempted to betray us and was declared utlaga. No, I am working with Quetzalcoatl.”

  “Be careful of him,” Odin advised. “He is not to be trusted.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He told me he could give me a proper human body.” She took a step forward, lion’s claws scratching on the stone. “Could he do that?”

  “Probably,” Mars said.

  “Could you?”

  Mars shook his head.

  “What about you, Odin, or you, Hel? Could you give me a human body?”

  Hel shook her head, but the one-eyed Elder said, “I could not, but I know some people who could. I could take you to a Shadowrealm where we could grow you the most perfect body and implant your consciousness and memories into it.”

  “Quetzalcoatl said he can morph this body to a new shape. Can he?” she demanded.

  “Probably,” Odin said. “Who knows what that monster can do?”

  “So why are you here?” Mars asked.

  “I came here to guard our grotesque guests, and then stand watch over Perenelle Flamel. I was promised her memories as my fee.”

  “Did she not escape?” Mars said with a savage grin.

  “She eluded me. When I reach the mainland, I will make it my special duty to seek her out. I am hoping she will still be alive so I can kill her. I am also hoping she has enough of her aura left to resurrect herself, so that I can kill her again.”

  “Better creatures than you have tried to kill her and failed,” Mars said.

  “She is humani. And all humani are weak. She escaped last time because she was lucky.” The sphinx threw back her head and breathed deeply. “I will drain your auras and drink your memories,” she announced. “It will be a banquet indeed.”

  “I’m going to make sure I think my foulest thoughts when you are draining me,” Hel promised. “I’m going to give you indigestion.”

  As the sphinx stepped forward, the three Elders felt a sudden rush of warmth, and then all energy left them. All their minor wounds flared to agony, and more serious wounds reopened.

  Mars stood in front of the other two and attempted to lift his sword, but it was a solid leaden weight. The air filled with the stink of burnt meat, and a shimmering purple-red mist started to steam off his flesh. Behind him, Odin’s gray aura gathered around him, and a bloodred miasma coiled off Hel’s mottled flesh. Ozone mingled with rotting fish and the stench of burnt meat.

  “Smells like a barbecue,” the sphinx purred. “I’ve been on this island for months.” Her nails clicked as she continued toward them. “I came here because I was promised a feast. The memories and aura of the Sorceress were denied me. But you three—you more than make up for that disappointment.”

  Mars fell to his knees, sword clattering across the stones, and Odin collapsed beside him, sprawled on the ground. Only Hel remained on her feet, and that was because she had dug her long nails deep into the wall to hold herself up. She was willing the sphinx to come a few steps closer so she could try to launch herself at the creature. Although the sphinx’s body was that of a lion, the head was a small fragile human being.

  The sphinx stopped and cocked her head to one side. “Do you think you can do it, Elder? Do you think you have the strength to throw yourself at me? I don’t. I think I will take you first.” Delicate nostrils flared as she breathed deeply, and her long black snakelike tongue flickered in the air. “Your defiance will add a certain spice to the meal.”

  Hel tried to lash out with her whip, but she could barely raise it off the ground; she knew she didn’t have the strength to send it cracking through the air.

  “Brave,” the sphinx said. “But foolish, too. You are doomed, Elder. Only a miracle will save you now.”

  “You know,” came a new voice, filling the hallway, “I’ve been called many things in my life. But I’ve never been called a miracle before.”

  The sphinx spun around, hissing.

  Standing alone in the center of the corridor was the American immortal Billy the Kid.

  The sphinx took a step toward Billy. “It seems I was mistaken when I said I would take Hel first. It looks like I’ll be starting with an American first course. An appetizer.” Without warning, her hind legs bunched underneath her and she leapt the length of the corridor, cl
aws extended, mouth gaping.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  In a windowless chamber, deep beneath the Yggdrasill, Hekate, now an ancient and withered woman, lay down in a long coffinlike network of tree roots and folded her arms across her chest, left hand on right shoulder, right palm on left shoulder. The entire tree shuddered and sighed; then the roots coiled around her, embracing her.

  “Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,” William Shakespeare murmured, “the dear repose for limbs with travel tired.”

  “She is the tree,” Scathach said. “Indivisible from it, inextricable, entwined with it. If one dies, the other goes too.”

  “That will never happen,” Huitzilopochtli said confidently, urging his companions out of the windowless circular sleep chamber. “The Yggdrasill has endured for millennia. It will always survive. And so too will the goddess.”

  Scathach’s pointed teeth bit her lip. Less than a week ago she had watched the Yggdrasill—admittedly a smaller version—fall. She had seen the death of Hekate. But that would not happen for ten thousand years.

  Prometheus was waiting outside the door. He was dressed from head to foot in ornate red armor, and a massive red-bladed sword was strapped to his back, the hilt projecting above his left shoulder. Behind him stood a troop of Torc Allta, the wereboars created by Hekate. Two of the huge creatures took up positions outside Hekate’s bedchamber. Their bodies were those of enormous muscular humans, but their faces were porcine, with flattened noses and jutting tusks. Their eyes—bright blue—were human.

  “The Torc Allta will watch over her while she sleeps. None will get close,” Prometheus said.

  “Will they fight with us?” Scathach asked. “They would be more than a match for the anpu.”

  “No, the Torc Allta are loyal only to Hekate,” Prometheus said. “And it is better that humankind stand together for the final battle.” He turned to Huitzilopochtli. “It’s time.”

  Without another word, the two Elders set off down the long twisting corridor.