The Sorceress (38 page)

When Flamel and the others had escaped in the car, Dee had raced over to the moat, dropped to his belly in the mud and pushed his left arm down into the oily sludge where Excalibur had sunk. It was deeper than he’d expected and it swallowed his arm almost up to his shoulder. The liquid was thick and still warm where it had burned, and noxious bubbles burst under his nose, making him nauseous and lightheaded. His eyes stung furiously. He felt around, searching frantically, but touched nothing. He could hear sirens in the
distance; the flaming moat must have been seen all across North London, and no doubt there had been scores of calls to the emergency services. Digging the fingers of his right hand into the soft muddy earth, he held on tightly as he leaned farther out over the edge, the side of his face actually touching the liquid. Where was it? He wasn’t leaving without the sword. Finally, his fingers closed over a smooth length of cold stone. It took a tremendous effort to lift Excaliber out of the thick liquid. It came free with a pop. Rolling onto his back, he cradled it against his chest. Even though he was exhausted, Dee charged his palm with his aura and rubbed yellow power across the stone, wiping away the filthy muck.

Clambering to his feet, he looked around. But there was no trace of the Horned God or the Wild Hunt. The last of the menagerie Shakespeare had created—the snakes, hedgehogs and newts—were slowly winking out of existence, like bursting bubbles, leaving sooty outlines in the air. The car yard was a ruin, with scores of tiny fires burning everywhere, and black smoke billowed out from beneath the metal hut. Fire burned within. Somewhere off to the right a wall of cars creaked ominously, then swayed and crashed to the ground in a huge detonation of metal. Metal and glass shards whined through the air.

Dee turned and raced onto the street. He was unsurprised to find that Bastet and the car they’d arrived in had disappeared.

He’d been abandoned. More than that, he was truly on his own.

Dee was bitterly aware that he had failed his Dark Elder
masters. And they had been very clear about what would happen to him. He had no doubt that Bastet had reported his failure. His lips twisted in an ugly smile. One of these days he was going to have to do something about that cat-headed creature. But not now, not yet. He had failed, but all was not lost, not unless his master withdrew the gift of immortality, and before his master could make him human again, he would have to touch him, lay both hands on him. That meant either his master would come out of the Shadowrealms or someone—or something—would be sent to capture Dee and drag him back to stand trial.

But that wasn’t going to happen immediately. The Elders understood time differently than the humani; it would take a day, maybe two, to organize for his capture. And a lot could happen in that time.

Even in his darkest hour, Dr. John Dee had never admitted defeat, and he had always ultimately triumphed. If he could capture the twins and find the missing pages, then he was confident he would be able to redeem himself.

London was still his city. His company, Enoch Enterprises, had offices on Canary Wharf. He had a home here—more than one, in fact—and he had resources he could call upon: servants, slaves, allies and mercenaries.

Stupidity always angered Dee; especially his own stupidity. He had been overawed by the presence of Bastet and the appearance of the Archon and the Wild Hunt; he had not taken the proper precautions. On previous occasions the Flamels had escaped by a combination of luck, circumstances
or their own skills and powers. But Dee had never considered himself to blame. This time it was different. This was entirely his own fault. He had underestimated the twins.

Blue and white lights washed over boarded-up houses, and the Magician ducked down behind a wall as a trio of police cars screamed past.

He knew the girl had been trained in at least two of the magics—Air and Fire—and she’d demonstrated extraordinary skill and courage when she’d faced down the Archon. But if the girl was dangerous, then the boy … well, the boy was doubly so. He was an enigma. Newly Awakened, untrained in any of the elemental magics, he handled Clarent as if he’d been born to it, and fought with a skill that was far beyond him. And that should have been impossible.

The Magician shook his head. He knew the ultimate secret of the four Swords of Power; he knew what they did to normal humani. The swords were insidious and deadly, almost vampiric in nature. They whispered of victories to come, hinted at secrets beyond imagining and made promises of ultimate power. All the humani had to do was to keep using the weapon … and all the while, the sword was drinking the humani’s memories, consuming their every emotion before it finally gorged upon their aura. At that stage the humani forgot to eat and drink. The strongest survived for a month; most didn’t last ten days. Magicians like him spent decades of preparation before they even touched the cold stone weapons; it took months of fasting and practice before they learned the art of forging their auras into protective
gloves. Even then, the swords were so powerful that many a magician and sorcerer had succumbed to them.

So how was the boy able to handle Clarent?

And how had he known that Dee intended to kill the Archon?

The Magician cut through a narrow trash-filled alley and slunk down a deserted street. He pressed his hand to his side, where he could feel Excalibur’s warmth beneath his filthy coat. All four swords were very similar, though each was unique in ways he could not even begin to understand. Excalibur was the best known of all the swords, and while it was not the most powerful, it had attributes the other swords lacked. Ducking into another deserted alley, John Dee pulled the sword from beneath his coat and set it on the ground at his feet. His little fingernail glowed yellow, and the smell of brimstone was lost amid the stinking refuse as he touched the blade with his finger and whispered, “Clarent.”

The stone sword trembled and vibrated and then slowly turned, the blade pointing south. Excalibur always pointed toward its twin. Dee snatched up the weapon and hurried on.

The Magician had spent centuries collecting the Swords of Power. He had three of the four, and he’d just come frustratingly close to adding Clarent to his collection. Neither Elders nor Next Generation were immune to the lure of the Swords. It was said that Mars Ultor had worn both Excalibur and Clarent in matched scabbards across his back. He had been the champion of the humani before he’d carried the twin blades; afterward he became a monster. And if the two
swords had corrupted the Elder, then what chance had an untrained humani boy? Every time the boy held it, every time he touched the hilt, it drew him deeper under its control. And so long as he carried it, Dee would always be able to find him.

iccolò Machiavelli sat back in his chair and focused on the largest of the high-definition LCD screens on the wall before him. He was watching the English satellite news service Sky News. The two a.m. headlines showed an aerial shot of a fire raging through an industrial area. The line of text crawling across the bottom of the screen announced that the fire was in a car yard in North London. Machiavelli had seen enough castle fortifications in his time to recognize the design, even though this one was made of cars rather than slabs of stone. The black outline of a moat was still clearly visible, gray smoke curling from it.

Machiavelli grinned as he reached for the remote control and brought up the volume. That particular location sounded familiar. On a separate screen he activated his encrypted database of Elders, Next Generation and immortals and typed in the location in North London. Two names immediately
popped up: Palamedes, the Saracen Knight, and the Bard, William Shakespeare.

Machiavelli scanned both files: Shakespeare had been Dee’s apprentice for years, until he’d suddenly turned against the Magician. He was immortal, though how he’d become so was a mystery, since he was associated with no known Elder. Palamedes was an enigma. A warrior-prince of Babylon, he’d fought with Arthur and had been there at the end, when the king had been killed. Again, there was no record of who had made him immortal, and traditionally the Saracen Knight had remained neutral in the wars between the Elders and the Dark Elders.

Machiavelli had never met either immortal, though he had known about them for generations and had longed to meet the Bard. Machiavelli had always wondered how and when and where Shakespeare and Palamedes had originally met. According to his files, their first recorded meeting was in London in the nineteenth century, but Machiavelli suspected they’d known one another a long time before that; there was some evidence to suggest that the Bard had originally written the part of
Othello
for Palamedes early in the seventeenth century. Shakespeare had turned up in London sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century as a ragpicker, a dealer in secondhand clothing. At least sixty barefoot urchins worked for him, sleeping in the attic of his warehouse on the docks, then going out during the day to scour the city for cast-off clothing and rags. There was a police report on file that the warehouse was suspected of storing stolen goods, and it had been raided at least twice. The Saracen Knight had been in
London at the same time, earning his living as an actor in theaters in the West End. He specialized in monologues from Shakespeare’s plays.

Machiavelli examined a grainy photograph of the man identified as William Shakespeare. Taken with a telephoto lens, it showed a rather ordinary-looking man dressed in stained blue overalls, bending over the engine of a car, a scattering of tools and car parts by his feet. Two dogs were visible in the background, and the photography had given both dogs red eyes. The second photograph was higher resolution. It showed a huge dark-skinned man leaning against the side of a gleaming London taxi, drinking tea from a white paper cup. The wheel of the London Eye was just visible in the background.

A male reporter’s voice filled the room.
“… raging for the past two hours in this car yard. At this time, no bodies have been removed from the scene, and officers do not expect to find any. Officials have expressed concern because of the huge amount of combustible material in the area, and firemen are using breathing apparatuses to enter the yard. There is a fear that if the stacked tires start to burn, they will release noxious gases. There is some consolation, however, that in this run-down part of London, most of the houses are abandoned and derelict ….”

Machiavelli hit the Mute button. Leaning back in his leather chair, he ran his hands over his close-cropped white hair, hearing it rasp in the silence. So, had Dee killed the Alchemyst and captured the twins?

The reporter appeared on-screen holding a handful of
what looked like flint arrowheads, and Machiavelli almost fell off the chair in his haste to turn on the sound.

“… and bizarrely found hundreds of what look like flint arrowheads.”
The camera panned around and showed broken arrows and spears scattered all over the ground. Machiavelli recognized the stubby lengths of crossbow bolts.

Well, if Dee
had
captured the twins, it hadn’t been without a fight.

Machiavelli’s cell phone buzzed, startling him. Pulling it out of his inner pocket, he stared at the screen, immediately recognizing the overlong number and impossible area code. He took a deep breath before answering. “Yes?”

“Dee has failed.”
Machiavelli’s Elder’s voice was little more than a thready whisper. He spoke in Late Egyptian, the language used in the New Kingdom over three thousand years ago.

Machiavelli responded in the formal Italian of his youth. “I’m watching the news. I see there’s a fire in London; I know that location is associated with two neutral immortals. I assume there is some connection to the two events.”

“Flamel and the twins were there. They escaped.”

“It looks like the location was defended; the television report is showing evidence of a fight—arrows, spears and crossbow bolts. Perhaps we should have given the English Magician more resources,” Machiavelli suggested carefully.