The Necromancer (26 page)

“It’s called a sunstone,” Prometheus said quietly.

Josh turned the smooth stone disc over in his hands. It felt warm.

“I know your sister was taught Fire magic by Saint-Germain.”

Josh squirmed uncomfortably. “Nicholas told me not to mention his name in front of you.”

The Elder waved a huge hand. “Saint-Germain is a rogue, a liar and a thief, but I forgave him. He was my student for a long time; then he either got lazy or greedy. He stole the secret of fire from me, but”—the Elder shrugged—“it was hard for me to remain mad at him, because I’d originally stolen fire myself. Someone—not me—taught Saint-Germain how to use the Magic of Fire, but they did not know all my secrets. I will teach you more about the Magic of Fire than your sister will ever know. Look at the sunstone.”

Josh looked down into the palm of his hand, and his breath caught in his chest. The disc had started to throb and pulse with a dull golden light, and for a moment, he thought the eyes on the carved face had blinked and the tongue had flickered.

“I swore I would never teach another humani the Magic of Fire, but there are some promises which should be broken.”

Wisps of yellow smoke steamed off the stone and the scent of oranges filled the room.

“You are the sun, Josh; fire is your natural element. Your sister is the moon, and her primary element is water. Yes, your sister knows fire, but you, Josh, you will know it a hundred times better!”

And the disc burst into flame.

S
ophie screamed.

She leapt up from the kitchen table clutching her hand.

Perenelle and Aoife surged to their feet on either side of her. Only Flamel and Niten remained seated.

“What’s wrong?” Perenelle demanded.

Sophie held up her right hand. Her palm was bright red. “I thought … It felt like something burned me,” she said, blinking away tears.

Perenelle crossed to the sink and ran cold water onto a tea towel, then pressed it against Sophie’s palm. “So, it’s begun,” she said, looking into the girl’s eyes. “Prometheus is teaching your brother the Magic of Fire.”

“But it didn’t hurt when Saint-Germain taught me.”

“There are as many ways to teach magic as there are teachers,” Perenelle said.

“I should go to him …,” Sophie began.

“You cannot. This is something he has to do alone.” Perenelle drew Sophie back to the table. “Sit; there is something we must do.”

Perenelle sat down across from Nicholas at the small kitchen table. Aoife had taken the third seat, facing Sophie. Niten sat on the couch where Sophie had slept earlier. He was slowly and methodically running a cloth along the length of his katana.

In the center of the table sat a carved wooden box.

Sophie looked closely at it. She was aware of a hint of exotic spices in the air, and she recognized one of the smells as jasmine, Aunt Agnes’s favorite perfume. And when she looked at the box, she realized she’d seen the triple spiral carved into the sides and the top of the box before. She had a sudden flash of Zephaniah seeing the same triple spiral carved into the glass walls of the Nameless City.

Sophie watched as Nicholas carefully lifted the lid and reached into the box to remove an object wrapped in a bag of finely woven grass and wicker.

One by one all of their auras started to spark and crackle, darting cinders of light around the room—green and white, silver and gray, and speckles of royal blue from Niten. Perenelle’s hair rose slightly off her shoulders, static snapping through it.

Perenelle picked up the box and the lid and set them on the ground, and the Alchemyst placed the grass-wrapped object in the center of the table. He began to tug at the twisted strands of grass, crackling threads of power crawling across his fingers.

“You might have seen this before,” Perenelle said to Aoife, and then she looked at Sophie. “Maybe you, too. Well, not you, but the Witch. In fact,” she added lightly, “you may know more about it than we do.”

Nicholas peeled apart the grass knots and the covering fell away to reveal an intricately beautiful crystal skull that was almost—but not quite—human. When the Alchemyst laid his hand on it, a slow wave of mint green light pulsed through the translucent crystal. Perenelle put her hand on top of his and the skull started to glow.

“Now you,” Nicholas said, looking at Aoife.

She looked at him with an expression of absolute disgust on her face. “I am not touching that abominable thing,” she said hoarsely.

“As you wish.” He looked at Sophie. “We need the strength of your aura.…”

Numb with shock, Sophie felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room. She had seen this before.…

Zephaniah was in the Nameless City again.

She was trying to protect her unconscious brother from the hordes of monsters that were gathering outside. Yet it was just as dangerous inside the library; all around her, the animated clay people moved and shuffled, threatening to crush her.

She was dragging Prometheus deep into the heart of the building. Night had fallen outside, and unseen creatures roamed the deserted streets, claws clicking, flesh slithering and rasping. She could make out their rancid odor: they smelled like crocodiles.

Zephaniah discovered a room deep in the heart of the library. The unusually tall doors were locked, but a section of the glass wall close to the floor was missing. In ages past, an earthquake must have rocked the city and a section of the floor given way; the wall’s glass blocks had shifted and pulled apart, creating a wide gap.

She crawled through the opening and pulled her brother into the safety of the room just as the monsters surged into the building above. She could hear them hissing and snapping, could hear the sound of clay shattering.

When she straightened, the room instantly lit up with a soft milky glow. The walls were empty—though they must have once held countless books—and all that remained in the center of the room was a crystal skull on a plinth of polished metal.

Zephaniah watched as light flickered through the skull and it started to pulse, and she discovered that it was beating in time with her heart.

And then it spoke to her.…

And its revelations were terrifying.

Sophie knew what the skull was, knew its origins and its powers.

This was Archon technology, and they had created the skulls based on even older knowledge. The Witch had spent centuries searching for artifacts just like it, and when she’d found them, she had destroyed them utterly. She had erased countless millennia of knowledge, burning vast caches of metal books; melting into slag the ancient objects and artifacts that looked like swords, spears and knives; shattering crystal balls and grinding fabulous jewels to powder. Zephaniah had spent fortunes—several fortunes—in search of the Archon skulls. They were impossible to break, impervious to blade or tool, but she had finally discovered that she could destroy them by tossing them into the mouths of active volcanoes, where they were swallowed by the molten lava. Once she had rid the world of as many magical objects as she could find, the Witch had set about killing the storytellers who kept alive the memories of the Archons and the Earthlords who had come before them.

But all that had come later.

Much later.

After the Fall of Danu Talis.

After she had realized just how dangerous the skulls truly were.

“Sophie?” Perenelle leaned forward, eyes fixed on the girl’s face. “We need your aura. Put your hand on the skull.”

Sophie shook her head, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement.

The Sorceress blinked in surprise. “Do you—or rather, does the Witch—know anything about the crystal skull?”

Sophie looked into the Sorceress’s eyes and slowly and deliberately shook her head. Instinct—or was it the Witch’s knowledge?—made her lie: “No,” she said.

Even as she was speaking, there was a pop as the lightbulb shattered and the room plunged into darkness … except for the glowing skull.

T
he disc burned red-hot, then white-hot, in waves of shimmering heat. Each square pictograph throbbed and pulsed, red, orange and black, forming patterns, making shapes. The concentric rings turned left and right, the inner circle moving clockwise, the next ring counterclockwise, to create new designs. Josh realized to his horror that the etched designs were like snakes swallowing their own tails. And he hated snakes.

And then the face in the center of the stone moved.

The eyes opened, and they were fire red, flecked with glittering black cinders. The mouth moved, and it spoke in the voice of Prometheus.

“It is said that the Magic of Air or Water or even Earth is the most powerful of all. But that is wrong. The Magic of Fire far surpasses all others, for fire is both the life-giver and the death-bringer.”

Abruptly the fire vanished, leaving Josh in utter darkness. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or even where he was. He’d lost all sensation and was conscious only of the weight of the warm stone in his palm. He clutched it with both hands now, holding it tightly, concentrating on it. He realized that he wasn’t afraid, yet wasn’t excited, either … he was simply curious.

“In the beginning …”

A spot of light, a pinprick, appeared in the darkness.

“… there was fire.”

The tiny dot suddenly expanded, growing, growing, growing, amber, orange, red, before detonating into a brilliant white-hot globe. The left and right edges of the fireball peeled off into broad horizontal lines speckled with points and streaks of multicolored light. And as the light rolled toward him in a huge slow wave, Josh suddenly recognized it: he was looking at a galaxy … no, he was seeing the universe.

“Before air, there was fire.…”

The wave of blazing light flowed over him—or had he fallen into it? Flames and curling threads of plasma washed around him, bathed him. He could see himself now. He was standing, floating, flying, and his skin was the same color as the golden flames. On one level he knew he should be terrified, but he still felt no fear, only a peculiar sense of sadness that his sister was not here to share this with him.

“Before water …”

His skin became translucent. Looking down, he could see the thin twisting veins and arteries, the knots and strands of muscles, the darker masses of organs and the lines and curves of bones beneath his flesh.

“Before earth …”

Fire was streaming off his skin in long ropes, thickening, hardening into a shell, trapping him inside a burning sphere.

“Fire is the creator of worlds …”

Suddenly Josh was back in darkness again, but this time the darkness was not complete. On all sides he could see the finest traces of light, wriggling hair-thin cracks of red fire. It was like looking at an eggshell, he realized. The cracks widened and broke apart, and then the fire cascaded downward. He realized then that he was in a cave, standing on the edge of a lava pool, while molten rock flowed past him.

“And at the center of every world is its fiery heart.”

Josh was unsure whether he was moving past the images or standing still while the images raced past him. He felt as if he was rising up through bubbling rock and blazing stones, glutinous boulders and dripping globules of fire. He rose faster, faster, faster, the burning walls streaking by him … and abruptly there was sky above, shockingly, spectacularly blue, though smudged with filthy smoke and boiling clouds.

“Fire created this world … shaped it.…”

Josh soared high into the air, shot up in a plume of lava and smoke from the maw of an enormous volcano, one of a line that erupted in sequence, tearing away huge chunks of landscape, forming and re-forming the barren world, giving it shape before ripping it apart again.

“It was fire which ignited the spark of life on this primitive planet.…”

Thick gritty clouds swirled around Josh, then suddenly cleared, and he discovered he was walking along the edge of a lake, though it was not a lake of water. The thick souplike substance steamed and boiled with enormous noxious popping bubbles. And floating on the surface of the boiling mud was a sludge of gray algae.

“Heat brings life …”

Even as Prometheus was speaking, the landscape before Josh’s eyes was changing impossibly quickly: vast swaths of grasslands appeared, and died away, replaced by trees that rose spectacularly high only to crumble and be replaced by smaller trees, ferns and bushes.

“… in all its myriad forms.”

And now the animals appeared. Small at first, then morphing into huge hideous beasts, pelycosaurs and archosaurs. Josh knew these were the creatures that had predated the dinosaurs. Fascinated, he tried to look around this primeval world, but the images flickered past, leaving little more than an impression of scales and fur, claws and teeth.

“And fire destroys.…”

The sky darkened; lightning flashed, and then fire ravaged the forest, and in a single instant the world was blackened, the trees scarred with the evidence of a terrible conflagration.

“Fire destroys, but it also creates. A forest needs fire to thrive; certain seeds depend on it to germinate.”

And at the base of the trees, brilliant green shoots poked through the cinders, twisting and writhing up to the light.…

“And it was fire which warmed the first of my people, the humani, allowing them to thrive in harsh climates.”

The forest died, and was replaced by a desolate ice-locked landscape, rocky and snow-covered. But on a cave-dotted cliff face, tiny fires burned brightly.

“Fire allowed the first humani to cook their kills, and made it easier for them to digest the nutrients from the meat they hunted. It kept them warm and safe in their caves, and the same fire hardened their tools and weapons, turned soft clay into pots, even sealed their wounds. Fire has driven every great civilization from the ancient world right up to the present day.”

A modern city grew before Josh’s eyes, glass and steel and concrete, highways and bridges, skyscrapers and suburbs, rail lines and airports.