Michael Scott - The Alchemyst

The book? Sophie asked. She had caught a glimpse of it in Josh s handbefore the small man pulled it free. Although she was standing in a shop fullof books, and their father owned a huge library of antiquarian books, she hadnever seen anything like that particular one before. It looked as if it wasbound in tarnished metal.

Fleming nodded. He s been looking for that for a long time, he said softly,his pale eyes lost and distant. A very long time.

Josh rose slowly to his feet, his back and shoulders aching. He held out twocrumpled pages to Nick. Well, he didn t get all of it. When he pulled thebook out of my hand, I guess I must have been holding on to these.

Fleming snatched the pages from Josh s hand with an inarticulate cry.Dropping to the floor, he brushed away shredded books and shattered shelvingand laid the two pages on the floor side by side. His long-fingered handswere trembling slightly as he smoothed the pages flat. The twins knelt on thefloor on either side of him, staring intently at the pages and trying to makesense of what they were seeing. And we re certainly not imagining that,Sophie whispered, tapping the page with her index finger.

The thick pages were about six inches across by nine inches long and werecomposed of what looked like pressed bark. Tendrils of fibers and leaves wereclearly visible in the surface, and both were covered with jagged, angularwriting. The first letter at the top left-hand corner of each page wasbeautifully illuminated in gold and red, while the rest of the words werewritten in reddish black ink.

And the words were moving.

Sophie and Josh watched as the letters shifted on the page like tiny beetles,shaping and reshaping themselves, becoming briefly almost legible inrecognizable languages like Latin or Old English, but then immediatelydissolving and re-forming into ancient-looking symbols not unlike Egyptianhieroglyphs or Celtic Ogham.

Fleming sighed. No, you re not imagining that, he said finally. He reacheddown the neck of his T-shirt and pulled out a pair of pincenez on a length ofblack cord. The pincenez were old-fashioned glasses without arms, designed toperch on the bridge of the nose. Using the spectacles as magnifying glasses,Nick moved them across the wriggling, shifting words. Ha!

Good news? Josh asked.

Excellent news. He s missing the Final Summoning. He squeezed Josh sbruised shoulder, making him wince. If you had wanted to take two pages fromthe book, rendering it useless, then you could not have chosen better thanthese. The broad smile faded from his face. And when Dee finds out, he llbe back, and I guarantee you he will not just bring Golems with him nexttime.

Who was the gray man? Sophie asked. Perry also called him Dee.

Gathering up the pages, Nick stood. Sophie turned to look at him and realizedthat he suddenly looked old and tired, incredibly tired. The gray man wasDr. John Dee, one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the world.

I ve never heard of him, Josh said.

To remain unknown in this modern world: that, indeed, is real power. Dee isan alchemist, a magician, a sorcerer and a necromancer, and they are not allthe same thing.

Magic? Sophie asked.

I thought there was no such thing as magic, Josh said sarcastically, andthen immediately felt foolish, after what he d just seen and experienced.

Yet you have just fought creatures of magic: the Golems are men created ofmud and clay, brought to life by a single word of power. In this century,I ll wager there are less than half a dozen people who have even seen aGolem, let alone survived an encounter with one.

Did Dee bring them to life? Sophie asked.

Creating Golems is easy; the spell is as old as humanity. Animating them isa little harder and controling them is practically impossible. He sighed.

But not for Dr. John Dee.

Who is he? she pressed.

Dr. John Dee was Court Magician during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I inEngland.

Sophie laughed shakily, not entirely sure whether to believe Nick Fleming.

But that was centuries ago; the gray man couldn t have been older thanfifty.

Nick Fleming crawled around on the floor, pushing through books until hefound the one he wanted. England in the Age of Elizabeth. He flipped it open:on the page facing an image of Queen Elizabeth I was an old-fashioned etchingof a sharp-faced man with a triangular beard. The clothes were different, butthere was no doubt that this was the man they had encountered.

Sophie took the book from Nick s hands. It says here that Dee was born in1527, she said very softly. That would make him nearly five hundred yearsold.

Josh came to stand beside his sister. He stared at the picture, then lookedaround the room. If he breathed deeply, he could still smell the peculiarodors of magic. That was what he had been smelling not mint and rotten eggs,but the scent of magic. Dee knew you, he said slowly. He knew you well,he added.

Fleming moved about the shop, picking up odd items and dropping them to thefloor again. Oh, he knows me, he said. He knows Perry, too. He s known usfor a long time a very long time. He looked over at the twins, his almostcolorless eyes now dark and troubled. You re involved now, more s the pity,so the time for lies and subterfuge is past. If you are to survive, you willneed to know the truth.

Josh and Sophie looked at one another. They had both picked up the phrase If you are to survive

My real name is Nicholas Flamel. I was born in France in the year 1330.Perry s real name is Perenelle: she is ten years older than me. But don tever tell her I said that, he added hastily.

Josh felt his stomach churn and rumble. He was going to say Impossible! and laugh and be irritated with Nick for telling them such a stupid story. But hewas bruised and aching from being flung across the room by by what? Heremembered the Golem that had reached for Perry Perenelle and how it had dissolved into powder at her touch.

What what are you? Sophie asked the question that was forming on her twin s lips. What are you and Perenelle?

Nick smiled, but his face was cold and humorless, and for an instant, he almost resembled Dee. We are legend, he said simply. Once a long time ago we were simple people, but then I bought a book, the Book of Abraham the Mage, usually called the Codex. From that moment on, things changed. Perenelle changed. I changed. I became the Alchemyst.

I became the greatest alchemyst of all time, sought after by kings and princes, by emperors and even the Pope himself. I discovered the secret of the philosopher s stone hidden deep in that book of ancient magic: I learned how to turn ordinary metal into gold, how to change common stones into precious jewels. But more than this, much more, I found the recipe for a formulation of herbs and spells that keeps disease and death at bay. Perenelle and I became virtually immortal. He held up the torn pages in his hand. This is all that remains of the Codex. Dee and his kind have been seeking the Book of the Mage for centuries. Now they have it. And Perenelle, too, he added bitterly.

But you said the Book is useless without these pages, Josh reminded him quickly.

That is true. There is enough in the Book to keep Dee busy for centuries, but these pages are vital, Nick agreed. Dee will be coming back for them.

There s something else, though, isn t there? Sophie asked quickly. Something more. She knew he was holding something back; adults always did. Their parents had taken months to tell Josh and her that they would be spending the summer in San Francisco.

Nick glanced at her sharply, and once again she was reminded of the look Dee had given her earlier: there was something cold and inhuman in it. Yes there is something more, he said hesitantly. Without the Book, Perenelle and I will age. The formulation for immortality must be brewed afresh every month. Within the full cycle of the moon, we will wither and die. And if we die, then the evil we have so long fought against will triumph. The Elder Race will claim this earth again.