“But we won’t tell anyone what we’ve seen…,” Josh began, “and no one would believe us anyway….” His sentence trailed away.
“And if we don’t tell anyone, then no one will ever know,” Sophie said. “We’ll never speak of this again. Dee will never find us.” But even as the words were leaving her mouth, she was beginning to realize that it was hopeless. She and Josh were as trapped by their knowledge of the Codex’s existence as Nicholas and Perry had been.
“He would find you,” Flamel said reasonably. He glanced at the Warrior Maid. “How long do you think it would it take for Dee or one of the Morrigan’s spies to find them?”
“Not long,” she said, munching on the apple skin. “A couple of hours maybe. The rats or birds would track you, then Dee would hunt you down.”
“Once you have been touched by magic, you are forever changed.” Flamel moved his right hand in front of him, leaving the faintest hint of pale green smoke dangling in the air. “You leave a trail.” He huffed a breath at the green smoke and it curled away and disappeared.
“Are you saying we smell?” Josh demanded.
Flamel nodded. “You smell of wild magic. You caught a whiff of it earlier today when Hekate touched you both. What did you smell then?”
“Oranges,” Josh said.
“Vanilla ice cream,” Sophie replied.
“And earlier still, when Dee and I fought: what did you smell then?”
“Mint and rotten eggs,” Josh said immediately.
“Every magician has his or her own distinctive odor; rather like a magical fingerprint. You must learn to heed your senses. Humans use but a tiny percentage of theirs. They barely look, they rarely listen, they never smell, and they think that they can only experience feelings through their skin. But they talk, oh, do they talk. That makes up for the lack of use of their other senses. When you return to your own world, you will be able to recognize people who have some taint of magical energy.” He cut out a neat cube of apple and popped it into his mouth. “You may notice a peculiar scent, you might even taste it or see it as a shimmer around their bodies.”
“How long will the feeling last?” Sophie asked, curious. She reached out and took a cherry. It was the size of a small tomato. “Will it fade?”
Flamel shook his head. “It will never fade. On the contrary, it will get stronger. You have to realize that nothing will ever be the same for either of you from this day forth.”
Josh bit into an apple with a satisfying crunch. Juice ran onto his chin. “You make that sound like a bad thing,” he said with a grin, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
Flamel was about to respond, but glanced up and suddenly came to his feet. Scathach also rose smoothly, silently. Sophie immediately stood, but Josh remained sitting until Sophie caught his shoulder and pulled him up. Then she turned to look at the Goddess with Three Faces.
But this wasn’t Hekate.
The woman she had seen earlier had been tall and elegant, middle-aged maybe, her hair cut in a tight white helmet close to her head, her black skin smooth and unwrinkled. This woman was older, much, much older. The resemblance to Hekate was there, and Sophie guessed that this was her mother or grandmother. Although she was still tall, she stooped forward, picking her way around the branch, leaning into an ornately carved black stick that was at least as tall as Sophie. Her face was a mass of fine wrinkles, her eyes deeply sunken in her head, glittering with a peculiar yellow cast. She was completely bald, and Sophie could see where her skull was tattooed in an intricate curling pattern. Although she was wearing a dress similar to the one Hekate had worn earlier, the metallic-looking fabric ran black and red with her every movement.
Sophie blinked, squeezed her eyes shut and then blinked again. She could see the merest hint of an aura around the woman, almost as if she were exuding a fine white mist. When she moved, she left tendrils of this mist behind her.
Without acknowledging anyone’s presence, the old woman settled into the seat directly facing Nicholas Flamel. Only when she was seated did Flamel and Scathach sit. Sophie and Josh sat down also, glancing from Nicholas to the old woman, wondering who she was and what was going on.
The woman raised a wooden goblet from the table, but didn’t drink. There was movement in the trunk of the tree behind her, and four tall, muscular young men appeared, carrying trays piled high with food, which they set down in the center of the table before backing away silently. The men looked so alike that they had to be related, but it was their faces that drew the twins’ attention: there was something wrong with the planes and angles of their skulls. Foreheads sloped down to a ridge over their eyes, their noses were short and splayed, their cheekbones pronounced, and their chins receded sharply. The hint of yellow teeth was visible behind thin lips. The men were bare-chested and barefoot, wearing only leather kilts, onto which rectangular plates of metal had been sewn. And their chests, legs and heads were covered with coarse red hair.
Sophie suddenly realized that she was staring, and deliberately turned away. The men looked like some breed of primitive hominid, but she knew the differences between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, and her father had plaster skulls of Australopithecus, Peking man and the great apes in his study. These men were none of those. And then she noticed that their eyes were blue: bright blue, and incredibly intelligent-looking.
“They’re Torc Allta,” she said, and then froze in surprise when everyone turned to look at her. She hadn’t realized she had spoken aloud.
Josh, who’d been staring suspiciously at what might have been a chunk of fish he’d forked out of a big bowl of stew, glanced at the backs of the four young men. “I knew that,” he said casually.
Sophie kicked him under the table. “You did not,” she muttered. “You were too busy checking out the food.”
“I’m hungry,” he said, then leaned across to his twin. “It was the red hair and piggy noses that gave it away,” he murmured. “I thought you’d realized that.”
“It would be a mistake to let them hear you say that,” Nicholas Flamel interrupted quietly. “It would also be a mistake to judge by appearances or to comment on what you see. In this time, in this place, different standards, different criteria apply. Here words can kill—literally.”
“Or get you killed,” Scathach added. She had piled her plate high with an assortment of vegetables, only some of which were familiar to the twins. She nodded in the direction of the tree. “But you are right: they are Torc Allta in their humani form. Probably the finest warriors of any time,” she said.
“They will accompany you when you leave here,” the old woman said suddenly, her voice surprisingly strong coming from such a frail-looking body.
Flamel bowed. “We will be honored by their presence.”
“Don’t be,” the old woman snapped. “They’ll not accompany you solely for your protection: they’re to ensure that you really do leave my realm.” She spread her long-fingered hands on the table, and Sophie noticed that her fingernails were each painted a different color. Strangely, the pattern was identical to the one she’d noticed on Hekate’s nails earlier. “You cannot stay here,” the woman announced abruptly. “You must go.”
The twins glanced at each other; why was she being so rude?
Scathach opened her mouth to speak, but Flamel reached over and squeezed her arm. “That was always our intention,” he said smoothly. The late-afternoon sunlight slanting through the trees dappled his face, turning his pale eyes into mirrors. “When Dee attacked my shop and snatched the Codex, I realized that I had nowhere else to go.”
“You should have gone south,” the old woman said, her dress almost completely black now, the red threads looking like veins. “You would have been more welcome there. I want you to leave.”
“When I began to suspect that the prophecy was beginning to come about, I knew I had to come to you,” Flamel continued, ignoring her. The twins, who were following the exchange closely, noticed how his eyes had flickered briefly in their dir
ection.
The old woman turned her head and looked at the twins with her butter-colored eyes. Her wizened face cracked in a humorless smile that showed her tiny yellow teeth. “I have thought about this; I am convinced that the prophecy does not refer to humani—and especially not humani children,” she added with a hiss.
The contempt in the woman’s voice made Sophie speak out. “I wish you wouldn’t talk about us as if we weren’t here,” she said.
“Besides,” Josh said, “your daughter was going to help us. Why don’t we wait and see what she has to say.”
The elderly woman blinked at him, and her almost-invisible eyebrows raised in a silent question. “My daughter?”
Sophie saw Scathach’s eyes widen in surprise or warning, but Josh pressed on.
“Yes, the woman we met this afternoon. The younger woman—your daughter? Or maybe she’s your granddaughter? She was going to help us.”
“I have neither a daughter nor a granddaughter!” The old woman’s dress flared black and red in long sheets of color. Her lips drew back from her teeth and she snarled some incomprehensible words. Her hands curled into claws, and the air was suddenly filled with the citrus scent of lime. Dozens of tiny spinning balls of green light gathered in the palms of her hand.
And then Scathach slammed a double-edged dagger into the center of the table. The wood split in two with a thunderous snap that spewed splinters into the air, and the bowls of food shattered on the ground. The old woman reared back, the green light dribbling from her fingers like liquid. It ran hissing and spitting down the branch before sinking into the wood.
The four Torc Allta were immediately behind the old woman, curved, scythelike swords in their hands, and three more of the creatures in their boar shape burst through the undergrowth and raced up the branch to assume positions behind Flamel and Scatty.
The twins froze, terrified, unsure what had just happened. Nicholas Flamel hadn’t moved, he merely continued to cut and eat the apple. Scathach calmly sheathed her dagger and folded her arms. She spoke quickly to the old woman. Sophie and Josh could see Scathach’s lips moving, but all they could hear was a tinny, mosquito-like buzz.
The old woman didn’t respond. Her face was an expressionless mask as she stood and swept away from the table, surrounded by the Torc Allta guards. This time neither Flamel nor Scathach stood.
In the long silence that followed, Scathach stooped down to gather some of the fallen fruits and vegetables from the ground, dusted them off and popped them into the only remaining unbroken wooden bowl. She started to eat.
Josh was opening his mouth to ask the same question Sophie wanted an answer to, but she reached under the table and squeezed his arm, silencing him. She was aware that something terribly dangerous had just occurred, and that somehow Josh was involved.
“I think that went well, don’t you?” Scathach asked eventually.
Flamel finished the apple and cleaned the edge of the black arrowhead on a leaf. “It depends on how you define the word well,” he said.
Scathach munched on a raw carrot. “We’re still alive and we’re still in the Shadowrealm,” she said. “Could be worse. The sun is going down. Our hostess will need to sleep, and in the morning, she’ll be a different person. Probably won’t even remember what happened tonight.”
“What did you say to her?” Flamel asked. “I’ve never mastered the Elder Tongue.”
“I simply reminded her of the ancient duty of hospitality and assured her that the slight to her was unintentional and made through ignorance and was, therefore, no crime under the Elder Laws.”
“She is fearful…,” Flamel murmured, glancing toward the huge tree trunk. The Torc Allta guards could be seen moving inside, while the largest of the boars had remained outside, blocking the doorway.
“She is always fearful when the evening draws in. It is when she is at her most vulnerable,” Scathach said.
“It would be nice,” Sophie interrupted, “if someone told us exactly what just happened.” She hated it when adults talked among themselves and ignored any children present. And that was exactly what was happening now.
Scathach smiled, and suddenly, her vampire teeth looked very long in her mouth. “Your twin managed to insult one of the Elder Race and was very nearly turned into green slime for his crime.”
Josh shook his head. “But I didn’t say anything…,” he protested. He looked at his twin for support as he quickly thought over his conversation with the old woman. “All I said was that her daughter or granddaughter had promised to help us.”
Scathach laughed softly. “There is no daughter or granddaughter. The mature woman you saw this afternoon was Hekate. The old woman you saw this evening is also Hekate, and in the morning, you will meet a young girl who is Hekate as well.”
“The Goddess with Three Faces,” Flamel reminded them.
“Hekate is cursed to age with the day. Maiden in the morning, matron in the afternoon, crone in the evening. She is incredibly sensitive about her age.”
Josh swallowed hard. “I didn’t know….”
“No reason why you should have—except that your ignorance could have gotten you killed…or worse.”
“But what did you do to the table?” Sophie asked. She looked at the ruin of the circular table: it was split down the middle where Scatty had cut it with her 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 of iron 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 Elders get 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 around iron.”
Josh licked his dry lips. He was still remembering the green light buzzing in Hekate’s palms. “When you said ‘turned into green slime,’ you didn’t really mean…”
Scathach nodded. “Sticky green slime. Quite disgusting. And I understand the victim retains some measure of consciousness for a while.” She glanced at Flamel. “I cannot remember the last person to cross one of the Elders and live, can you?”
Flamel stood. “Let’s hope she doesn’t remember in the morning. Get some rest,” 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 magical potential. If you are going to have any chance of surviving the days to come, I will have to train you to become magicians.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nicholas Flamel watched Sophie and Josh follow Scathach into the tree. Only when the door had closed behind them did his colorless eyes betray the worry he 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 able to reconstitute him in the morning when she had taken on her maiden form. He had to get the twins away from her before their ignorance got them into trouble.
Flamel walked away from the ruined table and followed the slope of the tree limb down to the pool. He stepped off the branch and onto a narrow unpaved path. 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 by creatures he couldn’t see, and he guessed that the Torc Allta were probably the least of Hekate’s guards.
Crouching by the water’s edge, he took a deep breath and allowed himself a moment to relax. It would be true to say that this had been one of the more eventful days in his long life, and he was exhausted.
From the moment Dee had snatched Perry and the Codex and the twins had appeared, Flamel knew that one of the fi
rst prophecies he had read in the Book 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 of them were concerned with the annihilation of Danu Talis, the ancient homeland of the Elder Race, but there was also a series of prophecies that had to do with 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 personal magician. 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 to bring about their return. He had heard unconfirmed reports that more and more of the Dark Elders had left their Shadowrealms and begun to explore the world of 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. The twins—“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 no harm should come to them, especially now that he believed they were destined to play a critical role in the war against the Dark Elders. Nicholas knew that bringing Josh and Sophie to the Goddess with Three Faces had been an incredible risk—especially in the company of Scathach. The Warrior’s feud with the goddess was older than most civilizations. Hekate was one of the most dangerous of the Elders. Immensely powerful, one of her many skills enabled her to Awaken the magical powers that existed in every sentient creature. However, like many of the Elders, her metabolism was linked to a solar or lunar cycle. She aged during the day, and effectively died when the sun went down, but was then reborn with the sunrise as a young woman. This peculiar trait clouded and colored her thinking, and sometimes, as had happened earlier, the older Hekate forgot the promises her younger selves had made. Flamel was hoping he would be able to reason with the maiden Hekate in the morning and convince her to Awaken the twins’ extraordinary potential.