The Magician (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #2) (24 page)

“At dawn.”

“Why not now?” Dee demanded.

“We are creatures of the twilight. In that no-time between night and day, we are at our strongest”, one said.

“That is when we are invincible”, her sister added.

“I
guess I must still be on American time”, Josh said.

“Why?” Scathach asked. They were standing in the fully equipped gym in the basement of Saint-Germain’s house. One wall was mirrored, and it reflected the young man and the vampire, surrounded by the latest exercise equipment.

Josh glanced up at the clock on the wall. “It’s three a.m. I should be exhausted, but I’m still totally awake. It could be because it’s only six at night back home.”

Scathach nodded. “That’s one of the reasons. Another is because you are around people like Nicholas and Saint-Germain, and especially your sister and Joan. Although your powers have not been Awakened, you are in the company of some of the most powerful auras on the planet. Your own aura is picking up a little of their power, and it is energizing you. But just because you don’t feel tired, that doesn’t mean you should not rest”, she added. “Drink plenty of water too. Your aura is burning through a lot of liquids. You need to keep hydrated.”

A door opened and Joan stepped into the gym. While Scathach was dressed in black, Joan was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt over loose white trousers and white sneakers. Like Scathach, however, she was carrying a sword. “I wondered if you needed an assistant”, she said, almost shyly.

“I thought you’d gone to bed”, Scathach said.

“I don’t sleep much these days. And when I do, my dreams are troubled. I dream of fire”. She smiled sadly. “Isn’t it a wonderful irony: I’m married to a Master of Fire, yet I’m terrified by dreams of fire.”

“Where is Francis?”

“In his office, working. He’ll be there for hours. I’m not sure if he ever sleeps anymore. Now”, she said, looking at Josh and changing the subject, “how are you getting on?”

“I’m still learning how to hold the sword”, Josh muttered, sounding vaguely embarrassed. He’d seen movies; he’d thought he knew how people fought with swords. He’d never imagined, though, that just holding one would be so difficult. Scathach had spent the past thirty minutes attempting to teach him how to hold and move Clarent without dropping it. She hadn’t had much success; every time he spun the weapon, the weight dragged it from his grip. The highly polished wooden floor was scratched and gouged where the stone blade had struck it. “It’s harder than I thought”, he finally admitted. “I’m not sure I’ll ever learn.”

“Scathach can teach you how to fight with a sword”, Joan said confidently. “She taught me. She took a simple farm girl and turned her into a warrior.” She twisted her wrist, and her sword, which was almost as tall as she was, moved and curled in the air with an almost human-sounding moan. Josh attempted to copy the action and Clarent went spinning from his hand. It buried itself point first in the floor, cracking the wood and swaying to and fro.

“Sorry”, Josh muttered.

“Forget everything you think you know about swordplay”, Scathach said. She glanced at Joan. “He’s watched too much TV. He thinks he can just twirl a sword around like a cheerleader’s baton.”

Joan grinned. She deftly flipped her long sword and presented it to Josh, hilt first. “Take it.”

Josh reached for the sword with his right hand.

“You might think about using both hands”, the small Frenchwoman suggested.

Josh ignored her. Wrapping his fingers around the hilt of Joan’s sword, he attempted to lift it from her grasp. And failed. It was incredibly heavy.

“You can see why we’re still on the basics”, Scatty said. She plucked the sword from Josh’s grip and tossed it to Joan, who caught it easily.

“Let’s start with how to hold a sword.” Joan took up a position on Josh’s right, while Scathach stood to his left. Look straight ahead.

Josh looked into the mirror. While he and Scathach were clearly visible in the glass, the faintest silver haze surrounded Joan of Arc. He blinked, squeezing his eyes shut, but when he opened them again, the haze was still there.

“It’s my aura”, Joan explained, anticipating the question he was just about to ask. “It’s usually invisible to the human eyes, but it’ll sometimes turn up on photos and in mirrors.”

“And your aura is like Sophie’s”, Josh said.

Joan of Arc shook her head. “Oh no, not like your sister’s”, she said, surprising him. “Hers is much stronger”.

Joan raised the long sword, spinning it around so that the point of the blade was positioned between her feet and both hands rested on the pommel of the hilt. Now, just do as we do and do it slowly. She stretched out her right arm, holding the long blade steady. On Josh’s left, the Shadow extended both arms, holding her two short swords straight out in front of her.

Josh wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the stone sword and raised his right arm. Even before he had it fully extended, it had begun to tremble with the weight of the blade. Gritting his teeth, he attempted to keep his arm steady. “It’s too heavy”, he gasped as he lowered his arm and rotated his shoulder; his muscles were burning. It felt a bit like the first day of football practice after summer vacation.

“Try it like this. Watch me.” Joan showed him how to grip the handle with both hands.

Using both hands, he found that it was easier to hold the sword straight out. He tried it again, this time holding the sword with one hand. For about thirty seconds the weapon remained still; then the tip began to tremble. With a sigh, Josh lowered his arms. “Can’t do it with one hand”, he muttered.

“In time you will”, Scathach snapped, losing patience. “But in the meantime, I’ll teach you how to wield it using both hands, Eastern fashion.”

Josh nodded. “That might be easier.” He’d spent years studying tae kwon do, and had always wanted to study kendo, Japanese fencing, but his parents had refused, saying it was too dangerous.

“All he needs is practice”, Joan said seriously, looking at Scathach’s reflection in the mirror, her gray eyes bright and twinkling.

“How much practice?” Josh asked.

“At least three years.”

“Three years?” Taking a deep breath, he wiped first one palm and then the other on his pants and gripped the hilt again. Then he looked at himself in the mirror and stretched out both arms. “I hope Sophie is doing better than I am”, he muttered.

The Comte de Saint-Germain had brought Sophie up to the house s tiny roof garden. The view of Paris was spectacular, and she leaned on the balustrade to look down onto the Champs-Elys es. Traffic had finally faded to little more than a sparse trickle, and the city was still and silent. She breathed deeply; the air was cool and damp, the slightly sour smell of the river masked by the herbal scents coming from the dozens of overflowing pots and fancy containers scattered across the roof. Sophie wrapped her arms around her body, vigorously rubbed her forearms and shivered.

“Cold?” Saint-Germain asked.

“A little”, she said, though she wasn’t sure if she was cold or nervous. She knew Saint-Germain had brought her up here to teach her Fire magic.

“After tonight, you will never feel the chill again”, Saint-Germain promised. “You could walk across Antarctica wearing shorts and a T-shirt and feel nothing.” Brushing his long hair off his forehead, he plucked a leaf from a pot and curled it between the palms of his hands, then rubbed them together. The crisp odor of spearmint filled the air. “Joan loves to cook. She grows all her herbs up here”, he explained, breathing deeply.” There are a dozen different types of mint, oregano, thyme, sage and basil. And of course lavender. She loves lavender; it reminds her of her youth.”

“Where did you meet Joan? Here, in France?”

“I finally got together with her here, but believe it or not, I first met her in
California
. It was 1849; I was making a little gold and Joan was working as a missionary, running a soup kitchen and hospital for those who’d gone west in search of gold.”

Sophie frowned. “You were making gold during the Gold Rush? Why?”

Saint-Germain shrugged and looked vaguely embarrassed. “Like just about everyone else in America in 48 and 49, I went west in search of gold.”

“I thought you could make gold. Nicholas said he can.”

“Making gold is a long, laborious process. I thought it would be far easier to dig it up out of the ground. And once an alchemist has a little gold, he can use that to grow more. That’s what I thought I’d do. But the land I bought turned out to be useless. So I started planting a few fragments of gold on the land and then I’d sell the property to those people who had just arrived.”

“But that’s just wrong”, Sophie said, shocked.

“I was young then”, Saint-Germain said. “And hungry. But that’s no excuse”, he added. “Anyway, Joan was working in Sacramento, and she kept meeting people who had bought useless land from me. She thought I was a charlatan which I was and I took her for one of those dreadful do-gooders. Neither of us knew the other was immortal, of course, and we hated one another on sight. We kept bumping into one another over the years, and then, during the Second World War, we met again, here in Paris. She was fighting with the Resistance and I was spying for the Americans. That’s when we realized that we were different. We survived the war, and we’ve been inseparable ever since, though Joan keeps very much to the background. None of my fan blogs or the gossip magazines even know we’re married. We could probably have sold the wedding pictures for a fortune, but Joan prefers to keep a very low profile.”

“Why?” Sophie knew that celebrities valued their privacy, but to remain completely invisible seemed just strange.

“Well you have to remember that the last time she was famous, people tried to burn her at the stake.”

Sophie nodded. Suddenly, remaining invisible sounded perfectly reasonable. “How long have you known Scathach?” she asked.

“Centuries. When Joan and I got together, we discovered that we knew a lot of people in common. All immortal, of course. Joan’s known her a lot longer than I have. Though I’m not sure if anyone really knows the Shadow”, he added with a wry smile. “She always seems so…” He paused, hunting for the right word.

“Lonely?” she suggested.

“Yes. Lonely.” He gazed out across the city and then shook his head sadly and looked back over his shoulder at Sophie. “Do you know how often she has stood alone against the Dark Elders, how many times she has put herself in terrible danger to keep this world safe from them?”

Even as Sophie started to shake her head, a series of images flashed through her consciousness, fragments from the Witch’s memories:

Scathach, wearing leather and chain mail, standing alone on a bridge, two blazing swords in her hands, waiting as enormous sluglike monsters gathered at one end.

Scathach in full armor, standing in the door of a great castle, arms folded across her chest, her swords stuck into the ground at her feet. Facing her was an army of huge lizard like creatures.

Scathach, clad in sealskin and furs, balanced on a shifting ice floe as creatures that looked as if they had been carved out of the ice itself surrounded her.

Sophie licked her lips. “Why why does she do it?”

“Because that is
who
she is. That is
what
she is.” The count looked at the girl and smiled sadly. “And because it is all she knows. Now”, he said briskly, rubbing his hands together again, sparks and cinders spiraling up into the night air.” Nicholas wants you to learn the Magic of Fire. Nervous?” he asked.

“A little. Have you ever taught anyone else?” Sophie asked hesitantly.

Saint-Germain grinned, showing his uneven teeth. “No one. You will be my first student and probably my last.”

She felt her stomach flip-flop, and suddenly this didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. “Why would you say that?”

“Well, the chances of coming across another person whose magical abilities have been Awakened are very slight, and those of finding someone with as pure an aura as yours, next to impossible. A silver aura is incredibly rare. Joan was the last humani to have one, and she was born in 1412. You are very special indeed, Sophie Newman.”

Sophie swallowed hard; she wasn’t feeling very special.

Saint-Germain sat down on a simple wooden bench set back against the chimneybreast. “Sit here beside me, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Sophie sat beside the Comte de Saint-Germain and looked across the roof, out over the city. Memories that were not hers flickered at the edge of her consciousness, hinting at a city with a different skyline, a city of low buildings clustered around a massive fortress, thousands of smoke trails rising into the night. She deliberately shied away from the thoughts, realizing she was seeing Paris as the Witch of Endor remembered it, sometime in the past.

Saint-Germain shifted to look at the girl. “Give me your hand”, he said softly. Sophie put her right hand in his, and immediately a feeling of warmth coursed through her body, wiping out the chill. “Let me tell you what my own teacher taught me about fire.” As he was speaking, the count moved his glowing index finger across the girl’s palm, following the lines and ridges in the flesh, tracing a pattern on her skin. “My teacher said that there are those who will say that the Magic of Air or Water or even Earth is the most powerful magic of all. They are wrong. The Magic of Fire surpasses all others.”