The Sorceress (44 page)

Moving stiffly, arms and necks aching, Josh and Sophie both stretched out. Josh automatically ran his hand through the bird’s nest of his hair, yawning widely as he squinted out the window, blinking in the sunlight. “This is Stonehenge?” he asked, peering out at the field of tall grass speckled with wildflowers. Then reality hit him and he answered his own question, his voice rising in alarm. “This isn’t Stonehenge.” Twisting in the seat, he looked at the Alchemyst and demanded, “Where are you taking us?”

“Everything is under control,” Palamedes said from the front. “There are police checkpoints on the main road. We’ve just taken a little detour.”

Sophie hit a button and the power window whined down, flooding the car with the scent of grass. She sneezed, and as
her sinuses cleared, she realized that she could pick out the scents of individual wildflowers. Leaning her head out the window, she turned her face to the sun and the cloudless blue sky. When she opened her eyes, a red admiral butterfly danced past her face. “Where are we?” she asked Nicholas.

“I’ve no idea,” he admitted quietly. “Palamedes knows this place. Somewhere close to Stonehenge.”

The car rocked again and Gilgamesh came slowly, noisily awake. Lying on the floor, he yawned hugely and stretched, then sat bolt upright and looked out the window, squinting in the bright light. “I haven’t been out to the country for a while,” he said happily. He looked at the twins and frowned. “Hello.”

“Hi,” Josh and Sophie said simultaneously.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look alike enough to be twins?” he continued, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He blinked and frowned. “You are twins,” he said slowly. “You are the twins of legend. Why aren’t you called the legendary twins?” he asked suddenly.

They looked at one another and shook their heads, confused.

Gilgamesh tilted his head to look up at the Alchemyst and his expression soured. “You I know. You I will never forget.” He turned back to the twins. “He tried to kill me, you know that?” He frowned. “But you do know that, you were there.”

They shook their heads. “We weren’t there,” Sophie said gently.

“Not there?” The ragged king sat back on the floor and pressed both hands against his head, squeezing hard. “Ah,
but you must forgive an old man. I have lived for … for a long time, too long, too, too long, and there is so much that I remember, and even more that I forget. I have memories and dreams and they get confused and wrapped up together. There are so many thoughts whirling around inside my head.” He winced, almost as if he were in pain, and when he spoke, there was nothing but the sadness of loss in his voice. “Sometimes it is hard to tell them apart, to know what really was and what I have only imagined.” He reached into his voluminous coats and pulled out a thick sheaf of paper held together with string. “I write things down,” he said quickly. “That’s how I remember.” He thumbed through the pages. There were scraps from notebooks, covers torn from paperbacks, bits of newspapers, restaurant menus and napkins, thick parchment, even scraps of hide and wafer-thin sheets of copper and bark. They had all been cut or torn to roughly the same size and they were covered in miniscule scratchy writing. He looked closely at each of the twins in turn. “Someday I’ll write about you, so that I’ll remember you.” He glared at Flamel. “And I’ll write about you, too, Alchemyst, so that I never forget you.”

Sophie suddenly blinked and the image before her fragmented as tears came to her eyes. Two perfect silver drops slid down her cheeks.

The king came slowly to his knees before her and then, gently, carefully, reached out to touch the silver liquid with his index finger. The tears twisted and curled like mercury across his fingernail. Concentrating fiercely, he rubbed the tears between forefinger and thumb. When he looked up,
there were no signs of confusion in his eyes, no doubts on his face. “Do you know how long it has been since anyone has shed a tear for Gilgamesh the King?” His voice was strong and commanding, and there was the tiniest accent when he said his name and title. “Oh, but it was a lifetime ago, in that time before time, the time before history.” The silver droplet pooled in his palm and he closed his hand into a fist, holding the tear. “There was a girl then who shed silver tears, who wept for a prince of the land, who wept for me, and for the world she was about to destroy.” He looked up at Sophie, blue eyes huge and unblinking. “Girl, why do you weep for me?”

Unable to speak, Sophie shook her head. Josh put his arm around his sister.

“Tell me,” Gilgamesh insisted.

She swallowed hard and shook her head again.

“Please? I would like to know.”

Sophie drew in a deep shuddering breath, and when she spoke her voice was barely above a whisper. “I have the Witch of Endor’s memories inside me. I spend all my time trying to keep thoughts away and ignore them … but here you are, trying to remember your own life, writing your thoughts down so that you don’t forget. I suddenly realized what it would be like not to know, not to
remember.
”

“Just so,” Gilgamesh agreed. “We humans are nothing more than the sum of our memories.” The king sat back against the door, legs stretched straight out in front of him. He looked at the bundled pages in his lap, then pulled out a tiny stub of a pencil and started writing.

The Alchemyst leaned forward, and for a moment, it looked as if he was about to put his hand on the king’s shoulder. Then he drew it back and asked gently, “What are you remembering now, Gilgamesh?”

The king pressed his index finger into the page, rubbing silver tears into the paper. “The day someone cared enough to shed a tear for me.”

nd of the road.” Palamedes hit the brakes and the cab skidded to a stop in front of the barn. A cloud of dust from the baked-hard earth plumed upward, billowing out around the windows. Gilgamesh immediately pushed open the door and stepped out into the still morning, turning his face to the sun and stretching his arms wide. The twins followed him, pulling the cheap sunglasses the Alchemyst had bought them from their pockets.

Flamel was the last to exit, and he turned to look at the knight, who’d made no move to turn off the engine or get out of the cab. “You’re not staying?”

“I’m going into the nearest village,” Palamedes said. “I’ll pick up some food and water and see if I can find out what’s going on.” The Saracen Knight allowed his eyes to drift toward the king and lowered his voice. “Be careful. You know how quickly he can turn.”

The Alchemyst moved the side mirror slightly, angling it to be able to see Gilgamesh and the twins exploring the barn. The building sat in the middle of the grassy field. Ancient and overgrown, the walls were constructed of thick black timbers and mud. The doors were of a more recent vintage, and he guessed that they’d probably been put up sometime in the nineteenth century. Now they both hung askew, the right door attached by only a single leather hinge. The bottoms of both doors were rotted to ragged splinters by weather and the gnawings of animals.

“The boy will be first inside,” Palamedes said, looking over the Alchemyst’s shoulder.

Flamel nodded silently in agreement.

“You need to be careful of him also,” Palamedes advised. “You need to separate him from the sword.”

Nicholas adjusted the mirror slightly. He saw Josh tug Clarent from its map tube and slip into the barn, followed a moment later by his twin and then the king. “He needed a weapon,” the Alchemyst said, “he needed something to protect himself with.”

“A shame it was
that
weapon. There are other swords. They are not quite so dangerous, not quite so …
hungry
as that one.”

“I’ll take it back when he learns one of the elemental magics,” Flamel said.

Palamedes grunted. “You’ll try. I doubt you’ll succeed.” He put the car in gear. “I’d best go. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Are we safe here?” Flamel asked the knight, looking around. The field was surrounded by ancient twisted oaks; he
could see no signs of nearby buildings or power lines. “Any chance of the owner turning up?”

“None at all,” Palamedes said with a grin. “Shakespeare owns it, and everything for miles around. He has properties all across England.” The knight tapped the satellite navigator stuck to his cracked windshield. “We have them all entered in here; that’s how I was able to get you to safety.”

Nicholas shook his head. “I never imagined Will as a property investor, but then I never imagined him as a car mechanic either.”

The knight nodded. “He was—and still is—an actor. He plays many roles. I know he started buying properties back in the sixteenth century, when he was writing. He always said he made more money from property than he did from his plays. But you don’t want to believe half of what he says; he can be a terrible liar.” Palamedes eased on the gas and turned the wheel, rolling the big black taxi around in a half circle, Flamel walking alongside the open window. “The barn is invisible from the road, and I’ll lock the gate after me.” The knight glanced sidelong at Flamel, then jerked his chin in the direction of the dilapidated structure. “Did you really try to kill the king the last time you met?”

Nicholas shook his head. “In spite of what you think of me, Sir Knight, I am not a killer. In 1945, Perenelle and I were working in Alamogordo, in New Mexico. It was, without doubt, the perfect job for an alchemyst. Even though our work was classified as above top-secret, Gilgamesh somehow discovered what we were planning.”

“And what were you planning?” Palamedes asked, confused.

“To detonate the first atomic bomb. Gilgamesh wanted to be standing underneath when it went off. He decided it was the only way he could truly die.”

The Saracen Knight’s broad face creased in sympathy. “What happened to him?” he asked softly.

“Perenelle had him locked up in an institution for his own protection. He spent ten years there before we thought it was safe enough to allow him to escape.”

Palamedes grunted. “No wonder he hates you,” he said. And before the Alchemyst could answer, the knight revved the engine and drove off in a plume of dust.

“No wonder indeed,” Nicholas murmured. He waited until the dust had settled and then he turned and headed for the barn. He was hoping Gilgamesh wouldn’t remember everything—especially the part about being locked up—until after he had taught the twins the third of the elemental magics. A thought hit him as he slid through the doorway of the barn: given the fractured state of his mind, would the king even
remember
the ancient Magic of Water?

osh walked cautiously through the barn, Clarent still and quiet in his hands, the tiny quartz crystals in the stone blade dull and lifeless. He inched along on the balls of his feet, suddenly struck by how acutely conscious he was of his surroundings. Though he knew he’d never been here before, and had thus far only had a quick glimpse of the interior, he also knew with absolute certainty that he could navigate the space with his eyes closed.