Michael Scott - The Sorceress

Josh opened his eyes.

A huge blue planet floated in space. White clouds swirled across its surface; ice glittered at its poles.

And then he was falling, plunging toward the planet, hurtling toward the bright blue seas. Strong and commanding, Gilgamesh's voice boomed and roared around him, rising and falling like the waves of the ocean.

"It is said that the Magic of Air or Fire or even Earth is the most powerful magic of all. But that is wrong. The Magic of Water surpasses all others, for water is both the lifegiver and the deathbringer."

Mute, unable to move, to even turn his head, Josh fell through the clouds and watched as the world grew larger, vast landmasses appearing, though there was none that he recognized. He raced toward a red speck on the horizon, the clouds dark and thick above it, flying high over churning grass green seas.

Volcanoes. A dozen stretched along a ragged coastline, huge monsters belching fire and molten rock into the atmosphere. The seas roared and foamed around the red-hot rock.

"Water can extinguish fire. Even lava from the molten heart of the planet cannot stand against it."

When the lava hit the pounding seas, it cooled in a detonation of smoke. A steaming black landscape of congealed magma appeared out of the waves.

Josh was soaring again, the only sound the heartbeat-like throb of the king's voice, powerful yet soothing, like the crash of waves on a distant shore. The boy rose high over the ring of fire, heading east, toward a dawn. Clouds gathered beneath him; wisps giving way to fluffy balls that thickened into clumps and then blossomed into an expanse of roiling storm clouds.

"Without water, there is no life…"

Josh fell through the clouds. Lightning flashed silently around him, and torrential rain washed down onto lush green primordial forests, where impossibly tall trees and enormous ferns covered the earth.

The landscape changed again, images flickering faster and faster. He soared across a desert wasteland where vast dunes undulated in every direction. A single spot of color drew him down, down, down toward an oasis, vibrant green trees clustered around a sparkling pool.

"Mankind can survive with little food but cannot survive without water."

Josh rose and dropped down onto a mighty river cutting through high ragged hills. Dotted along its curved banks were tiny habitations, lit by fires sparking in the gloom. Racing low along the length of the river, he was aware that time was speeding up. Decades, then centuries, passed with each heartbeat. Storms lashed across the mountains, weathering them, softening them, wearing them down. Straw huts changed to mud, to wood, to stone; then clusters of stone houses appeared, a wall wrapped around them; a castle appeared and crumbled, to be replaced by a larger village, then a low town of wood and stone; then a city grew, polished marble and glass windows winking in the light before it transformed into a modern-day metropolis of glass and metal.

"Mankind has always built his cities on riverbanks and sea-coasts."

The river opened out to a vast ocean. The sun streaked across the sky, moving almost too fast to see as time raced by.

"Water has been his highway…"

Boats moved on the water, canoes first, then rowboats, then ships with banks of sails, and finally vast oceanliners and supertankers.

"… his larder…"

A flotilla of fishing boats pulled huge nets from the ocean.

"… and his doom."

The ocean, huge and churning, the color of a bruise, battered an isolated coastal village. It swamped boats, swept away bridges, leaving devastation in its wake.

"Nothing stands against the power of water…"

A vast wall of water rolled down a modern city street, flooding homes, washing away cars.

Suddenly, Josh was soaring upward, the earth falling away beneath him, and the king's voice faded to a whisper, like the hiss of surf on sand.

"It was water which brought life to the earth. Water which very nearly destroyed it."

Josh looked down at the blue planet. This was the world he recognized. He saw the shapes of continents and countries, the sweep of North and South America, the curl of Africa. But then he suddenly realized that there was something wrong with the outlines of the land. They weren't the way he remembered them from his geography class. They seemed larger, less clearly defined. The Gulf of Mexico looked smaller, the Gulf of California was missing entirely and the Caribbean was definitely smaller. He couldn't see the distinctive shape of Italy in the Mediterranean, and the islands of Ireland and Britain were one misshapen lump.

And as he watched, the blue of the sea began to seep over the land, drowning it, flooding it…

He fell toward the water, into the blue.

And Gilgamesh blinked and looked away.

And then both twins woke. rancis, the Comte de Saint-Germain, turned in the driver's seat to look over his shoulder at Scathach. "And you cannot see it?"

Scathach leaned forward between Saint-Germain and Joan, who was sitting in the passenger seat, and stared through the windshield. Directly in front of her was the ruined fa?ade of the great cathedral of Notre Dame. The world-famous gargoyles and grotesques that had decorated the front of the ancient building now lay in heaped rubble on the parvis. Groups of academics from across France, surrounded by volunteers and students, milled around in front of the cathedral, attempting to put the shattered pieces of stone back together again. All of the larger lumps of stone had little numbered stickers on them.

"What am I looking for?" she asked.

Saint-Germain rested both hands on the steering wheel of the black Renault and raised his sharp chin, pointing it toward the center of the rock-strewn square. "Can you not see a faint golden pillar of light?"

Scathach squinted her grass green eyes, turned her head from side to side, searching, then finally said, "No."

The count looked at his wife.

"No," Joan of Arc said.

"It's there," Saint-Germain insisted.

"I've no doubts about that," Scathach said quickly. "I just cannot see it."

"But I can," Saint-Germain mused aloud. "Now, that's a mystery," he said delightedly. "I just assumed everyone could see it."

Joan reached out, clamped iron-hard fingers over her husband's arm and squeezed tightly enough to silence him. "You can puzzle it out later, dear. Right now we need to go."

"Oh, absolutely." The count brushed his long black hair off his forehead and then pointed to the center of the square. "Two ley lines connect the West Coast of America to Paris. Both are incredibly ancient, and one-this one, in fact-circumnavigates the globe, linking together all the primeval places of power." He tilted the rearview mirror to look at Scathach. "When you, Nicholas and the twins arrived, you came in on the line that ends at the Sacre-Coeur basilica in Montmartre. Theoretically, it should not have worked, but obviously the Witch of Endor was powerful enough to activate it."

"Francis," Joan warned, "we don't have time for a history lesson."

"Yes, yes, yes. Well, the other line, the much more powerful ley line, is here at Point Zero outside Notre Dame in the center of the city."

"Point Zero?" Scathach asked.

"Point Zero," the count repeated, pointing toward the cathedral. "The very heart of Paris; this place has been special for millennia. This is the place from which all distances to Paris are measured."

"I've often wondered why this particular spot was chosen," Joan said. "It wasn't some accident or random choice, then?"

"Hardly. Humans have worshipped here since before the Romans arrived. They have always been drawn to this place and the others like it. Perhaps, deep down in their DNA, people remembered that there was a leygate here. There are Point Zeros or Kilometer Zeros in just about every capital city in the world. And there are nearly always leygates nearby. There was a time when I used them to travel the globe."