Michael Scott - The Alchemyst

Josh swallowed hard. I didn t know.

No reason why you should have except that your ignorance could have gottenyou killed or worse.

But what did you do to the table? Sophie asked. She looked at the ruin ofthe circular table: it was split down the middle where Scatty had cut it withher knife. The wood on either side of the split looked dry and dusty.

Iron, Scatty said simply.

One of the surprising side effects of the artificial metal, Flamel said,

is its ability to nullify even the most powerful magics. The discovery ofiron really signaled the end of the Elder Race s power in this world. He held up the black stone arrowhead. That s why I was using this. The Eldersget nervous in the presence of iron.

But you re carrying iron, Sophie said to Scatty.

I m Next Generation not pure Elder like Hekate. I can bear to be aroundiron.

Josh licked his dry lips. He was still remembering the green light buzzing inHekate s palms. When you said turned into green slime, you didn t reallymean

Scathach nodded. Sticky green slime. Quite disgusting. And I understand thevictim retains some measure of consciousness for a while. She glanced atFlamel. I cannot remember the last person to cross one of the Elders andlive, can you?

Flamel stood. Let s hope she doesn t remember in the morning. Get somerest, he said to the twins. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

Why? Sophie and Josh asked simultaneously.

Because tomorrow, I m hoping I can convince Hekate to Awaken your magicalpotential. If you are going to have any chance of surviving the days to come,I will have to train you to become magicians.

N icholas Flamel watched Sophie and Josh follow Scathach into the tree. Onlywhen the door had closed behind them did his colorless eyes betray the worryhe felt. That had been close: another heartbeat or two and Hekate would have reduced Josh to bubbling liquid. He wasn t sure if she would have been ableto reconstitute him in the morning when she had taken on her maiden form. Hehad to get the twins away from her before their ignorance got them intotrouble.

Flamel walked away from the ruined table and followed the slope of the treelimb down to the pool. He stepped off the branch and onto a narrow unpavedpath. There were a multitude of marks in the mud some were boar tracks,others looked more like human feet and some were a curious mixture of both. He knew he was being followed, that his every movement was being tracked bycreatures he couldn t see, and he guessed that the Torc Allta were probablythe least of Hekate s guards.

Crouching by the water s edge, he took a deep breath and allowed himself amoment to relax. It would be true to say that this had been one of the moreeventful days in his long life, and he was exhausted.

From the moment Dee had snatched Perry and the Codex and the twins hadappeared, Flamel knew that one of the first prophecies he had read in theBook half a millennium previously was beginning to come true.

The two that are one, the one that is all.

The Codex was full of cryptic phrases and incomprehensible sayings. Most ofthem were concerned with the annihilation of Danu Talis, the ancient homelandof the Elder Race, but there was also a series of prophecies that had to dowith the return of the Dark Elders and the destruction and enslavement of the humani.

There will come a time when the Book is taken

Well, that was fairly self-explanatory.

And the Queen s man is allied with the Crow.

That had to refer to Dr. John Dee. He had been Queen Elizabeth s personalmagician. And the Crow was clearly the Crow Goddess.

Then the Elder will step out of the Shadows

Flamel knew that Dee had been working for centuries with the Dark Elders tobring about their return. He had heard unconfirmed reports that more and moreof the Dark Elders had left their Shadowrealms and begun to explore the worldof the humani again.

And the immortal must train the mortal. The two that are one must become the one that is all.

Nicholas Flamel was the immortal of the prophecy. He was sure of it. Thetwins the two that are one must be the mortal who needed to be trained. But he had no idea what the last phrase referred to: the one that is all.

Circumstances had placed the twins in his care, and he was determined that noharm should come to them, especially now that he believed they were destinedto play a critical role in the war against the Dark Elders. Nicholas knewthat bringing Josh and Sophie to the Goddess with Three Faces had been anincredible risk especially in the company of Scathach. The Warrior s feudwith the goddess was older than most civilizations. Hekate was one of themost dangerous of the Elders. Immensely powerful, one of her many skillsenabled her to Awaken the magical powers that existed in every sentientcreature. However, like many of the Elders, her metabolism was linked to asolar or lunar cycle. She aged during the day, and effectively died when thesun went down, but was then reborn with the sunrise as a young woman. Thispeculiar trait clouded and colored her thinking, and sometimes, as hadhappened earlier, the older Hekate forgot the promises her younger selves hadmade. Flamel was hoping he would be able to reason with the maiden Hekate inthe morning and convince her to Awaken the twins extraordinary potential.

The Alchemyst knew that everyone had the possibility for magic within them.Once it had been sparked into life, it tended to become increasingly powerfulof its own accord. Sometimes very rarely children suddenly exhibitedextraordinary powers, usually either telepathy or telekinesis or acombination of both. Some children realized what was happening and managed tocontrol their growing powers, while others never fully understood it. Leftuntrained and unchecked, magical energy radiated off the children in waves,moving furniture around, knocking people to the ground, gouging marks inwalls and ceilings. This was often reported as poltergeist activity. He knewthat if Hekate Awakened the twins dormant magical powers, then he could usewhat he had learned over six hundred years of study to increase their skills.Not only would he give them the means of protecting themselves, but he wouldalso be able to begin preparing them for whatever lay ahead.

Still crouching by the pool, he stared into the green-tinged water. Red andwhite koi moved just below the surface, while deeper down, humanlike facespeered up, eyes huge and blank, mouths filled with needle-pointed teeth. Hedecided against dipping his fingers into the water.

It was commonly held in all the ancient magical books that there were fourelements of magic: Air and Water, Earth and Fire. But centuries of study hadrevealed to Nicholas that there were, in fact, five elemental forces ofmagic. The fifth force was the magic of Time, the greatest of all magics. TheElders could control all the other elements, but the secret of the fifth wascontained only in the Codex and that was one of the many reasons why Dee, andthe Dark Elders he sided with, wanted the Codex. With it in their possession,they would be able to control time itself.

Along with Perenelle, Nicholas Flamel had spent most of his long lifestudying the elemental forces. While Perry had trained herself in differentstyles of magic, he had concentrated on the formulae and theorems from theCodex. These formed the basis of the study of alchemy, which was a type ofscience. Using the formulae, he had learned how to turn base metal into goldand coal into diamonds, but there was very little magic involved. True, itwas a remarkably complex formula and required months of preparation, but theprocess itself was almost ridiculously simple. One day he had been poor, thenext wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Taking Perry s advice, he had foundedhospitals, established orphanages and funded schools in his native Paris.Those had been good times no, more than that they had been great times. Lifehad been so much simpler then. They had not known about the Elder Race, hadnot begun to suspect even the tiniest portion of dark knowledge the Codexcontained.