The Alchemyst

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

N icholas Flamel watched Sophie and Josh follow Scathach into the tree. Only

when the door had closed behind them did his colorless eyes betray the worry

he felt. That had been close: another heartbeat or two and Hekate would have

reduced Josh to bubbling liquid. He wasn't sure if she would have been able

to reconstitute him in the morning when she had taken on her maiden form. He

had to get the twins away from her before their ignorance got them into

trouble.

Flamel walked away from the ruined table and followed the slope of the tree

limb down to the pool. He stepped off the branch and onto a narrow unpaved

path. There were a multitude of marks in the mud some were boar tracks,

others looked more like human feet and some were a curious mixture of both.

He knew he was being followed, that his every movement was being tracked by

creatures he couldn t see, and he guessed that the Torc Allta were probably

the least of Hekate's guards.

Crouching by the water s edge, he took a deep breath and allowed himself a

moment to relax. It would be true to say that this had been one of the more

eventful days in his long life, and he was exhausted.

From the moment Dee had snatched Perry and the Codex and the twins had

appeared, Flamel knew that one of the first prophecies he had read in the

Book half a millennium previously was beginning to come true.

The two that are one, the one that is all.

The Codex was full of cryptic phrases and incomprehensible sayings. Most of

them were concerned with the annihilation of Danu Talis, the ancient homeland

of the Elder Race, but there was also a series of prophecies that had to do

with the return of the Dark Elders and the destruction and enslavement of the

humani.

There will come a time when the Book is taken

Well, that was fairly self-explanatory.

And the Queen s man is allied with the Crow .

That had to refer to Dr. John Dee. He had been Queen Elizabeth s personal

magician. And the Crow was clearly the Crow Goddess.

Then the Elder will step out of the Shadows

Flamel knew that Dee had been working for centuries with the Dark Elders to

bring about their return. He had heard unconfirmed reports that more and more

of the Dark Elders had left their Shadowrealms and begun to explore the world

of the humani again.

And the immortal must train the mortal. The two that are one must become

the one that is all.

Nicholas Flamel was the immortal of the prophecy. He was sure of it. The

twins the two that are one must be the mortal who needed to be trained. But

he had no idea what the last phrase referred to: the one that is all.

Circumstances had placed the twins in his care, and he was determined that no

harm should come to them, especially now that he believed they were destined

to play a critical role in the war against the Dark Elders. Nicholas knew

that bringing Josh and Sophie to the Goddess with Three Faces had been an

incredible risk especially in the company of Scathach. The Warrior s feud

with the goddess was older than most civilizations. Hekate was one of the

most dangerous of the Elders. Immensely powerful, one of her many skills

enabled her to Awaken the magical powers that existed in every sentient

creature. However, like many of the Elders, her metabolism was linked to a

solar or lunar cycle. She aged during the day, and effectively died when the

sun went down, but was then reborn with the sunrise as a young woman. This

peculiar trait clouded and colored her thinking, and sometimes, as had

happened earlier, the older Hekate forgot the promises her younger selves had

made. Flamel was hoping he would be able to reason with the maiden Hekate in

the morning and convince her to Awaken the twins extraordinary potential.

The Alchemyst knew that everyone had the possibility for magic within them.

Once it had been sparked into life, it tended to become increasingly powerful

of its own accord. Sometimes very rarely children suddenly exhibited

extraordinary powers, usually either telepathy or telekinesis or a

combination of both. Some children realized what was happening and managed to

control their growing powers, while others never fully understood it. Left

untrained and unchecked, magical energy radiated off the children in waves,

moving furniture around, knocking people to the ground, gouging marks in

walls and ceilings. This was often reported as poltergeist activity. He knew

that if Hekate Awakened the twins dormant magical powers, then he could use

what he had learned over six hundred years of study to increase their skills.

Not only would he give them the means of protecting themselves, but he would

also be able to begin preparing them for whatever lay ahead.

Still crouching by the pool, he stared into the green-tinged water. Red and

white koi moved just below the surface, while deeper down, humanlike faces

peered up, eyes huge and blank, mouths filled with needle-pointed teeth. He

decided against dipping his fingers into the water.

It was commonly held in all the ancient magical books that there were four

elements of magic: Air and Water, Earth and Fire. But centuries of study had

revealed to Nicholas that there were, in fact, five elemental forces of

magic. The fifth force was the magic of Time, the greatest of all magics. The

Elders could control all the other elements, but the secret of the fifth was

contained only in the Codex and that was one of the many reasons why Dee, and

the Dark Elders he sided with, wanted the Codex. With it in their possession,

they would be able to control time itself.

Along with Perenelle, Nicholas Flamel had spent most of his long life

studying the elemental forces. While Perry had trained herself in different

styles of magic, he had concentrated on the formulae and theorems from the

Codex. These formed the basis of the study of alchemy, which was a type of

science. Using the formulae, he had learned how to turn base metal into gold

and coal into diamonds, but there was very little magic involved. True, it

was a remarkably complex formula and required months of preparation, but the

process itself was almost ridiculously simple. One day he had been poor, the

next wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Taking Perry s advice, he had founded

hospitals, established orphanages and funded schools in his native Paris.

Those had been good times no, more than that they had been great times. Life

had been so much simpler then. They had not known about the Elder Race, had

not begun to suspect even the tiniest portion of dark knowledge the Codex

contained.

In recent years, Nicholas would sometimes awaken at the quietest hour of

night with a single thought spinning round and round in his head: if he had

known then what he knew now about the Codex, would he have continued his

research into the philosopher s stone? That path had ultimately brought him

into contact with the Elder Race notably the Dark Elders and had brought Dr.

John Dee into his life. It had forced Perry and him to fake their own deaths

and flee Paris and ultimately to spend the next half millennium in hiding.

But the study of the Codex had also made them both immortal. Most nights he

answered yes: even knowing all he knew now, he would still have continued his

studies and become the Alchemyst.

But there were rare occasions, like today, when the answer was no. Now he

stood to lose Perenelle, probably the lives of the innocent twins and the

not-so-innocent Scathach though she would not be so easy to kill and there

was also a chance that he had doomed the world.

Nicholas felt himself grow cold at the thought. The Book of Abraham was full

of what he had first assumed to be stories, legends, myths and tales. Over

the centuries, his research had revealed that all the stories were true, all

the tales were based on fact, and what he believed to be legends and myths

were simply reports of real beings and actual events.

The Elder Race existed.

They were creatures that looked human sometimes but had the powers of gods.

They had ruled for tens of thousands of years before the creatures they

called the humani humankind appeared on the earth. The first primitive humani

worshipped the Elder Race as gods and demons and over generations had

constructed whole mythologies and belief systems based around an individual

or a collection of Elders. The gods and goddesses of Greece and Egypt, of

Sumeria and the Indus Valley, of the Toltec and the Celt, existed. They

weren t different gods, however; they were simply the same Elders called by

different names.

The Elder Race divided into two groups: those who worked with the humani and

those who regarded them as little better than slaves and, in some cases,

food. The Elders warred against one another in battles that took centuries to

complete. Occasionally humani would fight on one side, and their exploits

were recalled in great legends like those of Gilgamesh and Cuchulain, Atlas

and Hippolytus, Beowulf and Ilya of Murom.

Finally, when it became clear that these wars might destroy the planet, the

mysterious Abraham, using a powerful collection of spells, forced all of the

Elder Race even those who supported the humani to retreat from the earth.

Most were like Hekate and went willingly, settling into a Shadowrealm of

their own creation, and afterward had little or no contact with the humani.

Others, like the Morrigan, though she was greatly weakened, continued to

venture out into the humani world and worked to restore the old ways. Others

still, like Scathach, lived anonymously among humankind. Flamel eventually

came to understand that the Codex, which contained the spells that had driven

the Elder Race from this world and into their Shadowrealms, also contained

the spells that would allow them to return.

And if the Dark Elders returned, then the civilization of the twenty-first

century would be wiped away in a matter of hours as the godlike creatures

warred among themselves. It had happened before; mythology and history

recorded the event as the Flood.

Now Dee had the Book. All he needed were the two pages Flamel could feel

pressed against his flesh. And Nicholas Flamel knew that Dee and the Morrigan

would stop at nothing to get those pages.

Flamel hung his head and wished he knew what to do. He wished Perenelle were

with him; she would surely have a plan.

A bubble burst on the surface of the water. The lady asks me to tell you

Another bubble popped and burst. that she is unharmed.

Flamel'scrambled back from the pool s edge. Tendrils of mist were rising from

the surface of the water, tiny bubbles popping and snapping. A shape began to

form out of the mist cloud a surprising shape: that of an elderly man in a

security guard s uniform. The shape hovered, twisting and curling over the

pond. The late-evening sunshine shone through the water drops, turning each

one into a brilliant rainbow of light. You are a ghost? Nicholas asked.

Yes, sir, I am. Or I was until Mrs. Flamel freed me.

Do you know me? Nicholas Flamel asked. He wondered quickly if this might be

a trick of Dee s, but then he dismissed the idea: the sorcerer was powerful,

but there was no way he could penetrate Hekate's defenses.

The mist shifted and thickened. Yes, sir, I believe I do: you are Nicholas

Flamel, the Alchemyst. Mrs. Flamel asked me to go in search of you. She

suggested that I would find you here, in this particular Shadowrealm. She

overheard Dee mention that you were here.

She is unharmed? Flamel asked eagerly.

She is. The small man they call John Dee is terrified of her, though the

other woman is not.

What woman?

A tall woman, wearing a cloak of black feathers.

The Morrigan, Flamel'said grimly.

Aye, and That'sthe message A fish leapt out of the pond and the figure

dissolved into a thousand water droplets that hung frozen in the air, each

one a tiny portion of a jigsaw that made up the ghost. Mrs. Flamel'says you

have to leave and leave now. The Crow Goddess is gathering her forces to

invade the Shadowrealm.

SHe'll not succeed. She is Next Generation; she has not the power.

The fish leapt again, scattering the water droplets, and the ghost s voice

drifted and whispered away, dying with each bursting bubble. Mrs. Flamel

instructed me to tell you that the Crow Goddess intends to awaken Bastet.