Scathach stepped forward and rested her hand lightly on the Alchemyst’s shoulder. “Nicholas, you know that is true. There are certain words that should never be spoken, names that should never be used. Old things. Undead things.”
Nicholas nodded. “If you gave this person your word, then you should not go back on it, of course. But tell me”—he paused, not looking at the count—“this mysterious person, how many hands did he have?”
Saint-Germain sat back suddenly, and the shocked expression on his face revealed the truth. “How did you know?” he whispered.
The Alchemyst’s mouth twisted into an ugly grimace. “In Spain, six hundred years ago, I met a one-handed man who taught me some of the secrets of the Codex. He too refused to speak his name aloud.” Flamel suddenly looked at Sophie, eyes wide and staring. “You have within you the Witch’s memories. If a name comes to you now—it would be better for all of us if you did not say it aloud.”
Sophie closed her mouth so quickly she bit the inside of her lip. She knew the name of the person Flamel and Saint-Germain were talking about. She also knew just who—and what—he was. And she had been just about to speak the name aloud.
Flamel turned back to Saint-Germain. “You know that Sophie’s powers have been Awakened. The Witch taught her the basics of the Magic of Air, and I am determined that both she and Josh be trained in all the elemental magics as quickly as possible. I know where there are masters of Earth and Water magic. Only yesterday, I was thinking we might have to go in search of one of the Elders associated with fire, Maui or Vulcan or even your old nemesis, Prometheus himself. Now I’m hoping that might not be necessary.” He paused for a breath. “Do you think you could you teach Sophie the Magic of Fire?”
Saint-Germain blinked in surprise. He folded his arms across his chest and looked from the girl to the Alchemyst and started to shake his head. “I’m not sure I could. I’m not even sure I should….”
Joan reached over and rested her right hand on the back of her husband’s arm. He turned to look at her and she nodded, almost imperceptibly. Her lips didn’t move, and yet everyone clearly heard her say, “Francis, you must do it.”
The count didn’t hesitate. “I’ll do it…but is it wise?” he asked, serious.
“It is necessary,” she said simply.
“It’ll be a lot for her to take in….” He bowed to Sophie. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to talk about you as if you weren’t here.” He looked back at Nicholas and added doubtfully, “Sophie is still dealing with the Witch’s memories.”
“Not anymore. I attended to that.” Joan’s grip tightened on her husband’s arm. She turned her head to look at everyone sitting around the table, finally stopping at Sophie. “While Sophie slept, I spoke to her, helped her sort the memories, categorize them, separate her own thoughts from the Witch’s. I do not think they will trouble her so much now.”
Sophie was shocked. “You got into my head while I was asleep?”
Joan of Arc shook her head slightly. “I didn’t get into your mind…I simply talked to you, instructed you what to do and how to do it.”
“I saw you talking…,” Josh began, and then frowned. “But Sophie was sound asleep. She couldn’t hear you.”
“She heard me,” Joan said. She looked directly at Sophie and placed her left hand flat on the table. A crackling silver haze appeared on her fingertips, tiny speckles of light dancing from her flesh to bounce, like mercury droplets, across the table toward the girl’s hands, which were resting on the polished wood. As they approached, Sophie’s fingernails began to glow a muted silver, and then suddenly, the points of light wrapped around her fingers.
“You may be twin to Josh, but we are sisters, you and I. We are Silver. I know what it is like to hear voices inside my head; I know what it is like to see the impossible, to know the unknowable.” Joan looked first at Josh and then at the Alchemyst. “While Sophie slept, I spoke directly to her unconscious mind. I taught her how to control the Witch’s memories, how to ignore the voices, to shut out the images. I taught her how to protect herself.”
Sophie raised her head slowly, eyes wide with surprise. “That’s what’s different!” she said, both shocked and amazed. “I can’t hear the voices anymore.” She looked at her twin. “They started when the Witch poured her knowledge into me. There were thousands of them, shouting and whispering in languages I almost understood. It’s quiet now.”
“They’re still there,” Joan explained. “They will always be there. But now you will be able to call upon them when you need to, to use their knowledge. I also started the process of teaching you how to control your aura.”
“But how could you while she was asleep?” Josh pressed. He even found the thought of it incredibly disturbing.
“Only the conscious mind sleeps—the unconscious is always aware.”
“What do you mean, control my aura?” Sophie asked, confused. “I thought it was just this silver-colored electrical field around my body.”
Joan shrugged, an elegant movement of her shoulders. “Your aura is as powerful as your imagination. You can shape it, meld it, fashion it to your will.” She held out her left hand. “That’s how I can do this.” A metal glove from a suit of armor clicked into existence around her flesh. Each rivet was perfectly formed, and the back of the fingers was even dappled with rust. “Try it,” she suggested.
Sophie held out her hand and looked hard at it.
“Visualize the glove,” Joan suggested. “See it in your imagination.”
A tiny silver thimble appeared on Sophie’s little finger, then winked out of existence.
“Well, a little more practice, maybe,” Joan admitted. She glanced sidelong at Saint-Germain and then looked at the Alchemyst. “Let me work with Sophie for a couple of hours, teach her a little more about controlling and shaping her aura, before Francis starts to teach her the Magic of Fire.”
“This Fire magic. Is it dangerous?” Josh demanded, looking around the room. He still vividly remembered what had happened to his sister when Hekate had Awakened her—she could have died. And the more he’d learned about the Witch of Endor, he’d realized Sophie could have died learning Air magic as well. When no one answered him, he turned to look at Saint-Germain. “Is it dangerous?”
“Yes,” the musician said simply. “Very.”
Josh shook his head. “Then I don’t want—”
Sophie reached out to squeeze her brother’s arm. He looked down: the hand that gripped his arm was wrapped in a chain-mail glove. “Josh, I have to do this.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
Josh looked into his sister’s face. It was set in the stubborn mask he knew so well. Finally, he turned away, saying nothing. He didn’t want his sister learning any more magic—not only was it dangerous…but it would also distance her even further from him.
Joan turned to Flamel. “And now, Nicholas, you must rest.”
The Alchemyst nodded. “I will.”
“We were expecting you back a long time ago,” Scathach said. “I was thinking I’d have to go out in search of you.”
“The butterfly led me here hours ago,” Nicholas said tiredly, voice muffled with exhaustion. “Once I knew where you were, I wanted to wait for night to fall before approaching the house, just in case it is under observation.”
“Machiavelli doesn’t even know this house exists,” Saint-Germain said confidently.
“Perenelle taught me a simple cloaking spell a long time ago, but it only works when it’s raining—it uses water droplets to refract light around the user,” Flamel explained. “I decided to wait until nightfall to increase my chances of remaining unseen.”
“What did you do for the day?” Sophie asked.
“I wandered around the city, looking for some of my old haunts.”
“Surely most are gone?” Joan said.
“Most. Not all.” Flamel reached down and lifted an object wrapped in newspaper from the floor. It made
a solid thump when he dropped it on the table. “The house in Montmorency is still there.”
“I should have guessed you’d visit Montmorency,” Scathach said with a sad smile. She looked at the twins and explained, “It is the house where Nicholas and Perenelle lived in the fifteenth century. We spent some happy times there.”
“Very happy,” Flamel agreed.
“And it’s still there?” Sophie asked, amazed.
“One of the oldest houses in Paris,” Flamel said proudly.
“What else did you do?” Saint-Germain asked.
Nicholas shrugged. “Visited the Musée de Cluny. It’s not every day you get to see your own gravestone. I guess it’s comforting to know that people still remember me—the real me.”
Joan smiled. “There is a street named after you, Nicholas: the Rue Flamel. And one named in honor of Perenelle, too. But somehow, I don’t think that’s the real reason you visited the museum, is it?” She said shrewdly, “You never struck me as a sentimental man.”
The Alchemyst smiled. “Well, not the only reason,” he admitted. He reached into his jacket pocket and plucked out a narrow cylindrical tube. Everyone around the table leaned forward. Even Scatty stepped in to look at it. Unscrewing both ends, Flamel removed and unrolled a length of rustling parchment. “Nearly six hundred years ago, I hid this within my tombstone, little thinking that I would ever need to use it.” He spread the thick yellow parchment on the table. Drawn in red ink faded to the color of rust was an oval with a circle inside it, surrounded by three lines forming a rough triangle.
Josh leaned over. “I’ve seen something like that before.” He frowned. “Isn’t there something like that on the dollar bill?”
“Ignore what it looks like,” Flamel said. “It’s drawn this way to disguise its true meaning.”
“What is it?” Josh asked.
“It’s a map,” Sophie said suddenly.
“Yes, it’s a map,” Nicholas agreed. “But how did you know? The Witch of Endor never saw this….”
“No, it has nothing to do with the Witch,” Sophie smiled. She leaned across the table, her head brushing her brother’s. She pointed to the top right-hand corner of the parchment, where a tiny, barely visible cross was etched in red ink. “This definitely looks like an N,” she said, pointing to the top of the cross, “and this is an S.”
“North and south.” Josh nodded in quick agreement. “Genius, Soph!” He looked at Nicholas. “It’s a map.”
The Alchemyst nodded. “Very good. It’s a map of all the ley lines in Europe. Towns and cities, even borders might change beyond all recognition, but the ley lines remain the same.” He held up the square. “This is our passport out of Europe and back to America.”
“Let’s hope we get a chance to use it,” Scatty muttered.
Josh touched the edge of the newspaper-wrapped bundle that sat in the center of the table. “And what’s this?”
Nicholas furled the parchment back into the tube and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Then he began to unwrap layers of newspaper from the object on the table. “Perenelle and I were in Spain close to the end of the fourteenth century when the one-handed man revealed the first secret of the Codex,” he said, speaking to no one in particular, his French accent now pronounced.
“The first secret?” Josh asked.
“You’ve seen the text—it changes…but it changes in a strict mathematical sequence. It’s not random. The changes are linked to the movements of the stars and planets, the phases of the moon.”
“Like a calendar?” Josh said.
Flamel nodded. “Just like a calendar. Once we had learned that code sequence, we knew we could finally return to Paris. It would take us a lifetime—several lifetimes—to translate the book, but at least we had learned where to start. So I changed some stones into diamonds, and some flat pieces of shale into gold, and we started out on the long journey back to Paris. By then, of course, we had come to the attention of the Dark Elders, and Bacon, Dee’s foul predecessor, was closing in. Rather than take a direct route into France, we kept to the back roads and avoided the usual passes across the mountains, which we knew would be watched. However, winter arrived early that year—I believe the Dark Elders had something to do with it—and we found ourselves cut off in Andorra. And that is where I found this….” He touched the object on the table.
Josh looked at his sister, eyebrows raised in a silent question. Andorra? he mouthed; she was much better at geography than he was.
“One of the smallest countries in the world,” she explained in a whisper, “in the Pyrenees between Spain and France.”
Flamel unwrapped more paper. “Before I ‘died,’ I hid this object deep within the stone over the lintel of the house on the Rue de Montmorency. I never thought I would need it again.”
“Within?” Josh asked, confused. “Did you say you hid it within?”
“Within. I changed the molecular structure of the granite, pushed this into the block of stone and then returned the lintel to its original solid state. Simple transmutation: like pushing a nut into a tub of ice cream.” The final sheet of newspaper tore as he pulled it away.
“It’s a sword,” Josh whispered in awe, looking at the short narrow weapon nestled on the paper-strewn table. He guessed it was about twenty inches long, its simple cross hilt wrapped in strips of stained dark leather. The blade seemed to be made of a sparkling gray metal. No, not metal. “A stone sword,” he said aloud, frowning. It reminded him of something—almost as if he had seen it before.
But even as he was speaking, Joan and Saint-Germain scrambled away from the table, the woman’s chair falling over in her eagerness to get away from the blade. Behind Flamel, Scathach hissed like a cat, vampire teeth appearing as she opened her mouth, and when she spoke, her voice was shaking, her accent thick and barbaric. She sounded almost angry…or afraid. “Nicholas,” she said very slowly, “what are you doing with that filthy thing?”
The Alchemyst ignored her. He looked at Josh and Sophie, who had remained sitting at the table, shocked motionless by the reaction of the others, unsure what was happening. “There are four great swords of power,” Flamel said urgently, “each one linked to the elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. It is said that they predate even the oldest of the Elder Races. The swords have had many names through the ages: Excalibur and Joyeuse, Mistelteinn and Curtana, Durendal and Tyrfing. The last time one was used as a weapon in the world of men was when Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, carried Joyeuse into battle.”
“This is Joyeuse?” Josh whispered. His sister might be good at geography, but he knew history, and Charlemagne had always fascinated him.
Scathach’s laugh was a bitter snarl. “Joyeuse is a thing of beauty. This…this is an abomination.”
Flamel touched the sword’s hilt and the tiny crystals in the stone sparkled with green light. “This is not Joyeuse, though it is true that it once belonged to Charlemagne. I also believe the emperor himself hid this blade in Andorra sometime in the ninth century.”
“It’s just like Excalibur,” Josh said, suddenly realizing why the stone sword was so familiar. He looked at his sister. “Dee had Excalibur; he used it to destroy the World Tree.”
“Excalibur is the Sword of Ice,” Flamel continued. “This is its twin blade: Clarent, the Sword of Fire. It is the only weapon that can stand against Excalibur.”
“It is a cursed blade,” Scathach said firmly. “I’ll not touch it.”
“Nor I,” Joan said quickly, and Saint-Germain nodded in agreement.
“I’m not asking any of you to carry it or wield it,” Nicholas snapped. He spun the weapon on the table until the hilt touched the boy’s fingers and then he looked at each of them in turn. “We know Dee and Machiavelli are coming. Josh is the only one amongst us without the ability to protect himself. Until his powers are Awakened, he is going to need a weapon. I want him to have Clarent.”
“Nicholas!” Scathach cried, horrified. “What are you thin
king. He’s an untrained humani—”
“—with a solid gold aura,” Flamel said coldly. “And I am determined to keep him safe.” He pushed the sword into Josh’s fingers. “This is yours. Take it.”
Josh leaned forward and felt the two pages from the Codex press against his skin in their cloth bag. This would be the second gift the Alchemyst had given him in as many days. Part of him wanted to accept the gifts at face value—to trust him and to believe that Flamel liked him and trusted him in turn. And yet, and yet…even after the conversation they’d had in the street, somewhere at the back of his mind, Josh couldn’t forget what Dee had said by the fountain in Ojai: that half of everything Flamel said was a lie, and the other half wasn’t entirely truthful either. He deliberately looked away from the sword and looked into Flamel’s pale eyes. The Alchemyst was staring at him, his face an expressionless mask. So what was the Alchemyst up to? Josh wondered. What game was he playing? More of Dee’s words popped into his head. “He is now, and has always been, a liar, a charlatan, and a crook.”
“Don’t you want it?” Nicholas asked. “Take it.” He pushed the hilt right into Josh’s grip.
Almost against his will, Josh’s fingers closed over the smooth leather-wrapped hilt of the stone sword. He lifted it—though it was short, it was surprisingly heavy—and turned it over in his hands. “I’ve never handled a sword in my life,” he said. “I don’t know how….”
“Scathach will show you the basics,” Flamel said, not looking at the Shadow, but turning the simple statement into a command. “How to carry it, simple thrust and parry. Try and avoid stabbing yourself with it,” he added.
Josh suddenly realized that he was grinning widely and tried to wipe away the smile, but it was difficult: the sword felt amazing in his hand. He moved his wrist and the sword twitched. Then he looked at Scatty, Francis and Joan and saw how their eyes were fixed on the blade, following its every movement, and his smile faded. “What’s wrong with the sword?” he demanded. “Why are you so scared of it?”
Sophie put her hand on her brother’s arm, her eyes sparkling silver with the Witch’s knowledge. “Clarent,” she said, “is an evil, accursed weapon, sometimes called the Coward’s Blade. This is the sword Mordred used to kill his uncle, King Arthur.”