On the opposite side of the field, the Yggdrasill burned. The ancient wood snapped and cracked, plumes of white-hot sap boiling up into the pristine air like fireworks. But even as the burnt wood fell away, new growth appeared, fresh and green, in its place. Sophie was conscious of another sound too, and realized she was listening to the Yggdrasill. And now, with her incredibly sensitive hearing, she thought she could make out phrases and words, snatches of songs and fragments of poems within the agonized cries of the burning tree. In the distance, she could see Hekate desperately trying to put out the fires, but she was also fighting the Morrigan, the cats and the birds at the same time. Sophie also noticed that there were no more nathair in the skies, and very few of the Torc Allta remained to guard their ancient mistress.
Closer, Sophie spotted Scatty’s bright red hair. She, too, was surrounded by dozens of birds and cats. The Warrior was moving in what looked like an intricate dance, twin swords flashing, sending the creatures howling back from her. Scatty was trying to fight her way over to where Nicholas Flamel was lying facedown on the ground beneath the claws of the most terrifying creature Sophie had ever seen: Bastet, the Cat Goddess. With her incredibly sharp eyesight, the girl could make out the individual whiskers on Bastet’s feline face, and she actually saw a droplet of saliva gather on the overlarge fangs and drip onto the man below.
Flamel saw Sophie looking in his direction. He tried to draw a breath, but it was difficult with the heavy creature standing on top of him. “Run,” he whispered, “run.”
“Sophie, I only have a few moments…” Perenelle’s voice echoed inside the girl’s head, shocking her to full alertness. “This is what you must do. You must let me speak through you….”
Josh became aware that his sister was climbing to her feet, swaying slightly, hands pressed to her ears as if the sounds were too much, eyes squeezed tightly shut. He saw her lips move, as if she were talking to herself. He lashed out at a pair of humans with mockingbird heads as they darted forward. The heavy branch caught one of the creatures squarely on the beak, and it staggered back, dazed and stunned. The other continued to circle Josh, who realized that it was not coming for him—it was trying to get to Sophie. He turned and lashed out at it, but at that moment, a tall, slender man with a tabby cat’s head came bounding toward him. Josh tried to swing the branch, but he was off balance and the catman ducked under the blow. Then it leapt into the air, mouth gaping, claws extended. With a sour taste at the back of his throat, Josh admitted to himself that he and Sophie were in desperate trouble. He needed to get to his sister, he had to protect her…and in that instant, he knew he was not going to make it. He closed his eyes at the last minute as the savage cat-headed creature slammed into his chest, expecting to feel the sting of its claws, to hear its squalling roar in his face…but all he heard was a gentle purring. He blinked his eyes open and found he was holding a fluffy kitten in his arms.
Sophie! He turned around…and stopped in awe.
Sophie’s aura had flared pure silver around her body. It was so dense in places that it even reflected the sunlight, making it appear like a medieval suit of armor. Silver sparks crackled through her hair and dripped from her fingers like liquid.
“Sophie?” Josh whispered, elated. His sister was fine.
And then Sophie slowly turned her head to look at Josh, and he experienced the shocking, sickening realization that she did not recognize him.
The birdman that had been moving in to attack the girl suddenly darted forward, beak stabbing at her eyes. Sophie snapped her fingers: tiny droplets of silver spun away from her hands to splash against the creature. Instantly, it folded and twisted in on itself and became a disorientated hermit thrush.
Sophie walked past her brother and stepped toward Bastet.
“No farther, little girl,” Bastet commanded, raising a clawed hand.
Sophie’s eyes opened wide and she smiled, and Josh suddenly found that, for the first time in his life, he was frightened of his own sister. He knew that this wasn’t his Sophie; this terrifying creature could not be his twin.
When the girl spoke, her voice was a harsh croak. “You have no idea what I can do to you.”
Bastet’s huge feline eyes blinked in surprise. “You can do nothing to me, little girl.”
“I am no girl. You may be ancient, but you have never encountered anything like me. I possess the raw power that can nullify your magic. I can use it to return the birds and cats to their natural forms.” Sophie’s head titled to one side, a gesture Josh knew well; his sister did it when she was listening intently to someone. Then she stretched out her hands toward the Dark Elder. “What do you think would happen if I were to reach out and touch you?”
Bastet hissed a command, and a trio of huge catmen raced toward the girl. Sophie flung out her arm, and a long, whip-like, snaking coil of silver energy flowed from her hand. It touched each of the cats, crackling across their haunches and shoulders, and they immediately came to stumbling halts, rolling and twisting on the ground as they transformed into ordinary everyday cats, two shorthairs and a ragged-looking Persian. The cats bounded to their feet and streaked off, howling piteously.
Sophie spun the whip above her head, scattering drops of liquid silver in every direction. “Let me give you a taste of what I can do….” The silver whip cracked and snapped as she approached.
Scatty suddenly found that three of her adversaries had transformed into an American robin, a house finch, and a song sparrow, while the exotic-looking catman directly in front of her warped into a confused Siamese.
Sophie cracked the silver whip again and again, beating away their attackers, droplets of silver splashing everywhere, and more and more of the cat-and birdmen returned to their natural forms. “Get away from Nicholas,” she said, her lips not moving in synch with her words, “or we will find out what your true shape is, Bastet, who is also Mafdet, Sekhmet and Menhit.”
Bastet slowly stepped away from Flamel and raised herself to her full towering height. Her slit-pupiled eyes were wide, her mouth tightly closed. “It has been a long time since anyone has called me by those names. Who are you—certainly no modern humani girl?”
Sophie’s mouth moved, the words taking a moment or two to follow. “Beware this girl, Bastet. She is your doom.”
Bastet’s fur was bristling and her bare arms dimpled with goose bumps. Then she slowly backed away, turned and raced toward the burning Yggdrasill. For the first time in millennia, she was frightened.
Nicholas dragged himself to his feet and staggered toward Sophie, Josh and Scatty. He stepped up to Sophie. “Perenelle?” he whispered.
Sophie turned her head to him, eyes blank and unseeing. Her mouth worked, and then, as in a badly dubbed movie, the words came. “I’m in San Francisco, held in the basement of Enoch Enterprises. I’m safe and well. Take
the children south, Nicholas.” There was a long moment of silence; then, when she spoke again, the words came quicker than Sophie’s lips could move, and the girl’s silver aura began to fade and her eyes started to close. “Take them to the Witch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Dr. John Dee was becoming frantic. Everything was falling apart, and now there was every possibility that he was going to have to take an active part in the battle.
Flamel, Scatty and the twins had managed to escape from the interior of the Yggdrasill and were now fighting on the opposite side of the field, no more than two hundred yards away, but he couldn’t get to them—it would mean crossing a battlefield. The last of the Torc Allta, both in their human and boar form, fought running battles with the cat-and birdmen. The nathair had already been defeated. Initially, the winged serpents had brought chaos and confusion to the cats and birds, but they were lumbering and awkward on the ground, and most had been killed once they’d landed. The massive army of Torc Allta had thinned considerably, and he guessed that within the hour, there would be no more wereboars left in North America.
But he could not afford
to wait that long. He had to get to Flamel now. He had to retrieve the pages of the Codex as soon as possible.
From his hiding place behind a clump of bushes, Dee watched the Elders. Hekate was standing in the doorway to her tree home, surrounded by the last of her personal Torc Allta guard. While the boars fought the cats and birds, Hekate alone faced down the combined forces of the Morrigan and Bastet.
The three ignored the half-human animals fighting around them. To the casual observer it would have seemed as if the three Elders were simply staring at one another. Dee, however, noted the purple-gray clouds that gathered only above the Yggdrasill; he saw how the delicate white and gold flowers strewn around the huge tree withered and died, turning to black paste in an instant; he had seen the unsightly sheen of fungus that appeared on the smoothly polished stone path. Dee smiled; surely it would not be long now. How much longer could Hekate stand against the two Elders, aunt and niece?
But the goddess showed no sign of weakening.
And then she struck back.
Although the air, now stinking from the burning tree, was still, Dee watched as an invisible, unfelt breeze whipped the Morrigan’s cloak about her shoulders and buffeted the huge Bastet, making her tilt her head and lean forward into the wind. The patterns on Hekate’s metallic dress whirled with blinding rapidity, the colors blurred and distorted.
With growing alarm, he saw a dark shadow flowing across the withering grass and then watched as a swarm of tiny black flies settled on Bastet’s fur, crawling into her ears and up her nose. The Cat Goddess howled and staggered back, rubbing furiously at her face. She fell to the ground, rolling over and over in the long grass, attempting to free herself from the insects. More and more kept coming, and they were joined by fire ants and recluse spiders, which crawled out of the grass and swarmed over her body. Crouched on all fours, she threw back her head and screamed in agony, then turned and ran across the field, rolling and crawling in the grass, splashing through a little pool, trying to clean the insects from her body. She was more than halfway across the field before the thick, swirling cloud left her. She rubbed furiously at her face and arms, leaving long scratches on her skin, before climbing to her feet and striding back toward the Yggdrasill. And then the swarm of flies, thicker now, re-formed in the air before her.
In that moment, Dee considered that perhaps—just perhaps—Hekate could win. Splitting Bastet and the Morrigan had been a master stroke; ensuring that Bastet could not get back was simply genius.
Realizing that she could not return to the Yggdrasill, Bastet hissed her rage, then turned and raced over to where Flamel, Scatty and the twins were trying to defend themselves. Dee saw her leap an incredible distance and bring the Alchemyst to the ground. That gave him some satisfaction, at least, and he allowed himself a slight smile, which quickly faded—he was still trapped on this side of the field. How was he going to get past Hekate?
Even though the Yggdrasill was burning furiously, with whole sections blazing, burning leaves and blackened strips of branches spiraling down, sticky streamers of sap exploding from collapsing branches, Hekate’s powers seemed undiminished. Dee ground his teeth in frustration; all his research indicated that Hekate had brought the tree to life by imbuing it with a little of her own life force. In turn, as it grew, it renewed and replenished her powers. Burning the tree had been his idea. He had imagined that as it burned, she would weaken. But on the contrary: setting the tree alight had only served to enrage the goddess, and her anger had made her all the more deadly. When Dee saw Hekate’s lips twitch in what might have been a smile and the Morrigan stagger and then step back, he began to realize that here, in her own Shadowrealm, the Goddess with Three Faces was simply too strong for them.
Dee knew then that he would have to act.
Keeping to the shadows of the trees and tall grasses, he moved around the trunk of the enormous Yggdrasill. He was forced to crouch down and hide as a Torc Allta in its boar shape crashed through the undergrowth directly in front of him with at least a dozen cat-people and twice that number of birdmen clinging to him.
Dee came out of the undergrowth on the opposite side of the tree from where Hekate and the Morrigan fought. To his right, he could see that something was happening with Flamel’s group; birds and cats were scattering in every direction…and then he realized that he was seeing ordinary birds and everyday cats fleeing, not the half-human creatures. The Morrigan’s and Bastet’s transformation spells were failing: was Hekate that powerful? He had to end this now.
Dr. John Dee lifted the short-bladed sword in his hand. Dirty blue light coiled down its length, and for an instant the ancient stone blade hummed as an invisible breeze moved across the edge. The twisting snakes carved into its hilt came to twisting, hissing life.
Gripping the hilt tightly, Dee pressed the point of the blade against the gnarled bark of the ancient tree…and pushed.
Excalibur slid smoothly into the wood, sinking right up to the hilt without resistance. For a long moment nothing happened, and then Yggdrasill began to moan. The sound was like that of an animal in pain: beginning as a deep grumbling, it quickly rose to a high-pitched whimpering. Where the hilt of the sword protruded from the tree, a blue stain appeared. Like dripping ink, it flowed down the tree and seeped into the ground, then the oily blue light ran along the veins and seams of wood. Yggdrasill’s cries grew higher and higher, until they were almost beyond human hearing. The surviving Torc Allta fell to the ground, writhing in pain, clutching at their ears; birdmen whirled in confusion and the cat-people began to hiss and howl in unison.
The blue stain raced around the tree, coating everything in a thin veneer of glittering ice crystals that reflected the light. Blue-black and purple-green rainbows shimmered in the air.
The oily stain shot up the length of the tree and out along the branches, turning everything it touched to faceted crystals. Even the fire was not immune to it. Flames froze, fire caught in ornate and intricate patterns, then spiderwebbed, like ice on the surface of a pond, and dissolved to sparkling dust. Where the blue stain touched the leaves, they hardened and broke away from the branches. They did not spiral to the ground: they fell and shattered with tiny tinkling sounds, while the branches, now solid pieces of ice, ripped away from the trunk of the tree and crashed to the earth. Dee threw himself to one side to avoid being impaled by a three-foot length of frozen branch. Catching hold of Excalibur’s hilt, he dragged the stone blade free of the ancient tree and ran for cover.
The Yggdrasill was dying. Huge slabs of bark sheared off, like icebergs breaking away from an ice cap, and crashed to the ground, littering the beautiful Shadowrealm landscape with shards of razor-sharp ice.
Keeping his distance and watching for falling branches, Dee raced around the tree; he needed to see Hekate.
The Goddess with Three Faces was dying.
Standing quite still before the crumbling Yggdrasill, Hekate was flickering through her three faces—young, mature and old—in heartbeats. The change was happening so fast that her flesh had no time to adapt and she was caught between phases: young eyes in an old face, a girl’s head on a woman’s body, a woman’s body with a child’s arms. Her ever-changing dress had lost all color and was the same solid black as her skin.
Dee stood beside the Morrigan and they watched in silence. Bastet rejoined them, and together the three observed Hekate and Yggdrasill’s last moments.
The World Tree was now almost entirely blue, covered with a sheath of ice. Frozen roots had burst through the ground, destroying the perfect symmetry of the earth, cutting thick gouges in the soil. Huge holes had appeared in the massive trunk, revealing the circular rooms within, which were warped and stained with the blue ice.
Hekate’s transformations slowed. The changes were taking longer to materialize because now the blue stain was slowly creeping up her body, hardening her skin, turning it to ice crystals.
The Morrigan glanced at the blade in Dee’s hand, then quickly looked away. “Even afte
r all these years in our employ, Dr. Dee, you can still surprise us,” she said quietly. “I was not aware that you possessed the Sword of Ice.”
“I’m glad I brought it,” Dee said, not directly answering her. “It seems Hekate’s powers were stronger than we suspected. At least my guess—that her strength was connected to the tree—was correct.”
What remained of the Yggdrasill was now a solid block of ice. Hekate, too, was completely covered beneath a frozen sheet, though behind the blue crystals, her butter-colored eyes were bright and alive. The top of the tree began to melt, dirty water running down the length of the bark, cutting deep grooves into it.
“When I realized that she had the power to nullify your spells, I knew I had to do something,” Dee said. “I saw how the cats and birds were reverting to their natural shapes.”
“That was not Hekate’s doing,” Bastet growled suddenly, her accent thick, her voice beastlike.
The Morrigan and Dee turned to look at the Cat Goddess. The creature raised a furry claw and pointed across the field. “It was the girl. Someone spoke through her, someone who knew my true names, someone who used the girl’s aura to wield a whip of pure energy: that’s what reversed our spells.”
Dee looked across the field where he had seen Flamel, Scatty and the twins gathered around the oak tree. But there was no sign of them. He was turning to order the surviving cats and birds to find them when he spotted Senuhet staggering up. The old man was spattered with mud and blood—though none of the blood seemed to be his—and he had lost one of his curved bronze swords. The second had snapped in half.
“Flamel and the others have escaped,” he gasped. “I followed them out of the Shadowrealm. They’re stealing our car,” he added indignantly.