The group of Elders and immortals raced down the corridor, then through a narrow doorway. Beyond lay a series of glass-walled rooms that led outside into the stinking fog. The goat-men had vanished, but the darkness was alive with sounds, and none of them were pleasant. Hideous shapes moved in the gloom, and Mars and Odin slashed at any that came too close.
“Wait a moment.” Machiavelli stopped in the doorway, trying to orient himself. “We need to work out where we are on the island.”
“We’ve just come out of the Administration Building,” Black Hawk said immediately.
“How do you know?” the Italian demanded.
The American immortal caught Machiavelli’s arm and turned him slightly. Directly over the door they had just exited was an ornate carving of an eagle, wings spread, above an American flag in the shape of a shield. Below the carving, the flaking words ADMINISTRATION BUILDING were clearly visible.
“The lighthouse should be almost directly ahead of us,” Black Hawk said, pointing through the fog.
“But where is Areop-Enap?” Mars asked. “Flamel used the parrot to tell us that the Old Spider was on the island.”
The fog coalesced and the ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala appeared out of the damp. Everyone—even Mars—jumped with fright.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Hel muttered.
Billy grinned. “I didn’t know you had a heart.”
“To your left,” the ghost whispered, its voice filled with the sound of popping bubbles, “are the ruins of the Warden’s House. Areop-Enap is within.”
“Let’s go,” Billy said, turning to leave.
“Billy—wait!” Machiavelli and Black Hawk called together.
The American ignored them. As he moved cautiously through the fog, he began to make out the tall pillar of the lighthouse tower to his right and then the vague outline of gray walls and empty windows to his left. Suddenly he saw a figure—tall, misshapen, shrouded in fog—move past one of the openings. Billy caught a glimpse of the creature and thought he saw a white mane flowing down its back. Was it a centaur or another satyr? He watched as it stopped, then turned toward him, the white oval of a face peering at him. Claw-tipped fingers rose at its sides, pointing at him, and Billy’s hands fell to his waist as he pulled the spearheads from his belt and sent them whistling through the air …
… just as Perenelle Flamel, white hair glistening in the damp, stepped forward, hand raised in greeting.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
On the wild northeast shore of Danu Talis, the crystal tower rising out of the pounding waters began to glow and pulse with a pale golden light. Then it began to vibrate, a deep subsonic disturbance that trembled deep into the earth, thrashing the water to white foam.
“I’m here,” Tsagaglalal said. She was wearing the white ceramic armor her husband had given her, the matched kopesh in sheaths across her back.
Abraham the Mage stood tall and slender in a darkened room at the top of the Tor Ri. He was wrapped in shadow, facing away from her, so that she would not see the Change that had almost completely claimed his flesh, transforming it to solid gold.
“Let me look at you,” she whispered, turning him to the light. “Let me see you, and remember this moment.”
“I would rather you remember me as I was.”
“I carry that image within me always,” she said. She pressed the palm of her hand against his chest. “But this is you also, and I will never forget this. I will never forget you, Abraham.”
She held him, pressing his flesh and metal against her skin, and wept on his shoulder. She looked up into his face and saw a single tear, a solid bead of gold, rolling down his cheek. Raising up on her toes, she kissed the tear off his face, swallowing it. Tsagaglalal pressed her hands to her stomach. “I will carry it within me always.”
“You are about to begin a journey that will last ten thousand years, Tsagaglalal.” Every one of Abraham’s breaths was a labored effort now. “I have seen your future, I know what lies ahead for you.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to know.”
Abraham pressed on. “Like any life, there is both sorrow and joy in it. Entire tribes and nations will rise and honor you. You will be known by a thousand names, and many songs will be sung and stories told about you. Your legend will endure.”
The tower was vibrating harder now, the top swaying from side of side, tiny featherlike cracks appearing in the crystal.
“If I have a wish for you, it is for you to have a companion, someone to share your life with,” he continued. “I do not want you to be lonely. But in all the years of your life to come, I do not see you with anyone.”
“There will never be anyone,” she said firmly. “By rights we should never have met: I was a statue of mud, brought to life by Prometheus’s aura. You are one of the Elders of Danu Talis. And yet the moment I saw you, I knew—with absolute conviction—that we would be together for the rest of our lives. I can say now, with the same conviction, that there will never be another.”
Abraham drew in a shuddering breath. “Do you have any regrets?” he asked.
“I would have liked to have had children,” she said.
“In your years to come, Tsagaglalal, you will be a mother to many children. You will foster and adopt thousands of humans. Untold numbers of children will call you mother and aunt and grandmother, and they will be as dear to you as if they were your own. And toward the end, in ten thousand years’ time, when you watch over the twins and protect and guide them, there will be much joy. This I have seen: though you will exasperate and often infuriate them, they will love you with all their hearts, because they will instinctively understand that you love them unconditionally.”
“Ten thousand years,” she breathed. “Do I really have to live that long?”
“Yes. You must,” he rasped. “There are no unimportant players in this extraordinary plan Marethyu and I have constructed. Everyone—Elders, Next Generation and humankind—has their role to play. But Tsagaglalal, yours is the most critical role of all. Without you, everything falls apart.”
“And if I fail …?” she whispered. She staggered as the tower shifted. The vibrations were becoming more intense.
“You will not fail. You are Tsagaglalal, She Who Watches. You know what you have to do.”
“I know. I don’t like it,” Tsagaglalal said fiercely, “but I know.”
“Yes. So do it,” he said with difficulty. “You have the Book?”
“Yes.”
“Go, then,” the Elder said, his breath the merest whisper. “Count down one hundred and thirty-two steps and wait there.”
The tower swayed and suddenly a huge chunk of the ancient crystal shattered. The sea below started to boil and foam.
“I love you, Tsagaglalal,” Abraham sighed. “The moment you came into my life, I realized I wanted for nothing.”
“I have loved you and I will continue to love you all the days of my life,” she said, and then turned and ran.
“I know,” he whispered.
Abraham listened to his wife running down the stairs, her metal heels pinging off the crystal. He counted her steps.
The tower groaned and lurched, glass shattering, enormous slabs breaking off to explode into the sea far below.
Fifty steps …
Abraham turned his eyes to the horizon. Even now, with death—the true death—just a few moments away, he found he was still curious. He could just about make out the faintest line of the polar ice cap in the distance, and the ragged tops of the Mountains of Madness. He had always planned to mount an expedition there, but there had never been time. He’d even spoken to Marethyu about his fascination with the arctic whiteness. The hook-handed man told him he had been there and had seen wonders.
One hundred steps …
Abraham had lived perhaps ten thousand years, and there was still so much more he wanted to do.
One hundred and ten …
So much more
he wanted to see. He was going to miss the joy of discovery.
One hundred and twenty …
But more than anything else …
One hundred and thirty …
… he was going to miss Tsagaglalal.
One hundred and thirty-two.
The footsteps stopped.
“I love you,” he breathed.
Tsagaglalal stood on the step and waited.
Abraham had always instructed her never to linger on the steps. At least twelve ley lines radiated from the staircase, and they intersected with at least as many Shadowrealms.
She felt the tower shiver and a sudden wash of heat flowed up through her body. She looked down and saw a pattern on the stair she stood on, something she had never noticed before: a sun and moon picked out in thousands of gold and silver tiles.
Tsagaglalal’s aura flared and the air was filled with jasmine.
The volcano erupted directly beneath the base of the Tor Ri. The tower was simultaneously ripped apart and swallowed into the boiling lava. Within the space of a dozen heartbeats, the crystal tower and all it contained were gone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
One hundred people had followed Virginia Dare out of the marketplace. By the time she reached the square outside the prison, the crowd had swelled to ten times that number, with more and more arriving every minute. They were chanting Aten’s name, sending it rumbling and vibrating across the stones.
“Ah, your first big test,” Dr. John Dee said, almost gleefully. “In a few minutes the prison gates will open, and the anpu and Asterion will appear. If your people scatter, then you have lost. And believe me, Virginia, as soon as they see blood, they will run. They have been running all their lives.”
“Thank you for your words of encouragement,” Virginia muttered. But deep in her heart she knew the Magician was correct: when a troop of heavily armed warriors raced into the crowd, the humans’ newfound courage would instantly evaporate.
“These are farmers, shopkeepers and slaves,” Dee said. “What do they know of war?”
“Some of them are bringing weapons,” Virginia noted.
The square before the prison was filling with people, and the new arrivals were indeed carrying makeshift weapons: shovels, spades and sticks. She saw a baker with a rolling pin, and many others were carrying flaming torches.
“Oh yes, and I can see these ‘weapons’ being very effective against swords, spears and bows.” Dee stood beside her and looked up at the high prison walls. There were guards everywhere now, and he could clearly hear mocking laughter drifting down from above. “You didn’t think this through, did you? Marethyu spoke to you and suddenly you were off raising a revolution.”
“No,” she admitted. “Everything happened so fast.”
“Are you regretting it?” he asked.
“Absolutely not!” she snapped. “When the English, the French and the Spanish invaded my country, I could have—I should have—stood against them. But I didn’t. I might have made a difference.”
Dee frowned. “What are you talking about? You’re English.”
“I’m an American,” she said proudly. “I am the first European born on American soil.” Virginia’s hair began to rise in a crackling sheet as her anger buzzed through her. “Look around you, Doctor: what do you see?”
He shrugged. “The people of Danu Talis. The ordinary people,” he added.
“Who are enslaved by the Elders, who use monsters to enforce their laws. I’ve seen this before, on this world and many other worlds, and not all monsters wear the shapes of beasts. I watched it happen in my homeland. I will not allow it to happen again,” she said fiercely.
“You could die here,” he said quietly.
“I could.”
“For people you do not know …”
“I know them. I have seen people like them all my long life. And now fate has brought me here.”
“Well, actually, I did. Though the hook-handed man had a lot to do with it.”
A moan ran through the crowd as the prison gates creaked open and troops started to pour out and form into long straight lines. The evening sunlight ran bloodred off their armor and weapons.
“And I have to believe that I am here to make a difference.” She poked the Magician in the chest, hard enough to make him stagger. “So what are you here for, Dr. Dee?”
She had asked him the question that had been troubling him from the moment Marethyu had restored his health, if not his youth. Why was he here? The day had been one of such extraordinary mixed emotions. He’d gone from triumph to despair in a matter of moments; he’d been dying, then been revived. And for what? His long life had equipped him with extraordinary skills. How should he use them?
The old man sighed as he looked around. The crowd in the square had doubled to around two thousand people. They were shouting and chanting Aten’s name, but none dared approach the prison’s sloping walls too closely. In a moment, the animal-headed monsters would attack, and Dee had no doubt there would be a terrible slaughter in the square. There was a time when that would not have bothered him. But he’d been immortal then, more than human. Now he was just a man again. And that gave him a different perspective.
“Well,” Dee said finally. “I did spend a good portion of my mortal life advising England’s greatest queen. I helped defeat the Spanish Armada. So it seems that at the end of my life, I return, full circle, to my original role: as advisor to a queen.”
Virginia blinked in surprise. “I’m not a queen.”
“Oh, you will be,” he said confidently. “So here’s what I suggest.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Scathach wandered the outskirts of Danu Talis wrapped in a white robe, her blazing red spiky hair hidden under a conical straw hat.
The streets were almost deserted. A few elderly men and women sat in darkened doorways and watched her hurry past. Tiny children in rags played on the unpaved streets and looked at her with wide curious eyes.
Scathach paused by a crumbling fountain and allowed a handful of the brackish water to dribble into her hand. She sipped cautiously; it tasted vaguely of salt and bitter soil. Looking around, she tried to get her bearings. Here, at the very edge of the city, neighborhoods that were little better than slums gradually gave way to bigger homes, and then, farther in, closer to the center of the city, she could see the pyramids, ziggurats and palaces of the nobility rising into the sky. Beyond them, dominating everything, lay the Pyramid of the Sun.
Turning, shielding her eyes against the dipping sun, she looked into the west. The slanting light was blinding—Huitzilopochtli had deliberately timed the attack so that the sinking sun would help to conceal the arrival of the vimanas and fliers. But she saw them, vague dots against the sky. They would arrive soon.
A scratch of movement made her spin, hands falling to the weapons concealed beneath her white robe. A young girl with huge brown eyes that seemed far too big for her head was standing beside the fountain. She had a younger child firmly by the hand. They were barefoot and dressed in scraps of clothes that had probably never been white. The two children stared up at the Shadow. “Are you lost?” the girl asked.
Scathach looked down at the child. It was hard to tell her age—four or five, perhaps and the younger child was probably two. Crouching down, she looked at the girl, green eyes sparkling. “You know, I think I am. Maybe you can help.”
“Everyone has gone to the prison,” the girl said.
“Aten,” the boy added. He was sucking noisily on his thumb.
The girl nodded solemnly. “Everyone has gone to rescue Aten. He is in prison.”
“Bad men,” the boy said.
“The bad men put him there,” the girl said.
“Do you know which of these big buildings is the prison?” Scathach asked gently.
The girl nodded. Rising up on her toes, she pointed high into the sky. “Can’t see,” she said.
“Maybe if I lifted you …,” Scathach suggested.
r /> “And my brother, too,” the girl said immediately.
“Of course.” Curling her arms under both children, the Shadow lifted them. The girl immediately put her arm around Scathach’s shoulder and brought her face close to her cheek. She pointed toward a sloping flat-roofed pyramid. “There. That’s the bad house.”
“Bad house,” her little brother said.
“Mama says if you’re bad, you’re taken to the bad house. Is that true?”
“Sometimes,” Scathach said. She bent, placing both children back on the ground, and then knelt before them. She ran her fingers through the girl’s hair. She wished she had something to give the child, but all she had—all she ever had—were the clothes on her back and the weapons at her side. “Would you like to tell me your names?” she asked.
“I’m Brigid and this is my brother Cermait. Mama calls him Milbel,” she added with a giggle.
“Honey mouth,” Scathach whispered. She recognized the names from her time in ancient Ireland and Scotland; she knew who the children were and knew also that they would survive the Fall of Danu Talis.
“Are you going to the bad house?” Brigid asked.
“Yes.” Scathach nodded. “There’s someone I have to see.”
“A bad person?”
“I don’t know yet. I am going to find out.”
Cermait tugged on Scathach’s robe and rattled off an incomprehensible sentence. “He wants to know if you are a bad person,” his sister translated.
“Sometimes,” she whispered. “But only to bad people.”
“Who are you?” Brigid asked.
“I am Scathach the Shadow.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“No!” Billy screamed, the sound high-pitched and anguished.
The leaf-shaped blades came to glowing life as they spun through the air, slicing through the fog, trailing spirals of moisture in their wake.
The American saw Perenelle’s eyes widen in shock, and in that moment they both knew she could not escape the blades.