Emerging from the metal alleyway, he spotted the flaming moat. It completely encircled a mean-looking metal hut in the center of the camp. Dee hurried forward; he knew a dozen spells that would put out the fire, or he could transmute the oil into sand and use a separate Persian spell that would turn the sand into glass.
The Alchemyst and the twins stood on the opposite side of the fire, the boy and girl close together. Firelight turned their blond hair red and gold. Two other humani stood alongside them, one tall and bulky in black armor, the other short and slight in mismatched armor. Red-haired Gabriel Hounds, in both human and dog shapes, gathered protectively around the shorter man.
The Archon stood outlined before the dancing flames, firelight playing on its rack of antlers, while behind it what remained of the Wild Hunt waited patiently. The wolves’ human faces tracked Dee’s movements as he picked his way across the potholed expanse of mud. Without moving its body, Cernunnos twisted its head around to regard the Magician. The Horned God’s eyes fixed on the stone blade in his hands, which had now started to leak a cold blue smoke.
“Excalibur and Clarent together in the same place,” Cernunnos’s buzzing voice murmured in Dee’s skull. “These are indeed momentous times. Do you know when last these two swords were united?”
Dee was about to tell him that both swords had been in Paris the previous day but decided not to say anything to irritate the creature. A terrifyingly nasty plan was beginning to form at the back of his mind, something so incomprehensible that he was almost afraid to focus on the idea—just in case Cernunnos really could read his thoughts. Taking up a position to the left of the creature, he held Excalibur in his right hand and folded his arms across his chest. The glowing blue blade painted the left-hand side of his face in chill color. “I believe it was here, in England,” Dee said. “When Arthur fought his nephew Mordred on Salisbury Plain. Mordred used Clarent to kill Arthur,” he added.
“I killed Arthur,” Cernunnos said softly. “Mordred too. And he was Arthur’s son, not his nephew.” The Horned God’s head turned back to the fire. “You are a magician; I presume you can douse these flames?”
“Of course.” A new smell permeated the already foul air: the rotten-egg stink of brimstone. “Can you not cross through the fire?” he asked, deliberately testing the limits of the Horned God’s powers.
“The flames are laced with metal,” Cernunnos said shortly.
Dee nodded. He knew from experience that some metals—especially iron—were poisonous to Elders. And to Archons, too, he’d just discovered. He wondered if the two races were related in any way; he had always assumed that while they were similar, they were separate, like Elders and humani.
“I can kill the fire,” Dee answered confidently.
The Archon leaned forward, its ripe forest odor suddenly strong as it stared hard into the fire and beyond. Dee followed the direction of its gaze and found it was staring at the boy, Josh. “You can have the twins, Magician, and your pages. I claim the three immortal humani and the Gabriel Hounds for my own.”
“Agreed,” Dee said immediately.
“And Clarent. I claim the Sword of Fire.”
“Of course you can have it,” Dee said without hesitation. He deliberately allowed his aura to blossom yellow and stinking around him, knowing it would blanket his thoughts. He had no intention of giving Cernunnos the sword. Dee had spent centuries searching for Excalibur’s twin blade and was not prepared to see it disappear into some distant Shadow-realm with the Horned God. His outrageous plan suddenly came together. “I would be honored to present the sword to you myself.”
“I would allow that,” the Archon said, a touch of arrogance in its voice.
Dee bowed his head so that the creature would not see the triumph in his eyes. He would stand before the Archon, Excalibur in his right hand, Clarent in his left. He would bow to the Horned God and step forward … and then plunge both swords into Cernunnos. The Magician’s brimstone aura flared brighter and brighter with excitement. What would it feel like, what would he learn, what would he know after he had killed the Archon?
oughing, eyes streaming, Sophie, Josh and the three immortals scrambled away from the searing heat, slipping and falling on the muddy ground. They were safe behind the wall of fire, but they were also trapped.
Josh helped his sister to her feet. Her bangs had been seared to crispy curls and her cheekbones were bright red, her eyebrows little more than smudges.
Sophie reached out to trace a line over Josh’s eyes. “Your eyebrows are gone.”
“Yours too.” He grinned. He touched his cheekbones. His face felt tight, his lips dry and cracked, and he suddenly realized how lucky they’d been. If he’d been standing a couple of inches closer to the moat, he would have been badly burned. Sophie reached out and pressed her little finger against his cheek and he smelled vanilla as a soothing coolness touched his scorched skin. He caught his sister’s hand and lifted it away from his face; the pad of her little finger was coated with silver. “You shouldn’t be using your powers,” he said, concerned.
“It’s a simple healing—laying on of hands, Joan called it. It uses little or no aura. We’ll never have cuts or bruises again.” She smiled.
“I’ve got a feeling we’ll need to be worried about more serious things than cuts,” Josh said. He turned to look through the burning curtain of fire. The Horned God stood patiently on the far side of the flames. Its arms were folded across its massive chest, and the smoldering ruin of its club lay at its feet. Although hundreds of the Wild Hunt had turned to dust, at least twice that number still remained. Most had gathered in a semicircle behind Cernunnos, either sitting or lying down, their shockingly human faces staring fixedly at their master. Josh turned in a complete circle. The rest of the Wild Hunt had taken up positions around the camp. They were completely surrounded. “What are they doing?” he wondered aloud.
“Waiting,” Palamedes rumbled from behind him.
Josh turned. “Waiting?”
“They know the fire will not burn for long.”
“How long?”
“An hour. Maybe two.” He turned his face to the skies, gauging the time. “Maybe till midnight, but that’s not long enough.” He shrugged. The knight’s black armor was streaked with mud and dirt and smelled of oil. It squeaked and creaked with every movement. “We built this fortress more for privacy than protection, though it has kept us safe from some of the less savory creatures that haunt this land. It was never designed to keep something like Cernunnos away.” He suddenly looked sidelong at Sophie as a thought struck him, his eyes liquid in the reflected firelight. “You have mastered Fire. You could keep the flames alive.”
“No,” Josh said immediately, instinctively moving in front of his sister. “Even attempting something like that could kill her, burn her up.”
The Alchemyst nodded. “Sophie would need to keep the fires burning till dawn; she’s not strong enough for that. Not yet. We need to find an alternative.”
“I know some spells …,” Shakespeare began. “You too, Palamedes. And what of you, Nicholas? Working together, surely we three could—” And then the Bard’s head snapped around, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing.
“What is it?” Palamedes asked, turning to squint through the wall of fire.
“Dee,” Shakespeare and Flamel said together. Even as they were speaking, the figure of a small man standing alongside the Archon was outlined in sulfurous yellow. He was holding a smoldering blue sword.
“With Excalibur,” Flamel added.
As the group watched, the Magician plunged Excalibur into the fiery wall and twisted the blade. Hissing and sizzling, the stone sword pierced the fire, and then a sudden down-draft of icy wind opened a perfectly circular hole, like a window, in the raging flames. Dee peered through the opening and smiled, the fire reflecting off his teeth, bloodred. “Well, well, well, what have we here? Master Shakespeare—apprentice to both the Alchemyst and the Magician. Why, it is practically a
family reunion. And Palamedes, the Black Knight, reunited—almost—with the swords that ruled and ruined your master’s life. And the twins, of course. So nice of you to bring them home to me, Nicholas, though it would have been so much more convenient if we had concluded this business on the West Coast. Now I’ll have to return them to the States. However, surrender them now and we can avoid a lot of unpleasantness.”
The Alchemyst laughed, though there was nothing humorous in the sound. “Aren’t you forgetting something, John?”
The Magician tilted his head to one side. “You seem to be trapped, Nicholas, behind flames, and surrounded by the Wild Hunt.” He jerked his thumb at the huge figure standing by his side. “And, of course, Cernunnos. This time, there is no escape. Not even for you.”
“We three immortals are not without power,” Flamel said quietly. “Can you stand against all of us?”
“Oh, I don’t have to,” Dee said. “All I have to do is douse the fire. Even you cannot prevail against an Archon and the Wild Hunt.”
Josh stepped forward, Clarent a blaze of black light in his left hand, the dancing shadows making his face look older than its fifteen years. “And what about us? It would be a mistake to forget about us,” he snapped. “You were in Paris. You saw what we did to the gargoyles.”
“And Nidhogg,” Sophie added, at his side.
Clarent moaned and then Josh snapped it forward toward Excalibur. The swords met in the circular opening in the midst of the fire, the two blades crossing in an explosion of black and blue sparks.
And Dee’s thoughts washed over Josh.
Fear. A terrible all-consuming fear of beastlike creatures and shadowy humans.
Loss. Countless faces, men, women and children, family, friends and neighbors. All dead.
Anger. The overriding emotion was one of anger—a simmering all-consuming rage.
Hunger. An insatiable hunger for knowledge, for power.
Cernunnos. The Horned God. The Archon. Lying dead in the mud with Dee standing over him, holding Clarent and Excalibur in either hand, the swords blazing red-black and blue-white flames.
The thoughts and emotions came at Josh like blows. He felt his head jerk with each startling image. But the most shocking of all was the sight of the Archon lying in the mud. Dee intended to kill Cernunnos. But to do that he needed Clarent. And Josh was not giving up the Sword of Fire. He tightened his grip on the hilt and pushed hard against Excalibur, but it was like pushing against a rock wall. Holding the sword in both hands, he pressed back against Dee’s sword again, stone grating and sparking, but it didn’t move. The reflected light turned Dee’s face into a grinning skull.
Josh had seen Sophie focus her aura, had watched her shape it around her body; he’d felt its healing properties on his own skin, but he had no idea how she did it. Joan had trained her. But he’d had no one to train him. “Sis …?”
“I’m here.” Sophie was instantly by his side.
“How did you …” He groped for the right word. “How do you get your aura to focus?”
“I don’t know. I just … I guess I just concentrate really hard.”
Josh took a deep breath and frowned, forehead creasing, eyebrows knitting together, concentrating as hard as he could.
Nothing happened.
“Close your eyes,” Sophie said. “Visualize really clearly what you want to see happen. Start with something small, tiny …”
Josh nodded. He took another deep breath and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Sophie could focus her aura into her little finger, so why couldn’t he just—
There was an instant when he felt something churn in his stomach; then it surged up through his chest, down along both arms, into his hands, which were wrapped around the hilt of the sword. His aura exploded into blazing, blinding light that flowed down the weapon.
Clarent moaned, the sound one of pure agony as the stone blade turned to solid gold. The instant it touched Dee’s sword, it doused Excalibur’s cold blue-white fire, turning it back to plain gray stone.
Josh blinked in surprise.
And his aura winked out of existence.
Instantly, the gold fire faded from Clarent and was replaced with crimson-black fire. Excalibur reignited in a huge explosion of sparks. Staggered and shaking, Josh managed to retain his grip on Clarent, but the shocking force had sent Dee flying backward, sending up a geyser of mud. He then slid on his back across the filthy oily ground, and Excalibur tumbled through the air to fall point-first into the mud close to his head.
It took a tremendous effort for Josh to pull Clarent back out of the fire. Immediately, the circular window in the flames snapped shut. The boy’s face was ghastly, deep blue-black shadows under his eyes, but he still managed a shaky smile for his twin. “See: that was no problem.”
Sophie reached out for her brother and put her hand on his shoulder. He felt a trickle of energy from her aura flow into his body, steadying his wobbly legs.
“I wonder what Dee will do next?” she said.
A heartbeat later, thunder boomed and rumbled and lightning flashed almost directly overhead. The rain that followed was torrential.
erenelle sloshed through the muddy tunnel, heading back toward the ladder. In one hand she carried the spear; the other was clamped over her nose, but she could feel the nauseating fishy smell coating her tongue and taste it in her throat every time she swallowed.
Juan Manuel de Ayala floated beside her, facing back down the tunnel. There was no sign of the Crow Goddess.
“What are you frightened of?” Perenelle demanded. “You’re a ghost; nothing can harm you.” Then she smiled, and her voice softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I know what an extraordinary effort it took for you to reach the cave mouth and warn me.”
“It was easier once you broke the Spell of Binding,” the ghost said. Much of his essence had dissipated, leaving only the merest hint of his face and the outline of his head hanging in the air. His dark shining eyes were brilliant in the gloom. “Nereus is every sailor’s nightmare,” he admitted. “And I am not frightened for myself I fear for you, Sorceress.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Perenelle asked lightly. “He can only kill me. Or try to.”
The ghost’s eyes turned liquid. “Oh, he’ll not kill you. Not immediately. He’ll drag you down to some undersea kingdom and keep you alive for centuries. And when he is finished with you, he’ll turn you into some sea creature—like a sea cow or a dugong.”
“That’s just a story …,” Perenelle began, and then stopped, realizing just how ridiculous her statement was: she was running down an underground tunnel accompanied by a ghost, pursuing an ancient Celtic goddess and being followed by the Old Man of the Sea. Reaching the end of the tunnel, she craned her neck and looked up. Far above her, she could see a circle of blue sky.
She tore a narrow strip off the ragged hem of her dress and tied it around her waist. Shoving the spear into the back of the makeshift belt, she reached up to grab the slimy metal rungs of the rusting ladder.
“Perenelle!” de Ayala howled as he flowed upward.
“Leaving so soon, Sorceress?” The voice echoed down the corridor, liquid and bubbling, a gurgling, gargling sound.
Perenelle turned and tossed a tiny spark of light down the tunnel. Like a rubber ball, it bounced off the ceiling, hit a wall, then the ground, and bounced up again.
Nereus filled the darkness.
The instant before he reached out and crushed the light in his web-fingered hand, Perenelle caught a glimpse of a stocky, surprisingly normal-looking man, a head of thick curly hair flowing to his shoulders, mingling with a short beard that was twisted into two tight curls. He was wearing a sleeveless jerkin of overlapping kelp leaves and strands of green seaweed, and in his left hand he held a wickedly spiked stone trident. As the light faded and the tunnel plunged back into darkness, Perenelle realized that the Old Man of the Sea had no lower limbs. Below the waist, eight octopus legs writhed and coiled a
cross the corridor.
The stink of rotting fish intensified, there was a flicker of movement and then one suckered leg wrapped itself around Perenelle’s ankle and held fast. A second, sticky and slimy, attached itself to her shin.
“Stay awhile,” Nereus gurgled. Another leg snapped around Perenelle’s knee, suckers biting deep into her skin. His laughter was like a wet sponge being squeezed dry. “I insist.”
osh sat, dazed, as the wall of fire started to die down in a billowing cloud of thick white steam. Rain churned the ground to thick sticky mud as thunder rumbled continuously overhead. Lightning flashed, painting everything ash white and ebony black.
“Time to go,” Palamedes said decisively, rainwater running off his helmet. He turned to look at Sophie and Josh, Nicholas and Shakespeare. They were all soaked through, the twins’ hair plastered to their skulls. “There is a time to fight and a time to run. A good soldier always knows when it is time to do either. We can stand here and fight Dee and Cernunnos and none of us will survive. Except you, perhaps,” he said to the twins. Firelight ran amber off his dark skin and matching armor. “Though I am not sure what your quality of life would be in service to the Dark Elders. Nor how long you would survive when they were finished with you.”
Bitter smoke curled around them, thick, cloying and noxious, driving them back toward the metal hut.