Michael Scott - The Sorceress

"North of San Francisco, I believe," he said.

A shape moved below them, sending the mist billowing in great sweeping curves. The trio turned to face the figure, knowing that if it was an enemy, they had nothing left to fight it with. They were too tired even to run.

Perenelle Flamel appeared, looking poised and elegant even though she was dressed in a dirty black coat over a coarse shirt and trousers. "I've been waiting here for ages," she called, a huge smile on her face as she strode up the hillside.

The Sorceress wrapped her arms around the twins, squeezing them tightly. "Oh, but it is good to see you safe and well. I've been so worried." She touched the bruises on Sophie's cheek, a scrape on Josh's forehead, the cuts on his arm. They both felt a tingling crawling heat, and Josh actually watched the bruises fade from his sister's flesh.

"It's good to be back," Josh said.

Sophie nodded in agreement. "It's good to see you again, Perry."

Nicholas gathered his wife into his arms, holding her tight for what seemed like a long time. Then he stepped back, his hands on her shoulders, and looked at her critically. "You're looking good, my love," he said.

"Admit it, I'm looking old," she said. Then her green eyes moved across his face, noting the new lines and deep creases in his skin. Her index finger trailed white aura across his numerous cuts and bruises, healing them. "Though not as old as you. You are a decade younger," she reminded him, "though today"-she smiled-"for the first time in all our years together, you do look older than me."

"It has been an interesting few days," Flamel admitted. "But how did you get here? The last time we spoke you were a prisoner on Alcatraz."

"I can now claim to be one of the very few prisoners to have escaped the Rock." Slipping her arm into his, she walked him down the mountain through the early-afternoon mist, the twins following a few steps behind. "You should be very proud of me, Nicholas," she said. "I drove here all by myself."

"I'm always proud of you." He paused. "But we don't have a car."

"I borrowed a rather nice Thunderbird convertible I found at the pier. I knew the owner wouldn't be using it anytime soon." r. John Dee lay in the soft grass and looked up at the night sky, watching the gold and silver glow fade from the heavens and smelling, even from this distance, the hint of vanilla and orange. Police helicopters vibrated in the air, and sirens sounded everywhere.

So the twins and Flamel had escaped.

And they'd taken with them his life and his future. He had been living on borrowed time since the failed attack the previous night; now he was a dead man walking.

The Magician sat up slowly, cradling his right arm. It felt numb from fingertip to shoulder, where it had taken the full force of the blow from Clarent. He thought it might be broken.

Clarent.

He'd seen the boy throw the sword… but he hadn't seen him pick it up. Dee rolled over in the mud and discovered the blade lying on the ground next to him. Gently, almost reverently, he lifted it out of the dirt and then lay back on the earth, the blade flat on his chest, both hands resting across the hilt.

Five hundred years he had been searching for this weapon. It was a quest that had taken him all over the world and into the Shadowrealms. He laughed, the sound high-pitched, almost hysterical. And he had finally found it back almost where it started. One of the first places he'd looked for the blade was under the Altar Stone at Stonehenge; he'd been fifteen years old at the time, and Henry VIII had been on the throne.

Still lying on the ground, Dee reached under his coat and pulled out Excalibur, holding it in his right hand. Then he raised both weapons aloft. The swords moved in his grasp, twitching toward one another, the round hilts rotating, blades gently smoking. An icy chill started up one side of his body; a searing warmth flowed up the other side. His aura popped alight, steaming off his flesh in long yellow tendrils, and he felt his aches fade, his cuts and bruises heal. The Magician brought the two swords close, blade crossing blade.

And then they suddenly snapped together, as if magnetized. He tried to pull them apart, but they slotted together, fitting one into the other, then clicked and fused, blade to blade, hilt to hilt, to create a single rather ordinary-looking sword, that leaked gray smoke.

A figure shuffled out of the darkness, an old man bundled up in dozens of coats. Yellow light danced off his wild hair and unkempt beard, and his bright blue eyes were lost and distant. He looked at the sword, focusing, concentrating, remembering. He reached out with one trembling finger to stroke the cold stone, and then his eyes filled with tears. "The two that are one," he mumbled, "the one that is all." Then the Ancient of Days turned and shuffled off into the night. End of Book Three

It is nighttime when Sophie and Josh arrive at the prehistoric circle of standing stones on Salisbury Plain, England, and they only catch glimpses of these remnants of a once-great monument, one of the most recognizable archaeological sites in the world.

Stonehenge was built in three reasonably distinct phases. What remains today are the tumbled ruins of all the stages. Although there is evidence to suggest that humans were active around the area of Salisbury Plain (which would have been wooded at the time) about eight thousand years ago, the first building phase dates back over five thousand years. Using deer antlers, stones and wooden tools, the earliest builders scraped out a huge ring 6 feet wide and 320 feet in diameter. Its center was nearly 7 feet deep in places. One arc was left open and two stones were erected as gateposts. One of these stones survives: the Slaughter Stone.

The next phase began around five thousand years ago. Nothing from this phase remains visible, but there is archaeological evidence that a wood structure was erected within the circle. Shards of pottery and burnt bone have been found here, and there is a suggestion that Stonehenge may have been a place of burial or possibly sacrifice.

Over the next thousand years, Stonehenge was enlarged, altered and changed. The great stones that survive today date from this period of building.

It is estimated that up to eighty bluestone pillars were set up in the center of the circle. The pillars formed two half circles, one inside the other. Each of these huge stones weighed at least four tons and had been quarried from a site in the Preseli Mountains in Wales, more than 240 miles away. Just transporting the huge slabs of stone through densely wooded countryside, across mountains and rivers, was an extraordinary feat and shows how important Stonehenge was to the ancient peoples who built it. The enormous Altar Stone, which Nicholas Flamel lies down on, may well have stood as a huge upright. It weighs six tons.

Around this time, the entranceway was widened, and sunrise-especially on the morning of the summer solstice-would have sent long shadows spiking deep into the heart of the circle. At sunset in midwinter, the sun would have sunk between the stones.

Later still, perhaps a little over four thousand years ago, a circle of thirty capped stones was erected. This was another extraordinary feat. Each of the standing stones weighs around twenty-five tons. The stones came from a quarry more than twenty miles north of Stonehenge and were carefully cut, polished and shaped. Within this circle there were five trilithons arranged in a half circle, with the smallest at the outermost edges and the largest in the middle. The "smallest" trilithon was twenty feet tall.

Over the centuries, the site was abandoned and fell into disarray. Nature, the elements and the great weight of the stones pulled some of them to the ground, and gradually the order and arrangement of the circle became confused and was lost.