The Sorceress (26 page)

“William …,” Flamel whispered, shaking his head.

“Alchemyst, I am not entirely defenseless. I have not lived this long without learning some magic. Remember, at the heart of all magic is imagination … and there was never a greater imagination than mine.”

“Nor a greater ego,” Palamedes interjected. “Will, this is a battle we cannot win. We should go, regroup and fight another day. Come with us.” There was almost a note of pleading in the Saracen Knight’s voice.

The immortal Bard shook his head firmly. “I’m staying. I know I cannot win. But I can hold them here for hours … maybe even until the dawn. The Wild Hunt cannot run abroad during the hours of sunlight.” He looked at the Alchemyst. “This is something I have to do. I betrayed you once; let me now make amends.”

Nicholas stepped forward and gripped the Bard’s armor-clad arm with enough force to bring both their auras fizzing alight. “Shakespeare: knowing what I know now, I would be honored to stand and fight with you. But let us do as Palamedes says: let us choose our battles. You do not have to do this for me.”

“Oh, but I’m not doing this just for you,” Shakespeare said. He turned his head slightly, glancing sidelong at the silent twins. “I am doing this for them.” Armor squeaking and creaking, he stepped closer to Sophie and Josh and looked into each of their faces. Now he smelled strongly of lemon, sharp and clean, and they could see their own reflections in the shining armor. “I have witnessed their powers. These are the twins of legend, of that I have no doubt. Those of us loyal to the Elders have a duty to train these twins, to nurture them and bring them to their full potential. There is a time coming when they will need their powers … indeed, when the very world will need them.” Stepping back, he shook his head, his eyes huge and damp behind his glasses.
“And I am also doing this for Hamnet, my dear dead son. My twin boy. His sister was never the same after his death, though she lived for many years thereafter. I was not there to help him, but I can help you.”

“You can help us by leaving with us,” Sophie said softly. “I know what’s coming.” She shuddered as dark disturbing images appeared at the edges of her consciousness.

“Cernunnos and the Wild Hunt.” Shakespeare nodded, and then he looked around at the Gabriel Hounds, some still in their dog shapes, though most had now assumed their human guises. “Wolfmen against dogmen. It will be an interesting battle.”

“We need you,” Josh said urgently.

“Need me?” Shakespeare looked surprised. “Why?”

“You know so much. You could teach us,” he said quickly.

The Bard shook his head, armor winking. He lowered his voice and spoke directly to Josh and Sophie. “The Alchemyst knows more—much more—than I. And Sophie has access to the knowledge of the ages; she knows more than she thinks. You do not need me. I cannot teach you the elemental magics. That is your priority: if you are to have any chance of surviving the days to come, you need to master the five pure magics.”

“Five!” Josh looked startled. “I thought there were only four elements.” He looked at Sophie. “Air and Fire, and then Water and Earth.”

“Four elements?” Shakespeare smiled. “You’re missing Aether, the fifth magic. The most mysterious, the most powerful of all. But to master it, you have to first control the
other four.” He lifted his head, turned to the Alchemyst and raised his voice. “Go now. Take them to Gilgamesh the King. And Nicholas,” he added gravely, “be careful. You know what he is like.”

“What is he like?” Josh asked quickly, suddenly nervous.

The Bard turned pale blue eyes on Flamel. “You have not told them?” He looked at the twins and then dropped his visor, completely masking his face. When he spoke again, his voice echoed hollowly. “The king’s noble mind is overthrown. He is mad. Quite, quite mad.”

Josh rounded on the Alchemyst. “You never said—”

And then a sound filled the night. It was the bellow of a stag: ancient and primal, the bestial coughing echoed off the metal walls and trembled up through the ground, setting the puddles vibrating and shivering.

In response, Sophie’s aura appeared unbidden around her body, automatically molding itself into protective armor; Josh’s aura blinked into existence as a weak gold shadow around his head and hands.

The damp oily odor of rusting cars and the wet fur of the Gabriel Hounds was suddenly swamped by a repellent stink. The twins immediately recognized the smell from a working vacation they had spent with their parents in Peru: it was the putrid odor of the jungle, heavy with the cloying scent of rot and damp, of decaying trees and noxious deadly flowers.

And then Cernunnos and the Wild Hunt attacked.

osh suddenly realized he had Clarent in his hands, though he had no memory of pulling the sword from the map tube. The leather-wrapped hilt was warm and dry in his sweat-dampened palms, and he felt a tickle like an insect on his skin. The ancient weapon crackled, wisps of gray-white smoke coiling off the blade as the tiny crystals set into the stone winked with red and black light.

A flood of feelings and ideas almost overwhelmed him. They weren’t his thoughts, and because he’d handled the sword before and experienced its emotions, he didn’t think they belonged to the sword. These feelings were new and strange. He felt … different: confident, strong, powerful. And angry. Above all else he felt a terrible anger. It burned in the pit of his stomach, making him double over in pain. He could actually feel the heat flowing up from his stomach into his chest and down through his arms. His hands grew almost
uncomfortably hot, and then the smoke leaking off Clarent changed color, turning an ugly red-black. The sword twitched in his hands.

The pain disappeared, and as he straightened, Josh found that he was not afraid. All the fears of the past five days were gone.

He looked around, taking in the defenses and the number of defenders. He had no idea of the scale of the army they faced, and although the metal fortress was well made, he instinctively knew it would not hold till the dawn. It was designed to stand against human attackers. He automatically looked up, trying to gauge the time from the position of the stars, but they were hidden behind a layer of amber-tinted clouds … and then he remembered that he was wearing a watch. Eight-twenty-five. At least nine hours till dawn, when the Wild Hunt would retreat to their twilight Shadowrealm.

Tapping the stone blade against the palm of his left hand, he looked around, eyes narrowing. How would he attack a place like this? Scathach would know; the Warrior Maid would be able to tell him what they were up against and where the first attack would occur. He was guessing that the attackers had not brought siege engines, so storming the walls would be both time-consuming and costly. The Horned God would need to create an opening ….

And then Josh suddenly realized that he didn’t need the Warrior Maid to instruct him. He already knew. Sophie had been right: when Mars had Awakened him, he’d passed on his martial knowledge.

Josh turned to watch Palamedes and Shakespeare. The Gabriel Hounds had clambered up along the metal walls and joined those others already on the metal parapets. In total there were perhaps a hundred warriors, and Josh knew that there were not enough. They were all armed with bows and arrows, crossbows and spears. Why no modern weapons? he wondered. The archers had a handful of arrows in their quivers, the spearmen two or three spears apiece. Once they had fired their arrows and thrown their spears, they were useless. They would have to stand and wait for their attackers.

Josh found himself turning toward the gate, and almost of its own accord his hand came up, pointing the tip of the sword at the entrance. He knew that the weakest part of any fortress was its gate. Josh’s lips twisted in an ugly smile. “He will concentrate his attack here,” he said to no one in particular, staring hard at the gate, and a coil of gray-black smoke curled off the blade, almost in agreement. This was where the Horned God would attempt to create its opening.

At that moment a blow struck the gates with enough force to set the walls ringing. Cars shifted and moved in their tall stacks. Another blow, as if from a battering ram, vibrated through the night. Somewhere off to the right, a car toppled and crashed to the ground. Glass shattered.

The stag cried out again, a sound of raw power.

Clarent seemed to react to the sound. It twitched and actually turned in Josh’s palm. Heat coiled around his wrist, and suddenly his aura crackled orange.

“Josh …,” Sophie whispered.

Josh turned to look at his twin and saw that she was staring at his hands. He looked down. A pair of gauntlets had appeared on his hands where they gripped the hilt of the stone sword. They looked like soft leather gloves, and they were stained and worn, the leather scraped, dappled with what looked like dirt and mud.

Another tremendous blow struck the gate.

“We don’t have enough troops to hold the walls,” Josh said, thinking aloud. He pointed with Clarent. “Palamedes and Shakespeare should open the gates. The Gabriel Hounds can pick off the attackers as they bunch up in the narrow entrance.”

Flamel stepped forward and reached out for Josh. “We need to get out of here.”

The moment his fingers touched the boy’s shoulder, Josh’s aura intensified around him, yellow threads of power crawling across his chest and arms. The Alchemyst jerked his fingers back as if they had been burned. The stone sword glowed briefly gold, then faded to an ugly red-speckled black as a wash of emotions took Josh by surprise.

Fear. A terrible all-consuming fear of beastlike creatures and shadowy humans.

Loss. Countless faces, men, women and children, family, friends and neighbors. All dead.

Anger. The overriding emotion was one of anger—a simmering, all-consuming rage.

The boy slowly turned to look at the immortal. Their eyes locked. Josh immediately knew that these new emotions had
nothing to do with the sword. He had held Clarent before and had come to recognize the peculiarly repulsive nature of its memories and impressions. He knew that what he’d just experienced were the Alchemyst’s thoughts. When the man had touched him, he’d felt Flamel’s fear, loss and anger, and something else also: for a single instant there had been the vaguest ghostly impression of children … lots of children, in the clothes and costumes of a dozen countries from across the centuries. And as the immortal human had jerked his hand away, Josh had been left with the impression that all the children had been twins.

Josh took a step toward the Alchemyst and stretched out his hand, fingers spread wide. Perhaps if he just touched Nicholas and held on tightly, he’d finally have some answers. He would know the truth about the immortal Nicholas Flamel.

The Alchemyst took a step back from Josh. Although his lips still curled into a smile, Josh saw the older man’s hands close into fists and caught the suggestion of light as his fingernails turned green. A suggestion of mint touched the air, but it was sour and bitter.

Another crash shook the car yard and the gate vibrated in its frame. Metal screeched and sang as the Wild Hunt launched themselves, scratching and clawing at the walls. Josh hesitated, torn between forcing a confrontation with the Alchemyst and dealing with the assault. Something his father had once said to him popped into his head. They’d been walking on the banks of the Tennessee River and talking
about the Civil War Battle of Shiloh. “It’s always best to fight just one battle at a time, son,” he’d said. “You win more that way.”

Josh turned away. He needed to talk to Sophie, tell her what he’d experienced, and then, together, they would confront Flamel. He darted toward Palamedes. “Wait,” he called, “don’t fire!”

But before he could stop Palamedes, Josh heard the Saracen Knight’s deep voice, loud and clear across the junkyard.

“Fire!”

The archers on the parapets released their arrows, which keened and whispered as they cut through the air and disappeared into the night.

Josh bit his lip. They should be conserving their ammunition, but he had to acknowledge that the Saracen Knight knew his tactics. Arrows first, then spears, with the powerful but short-range crossbows held in reserve for close-quarters combat.