The Sorceress (43 page)

here are you taking us?” Nicholas asked softly. “Why have we left the main road?”

“Trouble,” Palamedes said quietly. He tilted the rearview mirror to peer into the back of the cab.

Only the Alchemyst was awake. The twins were slumped forward, held in place by seat belts, while Gilgamesh was curled up on the floor, twitching and mumbling in Sumerian. Nicholas looked at the Saracen Knight’s deep brown eyes in the mirror.

“I knew something was wrong when traffic was so heavy,” the knight continued. “Then I thought there might have been an accident.” They were taking seemingly random turns, heading down narrow country lanes, lush green hedgerows battering against the side of the car. “All the main roads are blocked; police are searching every car.”

“Dee,” Flamel whispered. Unclipping his seat belt, he
slipped into the jump seat just behind the driver, twisting around to look through the glass partition at the knight. “We have to get to Stonehenge,” he said. “That is our only way out of this country.”

“There are other leygates. I could take you to Holyhead in Wales, and you could get the ferry to Ireland. Newgrange is still active,” Palamedes suggested.

“No one knows where Newgrange comes out,” Nicholas said firmly. “And the ley line on Salisbury will take me just north of San Francisco.”

The knight turned down a road marked
PRIVATE
and stopped before a five-barred wooden gate. Leaving the engine running, he climbed out of the car and unlatched it. Flamel joined him, and together the two men pushed it open. A rutted track led down to a ramshackle wooden barn. “I know the owner,” Palamedes said shortly. “We’ll hide up here until everything calms down.”

Flamel reached out and caught Palamedes’ arm. There was a sudden odor of cloves and the Alchemyst jerked his fingers away as the knight’s flesh turned hard and metallic. “We need to get to Stonehenge.” The Alchemyst gestured toward the road they’d left. “We can’t be more than a couple of miles away.”

“We’re close enough,” Palamedes agreed. “Why the rush, Alchemyst?”

“I’ve got to get back to Perenelle.” He stepped in front of the knight, forcing him to stop. “Look at me, Saracen. What do you see?” He held up his hands; blue veins were now clearly visible, and there were brown age spots scattered
across his flesh. Tilting his head back, he exposed his wrinkled neck. “I’m dying, Palamedes,” the Alchemyst said simply. “I don’t have very long left, and when I die, I want to go with my own dear Perenelle. You were in love once, Palamedes. You understand that.”

The knight sighed and then nodded. “Let’s get into the barn and wake the twins and Gilgamesh. He agreed to train them in the Magic of Water. If he remembers and if he does it, then we’ll press on to Stonehenge. I’m sure I can work out a route with the GPS.” He reached out and caught Flamel’s arm. “Remember, Nicholas. Once he starts the process, the twins’ auras will blaze up, and then everyone—and everything—will know where they are.”

t 10:20 a.m., five minutes later than its scheduled departure time, the Air France Boeing 747 lifted off from Charles de Gaulle airport, bound for San Francisco.

Niccolò Machiavelli settled into his seat and adjusted his watch nine hours back to 1:20 a.m., Pacific Standard Time. Then he reclined his seat, laced his fingers together on his stomach, closed his eyes and enjoyed the rare luxury of being uncontactable. For the next eleven hours and fifteen minutes, no one would be able to phone, e-mail or fax him. Whatever crisis arose, someone else would have to handle it. A smile formed on his mouth: this was like a mini-vacation, and it had been a long time—more than two centuries, in fact—since he’d had a proper rest. His last holiday, in Egypt in 1798, had been ruined when Napoléon had invaded. Machiavelli’s smile faded as he shook his head slightly. He had masterminded Napoléon’s plan for a “federation of free peoples” and the
Code Napoléon, and if the Corsican had only continued to listen to him, France would have ruled all Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Machiavelli had even drawn up plans for an invasion of America via sea and down through Canada.

“Something to drink, monsieur?”

Machiavelli opened his eyes to find a bored-looking flight attendant smiling down at him. He shook his head. “Thank you. No. And please do not disturb me again for the duration of the flight.”

The woman nodded. “Would you like to be awakened for lunch or dinner?”

“No, thank you. I am on a special diet,” he said.

“If you had let us know in advance, we could have organized an appropriate meal ….”

Machiavelli held up a long-fingered hand. “I am perfectly fine. Thank you,” he said firmly, eyes moving off the woman’s face, dismissing her.

“I will let the others know.” The attendant moved away to check on the three other passengers in the l’Espace Affaires cabin. The rich smell of freshly brewed coffee and newly baked bread filled the air, and the Italian closed his eyes and tried to remember what real food—fresh food—tasted like. One of the side effects of the gift of immortality was the diminishing of appetite. Immortal humans still needed to eat, but only for fuel and energy. Most food, unless it was highly spiced or sickly sweet, was tasteless. He wondered if Flamel, who had become immortal by his own hand rather than by an Elder’s, suffered the same side effect.

And thinking of Nicholas made him focus on Perenelle.

Dee’s Elder had been quite clear:
“Do not attempt to capture or imprison Perenelle. Do not talk to her, bargain with her or reason with her. Kill her on sight. The Sorceress is infinitely more dangerous than the Alchemyst.”

Machiavelli had trained himself to become a master of both verbal and body language. He knew when people were lying; he could read it in their eyes, the tiny movements of their clenching hands, twitching fingers and tapping feet. Even if he could not see them, several lifetimes of listening to emperors, kings, princes, politicians and thieves had taught him that it was often not what people said, but what they did
not
say that revealed the truth.

Dee’s Elders had warned that the Sorceress was infinitely more dangerous than the Alchemyst. They had not indicated exactly how … but they
had
revealed that they were frightened of her. And why was that? he wondered. She was an immortal human: powerful, yes; dangerous, certainly; but why should she frighten the Elders?

Tilting his head, Machiavelli looked through the oval window. The 747 had risen above the clouds into a spectacularly blue sky, and he allowed his thoughts to wander, remembering the leaders he had served and manipulated down through the ages. Unlike Dee, who had come to fame as Queen Elizabeth’s personal and very public advisor, he had always operated behind the scenes, dropping hints, making suggestions, allowing others to take the credit for his ideas. It was always better—safer—to be overlooked. There was an old Celtic saying he was particularly fond of:
It is better to exist
unknown to the law.
He’d always imagined that Perenelle was a little like him, happy to stay in the background and allow her husband to take all the credit. Everyone in Europe knew the name Nicholas Flamel. Few were even aware of Perenelle’s existence. The Italian nodded unconsciously; she was the power behind the man.

Machiavelli had kept a file on the Flamels for centuries. The earliest notes were on parchment with beautifully illuminated drawings; then had come thick handmade paper with pen-and-ink sketches and later still, paper with tinted photographs. The most recent files were digital, with high-resolution photographs and video. He had retained all his earlier notes on the Alchemyst and his wife, but they had also been scanned and imported into his encrypted database. There was frustratingly little information on Nicholas, and very, very little devoted to the Sorceress. So much about her was unknown. There was even a suggestion in a fourteenth-century French report that she had been a widow when she had married Nicholas. And when the Alchemyst had died, he had left everything in his will to Perenelle’s nephew, a man called Perrier. Machiavelli suspected—though he had no evidence to back up his supposition—that Perrier might be a child from her first marriage. Perrier took possession of all the Alchemyst’s papers and belongings … and simply vanished from history. Centuries later, a couple claiming to be the descendents of Perrier’s family appeared in Paris, where they were promptly arrested by Cardinal Richelieu. The Cardinal had been forced to release them when he realized that they
knew nothing about their famous ancestor and possessed none of his books and writings.

Perenelle was a mystery.

Machiavelli had spent a fortune paying spies, librarians, historians and researchers to look into the mysterious woman, but even they had found astonishingly little on her. And when he had fought her face to face in Sicily in 1669, he had discovered then that she had access to extraordinary—almost elemental—power. Drawing upon more than a century of learning, he had battled her using a combination of magical and alchemical spells from around the globe. She had countered them all with a bewildering display of sorcery. By evening, he had been exhausted, his aura dangerously depleted, but Perenelle had still looked fresh and composed. If Mount Etna had not erupted and ended the battle, he was convinced she would have destroyed him, or caused his aura to spontaneously combust and consume his body. It was only later that he’d realized that the energies they had both released had probably caused the volcano to erupt.

Niccolò Machiavelli settled a soft wool blanket up around his shoulders and hit the switch that gently converted his comfortable seat into a six-foot-long bed. Lying back, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He would think about the problem of the Sorceress for the next few hours, but one thing was already crystal clear: Perenelle frightened the Dark Elders. And people were usually afraid only of those who could destroy them. One final thought hovered at the edge of his consciousness: who—or what—was Perenelle Flamel?

he cab hit a pothole and the jolt woke the twins. “Sorry,” Palamedes called back cheerfully.