The Sorceress (37 page)

rightened, aching and exhausted, Sophie tried her best to edge away from the tramp. He had squeezed in between the twins and she could feel a chill damp seeping from his bundled overcoats into her jeans and across her left arm. On his opposite side she noticed her brother also inch away, and from the corner of her eye, she could see that Nicholas had pressed himself back into the shadows. She watched as he raised his right hand and let it casually rest across his mouth, covering the lower half of his face, and she got the feeling that he was trying to hide from the old man.

“Oh, but this will not do.” Gilgamesh pushed himself up and flopped down into the small pull-down seat directly facing them. “Now I can see you properly.” He clapped his hands lightly. “So what have we here?”

Sodium streetlights and the passing headlights of other cars briefly illuminated the interior of the cab. Tilting her
head to one side, Sophie focused on the homeless man, her enhanced senses taking in every detail. Surely this couldn’t be the person they had come to London to see, the immortal called Gilgamesh, the oldest human on the planet. Nicholas had called him a king, Palamedes had said he was insane; he looked neither, just a harmless old vagrant wearing too many clothes and in need of a haircut and beard trim. But if the last few days had taught her anything, it was that no one was what they seemed.

“Well, this is pleasant,” Gilgamesh said, folding his hands in his lap. He smiled happily. He spoke English with a trace of an indefinable accent, vaguely Middle Eastern. “I always say you never know when you wake in the morning how the day will end. I like that: keeps you young.”

“And how old are you?” Josh immediately asked.

“Old,” Gilgamesh said simply, and grinned. “Older than I look, but not as old as I feel.”

Random images flickered into Sophie’s head. These were the Witch’s memories. Joan of Arc had taught her how to ignore them and dismiss the constant buzzing voices and noises she heard in her head, but this time Sophie deliberately let her guard down ….

Gilgamesh, ageless and unchanging.

Gilgamesh, standing tall and proud, a ruler, in the costumes of a dozen ages and as many civilizations: Sumerian and Akkadian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, and then the fur and leather of Gaul and Britain.

Gilgamesh the warrior, leading Celts and Vikings, Rus and Huns into battle against men and monsters.

Gilgamesh the teacher, in the plain white robes of a priest, oak and mistletoe in his hands.

Sophie’s eyes blinked silver and she spoke in a hoarse whisper. “You are the Ancient of Days.”

Gilgamesh drew in a quick breath. “It has been a long time since anyone called me that,” he said very slowly. “Who told you that?” There was a note almost of fear in his voice.

The girl shook her head. “I just knew.”

Josh smiled. “Are you as old as the pyramids?”

“Older, much, much older,” Gilgamesh said happily.

“The king’s age is measured in millennia and not centuries,” Palamedes offered from the front of the car.

Sophie guessed that Gilgamesh wasn’t much taller than Josh, but his thickly bundled clothing—coats worn on top of coats, multiple fleeces, T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts—bulked him out, and his mass of wild hair and ragged beard made him look like an old man. Eyeing him closely, trying to see beyond the hair, Sophie discovered that he reminded her of her father, with his high forehead, long straight nose and bright blue eyes peering out of a deeply tanned face. She thought he looked like he was around the same age, too: midforties.

They passed a brightly lit store. It illuminated the interior of the cab in bright yellow-white light, and Sophie also realized that what she’d first taken for dirty and stained patches on the king’s bundled clothes were odd symbols and lines of script written onto the cloth in what appeared to be black felt-tip marker. Squinting, she recognized what looked like cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics, and what she had first
assumed were tears or pulls in the fabric were long thick jagged stitches that looked almost like early writing. She was sure she had seen ancient clay tablets in her parents’ study with similar scratches on them.

Sophie was conscious that the old man was looking at her and her brother, bright blue eyes flickering from her face to Josh’s and back again, frown lines on his forehead and on either side of his nose deepening as he concentrated. And even before he spoke, she knew what he was going to say.

“I know you.”

Sophie glanced at her brother. The Horned God had said exactly the same words. Josh caught the look, squeezed his lips tightly shut and shook his head slightly; it was a signal they’d used many times when they were growing up. He was telling her to say nothing. “Where did we meet?” he asked.

Gilgamesh put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. He brought his palms together, fingers straight, and then pressed the two index fingers against the cleft beneath his nose and stared at them. “We met a long time ago,” he said finally, “when I was young, young, young.” Then his blue eyes clouded. “No, that’s not right. I saw you fight and fall ….” His voice caught and suddenly his eyes shone with tears. His voice turned raw with pain. “I saw you both die.”

Sophie and Josh looked at one another, startled, but Flamel moved in the shadows, forestalling their questions. “The king’s memory is often faulty,” he said quickly. “Do not believe everything he says.” He made it sound like a warning.

“You saw us die?” Sophie asked, ignoring Flamel. Gilgamesh’s words had awakened gossamer threads of memories,
but even as she tried to focus on them, they slipped away and faded.

“The skies bled tears of fire. Oceans boiled and the earth was rent asunder …,” Gilgamesh said in a lost whisper.

“When was this?” Josh asked quickly, eager for more information.

“In that time before time, the time before history.”

“Nothing the king says can be taken as accurate,” Flamel said coldly, voice loud in the suddenly silent cab. His French accent had thickened, as it did when he was under pressure. “I’m not sure the human brain is designed to hold and store something like ten millennia’s worth of knowledge. His Majesty often gets confused.”

Sophie reached across the seat and squeezed her brother’s hand. When he looked at her, this time
she
squeezed her lips tightly and shook her head, warning him not to say anything. She wanted time to explore the Witch’s memories and thoughts. There was something at the very edge of her consciousness, something dark and ugly, something to do with Gilgamesh and twins. She saw her brother nod, a tiny movement of his head, and then he looked back at the tramp. “So … you’re ten thousand years old?” he said carefully.

“Most people laugh when they say that,” Gilgamesh said. “But not you. Why is that?”

Josh grinned. “In the last couple of days, I’ve been Awakened by a buried legend, ridden on the back of a dragon and fought the Horned God. I’ve been to a Shadowrealm and seen a tree as big as the world. I’ve watched men change into wolves and dogs, seen a woman with the head of a cat … or
maybe it was a cat with the body of a woman. So, to be honest, a ten-thousand-year-old man isn’t really that strange. And actually, you’re probably the most normal-looking of all the people we’ve met. No offense,” he added quickly.

“None taken.” Gilgamesh nodded. “I may be ten thousand and more years old.” Then his voice altered, suddenly sounding tired. “Or I may be just a confused old fool. Lots of people have called me that. Though they’re all dead.” He grinned, then twisted in the seat and tapped on the glass partition. “Where are we going, Pally?”

The Saracen Knight was a vague shape in the gloom. “Well, first we wanted to see you …”

Gilgamesh smiled happily.

“… and then I want to get these people off the island. I’m taking them to the Henge.”

“The Henge?” the tramp asked, frowning. “Do I know it?”

“Stonehenge,” Flamel said from the shadows. “You should; you helped build it.”

Gilgamesh’s bright blue eyes turned cloudy. He squinted toward the Alchemyst, peering into the gloom. “Did I? I don’t remember.”

“It was a long time ago,” Flamel murmured. “I think you started raising the stones more than four thousand years ago.”

“Oh no, it’s older,” Gilgamesh said suddenly, brightening. “I started working on that at least a thousand years earlier. And the site was ancient even then ….” His voice trailed away and he looked at Sophie and then Josh. Then he turned back to Palamedes. “And why are we going there?”

“We’re going to try and activate one of the ancient ley lines and get these people out of the country.”

Gilgamesh nodded. “Ley lines. Yes, lots of ley lines in Salisbury. One of the reasons I raised the gates there. And why do we want to get them out of the country?”

“Because these children are the sun and the moon,” Flamel said, “with auras of pure gold and silver. And they are being hunted by the Dark Elders, who this very night brought an Archon back onto the earth. Two days ago Nidhogg rampaged through Paris. You know what that means.”

Something altered in the king’s voice. It became cold and businesslike. “They’ve stopped being cautious. It means the end is coming. And soon.”

“Coming
again,
” Nicholas Flamel said. He leaned forward, and amber light washed across his face, turning it the color of old parchment; the shadows highlighted the wrinkles across his forehead and emphasized the bags under his eyes. “You could help stop it.”

“Alchemyst!” Gilgamesh’s eyes widened and he hissed in alarm. “Palamedes! What have you done?” he shouted, voice high and wild. “You have betrayed me!”

And suddenly, a long black-bladed knife appeared in the tramp’s hand. It flashed in the light as Gilgamesh stabbed it toward Flamel’s chest.

ilthy and disheveled, his clothing ripped and stained, hair wild about his head, Dr. John Dee skulked down the empty streets, keeping to the shadows as police, fire trucks and ambulances raced past, sirens howling. A series of rattling explosions lit up the night sky behind him as gas canisters ignited. The cool June night air stank of burning rubber and hot oil, seared metal and melted glass.