The Necromancer (34 page)

“I knew.”

“One day you’re going to tell me how you knew that,” Scathach said seriously.

“Maybe I will. One day.”

“This is the second gate?” Joan asked, looking at the standing stones. “Where does it lead?”

“To the Crossroads of the Shadowrealms,” Marethyu said, then stepped between the two uprights … and vanished.

“I hate leygates,” Scatty muttered. “Just let me make sure there are no nasty surprises waiting for us on the other side.” Drawing her swords, she darted through. A second later, her slightly green-looking disembodied face appeared in midair. “All clear.”

Shakespeare went next, followed by Joan and Saint-Germain, hand in hand. Palamedes was the last to step from the Pleistocene Shadowrealm. He turned to look back and realized that the world was beginning to fade and die. Colors were leaching away, paling to grays, and the edge of the horizon was drifting off into a fine sparkling dust. As he watched, it swirled away into the cloudless sky and then the sky itself dissolved into utter darkness. One by one, the moons winked out. Palamedes shivered. The world and all it contained—all the extraordinary flora and diverse fauna—was dying because the hook-handed man had no further use for it. This realm had been created for one purpose, and one purpose only: to ensnare—or was it to save?—Scathach and Joan. Marethyu must have known that Saint-Germain would come after his wife. The big knight frowned: had he also known that Palamedes and Will would come after their friend? Marethyu said he was from the past … how, then, did he know so much about the future?

Who was the hook-handed man?

The Saracen Knight leapt through the henge in the last moments before the gates themselves dissolved to dust.

The hook-handed man waited until Palamedes had appeared. “Glad you could join us,” he said. “I was hoping you would not linger too long.” Then he turned to the small group and lifted his left arm. The hook glowed with warm golden light, partially illuminating the massive cave. “Welcome to Xibalba,” Marethyu said. “Thankfully, there is no time for sightseeing. We need to get out of here right now,” he added, and set off at a run. “Our body heat and auras will attract some spectacularly foul guardians. Follow in my footsteps. And do not, whatever you do, step off the path.”

“I hate this place,” Scathach grumbled, holding her nose shut in an attempt to block out the stink of sulfur.

“You’ve been here before?” Marethyu asked, surprised.

“So you don’t know everything,” she said with a quick grin.

“Not everything,” he said. “I just know enough.”

“Where are we going?” Saint-Germain called.

“I’m going to take you through a series of gates …,” Marethyu said.

“Not more leygates,” Scathach groaned.

“I am afraid so. Though these are not your normal leygates. I did a favor for Chronos, and in return he sequenced these gates for me. But you will all have to stick close behind me. We’re going into Shadowrealms which each have thirteen gates—we must go through the correct ones in the proper order.”

“Otherwise …?” Will demanded.

Marethyu shook his head. “Trust me: you do not want to know.”

“I do, actually,” the Bard muttered.

They raced along a narrow path that snaked across an enormous pool of black-crusted lava. Bubbles gathered and burst on the surface, sometimes spitting firework-like streamers of liquid rock high into the air. Occasionally, the ribbons would fly high enough to touch the ceiling far above, and then the molten threads would stick and dangle for a moment, swaying, before crashing to the ground below like fiery hailstones.

“This way!” Marethyu shouted, pointing to the narrowest of nine openings in the huge circular cave. “These are the Nine Gates to the Shadowrealms. From here, you can travel throughout the myriad realms.” Although all the gates were decorated with archaic glyphs, Shakespeare noticed that the designs over the gate they were running toward looked older, cruder than the rest. “The zero gate,” Marethyu said before he plunged through.

They followed him …

Into a crystal world, where even the sun was glass, and the ground was made of shards of broken crystal. Thirteen translucent gates stood on a mirrored lake.

“Through the first gate,” Marethyu said, pointing to a delicate tracery of spun glass. They raced through …

Into a realm of green sand that rippled and shifted in hypnotic patterns. A giant red sun dominated the sky, close enough
that they could see the flares curling off it. The solar flares matched the pattern in the sands. Here the thirteen gates were shaped from sparkling silica.

“Again, the first gate,” Marethyu said, darting between two squat pillars.

And now the world was ice and stank of sour milk, and the thirteen gates were like curdled cream.

“Through the second gate …”

Into a world of metal, where the ground was steel and the sky the color of lead, and the thirteen gates were slabs of rusty iron.

“The third gate …”

A world of noxious yellow fog filled with what sounded like the piteous crying of babies. The thirteen gates were amorphous shifting pillars of smoke, barely distinguishable from the fog.

“The fifth gate …”

Into a world of black oil and sticky tar, where metallic insects ate the oil and the thirteen gates were intricately carved from single blocks of coal.

“The eighth gate …”

A world devastated by a cataclysm, an empty shell of a city, and rain that tasted of ashes. A building that might once have been a hotel had thirteen gaping doorways.

Marethyu pointed. “The final gate, the thirteenth …”

They came out onto a gently sloping hillside covered in tiny yellow and white flowers. The sky overhead was the palest blue, streaked with white clouds, and the air was warm and tasted of salt.

They all breathed deeply, clearing their lungs of the noxious odors and tastes of the Shadowrealms. Marethyu walked up the side of the hill and stopped at the top, looking into the distance. One by one, the immortals climbed the hill to stand beside him.

They were looking down over an island paradise.

Below them, as far as the eye could see, spread a golden city. From this great height it looked like a maze, sparkling blue waterways encircling and weaving through the city. Countless multicolored flags and pennants waved over the buildings, and the sound of music and laughter drifted faintly on the perfumed air.

Dominating the center of the island was a huge stepped pyramid. The top of the pyramid was flat and filled with hundreds of flagpoles, and the tiny dots moving up and down its sides gave some indication of its incredible size.

“You are looking at the legendary Pyramid of the Sun,” Marethyu said, pointing with his hook. “Welcome to the Isle of Danu Talis.”

P
rometheus folded the cell phone and looked at Nicholas and Perenelle. The Elder had visibly aged in the past hour. His red hair was streaked with white, and he looked tired and ill.

“That was Niten,” he said very quietly, and the Flamels knew it was not good news. “Josh called Coatlicue. Sophie, Niten and Aoife arrived just as she stepped out from her Shadowrealm, but she was still trapped by some spell of Dee’s. Josh accidentally released her into this world.” His voice thickened, and the tears that rolled down his face were touched with white smoke. “Aoife sacrificed herself to drag Coatlicue back to her Shadowrealm prison. The warrior is gone. Gone forever.”

“And the twins?” Perenelle breathed.

“Sophie is safe with Niten. But when the Magician and Dare fled, Josh left with them. He went by choice. We’ve lost him to the Dark Elders.”