Michael Scott - The Alchemyst

And if you are mistaken? Hekate wondered aloud.

Then I have lost the love of my life, and this world and all the humani onit are lost. But if we are to have any chance of success, I need your help.

Hekate sighed. It s been a long time a very long time since I took astudent. She turned to look at Scathach. And that didn t turn out too well.

This is different. This time you would be working with raw talent, pure,untainted power. And we don t have a lot of time. Flamel drew in a deepbreath and spoke formally in the ancient language of the sunken island ofDanu Talis. Daughter of Perses and Asteria, you are the Goddess of Magic andSpells, I ask you to Awaken the twins magical powers.

And if I do it what then? Hekate demanded.

Then I will teach them the Five Magics. Together we will retrieve the Codexand save Perenelle.

The Goddess with Three Faces laughed, the sound bitter and angry. Have care,Nicholas Flamel, Alchemyst, lest you create something that will destroy usall.

Will you do it?

I will have to think upon it. I will give you my answer later.

Sitting in the car on the other side of the clearing, Sophie and Joshsuddenly became aware that Flamel and Hekate had turned to stare at them. Thetwins shivered simultaneously.

T here is something very wrong with this house. Sophie strode into herbrother s room, holding her expensive cell phone up to her face. I can t geta signal anywhere. She moved around the room, watching the screen, but thesignal bar remained flat.

Josh looked blankly at his sister. Wrong with this house? he repeatedincredulously. Then he spoke very slowly. Sophie, we re inside a tree! I dsay there s something wrong with that, wouldn t you?

When Hekate had finished speaking with Flamel, she had turned and disappearedinto the woods without saying a word to them, and it had been left to Flamelto bring them to the goddess s home. Instructing them to leave the car, heled them down a narrow winding pathway that cut through the overgrown woods.They had been so intent on the strange flora huge bruise-colored flowers thatturned to track their movements, vines that slithered and squirmed likesnakes as they followed them, grasses that had not existed since theOligocene era that they failed to notice that the path had opened out, andthat they were facing Hekate s home. Even when they looked up, it took themseveral moments to make sense of what they were seeing.

Directly ahead of them, in the center of a broad, gently sloping plainsprinkled with vast swathes of multicolored flowers, was a tree. It was theheight and circumference of a large skyscraper. The topmost branches andleaves were wreathed in wisps of white cloud, and the roots that burst fromthe ground like clawing fingers were as tall as cars. The tree itself wasgnarled and twisted, its bark scored and deeply etched with cracks and lines.Long vines, like huge pipes, wrapped around the tree and dangled from thebranches.

Hekate s home, Flamel explained. You are the only living humani in thelast two thousand years to see it. Even I ve only ever read about it.

Scatty smiled at the looks on the twins faces. She nudged Josh. Where exactly did you expect her to live? A trailer?

I wasn t I mean, I don t know I didn t think, Josh began. The sight wasincredible, and from the little he had studied about biology, he knew that noliving thing could grow so huge. No natural thing, he corrected himself.

Sophie thought the tree looked like an ancient woman, bent over with age. Itwas all very well for Flamel to talk about the distant past and atwo-thousand-year-old warrior or a ten-thousand-year-old goddess: the numbersmeant almost nothing. Seeing the tree was different. Both she and Josh hadseen ancient trees before. Their parents had taken them to see thethree-thousand-year-old giant redwoods, and they had spent a week campingwith their father in the White Mountains in the north of California as he investigated the Methuselah Tree, which, at nearly five thousand years old,was supposed to be the oldest living thing on the planet. Standing before theMethuselah Tree, a gnarled and twisted bristlecone pine, it was easy toaccept its great age. But now, seeing Hekate s tree house, Sophie had nodoubt that it was incredibly ancient, millennia older than the MethuselahTree.

They followed a smoothly polished stone path that led to the tree. As theygot closer, they realized that it was more like a skyscraper than they dfirst thought: there were hundreds of windows cut into the bark, with lightsflickering in the rooms beyond. But it was only when they reached the mainentrance that they appreciated just how vast the tree was. The smoothlypolished double doors towered at least twenty feet tall, and yet they openedat the merest touch of Flamel s fingers. The twins stepped into an enormouscircular foyer.

And stopped.

The interior of the tree was hollow. From just inside the entrance, theycould look straight up to where wispy clouds gathered inside the tree. A gently curving staircase curled up along the inside of the trunk, and everyfew steps brought them to an open doorway spilling out light. Dozens of tinywaterfalls spouted from the walls and splashed down onto the floor far below,where the water gathered in a huge circular pool that took up most of thefoyer. The interior walls were smooth and unadorned, except for the twistsand knots of vines that broke through the surface. Josh thought they lookedlike veins.

And it was completely deserted.

No one moved within the tree, nothing human or inhuman climbed the countlessstairs, no winged creature flew in the moist air.

Welcome to the Yggdrasill, Nicholas Flamel said, stepping back and allowingthem to enter. Welcome to the World Tree.

Josh held up his phone. The screen was blank. And have you noticed, he asked, there are no power sockets?

There have to be, Sophie said decisively. She walked over to the bed anddropped to her knees. There are always sockets beside the beds.

There were none.

The twins stood in the center of Josh s room and looked around. His room was a mirror image of his sister s. Everything around them was composed of ahoney-colored blond wood, from the highly polished floors to the smoothwalls. There was no glass in the windows, and the door was a wafer-thinrectangle of wood that looked and felt like the papery bark of a tree. Theonly item of furniture in the room was the bed, a low wooden futon coveredwith heavy fur throws. A thick fur rug lay on the floor beside the bed. Itwas dappled with an intricate pattern of spots that resembled no animaleither of the twins had ever seen.

There was also a tree growing out of the center of the floor.

Tall, thin and elegant, the red-barked tree rose straight out of the woodenfloor. No limbs protruded from the trunk until it came close to the ceiling,and then the branches burst out into a canopy that covered the roof. Theleaves were a deep, luxuriant green on one side, ash white on the other.Every so often, some spiraled to the floor, and covered it in a soft, almostfurry carpet.

Where are we? Sophie asked finally, unaware that she had spoken the thoughtaloud.

California? Josh said softly, but in a voice that suggested he didn t quitebelieve what he was saying.

After all we ve seen today? Sophie asked. I don t think so. We re inside a tree. A tree big enough to house the whole University of San Franciscocampus, a tree so old it makes the Methuselah Tree look like it was justplanted. And don t try to tell me it s a building shaped to look like a tree.Everything here is made from natural materials. She drew a breath and looked around. Do you think it could still be alive?

Josh shook his head. Can t be. The whole inside is scooped out. Maybe it wasalive a long time ago; but now it s just a shell.