06 The Enchantress

by Michael Scott

  By now, you will have heard the prophecy time and again. The two that are one must become the one that is all. One to save the world, one to destroy it.

  You know who you are, Josh Newman.

  Do you know what you have to do?

  Have you the courage to do it?

  The words slowly faded from the tablet, leaving it nothing more than a blank green stone once more. Josh turned it over in his hand and then gently slipped it back beneath his armor.

  Josh looked over at the girl who was not his sister but was still his twin, and they both nodded. “It’s time,” he whispered.

  “Time for what?” she asked, groaning as she got up, arm pressed to her stomach.

  “One to save the world,” he said, “one to destroy it.”

  The pyramid groaned as another earthquake tremor rippled through it. The nearby volcano detonated in a long slow rumble, showering sparks onto the city below. There was a sudden patter of footsteps around them. Josh grabbed Clarent and Excalibur and scrambled to his feet … just as Prometheus and Tsagaglalal, then Scathach and Joan, Saint-Germain and finally Palamedes, carrying a groaning Will Shakespeare, climbed onto the top of the pyramid. They were all bloodied and bruised, clothes torn, armor shattered, weapons broken. But they were alive.

  “We need to get out of here,” Prometheus said. “The earthquake will tear the pyramid apart.” They started to climb into Isis and Osiris’s gleaming vimana.

  “I thought I said I was never getting into another vimana,” Shakespeare muttered.

  Josh helped Sophie to her feet and half carried her toward the vimana. Scathach and Joan were about to go to his aid, but Saint-Germain put a hand on their shoulders. “No. Leave them be,” he said in French. “They need this moment together.”

  Sophie was crying. “Josh, we’re powerful, we can do something else….”

  “You know what has to be done,” he said simply. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why all of us are here. We were brought here to do this one thing. This is what we were born for. This is our destiny.”

  “I should be the one to do it,” she insisted. “I’m older.”

  “No you’re not.” He smiled. “Not anymore. I’m about thirty thousand years older than you. And you’re injured. I’m not.” There were tears on his face now, but he was unaware of them. “Besides, I think yours is going to be the harder job.” He hugged her. “Let me do this,” he said, “and if I can, I’ll come find you.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. Now go,” he pleaded.

  “I will never forget you,” Sophie whispered.

  “I will always remember you,” Josh promised.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Areop-Enap had awakened

  Eight bruise-colored eyes looked at the Alchemyst, and then each blinked in turn. Although Areop-Enap had the body of a huge spider, set in the center of her body was a huge, almost human head. It was smooth and round, with no ears or nose, but with a horizontal slash for a mouth. Like a tarantula’s, her tiny eyes were set close to the top of her skull. Beneath the thin shell, the Old Spider’s mouth opened and two long spearlike fangs appeared. “You should probably move now,” she said in a surprisingly sweet voice.

  Nicholas scrambled away just as Areop-Enap erupted upward.

  The Karkinos was huge.

  But Areop-Enap was massive.

  When Perenelle had first encountered the creature, the Old Spider had been large, but she had grown within the protective shell. She stretched, her massive body uncoiling out of the muddy shell. Areop-Enap was easily twice the size of the crab. Finger-thick purple hairs on her broad back waved to and fro.

  “I am smelling Quetzalcoatl and that cat-headed monstrosity in this fog.” She turned to look down at Perenelle. “Madam, would you care to explain just what is going on?”

  The Sorceress pointed. “The crab is trying to eat you. It’s just eaten Xolotl. We need you, Old Spider.”

  The creature shivered. “I have waited a lifetime to hear that.”

  And then she jumped straight up in the air and landed on top of the Karkinos, driving it into the ground. The crab squealed, snapping its massive claws, biting chunks out of the masonry, spraying stones everywhere. Areop-Enap plunged a razor-sharp stinger into the back of the crab and it froze, then started to spasm violently. Suddenly white threads blossomed around the claws, sealing them shut, and then the Old Spider’s huge legs moved, lifting the crab off the ground, spinning it over and over, blindingly fast, completely enfolding it in gossamer-thin gray strands that quickly thickened to become a bulbous white package. The entire process took less than a minute.

  “I’m going to save that for later,” Areop-Enap said. “I’m quite peckish.”

  Slowly, almost delicately, she crouched before Perenelle, all eight eyes regarding her impassively. “How long have I slept?”

  “A few days.”

  “Ah. But when I look at you, I see you have aged more than that.”

  “It has been a busy week,” Perenelle murmured. “You remember my husband, Nicholas.”

  “I remember him dropping a mountain on me.”

  “Your followers were about to sacrifice my wife to a volcano,” Nicholas said. “And it was only a small mountain.”

  “It was.” Areop-Enap picked her way around the room, pausing to lean close to Machiavelli, who was cradling Billy the Kid’s head in his lap. The Italian glared defiantly at the enormous spider.

  Billy’s nose twitched and then his eyes cracked open. He squinted up at the almost human head with the eight eyes. “I’m guessing this is not a nightmare,” he rasped.

  “It’s not,” Machiavelli said.

  “I was afraid of that,” Billy said, and closed his eyes. Then they snapped open. “Does this mean we’ve won?”

  “We have,” Machiavelli said quietly. “Though the cost has been heavy indeed.”

  Areop-Enap picked her way back to Nicholas and Perenelle. “So I am still on the island where Dee was storing the monsters. I can smell beasts in this filthy air.”

  “Not as many as there were,” Nicholas said. “They have been killing one another throughout the night.”

  “I should go and clean up, then,” Areop-Enap said as she turned to scuttle out of the building. “We don’t want any of those trying to swim to shore.”

  “Tell her about the unicorns,” Billy mumbled.

  The spider froze.

  “There may be a few monokerata unicorns running free,” Machiavelli said.

  “With or without horns?” Areop-Enap asked.

  “With.”

  “Extra crunchy. My favorite.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  The heavily laden vimana took off from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun into the night air, carrying the survivors to safety.

  Josh Newman stood where it had perched and raised his right hand in farewell. He watched as Sophie, supported on either side by Scathach and Joan, raised a hand and pressed her fingers against the glass. She was not crying now—she had no tears left.

  One to save the world …

  Josh sat cross-legged in the center of the pyramid. Reaching under his armor, he pulled out the Codex, which Tsagaglalal had given him. He turned it over and over in his hands, feeling the metal surface slick and cool against his flesh. It fell open to the end, ragged edges showing where pages had been torn out … where he would tear them out in ten thousand years’ time.

  Dipping his head, Josh lifted the torn pages from where he carried them in a bag around his neck. He placed them in the book, slotting them back into place. The ancient pages shifted, and threadlike strands appeared, weaving and wrapping together like worms, mending the Codex, making it whole again.

  Then, opening the book at random, Josh placed his index finger on the page and watched the words in endless languages twist beneath his fingernail. And as it scrolled before him, he read the history of the world after the Fall.

  In the days and weeks t
o come, Sophie and the others would rally the survivors, lead them off the sundered island and take them out into the world.

  The people of Danu Talis, Elder and human, would follow Aten and Virginia Dare, an Elder and a human, out across the globe. The couple would establish colonies in all the surrounding lands, and these would grow into the great nations that would one day rule the earth.

  Sophie and Virginia, Joan and Scathach, too, would be given other names and come to be worshipped as goddesses, teachers and saviors of humankind.

  And in time, Sophie Newman, after many adventures, would find a way to lead the other immortals through a series of sequenced leygates back home to their own time, arriving in San Francisco, where it all began.

  Josh closed the Codex and shoved it back beneath his armor. He didn’t want to read any more. Not yet. He was going to have to keep this book safe for over nine and a half thousand years, until he sold it to a penniless French bookseller.

  One to destroy the world.

  Danu Talis had to fall for the modern world to rise.

  And Josh would destroy it.

  The four ancient swords lay on the ground before him. Abraham had told him that the swords would give him the power—all he had to do was to take them in his hand and focus the energy even now pulsing up through the pyramid.

  He just had to pick them up.

  Abraham had said he had a choice. But Josh knew he had no choice, not really. If he did not do this, then his sister—and everyone else—would die, and he would not allow that.

  He sat down and arranged the four swords in front of him.

  But which one … was there an order?

  And suddenly he remembered something Dee had told him. He spoke the words aloud. “ ‘When in doubt, follow your heart. Words can be false, images and sounds can be manipulated. But this’ ”—he tapped his chest, over his heart—“ ‘this is always true.’ ”

  Without hesitation, with his left hand, he immediately reached for Clarent, the Sword of Fire. He felt the shivering heat of the ancient blade as it settled into his palm, and wondered briefly at the origins of these Swords of Power. No matter, he thought; he would have plenty of time in the future to investigate.

  With his right hand, he reached for Joyeuse, the Sword of Earth, and placed it in his left hand. It settled on top of Clarent and immediately broke up into flaking dry earth and dusty soil. It sizzled as it was absorbed into the Sword of Fire.

  Clarent began to glow red-hot, and Josh smelled burning flesh. His flesh.

  His aura began to smoke off him in orange-scented steam.

  Quickly he pressed Durendal on top of Clarent. The Sword of Air instantly dissolved into a wispy white mist and evaporated onto the single blade.

  And finally, Excalibur, the Sword of Ice.

  Josh lifted it in his right hand, holding it for a second, knowing that the instant he brought them together, everything would change … and then he laughed. Everything had already changed. It had changed a long time ago.

  Josh stood, Clarent in his left hand, Excalibur in his right. He held both swords aloft and the entire pyramid bellowed like a huge beast. Then he brought his hands together before his face and pressed the Sword of Ice into Clarent. It melted in an explosive plume that wrapped his left hand in steam. The four Swords of Power—Fire, Earth, Air and Water—combined to create a fifth power: Aether. It burned through him, filling him with knowledge, and with the knowledge came vast unimaginable power, hundreds of millennia of history and learning surging through him.

  He knew … everything!

  His aura raged, a solid spear of orange light blazing high into the heavens.

  Josh looked at his hand. All four of the stone swords were gone now. They had been swallowed into one another, becoming one bar of metal, which was slowly melting into his flesh, searing into it, becoming part of it, bending, twisting, curling into a flat metal hook.

  And there was pain—the likes of which he had never experienced before. He screamed, and what started as pain ended in a cry of triumph as he held the shining silver hook to the sky. He could feel the incredible energy gathering in the pyramid, shaking it violently, just waiting to be released. He would tear this island apart and destroy the world of the Elders, and, in that moment, give birth to the world of man.

  “Goodbye, Sophie,” Josh Newman said, and then Marethyu plunged the hook into the pyramid at his feet. And he spoke aloud the last words he had seen in the Codex.

  “Today, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

  FRIDAY,

  8th June

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  Arm in arm, Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel walked slowly around the island. They were incredibly aged, every one of their six hundred years etched into their flesh and bones.

  The sun was rising in the east and a chill breeze was whipping in off the Pacific, clearing away the last of the foul-smelling fog, the stink of burnt meat, seared wood and melted stone. The air was beginning to smell of clean salt once again.

  They walked past the wharf and followed the Agave Trail around the island, almost to the spot where they had come ashore less than twelve hours earlier. The bench was damp, and Nicholas bent to rub it clean with his sleeve before he would allow Perenelle to sit.

  Nicholas sat beside his wife and she leaned into him. He put his arm around her, feeling her thin and delicate bones beneath his hand. Directly ahead of them, the city of San Francisco appeared ghostlike out of the early dawn.

  “No mermaids in the water?” Perenelle asked.

  “Without Nereus to keep them here, they’ve no reason to stay.”

  “Well, at least the city is still standing,” Perenelle said in French, her voice a wispy thread. “I can see no smoke rising to the skies.”

  Nicholas looked right and then left. “And the bridges are unbroken. That’s a good sign.”

  “Prometheus and Niten did not fail us. They must have survived,” she said. “I surely hope so,” she added sincerely. “We lost so many good people tonight.”

  “They gave their lives doing what they believed was right,” he reminded her. “They gave their lives so that others might live and the world would go on. There is no greater sacrifice. And this morning the city survives, so they did not die in vain.”

  “And what of us, Nicholas? Did we always do what was right?”

  “Perhaps not,” he said softly. “But we always did what we believed was right. Is that the same thing?”

  “Of late I have found myself wondering if we should ever have looked for the twins of legend.”

  “And if we had not, then we would never have found Sophie and Josh,” Nicholas said simply. “From the moment I bought the Book of Abraham, our lives have been a journey which led us to this place and this time. It was our destiny—and no man can escape his destiny.”

  “I wonder where the twins are?” she whispered. “I would like to know … to know before the end. I need to know that they survived.”

  “They are safe,” he said confidently. “I have to believe that because this world goes on.”

  Perenelle nodded. “You must be right.” She rested her cheek against Nicholas’s arm. “It’s peaceful,” she said. “The island is so quiet this morning.”

  “No seagulls. The monsters either ate them or scared them away. They’ll be back.”

  The long grass rasped in the light breeze, and waves lapped against the stones in a soothing rhythm. Perenelle closed her eyes. “The sun is warm,” she murmured.

  Nicholas rested the side of his face against the top of her head. “Very warm. It’s going to be a glorious day.”

  As they sat, the sun rose slowly into the heavens, running golden along the Bay Bridge, bringing it to blazing light. The city of San Francisco came awake, the sounds of traffic faint and musical on the air.

  “You know that I have always loved you,” Nicholas said quietly.

  There was a long silence, and then Perenelle replied in a whisper, �
��I know that. And you know that I love you?”

  He nodded. “I have never doubted it for a moment.”

  “I would like to have been buried in Paris,” Perenelle said suddenly. “In those empty graves we prepared for ourselves all those years ago.”

  “Does it matter where we lie, so long as it is together?” Nicholas asked, closing his eyes.

  “Of course not,” she said, and closed her eyes as well.

  A shadow fell across the couple.

  They opened their eyes to find a tall blue-eyed young man standing over them. He was wrapped in a long leather hooded cloak. The sun was behind him, throwing his hooded face into shadow. A gleaming half circle of metal took the place of his left hand.

  “I wondered if you would come,” Nicholas Flamel said quietly.

  “I was there at the beginning when I sold you the Book all those years ago and started you on this great journey. It is only fitting that I should return at the end.”

  “Who are you?” the Alchemyst asked.

  The hook-handed man pulled down his hood. He crouched before Nicholas and Perenelle, took both their hands in his and looked into their faces. “You know me,” he said.

  Nicholas searched the young man’s lined and scarred face, and Perenelle reached up to run her fingers across his chin, tracing the plane of his forehead and the curve of his cheekbone. “Josh? Josh Newman?”

  “You knew me as Josh Newman …,” he said very gently. “But that was before this”—he held up his hook—“which is a long story.”

  “What of Sophie?”

  “A night has gone by for you. Almost seven hundred years have passed for her, but she has not aged. She’s had a lot of adventures over the years, but this morning she returned safe and well to San Francisco and Aunt Agnes.”

  “And you, Josh? What of you?”

  “Josh is no more. Now I am Marethyu. I am Death, and I am here to take you home.” His hook moved and a golden arc appeared over the bench. The air suddenly smelled of oranges, and he smiled. “You did say Paris, didn’t you?”