“How do you know they were humani?”
“Because there are no Elder children,” he reminded her, and then braced himself, preparing for her grip on his arm to tighten again in response to his disrespect.
“What are Isis and Osiris up to?” she asked, almost as if speaking to herself. “The gold and silver armor is a deliberate insult. A reminder that our family did not always rule the council.”
“I thought you said Isis and Osiris would support my claim,” he said.
“Well, who else were they going to support?”
“Unless they have their own candidates,” Anubis suggested.
Bastet started to shake her head, then stopped. “You know, you might not be as stupid as you look.”
Anubis said nothing, not sure that was a compliment.
At the end of the corridor, a pair of black-armored anpu snapped to attention and hauled opened two massive white quartz crystal doors. Trapped within the glass, a tentacled creature lazily opened a single eye, then closed it again.
Bastet and Anubis stepped through the doorway and out into a golden-sanded courtyard. It had once housed a spectacular garden, but Bastet in her rages had ripped up the flowers and rare blooms so often that Anubis had instructed the gardeners to plant only cacti and spiny succulents, plants she would not be so keen to tear from the ground. A carriage was waiting, an enormous shimmering globe carved from a single pearl Anubis had brought back from a watery Shadowrealm. A pair of albino saber-toothed cats, their incisors curled up like elephant tusks, were harnessed to the carriage. They were a new hybrid Anubis was breeding.
Anubis opened the door and held out his hand. Bastet ignored it and stepped into the carriage unaided.
“Maybe they are the twins of legend,” Anubis suggested innocently as he climbed in after his mother.
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped. “Where would Isis and Osiris find twins? Your father and I wiped out that bloodline a thousand years ago.”
Shocked, Anubis spun to look his mother in the face just as the tigers surged forward, jerking him back in his seat. They needed no driver; the big cats had been programmed to find their way to the Pyramid of the Sun. “I never knew that,” he said.
“Few do. And I don’t want you repeating it.” She turned her head, resting her chin on her left claw. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints at the slanting evening sunlight streaming through the translucent walls of the pearl coach. She sat quietly, the razor claws on her other hand absently tearing through the supposedly indestructible hide covering her seat. Every time she rode in the carriage, she ripped apart the upholstery; Anubis decided that the next seat was going to be carved from stone.
“If Isis and Osiris have found other claimants,” Bastet said quietly, “then why reveal them to us so early? That doesn’t make sense. They could have smuggled them into the Council Chamber and introduced them as a huge surprise later.”
“They obviously want us to know,” Anubis said, resting his great head on his fist and staring out across the city. There was smoke in the skies, and he could smell its stink on the air. The humani were burning their hovels again.
Eight huge anpu were waiting at the gates. They split into two groups of four and fell in alongside the carriage. Their role was more ceremonial than protective. All the principal houses and palaces of the rulers of Danu Talis were protected within the rings of canals, and the only access to the inner circle around the pyramid was across the closely guarded bridges. No humani had ever walked the golden stones around the great pyramid.
Anubis realized his mother had stopped speaking and turned to look at her.
“What did you say?” she asked.
Anubis frowned, trying to remember. “I said that they obviously wanted us to see the twins—the couple in gold and silver armor. When you are fighting a battle”—he leaned forward—“you can conceal the size of your troops and surprise the enemy. Sometimes that strategy works, but often if the enemy does not know how many warriors they are up against, they will keep fighting. The other option is to reveal yourself to the enemy: show them that they are outnumbered, demoralize them. Often you can get a quick bloodless victory.”
Bastet was nodding. “You know, we really need to spend more time together. You’re full of surprises.”
Was this a second compliment in one day? Anubis wondered if the world really was coming to an end.
“I’ve spent my entire life fighting. I know battles,” he said quickly.
“Where are they now?” Bastet asked.
Anubis gave his mother a blank look, then shrugged. “In the Pyramid of the Sun, I suppose. Maybe even in the Council Chamber.”
“No, I doubt it. It’s too early. Isis and Osiris will want to make a grand entrance into the Council Chamber.” She was confident. “It’s what I would do. However, I have no doubts they are meeting the other Elders, planting seeds, dropping hints about the couple in gold and silver. They’ll have stashed the couple somewhere quiet and out of the way, saving them for the big reveal.”
“But you said they can’t have the real twins. So they found a couple of children and dressed them up in fancy gold and silver armor. What’s that going to prove? The council will laugh at them.”
“Isis and Osiris are cunning. I guarantee you that they have not arrived with just any children dressed in armor. This pair will have some skills. Maybe enough to fool the council.” She shook her head. “Isis and Osiris must have been plotting this for centuries. Maybe longer. When you are ruler,” she added, “I want you to have that pair killed.”
“Which pair?” Anubis frowned. “The children?”
Bastet shook her head and yowled. “No, not the children. Well, yes, you can have them killed too, if you wish. I want Isis and Osiris taken care of.”
“The last people who tried to assassinate them ended up as jewelry,” he reminded his mother. “Isis wore that necklace of tiny people for months afterward. And most of them were still alive,” he added in a whisper.
Bastet suddenly sat forward and put her hand on Anubis’s knee. A razor claw pierced his flesh, though he bit his lip and said nothing. “But you’re right, of course….”
“I am?” he asked, the surprise of his mother agreeing with something he’d said briefly wiping away the pain. “What am I right about?”
“Kill the children.”
“Kill them?” He regarded her evenly, then tipped his head to one side. “That’s easy enough. They can have a little accident in the next few days.”
All of Bastet’s claws punctured his flesh and he gasped. “Sometimes you can be very stupid!”
When he was ruler, he was definitely banishing her to a Shadowrealm. Someplace with lots of dogs.
“Kill them now. Kill them before Isis and Osiris can present them to the council.” She squeezed his knee for extra emphasis. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Mother,” he said through gritted teeth.
“And have it done properly.”
“Yes, Mother,” Anubis repeated. “I know just the creatures for the job. They have never failed me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Strapped into a flimsy wood and paper glider, Scathach flew past the window and waved.
Within the rattling vimana, Joan of Arc waved back. “She’s enjoying herself,” she said.
“What?” Saint-Germain asked. He had drawn a staff of five lines in his Moleskine notebook and was rapidly filling it with notes and rests, humming along as he wrote.
“Scathach. I just saw her glide past the window. She looked like she was enjoying herself,” she said, shouting to be heard over the noise in the vimana.
“Who is?” Saint-Germain clambered to his feet and peered through the window. He saw Scathach rise and cut right, wheeling down on an invisible wind current, just above the canopy of trees. “Well, that’s nice for her,” he said absently. “Now, just give me a sec, I want to get this melody down.” He slumped to the floor and bent his head back over the not
ebook.
“I think she may be safer out there than she would be in here,” William Shakespeare muttered. He was sitting to the right of Prometheus, watching nervously as the big Elder struggled to control the ancient craft.
Palamedes stood behind the Bard, and even his usually impassive face was creased with concern.
“It was the last vimana available,” Prometheus explained. He pulled down on the throttle and it snapped off in his hand. He tossed the broken stick aside and gripped the end with his fingertips. “No one else wanted it.”
“I can see why,” Will said.
“You didn’t have to come,” the Elder snapped. “You did have a choice.”
Will looked up at Palamedes and grinned. “We didn’t, really. It all ends today.”
“Nothing will happen today,” Prometheus said confidently. “There’ll be a lot of shouting and banging on tables. It will take humankind days to get organized. Aten was the closest thing they had to a leader, and he’s gone now. They have no one to lead them.”
Scathach leaned to the right and felt the glider shift beneath her. Then she banked left and right in a series of quick zigzags. She had never flown in a glider before, but she was an accomplished horsewoman and a world-class surfer. And gliding, she discovered, was just like surfing, except she was riding air instead of water.
She’d learned to ride the waves in the bitterly cold waters that pounded her island fort of Skye millennia before surfing became a sport. Centuries later she’d even led a band of Maori warriors on a raid from one island to another to rescue some captured children. The lookouts had been watching for sails to signal the arrival of the enemy—the Maori had evaded them by surfing in on long boards.
She whooped a war cry. She was loving this and had only one tiny regret—that she’d discovered it so late in life.
Scathach the Shadow adjusted her weight, bringing the front end of the glider up, forcing air under the wings. The glider rose in slow spirals, and when she thought she was high enough in the sky, she swung around and looked down.
Directly below her the forest spread out in a vast unbroken carpet of green. In the distance, shimmering on the horizon, were the blue of the sea and the gold of Danu Talis, with the great Pyramid of the Sun dominating the skyline.
There were three thousand gliders in the air below her, and though they had been designed to carry only one person, most carried a second strapped precariously beneath the first. Paper and leather crackled as they flew, the sound like distant thunder.
Almost forty vimana sped through the air below the gliders. Most had been scavenged and bolted together from bits of other craft. There were a few of the rare triangular shapes, a scattering of the big Rukma warships, but the vast majority were the small circular craft designed to hold two people but jammed with five and six warriors. None of the craft were new, and a couple—including the one carrying Joan and the others—were ancient, with glassless portholes, their metal shells held together by knotted vines, pocked with holes that had been patched with leaves and wood. All of the craft were dangerously overloaded. Before they’d taken flight, Huitzilopochtli had told Scathach he was committing the Yggdrasill’s entire defenses—almost ten thousand warriors—to the battle. Four thousand would descend from the air, while six would march through the jungle. It would still take them two days to reach Danu Talis. And no one knew what they would find when they arrived.
Scathach had refused to join the others in the battered circular vimana. There was something she had to do—and she couldn’t afford to be trapped onboard the ship. She had insisted on strapping on the pair of glider wings and launching herself from a branch out into the sky, knowing with absolute confidence that she would be able to master the required skill. She had learned to swim the same way—by jumping into the icy depths off Skye and flapping about in the water until she started to float.
Scathach circled the vimana and waved again. Joan waved back. Prometheus was too busy struggling with the controls to notice; Will and Palamedes watched him anxiously. Only Saint-Germain seemed completely relaxed, hunched on the floor, writing in his notebook. Scathach hoped he survived to finish his symphony: she had a feeling it would be epic.
The Warrior took one last look at her friends, and then she allowed the wind to take her, pulling her higher and higher. When she knew the others would not be able to see her, she banked to the right and descended, falling through the sky, toward the outskirts of the city.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Nicholas Flamel’s hand flared into a green glove, and a solid ball of energy buzzed and spat in the palm of his hand. He drew back his arm and was about to throw the ball at the Morrigan when Perenelle suddenly grabbed his forearm. “Wait!”
“Wait?” Nicholas looked at his wife, confused.
The Sorceress was gazing intently at the black-cloaked figure. “You’re not the Morrigan, are you?”
“This is the Morrigan, the Crow Goddess,” Nicholas insisted. The ball of energy spinning in his hand was starting to shrink.
The hooded figure standing before them raised her head. Her pale face was framed by the hood, and when she spoke, traces of an Irish or Scottish accent were clearly audible. Her eyes were closed. “The Morrigan is still sleeping,” she said, and opened her eyes. They were bloodred. “At this moment, I am the Badb.”
The creature’s eyes slowly closed, then blinked open. Now they were a bright yellow. “And now I am Macha.” The Celtic accent was even stronger, and deeper, harsher.
The creature’s eyes closed once more, and when they opened, one was a lustrous red, the other a brilliant yellow. Two voices rolled from the same mouth, the sounds buzzing slightly out of sync with one another.
“And we are the Morrigan’s sisters. We are the Crow Goddess.”
Nicholas looked from the creature to his wife, eyebrows arching in a question.
“They are three in one,” she explained. “Like the three aspects of Hekate, but the Morrigan, Macha and the Badb are three separate personalities existing within the same flesh. Centuries ago, the Morrigan took over the other two, trapped them within her.” She smiled. “I released them, and now it is the Morrigan who is trapped within.”
The Crow Goddess smiled, sharp white teeth pressing against her black lips. “You should hope that she never escapes, Sorceress. She is not very happy with you.”
Nicholas closed his hand into a fist and his green aura sank back into his flesh, emerald fluid running down his arm like ink.
“Thank you for saving me,” Perenelle said.
“Thank you for freeing us,” the Crow Goddess said quickly.
“To be truthful, I never thought I’d see you again”—the Sorceress spread her arms—“especially not back here.”
“We had not planned for it either,” the Crow Goddess said. She turned toward the Powerhouse, her feathered cloak whispering along the ground. “This is … wrong.”
Nicholas and Perenelle looked at one another. “Wrong?”
“We are Next Generation,” the creature said. “We grew up in the terrible days after the Fall of Danu Talis. It was clear to us then—and it should have been clear to our sister—that the Elders were the architects of their own destruction. They had grown lazy and arrogant, and that helped destroy their world. They believed the people worshipped them as gods, but in reality, humankind despised and feared them. We weren’t there, but we heard the stories of the human uprising often enough.” A black-nailed claw pointed back toward the Powerhouse. “If these beasts get ashore, the Elders will return to this earth and the cycle of destruction will begin again.” She smiled, exposing her razor teeth, white against her black lips. “And despite our crowlike appearance, we were never the enemies of the humans. Many nations held us in honor. It seems we are allies once again, Sorceress.”
The immortal Frenchwoman nodded. “Thank you. And thank you for returning; your presence here makes all the difference. It gives us a chance.” She stretched out her hand.
&nb
sp; The Crow Goddess looked at it and then slowly, almost tentatively, reached out and shook it. “Do you know,” she said, “we do not believe a human has ever voluntarily offered us their hand.”
“Why not?” Nicholas asked.
“Oh …” The Elder let out a gentle laugh. “I suppose sometimes we really do bite the hand that feeds us.”
“So what do we do now?” Nicholas asked. “Are the three of us strong enough to attack whatever is inside either building?”
The Crow Goddess shook her head and her feathered cloak rasped as it settled back in place. “We have seen what is within. Every great beast of human legend, every monster imaginable, and a host of anpu. They’re under the command of Xolotl,” she added significantly.
Nicholas and Perenelle shook their heads, not recognizing the name.
“Quetzalcoatl’s twin brother,” the Crow Goddess explained. “The evil twin.” She smiled. “They were once identical, but the Change has been particularly unkind to Xolotl: there is no flesh on his skeleton—his bones are bare, and he now has the head of a dog. Quite an ugly dog too. The anpu worship him as one of their own. We are powerful, but we are Next Generation and we could not defeat him. Only an enormously powerful Elder might stand a chance. And we do not know where to find one.”
“But I do,” Perenelle said answered quickly. “Areop-Enap is here. If we could awaken the Old Spider, she would stand with us.”
“But while we’re doing that, the boat will sail,” Nicholas protested.
“You are the Alchemyst,” the Crow Goddess said. “Master of the arcane arts. And you”—she nodded at Perenelle—“are a sorceress. Surely there is something you can do?”
“We’re already weakened …,” Nicholas began.
Perenelle laid a hand on her husband’s arm. “Think simple, Nicholas. Keep it simple.”
“And fast,” the Crow Goddess added. “The boat is getting ready to cast off for shore.”