The Magician

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S top!

Nicholas Flamel kept running, turning to the right, racing down the Quai

Branly.

Stop or I shoot!

Flamel knew the police wouldn't shoot they couldn't. Machiavelli would not

want him harmed.

The slap of leather on concrete and the jingle of weapons were close now, and

he could hear his pursuer s even breathing. Nicholas s own breathing was

beginning to come in great heaving gasps, and there was a stitch in his side

just below his ribs. The recipe in the Codex kept him alive and healthy, but

there was no way he could outrun this highly trained and obviously fit police

officer.

Nicholas Flamel stopped so suddenly that the police captain almost ran right

into him. Standing still, the Alchemyst turned his head to look back over his

left shoulder. The policeman had drawn an ugly black pistol and was holding

it in a steady two-handed grip.

don't move. Raise your hands.

Nicholas turned slowly to face the police officer. Well, make your mind up,

what s it to be? he asked mildly.

Behind his protective goggles, the man blinked at him in surprise.

Do I not move? Or do I raise my hands?

The police officer gestured with the barrel of the gun and Flamel raised his

hands. Five more RAID officers came running up. They trained a variety of

weapons on the Alchemyst as they spread out in a line alongside their

captain. With his hands still in the air, Nicholas turned his head slowly to

look at each of them in turn. In their black uniforms, helmets, balaclavas

and goggles, they looked like insects.

Get down on the ground. Do it, do it now! the captain commanded. Keep your

hands in the air.

Nicholas slowly folded to his knees.

Now lie down! Facedown!

The Alchemyst lay flat on the Parisian street, his cheek against the cool,

gritty pavement.

Stretch your arms wide.

Nicholas stretched out his arms. The police officers shifted position,

quickly encircling him, but they still kept their distance.

We have him. The police captain spoke into the microphone positioned in

front of his lips. No, sir. We ve not touched him. Yes, sir. Immediately.

Nicholas wished Perenelle were with him now; she would know what to do. But

if the Sorceress had been with him, then he would not be in this mess in the

first place. Perenelle was a fighter. How often had she urged him to stop

running, to use half a millennium of his alchemical knowledge and her sorcery

and magic and take the fight to the Dark Elders? She d wanted him to gather

the immortals, the Elders and the Next Generation who supported the humani

and wage a war against the Dark Elders, Dee and his kind. But he couldn't;

he d been waiting all his life for the twins foretold in the Codex.

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

There had never been any doubt in his mind that he would discover the twins.

The prophecies in the Codex were never wrong, but like everything else in the

book, the words of Abraham were never clear and were written in a variety of

archaic or forgotten languages.

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

There will come a time when the Book is taken

And the Queen s man is allied with the Crow.

Then the Elder will step out of the Shadows

And the immortal must train the mortal. The two

that are one must become the one that is all.

And Nicholas knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the immortal

mentioned in the prophecy: the hook-handed man had told him.

Half a millennium ago, Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel had traveled throughout

Europe in an attempt to understand the enigmatic metal-bound book. Finally,

in Spain, they had met a mysterious one-handed man who had helped translate

portions of the ever-changing text. The one-handed man had revealed that the

secret of Life Eternal always appeared on page seven of the Codex at the full

moon, while the recipe for transmutation, for changing the composition of any

material, appeared only on page fourteen. When the one-handed man had

translated the first prophecy, he had looked at Nicholas with coal black eyes

and reached over to tap the Frenchman s chest with the hook that took the

place of his left hand.

Alchemyst, here is your destiny, he had whispered.

The mysterious words suggested that Flamel would one day find the twins the

prophecy hadn't revealed that he d end up lying spread-eagled on a dirty

Parisian street surrounded by armed and very nervous police officers.

Flamel closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Pressing his outspread fingers

against the stones, he reluctantly drew upon his aura. The merest gossamer

thread of green-gold energy seeped off his fingertips and soaked into the

stones. Nicholas felt the tendril of his auric energy curl through the

pavement, then into the earth beneath. The hair-thin thread snaked through

the soil, looking searching and then, finally, finding what he was looking

for: a seething mass of teeming life. Then it was a simple matter of using

transmutation, the basic principal of alchemy, to create glucose and fructose

and bind them together with a glycosidic bond to create sucrose. The life

stirred, shifted, flowed toward the sweetness.

The police captain raised his voice. Cuff him. Search him.

Nicholas heard the shuffling approach of two police officers, one on either

side. Directly in front of his face, he saw highly polished thick-soled black

leather boots.

And then, magnified because of its closeness to his face, Nicholas spotted

the ant. It popped up out of a crack in the pavement, antennae waving. It was

followed by a second, and a third.

The Alchemyst pressed his thumbs against the third finger of each hand and

snapped his fingers. Minuscule sparkles of mint-smelling green-gold spun into

the air, coating the six police officers in infinitesimal particles of power.

Then he transmuted the particles into sugar.

Abruptly, the pavement around Flamel turned black. A mass of tiny ants

erupted from below the street, surging up out of the cracks in the stone.

Like a thick glutinous syrup, they spread across the pavement, flowing over

boots before suddenly curling up around the legs of the police officers,

coating them in a heaving swarm of insects. For a moment the men were shocked

into immobility. Their suits and gloves protected them for another instant,

and then one man twitched, and another and another as the ants found the

tiniest of openings in the men s suits and darted inside, legs tickling, jaws

nipping. The men began jerking, twisting, turning, slapping at themselves,

throwing down their weapons, pulling off their gloves, tugging at their

helmets, tossing aside their goggles and balaclavas as thousands of ants

crawled over their bodies.

The police captain watched as their prisoner who was completely untouched by

the heaving blanket of ants sat up and fastidiously dusted himself off before

rising to his feet. The captain tried to point his gun at the man, but ants

were clawing at his wrists, tickling the palms of his hands, nipping his

flesh, and he couldn't hold the weapon steady. He wanted to order the man to

sit down, but there were ants crawling across his lips, and he knew if he

opened his mouth they would dart inside. Reaching up, brushing his helmet off

his head, he jerked off his balaclava and flung it to the ground, arching his

back as insects crawled along his spine. He ran his hand across his head and

felt it dislodge at least a dozen ants. They fell across his face and he

squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the prisoner was strolling

towards the Pont de l Alma train station, hands in his pockets, looking as if

he hadn't a care in the world.