Michael Scott - The Alchemyst

Sophie laid her hand on her brother s arm, silencing the question he wasabout to ask. What were you saying about myths and legends? she asked.

Somewhere deep in the house a bell chimed, the sound high and pure. Itlingered in the still air.

Scathach ignored it. I want you to remember that everything you know orthink you know about myth and legend is not necessarily false, nor is itentirely true. At the heart of every legend there is a grain of truth. Isuspect that much of your knowledge comes from movies and TV. Xena andDracula have a lot to answer for. All minotaurs are not evil, the GorgonMedusa did not turn every man to stone, not all vampires are blood drinkers,the Were clans are a proud and ancient race.

Josh attempted a laugh; he was still shaken by the revelation that Scathachwas a vampire. You ll be telling us next that ghosts exist.

Scathach s expression remained serious. Josh, you have entered theShadowrealm, the world of ghosts. I want you both to trust your instinctsfrom now on: forget what you know or think you know about the creatures andraces you will encounter. Follow your hearts. Trust no one. Except eachother, she added.

We can trust you and Nicholas, though, right? Sophie said.

The bell rang again, flat and piercing in the distance.

Trust no one, Scathach repeated, and the twins realized that she was notanswering the question. She turned toward the door. I think that s the dinner bell.

Can we eat the food? Josh asked.

Depends, Scatty said.

Depends on what? he asked in alarm.

Depends on what it is, of course. I don t eat the meat myself.

Why not? Sophie said, wondering if there was some particular ancientcreature they should avoid.

I m a vegetarian, Scatty answered.

P erenelle Flamel sat in a corner of the tiny windowless room and drew her knees up to her chest, then wrapped her arms around her shins. She rested her chin on her knees. She could hear voices angry, bitter voices.

Perry concentrated on the sound. She allowed her aura to expand a little as she murmured a small spell she had learned from an Inuit shaman. The shaman used it to listen to the fish moving under the arctic ice sheets and the bears crunching across the distant ice fields. The simple spell worked by shutting down all other senses and concentrating exclusively on hearing. Perry watched as the color faded from her surroundings and darkness closed in until she went blind. She gradually lost her sense of smell and felt the pins-and-needles tingle in her fingertips and toes as her sense of touch dulled, then faded completely. She knew that if there were anything in her mouth, she would no longer be able to taste it. Only her hearing remained, but it was enhanced and supersensitive. She heard beetles crawling in the walls behind her, heard the scritch-scratch as a mouse gnawed through wood somewhere above her, knew that a colony of termites was munching their way through distant floorboards. She also heard two voices, high and thin, as if they were being picked up on a badly tuned radio, and coming from a great distance. Perry tilted her head, homing in on the sound. She heard wind whistling, the flap of clothing, the high crying of birds. She could tell that the voices she was hearing were coming from the roof of the building. They strengthened, warbled and bubbled, and then abruptly clarified: they belonged to Dee and the Morrigan, and Perry could clearly hear the fear in the gray man s voice and the rage in the Crow Goddess s shrill cries.

She must pay for this! She must!

She is an Elder. Untouchable by the likes of you and me, Dee said, trying unsuccessfully to calm the Morrigan.

No one is untouchable. She has interfered where she was not wanted. My creatures had almost overwhelmed the car when her Ghost Wind swept them away.

Flamel, the warrior Scathach and the two humani have now disappeared, Dee s voice echoed, and Perry frowned, concentrating hard, trying to follow every word. She was delighted to discover that Nicholas had sought the assistance of Scathach: she was a formidable ally. It s as if they have vanished off the face of the earth.

They have vanished off the face of the earth, the Morrigan snapped. He s taken them into Hekate s Shadowrealm.

Unconsciously, Perry nodded. Of course! Where else would Nicholas have gone? The entrance to Hekate s Shadowrealm in Mill Valley was closest to San Francisco, and while the Elder was no friend to the Flamels, she was not allied to Dee and his Dark Elders either.

We must follow them, the Morrigan stated flatly.

Impossible, Dee said reasonably. I have neither the skills nor the powers to penetrate Hekate s realm. There was a pause, and then he added, Nor do you. She is a First Generation Elder, you are of the Next Generation.

But she is not the only Elder on the West Coast. The Morrigan s voice was asnap of triumph.

What are you suggesting? Fear had touched Dee s voice with a hint of his original English accent.

I know where Bastet sleeps.

Perenelle Flamel sat back against the cold stone and allowed her senses toreturn. Feeling came first pins and needles racing through her fingers andtoes then her sense of smell, and finally sight. Blinking, waiting for thetiny colored spots of light to fade, Perry tried to make sense of what shehad just discovered.

The implications were terrible. The Morrigan was prepared to awaken Bastetand attack Hekate s Shadowrealm to retrieve the pages of the Codex.

Perry shuddered. She had never met Bastet she didn t know anyone who had inthe last three centuries and had lived to tell the tale but she knew her byreputation. One of the most powerful members of the Elder Race, Bastet hadbeen worshipped in Egypt since the earliest ages of man. She had the body ofa beautiful young woman with the head of a cat, and Perry had absolutely noidea of the magical forces she controlled.

Events were moving surprisingly swiftly. Something big was happening. Manyyears before, when Nicholas and Perry had first discovered the secret ofimmortality, they had realized that their extra-long lives allowed them toview the world from a different perspective. They no longer planned eventsdays or weeks in advance; often they would make plans decades into thefuture. Perry had come to understand that the Elders, whose lives wereinfinitely longer, could make plans that encompassed centuries. And thatoften meant that events moved with an extraordinarily deliberate slowness.

But now the Morrigan was abroad. The last time she had walked in the World ofMen, she had been spotted in the bitter, mud-filled trenches of the Somme;before that she had prowled the bloodstained battlefields of the AmericanCivil War. The Crow Goddess was drawn to death; it hung around her like afoul stench. She was also one of the Elders who believed that humans had been placed on this earth to serve them.

Nicholas and the twins were safe in Hekate s Shadowrealm, but for how long?Bastet was a First Generation Elder. Her powers had to be at least equal toHekate s and if the Cat Goddess and the Crow Goddess, combined with Dee salchemical magic, attacked Hekate, would her defenses hold? Perry didn tknow.

And what of Nicholas, Scathach and the twins?

Perenelle felt tears prickle the back of her eyes, but blinked them away.Nicholas would be six hundred and seventy-seven years old on thetwenty-eighth of September, in three months time. He was well able to take care of himself, though his mastery of practical spells was very limited, andhe could be remarkably forgetful at times. Only the summer before, he hadforgotten how to speak English and had reverted to his native archaic French.It had taken her nearly a month to coach him back to speaking English. Beforethat he had gone through a period when he had signed his checks in Greek andAramaic characters. Perenelle s lips curled in a smile. He spoke sixteen languages well and another ten badly. He could read and write in twenty-twoof them though there wasn t much chance to practice his Linear B, cuneiformor hieroglyphics these days.