The Alchemyst (11 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

S
ophie and Josh followed Scathach through Hekate’s house. There were reminders everywhere that they were inside a tree: everything—floors, walls and ceilings—was wooden, and in places, little buds and shoots of green leaves dappled the walls, as if the wood was still growing.

With her hand resting lightly on her brother’s shoulder, Sophie looked around. The house seemed to be composed of a series of circular rooms that flowed, almost imperceptibly, into one another. She caught glimpses as she and Josh passed them; almost all the rooms were bare, and most of them had tall red-barked trees growing through the center of the floor. One room, off to the side and much larger than the rest, had a large oval-shaped pool in the middle of the floor. Startlingly large white-flowered water lilies clustered in the center of the pool, giving it the appearance of a huge unblinking eye. Another room was filled entirely with wooden wind chimes dangling from the branches of its red tree. Each set of chimes was a different size and shape, some etched and carved with symbols, others unadorned. They hung still and quiet until Sophie looked into the room, and then they slowly, melodically began to rattle together. It sounded like distant whispers. Sophie squeezed Josh’s shoulder, trying to attract his attention, but he was staring straight ahead, forehead creased in concentration.

“Where is everyone?” Josh finally asked.

“There is only Hekate,” Scathach said. “Those of the Elder Race are solitary creatures.”

“Are there many still alive?” Sophie wondered aloud.

Scathach paused by an open door and turned to look back over her shoulder. “More than you might think. The majority of them want nothing to do with the humani and rarely venture from their individual Shadowrealms. Others, like the Dark Elders, want a return to the old ways, and work through agents like Dee to make it happen.”

“And what about you?” Josh demanded. “Do you want to return to these old ways?”

“I never thought they were that great,” she said, then added, “especially for the humani.”

They found Nicholas Flamel sitting outside on a raised wooden deck set into a branch of the tree. Growing horizontally from the tree trunk, the branch was at least ten feet across, and sloped down to plunge into the earth close to a crescent-shaped pool. Walking across the branch, Sophie glanced down and was startled to see that beneath the green weeds that curled and twisted in the pool, tiny almost-human faces peered upward, mouths and eyes open wide. On the deck, five high-backed chairs were arranged around a circular table, which was set with beautifully hand-carved wooden bowls and elegant wooden cups and goblets. Warm, rough-cut bread and thick slices of hard cheese were arranged on platters, and there were two huge bowls of fruit—apples, oranges and enormous cherries—in the center of the table. The Alchemyst was carefully slicing the skin off an emerald green apple with a triangular sliver of black stone that looked like an arrowhead. Sophie noticed that he had arranged the green skin into shapes that resembled letters.

Scatty slid into the seat beside the Alchemyst. “Is Hekate not joining us?” she asked, picking up a piece of cut skin and chewing on it.

“I believe she is changing for dinner,” Flamel said, slicing off another curl of skin to replace the piece Scatty was chewing. He looked over at Sophie and Josh. “Sit, please. Our hostess will join us shortly and then we’ll eat. You must be exhausted,” he added.

“I am tired,” Sophie admitted. She’d become aware of the exhaustion a little earlier, and now she could barely keep her eyes open. She was also a little frightened, realizing that the tiredness was caused by the magic of the place feeding off her energy.

“When can we go home?” Josh demanded, unwilling to admit that he too was worn out. Even his bones ached. He felt as if he was coming down with a cold.

Nicholas Flamel cut a neat slice from the apple and popped it in his mouth. “I’m afraid you will not be able to return for a little while.”

“Why not?” Josh snapped.

Flamel sighed. He put down the stone arrowhead and the apple and placed his hands flat on the table. “Right now, neither Dee nor the Morrigan knows who you are. It’s only because of that, that you and your family are safe.”

“Our
family
?” Sophie asked. The sudden thought that her mother or father might be in danger made her feel queasy. Josh reacted with the same shock, his lips drawing into a thin white line.

“Dee will be thorough,” Flamel said. “He is protecting a millennia-old secret, and he will not stop with killing you. Everyone you know or have come in contact with will have an
accident.
I’d hazard a guess that even Bernice’s Coffee Cup will burn to the ground…simply because you once worked in it. Bernice might even perish in the fire.”

“But she has nothing to do with anything,” Sophie protested, horrified.

“Yes, but Dee doesn’t know that. Nor does he care. He has worked with the Dark Elders for a long time, and now he has come to regard humans as they do: as little more than beasts.”

“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 direction.

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.