The Sorceress (45 page)

The barn was warm and close, heavy with the scent of old hay and dry grass. Unseen creatures rustled in corners, doves cooed in the rafters and Josh could clearly hear a drone from a large wasps’ nest built high in a corner. A stream of insects moved in and out of the nest. Farm machinery had been stored here and abandoned; Josh thought he recognized an old-fashioned plow, and the squat remains of a tractor, its knobbly tires rotted to black strips. Every scrap of metal was
covered in thick brown-red rust. Wooden crates and empty barrels lay scattered around, and a crude workbench—nothing more than two strips of wood resting on concrete blocks—had been constructed up against one wall. The planks had warped and curled up at both ends. The frame of a black bicycle was tucked under the bench, almost invisible behind a heavy covering of grass and nettles.

“This place hasn’t been used in years,” Josh said. He was standing in the center of the barn, turning in a complete circle as he spoke. He drove Clarent into the dirt floor between his feet and folded his arms across his chest. “It’s safe.”

Gilgamesh wandered around the space, slowly peeling off layers of clothing, letting them fall on the ground behind him. Beneath all the coats and fleeces he was wearing the remains of what had once been a smart suit. The pinstripe jacket was greasy with wear, and the matching trousers had thin knees and a shiny seat. The king wore a grubby collarless shirt underneath the coat. The ragged remains of a knitted scarf wound around his neck. “I like places like this,” he announced.

“I like old places too,” Josh said, “but what’s to like about a place like this?”

The king spread his arms wide. “What do you see?”

Josh made a face. “Junk. Rusted tractor, broken plow, old bike.”

“Ah … but I see a tractor that was once used to till these fields. I see the plow it once pulled. I see a bicycle carefully placed out of harm’s way under a table.”

Josh slowly turned again, looking at the items once more.

“And I see these things and I wonder at the life of the person who so carefully stored the precious tractor and plow in the barn out of the weather, and placed their bike under a homemade table.”

“Why do you wonder?” Josh asked. “Why is it even important?”

“Because someone has to remember,” Gilgamesh snapped, suddenly irritated. “Someone has to remember the human who rode the bike and drove the tractor, the person who tilled the fields, who was born and lived and died, who loved and laughed and cried, the person who shivered in the cold and sweated in the sun.” He walked around the barn again, touching each item, until his palms were red with rust. “It is only when no one remembers that you are truly lost. That is the true death.”

“Then you will always be remembered, Gilgamesh,” Sophie said quietly. She was sitting on an overturned barrel, watching the king carefully. “
The Epic of Gilgamesh
is still in print today.”

The king stopped, his head tilted to one side, considering. “I suppose that is true.” He grinned and wiped his hands on his trousers, leaving red streaks on the stained cloth. “I read it once. Didn’t like it. Only some of it is true, and they missed the good parts.”

Flamel pushed the barn door closed, shutting out the sunlight. “You could write your own version,” he offered. “Tell your story, the true story.”

The king laughed, the booming sound setting the doves flapping from the rafters. “And who would believe me, eh,
Alchemyst? If I were to put down half of what I know, I would be locked up ….” His voice trailed away and his eyes clouded.

Nicholas quickly stepped forward and bowed deeply, an old-fashioned courtly movement. He knew he had to take control of the situation before Gilgamesh began to remember too much. “Majesty, will you keep your promise and teach the twins the Magic of Water?”

Still staring at Flamel, the king slowly nodded. “I will do that.”

Flamel straightened, but not before the twins had seen the look of triumph on his narrow face. “Sophie has been trained in Air and Fire. Josh has no training, so he has no idea what to expect,” he warned.

Josh stepped forward. “Just tell me what to do,” he said eagerly, eyes bright with excitement. He grinned at his twin. “We’ll start becoming real twins again,” he announced.

Sophie smiled. “This isn’t a competition.”

“Maybe not for you!”

Gilgamesh picked up a barrel and set it on the ground next to Sophie. “Come sit by your sister.”

“What do you want me to do?” Flamel asked, leaning back against the door, his hands shoved into the back pockets of his jeans.

“Say nothing and do nothing except stay out of my way,” Gilgamesh snapped. He looked over at the Alchemyst, his blue eyes blazing. “And when this is over, you and I will have a little talk … about the decade I was incarcerated. We’re due a reckoning.”

Nicholas Flamel nodded, his face expressionless. “This process,” he said. “Will it activate the twins’ auras?”

The king tilted his head to one side, thinking. “Possibly. Why?”

“Their auras would act as a beacon. Who knows what they will attract.”

Gilgamesh nodded. “Let me see what I can do. There are different ways to teach.” The king sank cross-legged onto the floor in front of the twins and briskly rubbed his hands together. “Now, where do we begin?” he said.

Josh suddenly realized that they were surrendering themselves to a mad vagrant who sometimes forgot his own name. How was this man going to remember age-old magic? What would happen if he forgot the process halfway through? “Have you done this before?” he asked, growing increasingly worried.

The king reached out and took Sophie’s right hand and Josh’s left hand and looked at them seriously. “Just once. And that didn’t end well.”

“What happened?” Josh attempted to pull his hand away from the immortal’s, but Gilgamesh gripped it tightly, his flesh as rough as tree bark.

“He flooded the world. Now, close your eyes,” the king commanded.

Sophie immediately shut her eyes, but Josh kept his open. He stared at the king. The man turned to look at him, and suddenly his bright unblinking blue eyes seemed huge in his head and Josh felt a nauseating twist of vertigo. He felt as if he were falling forward … and down … and rising up all at
once. He squeezed his eyes closed in an attempt to shut out the sickening sensations, but he could still see the king’s huge blue eyes burning into his retina, growing larger and larger, white threads starting to twist and curl across them. They reminded him of … of … of … clouds.

Gilgamesh’s voice boomed. “Now, think of …”

ater.
”

Josh opened his eyes.

A huge blue planet floated in space. White clouds swirled across its surface; ice glittered at its poles.

And then he was falling, plunging toward the planet, hurtling toward the bright blue seas. Strong and commanding, Gilgamesh’s voice boomed and roared around him, rising and falling like the waves of the ocean.

“It is said that the Magic of Air or Fire or even Earth is the most powerful magic of all. But that is wrong. The Magic of Water surpasses all others, for water is both the lifegiver and the deathbringer.”

Mute, unable to move, to even turn his head, Josh fell through the clouds and watched as the world grew larger, vast landmasses appearing, though there was none that he recognized. He raced toward a red speck on the horizon, the
clouds dark and thick above it, flying high over churning grass green seas.

Volcanoes. A dozen stretched along a ragged coastline, huge monsters belching fire and molten rock into the atmosphere. The seas roared and foamed around the red-hot rock.

“Water can extinguish fire. Even lava from the molten heart of the planet cannot stand against it.”

When the lava hit the pounding seas, it cooled in a detonation of smoke. A steaming black landscape of congealed magma appeared out of the waves.

Josh was soaring again, the only sound the heartbeat-like throb of the king’s voice, powerful yet soothing, like the crash of waves on a distant shore. The boy rose high over the ring of fire, heading east, toward a dawn. Clouds gathered beneath him; wisps giving way to fluffy balls that thickened into clumps and then blossomed into an expanse of roiling storm clouds.

“Without water, there is no life ….”

Josh fell through the clouds. Lightning flashed silently around him, and torrential rain washed down onto lush green primordial forests, where impossibly tall trees and enormous ferns covered the earth.

The landscape changed again, images flickering faster and faster. He soared across a desert wasteland where vast dunes undulated in every direction. A single spot of color drew him down, down, down toward an oasis, vibrant green trees clustered around a sparkling pool.

“Mankind can survive with little food but cannot survive without water.”

Josh rose and dropped down onto a mighty river cutting
through high ragged hills. Dotted along its curved banks were tiny habitations, lit by fires sparking in the gloom. Racing low along the length of the river, he was aware that time was speeding up. Decades, then centuries, passed with each heartbeat. Storms lashed across the mountains, weathering them, softening them, wearing them down. Straw huts changed to mud, to wood, to stone; then clusters of stone houses appeared, a wall wrapped around them; a castle appeared and crumbled, to be replaced by a larger village, then a low town of wood and stone; then a city grew, polished marble and glass windows winking in the light before it transformed into a modern-day metropolis of glass and metal.

“Mankind has always built his cities on riverbanks and sea-coasts.”

The river opened out to a vast ocean. The sun streaked across the sky, moving almost too fast to see as time raced by.

“Water has been his highway …”

Boats moved on the water, canoes first, then rowboats, then ships with banks of sails, and finally vast oceanliners and supertankers.

“… his larder …”

A flotilla of fishing boats pulled huge nets from the ocean.

“… and his doom.”

The ocean, huge and churning, the color of a bruise, battered an isolated coastal village. It swamped boats, swept away bridges, leaving devastation in its wake.

“Nothing stands against the power of water ….”

A vast wall of water rolled down a modern city street, flooding homes, washing away cars.

Suddenly, Josh was soaring upward, the earth falling away beneath him, and the king’s voice faded to a whisper, like the hiss of surf on sand.

“It was water which brought life to the earth. Water which very nearly destroyed it.”

Josh looked down at the blue planet. This was the world he recognized. He saw the shapes of continents and countries, the sweep of North and South America, the curl of Africa. But then he suddenly realized that there was something wrong with the outlines of the land. They weren’t the way he remembered them from his geography class. They seemed larger, less clearly defined. The Gulf of Mexico looked smaller, the Gulf of California was missing entirely and the Caribbean was definitely smaller. He couldn’t see the distinctive shape of Italy in the Mediterranean, and the islands of Ireland and Britain were one misshapen lump.