The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2) (39 page)

“The New World?” Areop-Enap asked.

“Yes, the New World”, Perenelle said, smiling. The reclusive spider Elder often hibernated for centuries and missed huge chunks of human history.

“What are you doing here?” Areop-Enap asked.

“I am a prisoner like you.” She stepped back. “If I lower the spear, are you going to do something stupid?

“Like what?”

“Like jump at me.”

All the hairs on Areop-Enap’s legs rose and fell in unison. “Truce?” the spider Elder suggested.

Perenelle nodded. “Truce”, she agreed. “It seems we have a common enemy.”

Areop-Enap moved to the door of the cell. “Do you know how I got here?”

“I was rather hoping you would be able to tell me that”, Perenelle said.

Keeping several wary eyes on the glowing spear, the spider took a tentative step out into the corridor. “The last place I remember was
Igup
Island
. It’s part of Polynesia”, it added.

“Micronesia”, Perenelle said. “The name changed more than one hundred and fifty years ago. Just how long have you been asleep, Old Spider?” she asked, calling the creature by its common name.

“I’m not sure when did we last meet and have our little misunderstanding? In humani years, Sorceress”, it added.

“When Nicholas and I were on Pohnpei investigating the ruins of Nan Madol”, Perenelle said immediately. She had an almost perfect memory. “That was about two hundred years ago”, she added.

“I probably took a nap sometime about then”, Areop-Enap said, stepping out into the corridor. Behind it, the cell came alive with millions of spiders. “I remember waking from a very nice nap”, it said slowly. “I saw the Magician Dee but he was not alone. There was someone else
something
else with him. Instructing him.”

“Who?” Perenelle asked urgently. “Try and remember, Old Spider, this is important.”

Areop-Enap closed each of its eyes as it tried to recall what had happened. “Something is preventing me”, it said, all its eyes opening simultaneously. “Something powerful. Whoever was with him was protected by an extraordinarily powerful magical shield.” Areop-Enap looked up and down the corridor. “That way?” it asked.

“This way.” Perenelle pointed with the spear. Even though Areop-Enap had called a truce, Perenelle was not prepared to stand unarmed before one of the most powerful of the Elders. “I wonder why he wanted you prisoner.” A sudden thought struck her and she stopped so quickly that Areop-Enap brushed against her, almost sending her face-first onto the muddy floor. “If you had to make a choice, Old Spider, if you had to choose between returning the Elders to this world or leaving it in the hands of the humani, who would you choose?”

“Sorceress”, Areop-Enap said, mouth gaping to reveal its terrifying teeth in what might have been a smile, “I was one of the Elders who voted that we should leave the earth to the ape-kin. I recognized that our time on this planet was over; and in our arrogance we had almost destroyed it. It was time to step back and leave it to the humani.”

“So you would not be in favor of the return of the Elders?”

“No”.

“And if there was a fight, who would you stand with the Elders or the humani?”

“Sorceress”, Areop-Enap said very seriously, “I’ve stood with the humani before. Along with my kin, Hekate and the Witch of Endor, I helped bring civilization to this planet. Despite my appearance, my loyalties are with the humani.”

“And that’s why Dee had to capture you now. He couldn’t afford to have someone as powerful as you fight alongside humankind.”

“Then the confrontation must be very close indeed”, Areop-Enap said. “But there’s nothing Dee and the Dark Elders can do until they secure the Book of…” Areop-Enap’s voice trailed away. “They’ve got the Book?”

“Most of it”, Perenelle confirmed miserably. “And you should know the rest of it. You are familiar with the prophecy of the twins?”

“Of course. That old fool, Abraham, was always twittering on about the twins and scribbling down his indecipherable prophecies in the Codex. I never believed a word of them myself. And in all the years I knew him, he never got a single thing right.”

“Nicholas found the twins.”

“Ah.” Areop-Enap was silent for a moment, then shrugged what shoulders it had, eyes blinking in unison. “So Abraham was right about something; well, that’s a first.”

While Perenelle slogged through ankle-deep mud, recounting what she had discovered in the cells above, she noticed that despite its enormous size, the spider Elder glided over the top of the muck. Behind them, the walls and ceilings pulsed with millions of spiders as they followed the Elder. “I wonder why Dee didn’t kill you.”

“He couldn’t”, Areop-Enap said matter-of-factly. “My death would send ripples through myriad Shadowrealms. Unlike Hekate, I have friends, and too many of them would come to investigate. Dee would not want that.” Areop-Enap stopped when it came to the first of the spears Perenelle had pushed down. A huge leg turned it over, and the spider examined the faint traces of the hieroglyph painted on the spearhead. “I’m curious”, it lisped. “These Words of Power. They were ancient when the Elders ruled the earth. And I thought we had destroyed both them and all record of them. How did the English Magician rediscover them?”

“I was wondering the same thing”, Perenelle said. She turned the spear in her hand to look at the single square hieroglyph. “Maybe he copied the spell from somewhere.”

“No”, Areop-Enap said. “The individual words are powerful, it is true, but Dee set them up in the particular pattern that kept me trapped in the cell. Every time I tried to escape, it was as if I ran into a solid wall. I’ve seen that pattern before, but it was in the days before the Fall of Danu Talis. In fact, now that I think of it, the last time I saw that pattern was before we had even created the island continent and dragged it up from the ocean floor. Someone instructed Dee; someone knew how to create these magical Wards, someone who’d seen them.”

“No one knows who Dee’s Elder is, whom he serves”, Perenelle said thoughtfully. “Nicholas spent decades vainly trying to discover who, ultimately, controls the Magician.”

“Someone old”, Areop-Enap said. “As old as me, or even older. One of the Great Elders, perhaps.” All of the spider Elder’s eyes blinked. “But it cannot be; none of them survived the Fall of Danu Talis.”

“You did.”

“I’m not one of the Great Elders”, Areop-Enap said simply.

They reached the end of the tunnel and de Ayala winked into existence directly before them. He had been a ghost for centuries and had seen wonders and monsters, but he had never seen anything like Areop-Enap, and the sight of the enormous creature shocked him speechless.

“Juan”, Perenelle said gently. “Talk to me.”

“The Crow Goddess is here”,
he said finally.
“She is almost directly above us, perched on top of the water tower like a huge vulture. She’s waiting for you to climb out. She had an argument with the sphinx”,
the ghost added.
“The sphinx said that the Elders had given you to her; the Morrigan claimed that Dee said you were hers.’

“So nice to be in demand”, Perenelle said, looking up the length of the shaft into the darkness. She glanced sidelong at Areop-Enap. “I wonder if she knows you’re here.”

“Unlikely”, Old Spider said. “Dee would have no reason for telling her, and with so many magical and mythical creatures on the island, she’ll not be able to pick out my aura.”

Perenelle’s lips twisted in a quick smile that lit up her face. “Shall we surprise her?”

J
osh Newman stopped and swallowed hard. Any moment now, he was going to throw up. Although it was cool and damp underground, he was sweating, his hair plastered to his skull, his shirt lying icy and clinging along the length of his spine. He had gone beyond frightened, past terrified and straight to petrified.

Descending into the sewers had been bad enough. Dee had wrenched the manhole cover out of the ground without any effort, and they’d jerked back as a plume of filthy, foul-smelling gas vented into the street. When it had drifted away, Dee had slipped into the opening, followed a moment later by Josh and finally Machiavelli. They’d climbed down a short metal ladder and ended upstanding in a tunnel that was so narrow they had to march single file and so low that only Dee could walk upright. The tunnel dipped, and Josh gasped as ice-cold water suddenly flooded his sneakers. The smell was appalling, and he desperately tried not to think about what he might be wading through.

The rotten-egg stink of sulfur briefly masked the smells in the sewer as Dee created a globe of cold blue-white light. It hovered and danced in the air about twelve inches in front of the Magician, painting the interior of the narrow arched tunnel in stark ashen light and deep impenetrable shadows. As they sloshed forward, Josh could hear things moving and glimpsed sparkling points of red light shifting in the blackness. He hoped they were only rats.

“I don’t”, Josh began, his voice echoing distortedly in the narrow tunnel. I really don’t like small spaces.

“Neither do I”, Machiavelli added tightly. “I spent a little time in prison, a long time ago. I’ve never forgotten it.”

“Was it as bad as this?” Josh asked shakily.

“Worse.” Machiavelli was walking behind Josh and he leaned forward to add, “Try and stay calm. This is just a maintenance tunnel; we’ll get into the proper sewers in a few moments.”

Josh took a deep breath and gagged on the smell. He had to remember to breathe only through his mouth. “And how is that going to help?” he muttered through clenched teeth.

“The sewers of Paris are mirrors of the streets above”, Machiavelli explained, his breath warm against Josh’s ear. “The bigger sewers are fifteen feet high.”

Machiavelli was correct; moments later they came out of the cramped and claustrophobic service tunnel into a tall arched sewer wide enough to drive a car through. The high brick walls were brightly lit and lined with black pipes of various thicknesses. Somewhere in the distance, water splashed and gurgled.

Josh felt the claustrophobia ease a little. Sophie sometimes got scared in wide-open spaces; he was afraid of tightly enclosed spots. Agoraphobia and claustrophobia. He took a deep breath; the air was still tainted with effluent, but at least it was breathable. He lifted the front of his black T-shirt to cover his face and breathed in: it stank. When he got out of here
if
he got out of here he’d have to burn everything, including the fancy designer jeans Saint-Germain had given him. He quickly dropped the shirt, realizing that he’d nearly exposed the bag he wore on the cord around his neck containing the pages from the Codex. No matter what happened now, he was determined that he wasn’t going to give up the pages to Dee, not until he was sure very, very, very sure that the Magician’s motives were honest.

“Where are we?” he wondered aloud, looking back at Machiavelli. Dee had walked out into the center of the sewer, the solid white ball now spinning just above the palm of his outstretched hand.

The tall Italian glanced around. “I’ve no idea”, he admitted. “There are about twenty-one hundred kilometers of sewers around thirteen hundred miles”, he amended, seeing the blank look on Josh’s face. “But don’t worry, we’ll not get lost. Most have their own street signs.”

“Street signs in the sewers?”

“The sewers of Paris are one of the great wonders of this city.” Machiavelli smiled.

“Come!” Dee’s voice cracked out, echoing in the chamber.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Josh asked quietly. He knew from experience that he needed to keep distracted; once he started thinking about the narrowness of the tunnels and the weight of the earth above him, his claustrophobia would reduce him to a wreck.

“We’re going down, into the deepest, oldest part of the catacombs. You’re going to be Awakened.”

“Do you know who we’re going to see?”

Machiavelli’s usually impassive face twitched in a grimace. “Yes. By reputation only. I’ve never seen it.” He lowered his voice to little more than a whisper and caught Josh’s sleeve, pulling him back. “It’s not too late to turn back”, he said.

Josh blinked in surprise. “Dee wouldn’t like that.”

“Probably not”, Machiavelli agreed with a wry smile.

Josh was puzzled. Dee had said Machiavelli wasn’t his friend, and it had been obvious that the two men didn’t agree. “But I thought you and Dee were on the same side.”

“We are both in the service of the Elders, it is true but I have never approved of the English Magician and his methods.”

Ahead of them, Dee turned into a smaller tunnel and stopped before a narrow metal door that was secured by a thick padlock. He pinched through the hasp of the metal lock with fingernails that stank of foul yellow power and pulled open the door. “Hurry”, he called back impatiently.

“This this person we’re going to see”, Josh said slowly, “can they really Awaken my powers?”

“I have no doubt about it”, Machiavelli said softly. “Is the Awakening so important to you?” he asked, and Josh was aware that Machiavelli was watching him closely.

“My sister was Awakened my twin sister”, he explained slowly. “I want I
need
to have my powers Awakened so we’re alike again.” He looked at the tall white-haired man. “Does that make sense?”