The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #6) (45 page)

Tsagaglalal looked to her right: Prometheus was an Elder. Surely in the battle ahead, his powers would prove more useful? And much more importantly, Prometheus was, in many respects, her father. His aura had given her life, and now it was only right and proper that she should return the gift to him.

Tsagaglalal blinked and suddenly there were tears on her face and the world dissolved into rainbow fractures. She had
only ever cried once before, and that was when Danu Talis had fallen and she’d lost her husband.

“I’m sorry, Niten,” she whispered, and poured the bloodred liquid aura down Prometheus’s throat.

The effect was instantaneous.

The Elder’s aura flared bright red around his body. He shuddered and coughed and his green eyes snapped open.

“Hello, Father.”

Prometheus reached up to touch Tsagaglalal’s face. “Just as I remember you,” he whispered, “just as I first saw you, young and beautiful. The Spartoi?”

“Dead. All dead.”

“And Niten?”

She dipped her head. “I could only save one.”

Prometheus struggled to sit up and she caught his arm and eased him upright. “Tsagaglalal, what have you done?”

“Repaid the gift you gave me a long time ago. You brought me to life and now I’ve returned you to life.”

He turned to look at her. “But at what cost to you?” Even as he was talking, her face was beginning to age, wrinkles appearing in her skin. A strand of white hair drifted to the ground between them.

“I think this is what I was meant to do,” she said.

“Without my aura you will not be able to renew your flesh. You will age normally now, and die soon enough.”

“Everything has a price,” Tsagaglalal said. “And this is one I am willing to pay. It seems a small price for countless lifetimes of experiences.”

Prometheus turned to look at Niten’s still form. “But,
Tsagaglalal,” he said quietly, “you have brought the wrong one back.”

“No!”

“Yes,” he insisted. “My time is done. My Shadowrealm is dust, and the First People are no more. There is nothing left for me here: it is time for me to go.”

“No …” She shook her head.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “Ten thousand years ago, your husband told me this was how it would end. He said I would die on a bridge wrapped in fog, in a city beyond comprehension, in a time out of time. I knew this when I set out tonight. I knew how it would end. Now let me go,” he pleaded. “Take back my aura. Give it to Niten.”

She shook her head, huge milk-colored tears on her face. “No, I cannot. I will not.”

“Let me ask you as a friend….”

She shook her head again, more hair curling and falling away from her face. Her tears sizzled on the bridge.

“I have never asked you for anything before. So let me ask you this as your father. Do this for me. Please.”

Tsagaglalal bowed her head and wept. Then she placed her right hand on the Elder’s chest and her left on Niten’s.

Prometheus lay back down and looked up into the night, the light fading from his eyes. “I am tired now, so very, very tired. It will be good to rest. And if you come across my sister, tell her who did this; tell her who sent the Spartoi. I have recognized Bastet’s and Quetzalcoatl’s auras on the air. And perhaps you should tell my sister where to find them.” He coughed a laugh. “They will not enjoy a visit from her.”

Niten drew in a deep shuddering breath and the air was suffused with the delicate odor of green tea.

“And, Tsagaglalal …”

“Yes, Father?”

Prometheus closed his eyes. “Tell Niten to find Aoife and ask her the question. Tell him … tell him she will say yes.”

I
sis and Osiris changed.

The transformation was sudden, sending them from human to beast in a single heartbeat. Ceramic armor burst apart as their pale skin split to reveal something dark and foul beneath. They grew tall, and the human flesh peeled away like torn paper to expose hard scales, rigid with triangular armored plates. Their faces lengthened to long serpentine snouts, and angular mouths filled with teeth. Their eyes flattened along the sides of their faces and turned yellow, while wicked horns curled from their heads. Their fingers grew razor-tipped claws. Barbed tails uncoiled, and wings, huge black batlike wings, unfurled from their backs.

And Sophie suddenly knew what the Witch of Endor had only suspected but could never quite believe. “Earthlords,” she whispered. She pulled out her swords. They shimmered,
trembling in her hands. “That’s why the Witch destroyed so much of the ancient knowledge. She was keeping it from you.”

Josh stood frozen. Isis and Osiris had turned into huge lizardlike creatures, and he was terrified of snakes. They were his every nightmare made flesh.

“A hundred thousand years ago your ancestors nearly destroyed our race,” one of the creatures said, speaking with Osiris’s voice.

“But we survived, and we swore a terrible vengeance,” the creature next to it continued in Isis’s voice.

The two creatures advanced on the twins, and Sophie immediately moved in front of Josh, protecting him.

“With your powers—your vast, incalculable powers—at our command,” Isis said, stamping her foot, “on this very spot, the very nexus of this Shadowrealm, we were going to open a portal into the past and bring our people through to this time. How they would have feasted on this world and all the other worlds.”

The Earthlords stepped closer as they spoke.

They exuded a rancid odor, and tiny insects and fat fleas twisted through their scales. Saliva dripping from their fangs seared the stones like acid as it fell. Black wings rose and spread, blotting out the last of the light.

“We will kill you and go back into the Shadowrealms,” Isis said. “We will find other Golds and Silvers. We will not make the same mistakes again.”

“No, you will not,” Sophie breathed. She threw herself forward, slashing out widely with the two swords. The movement caught the Earthlords by surprise, and the blades
screamed off their thick plated skin, drawing thin lines of green blood. But the edge of a flailing tail caught Sophie across the back, shattering her gold armor, breaking ribs and an arm, sending her crashing to the ground, her swords spinning away.

One of the creatures stood over her and planted a clawed foot on her stomach, pinning her to the ground. Sophie grunted. Her left arm was completely numb, and the pain in her ribs was excruciating, breathtaking. When she tried to call up her aura, the pain across her back and in her stomach was too much.

Isis raised a claw and leaned forward to rub it against Sophie’s face. “If only you had done what you were told.”

The second Earthlord crowded in. “How did you ever think you could defeat us?” He choked out a liquid laugh. “You are just humani.”

“We are the Gold and Silver!” Josh shouted. Blazing incandescent red and blue-white fire, he plunged Clarent and Excalibur into the Earthlords. “We are the twins of legend!”

A huge circle of white fire detonated off the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, and two vast columns of blinding flames were clearly visible in the night sky all across the island of Danu Talis.

S
ophie lay on the cold gold ground, and Josh sat cross-legged beside her.

They were both feeling sick and empty.

Excalibur and Clarent lay buzzing on the ground where Josh had dropped them, the blades of the two stone swords running with oily flame, sparkling, crackling and sizzling. Beside the swords were two bubbling pools of liquid gold where Isis and Osiris had been consumed.

Sophie was staring wide-eyed into distance. “Is it over?” she asked. She was focusing on healing her wounds, and the air was rich with the scent of vanilla.

“No,” Josh said sadly. “There’s still one thing to do. There is the prophecy.”

She nodded. “The twins of legend,” she whispered. “One to save the world, one to destroy it.”

Josh leaned forward and felt something move under his
armor. He reached in and took out the emerald tablet Tsagaglalal had given him. At first glance it was nothing more than a slab of slightly greasy stone. He turned it over and over in his hands. “It’s blank,” he said.

“Wait,” Sophie advised.

Josh rubbed his thumb across the surface, cleaning it … and words formed, shimmering gold against the green.

The words slowly faded from the tablet, leaving it nothing more than a blank green stone once more. Josh turned it over in his hand and then gently slipped it back beneath his armor.

Josh looked over at the girl who was not his sister but was still his twin, and they both nodded. “It’s time,” he whispered.

“Time for what?” she asked, groaning as she got up, arm pressed to her stomach.

“One to save the world,” he said, “one to destroy it.”

The pyramid groaned as another earthquake tremor rippled through it. The nearby volcano detonated in a long slow rumble, showering sparks onto the city below. There was a sudden patter of footsteps around them. Josh grabbed Clarent and Excalibur and scrambled to his feet … just as Prometheus and Tsagaglalal, then Scathach and Joan,
Saint-Germain and finally Palamedes, carrying a groaning Will Shakespeare, climbed onto the top of the pyramid. They were all bloodied and bruised, clothes torn, armor shattered, weapons broken. But they were alive.

“We need to get out of here,” Prometheus said. “The earthquake will tear the pyramid apart.” They started to climb into Isis and Osiris’s gleaming vimana.

“I thought I said I was never getting into another vimana,” Shakespeare muttered.

Josh helped Sophie to her feet and half carried her toward the vimana. Scathach and Joan were about to go to his aid, but Saint-Germain put a hand on their shoulders. “No. Leave them be,” he said in French. “They need this moment together.”

Sophie was crying. “Josh, we’re powerful, we can do something else….”

“You know what has to be done,” he said simply. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why all of us are here. We were brought here to do this one thing. This is what we were born for. This is our destiny.”

“I should be the one to do it,” she insisted. “I’m older.”

“No you’re not.” He smiled. “Not anymore. I’m about thirty thousand years older than you. And you’re injured. I’m not.” There were tears on his face now, but he was unaware of them. “Besides, I think yours is going to be the harder job.” He hugged her. “Let me do this,” he said, “and if I can, I’ll come find you.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Now go,” he pleaded.

“I will never forget you,” Sophie whispered.

“I will always remember you,” Josh promised.

A
reop-Enap had awakened

Eight bruise-colored eyes looked at the Alchemyst, and then each blinked in turn. Although Areop-Enap had the body of a huge spider, set in the center of her body was a huge, almost human head. It was smooth and round, with no ears or nose, but with a horizontal slash for a mouth. Like a tarantula’s, her tiny eyes were set close to the top of her skull. Beneath the thin shell, the Old Spider’s mouth opened and two long spearlike fangs appeared. “You should probably move now,” she said in a surprisingly sweet voice.

Nicholas scrambled away just as Areop-Enap erupted upward.

The Karkinos was huge.

But Areop-Enap was massive.

When Perenelle had first encountered the creature, the Old Spider had been large, but she had grown within the
protective shell. She stretched, her massive body uncoiling out of the muddy shell. Areop-Enap was easily twice the size of the crab. Finger-thick purple hairs on her broad back waved to and fro.

“I am smelling Quetzalcoatl and that cat-headed monstrosity in this fog.” She turned to look down at Perenelle. “Madam, would you care to explain just what is going on?”

The Sorceress pointed. “The crab is trying to eat you. It’s just eaten Xolotl. We need you, Old Spider.”