The Warlock (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #5) (30 page)

“Why are you doing this?” Aten asked.

Marethyu’s bright blue eyes widened in surprise. “Do I have a choice?”

“Everyone has a choice.”

The hook-handed man shook his head. “I’m not sure I believe that. My life was shaped millennia before I was born. I sometimes think I am just an actor, playing a role.”

The tunnel ended in a vast underground cavern. Water trickled in the darkness and the air smelled fresh and clean. Aten turned to face Marethyu. “Perhaps you are an actor, but you have accepted your role. You could just as easily have said no and walked away.”

Marethyu shook his head. “If you knew the whole story, you’d see that that was impossible. If I did not fulfill my role, then the world would be a very different place.”

The Elder reached out and touched the hook that took the place of Marethyu’s left hand. It sparkled and crackled, blazing brighter. “You were not born with this.”

“I was not.”

“How did you lose your hand?”

“By choice,” Marethyu said, his voice hardening. “It was a price I had to pay, and I paid it gladly.”

Aten nodded. “Everything has a price. I understand that.”

“Do you understand the price you will have to pay for allowing me to escape?”

Aten’s lips curled in a smile. “Anubis and Bastet will use it as the excuse they need to move against me. Isis and Osiris will gather the Council of Elders to declare me unfit to rule and probably feed me to the volcano.” He clapped his hands sharply together and a ripple of light shivered through the cave. Then he clapped again and the cave slowly lit up in a warm milk-white light. “The fungus on the walls is sensitive to sound,” he explained.

There was a lake in the center of the cave, the black water speckled with white, running with long slow ripples. Sitting on the banks of the lake was a crystal vimana. It was almost
completely transparent, visible only because of the coating of white reflected light.

“Take it,” Aten said. “I found it preserved in a block of ice on a plateau at the top of the world. It is probably the oldest vimana in existence, and despite its fragile appearance, it is practically indestructible.”

Shouts suddenly echoed down the tunnel behind them, and the fungus pulsed and rippled in time with the sounds.

“They’re coming. Go now, and do what you have to do.”

“You could come with me,” Marethyu said suddenly.

“The vimana will hold only one. And besides, didn’t you tell me that everything has a price?”

The tramp of footsteps was closer, the clink of metal and armor rattling off the walls.

Marethyu stretched out his right hand and Aten took it in his. “Let me tell you this,” the hook-handed man said. “We will meet again, you and I, in a different place and a different time.”

“You know this to be true?”

“I do.”

“Because you have seen the future?”

“Because I have been there.”

Anubis and the anpu burst out of the tunnel just as the crystal vimana took to the air. It hovered silently, the hook-handed man clearly visible inside the craft. He raised his hook in golden salute. Aten raised his hand in acknowledgment, and the craft plummeted beneath the surface of the lake and disappeared.

“What have you done, brother?” Anubis snarled. “You have betrayed us.”

“I did what I had to do to save the world.”

“Chain him,” Anubis commanded. He looked at his brother and his stiff face managed to twist and contort in rage.
“Waerloga,”
he spat.

The Elder nodded in agreement. “Aten the Warlock. It has a ring to it, don’t you think?”

ophie Newman stood in the back garden beside the barbecue and watched Prometheus grill sausages. The big Elder was grinning and whistling tunelessly.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“You should have seen the look on Mars’s face,” Prometheus said.

“You were—or you are—enemies?” she asked, and even as she was asking, images started to dance in her head.

… Mars Ultor and Prometheus standing back to back against a horde of snake-headed warriors
.

… Prometheus carrying a wounded Mars on his back as he dived off a bridge into a raging torrent …

… Mars snatching a barbed arrow out of the air, a hairs-breadth from Prometheus’s throat …

“Now, perhaps. Once we were friends, closer than brothers.”

“What happened?”

“He went mad,” he said sadly. “Or rather, the sword he carried drove him mad. The same sword your brother now carries.”

Sophie looked across the garden to where the big man in the leather jacket stood drinking pink lemonade through a straw. “He doesn’t look crazy, though.”

“Not at the moment, he doesn’t.”

“Why did he attack you?”

“It’s complicated,” Prometheus said, jumping back as hot grease spat at him.

Sophie glanced at the sausages and sizzling hamburgers, then looked away quickly as her stomach turned. Ever since she’d been Awakened, she’d developed an aversion to meat. “How complicated?”

“Well, Mars married my sister, Zephaniah, which made us brothers-in-law. But when the sword drove him insane, I helped my sister capture him and trap him in a shell of his own hardened aura. She buried him deep underground, and over the centuries the city of Paris grew above his head.”

“Sophie?” Aunt Agnes had appeared from the kitchen, carrying a tray.

“Just a minute, Aunt—”

“Now, Sophie,” Tsagaglalal insisted.

“Excuse me,” Sophie said, and crossed the patio.

Tsagaglalal handed her the tray, which held slices of cut sushi. “Will you help me pass these around? Our guests must be famished.”

“Aunt Agnes … Tsagaglalal,” Sophie said. She was completely confused. “What are we doing?”

“Feeding our guests,” the old woman said with a smile.

“But they’re mortal enemies.”

“They know they must put their enmities aside in my presence,” she said. “That is the tradition.” The corners of the old woman’s gray eyes crinkled in amusement. “Everything is as it should be. Now just help me hand out the food and we’ll wait for Nicholas and Perenelle to join us.”

Sophie followed Tsagaglalal across the patio to where Mars Ultor leaned against a low stone wall. He straightened when he saw the old woman approach, and put down his lemonade.

“Mistress Tsagaglalal,” he said, bowing deeply. Suddenly his blue eyes turned huge behind tears. “I thought I would never see you again.”

The old woman reached up to place the palm of her hand flat against his cheek. “Mars, old friend. It is good to see you. And you are looking well, too. You’ve lost weight. It suits you. How is Zephaniah?”

Mars nodded. “She is well, I think,” he said cautiously. “We … we didn’t talk too much. She spoke and I listened while she told me what to do.” Mars paused and smiled to himself. “It was just like old times. Then she sent me here to find Dee, but first she told me I had to come to you. She said you had something for me.”

Tsagaglalal nodded. “I do. I’ll give it to you in a moment, but first I want you to meet—”

“We’ve already met,” Sophie interrupted coldly. She remembered
the creature in the catacombs beneath Paris. “Mars Ultor, who was also Ares, Nergal and Huitzilopochtli.” She looked at Tsagaglalal. “He Awakened Josh in Paris.”

Tsagaglalal patted Sophie’s arm. “I know. Sophie, do not judge him by the Witch’s memories, or by what he was forced to do in Paris. When Danu Talis fell, Mars stayed to the very end and led thousands of humani slaves to safety. He was among the last off the island.”

Sophie looked at Mars again. “The Witch remembers you as a monster.”

“It is true. I was. But Clarent poisoned me,” Mars said. “It changed my nature. And now your twin carries it. Unless you get it away from him, it will change him also.”

“I’ll take it away from him,” Sophie said simply, and then her voice shook. “I know where he is.”

“He’s on Alcatraz. He and I are linked, remember.” He threw his head back and closed his eyes, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled a deep breath. “I can smell him and the others with him: Dee and Machiavelli, an immortal who smells like sage …”

“That would be Virginia Dare,” Tsagaglalal said.

One by one Odin, Hel and Black Hawk crossed the yard and gathered around Mars as he spoke.

“… and another, a male, young, smelling of red peppers,” he continued.

“That would be my friend Billy the Kid,” Black Hawk offered.

“You are sure the Magician is on the island?” Odin asked, his voice hoarse, every word labored.

“I’m sure.” Mars breathed in again. “And there is another.” His face twisted in disgust. “Ah, the stench of Nereus.”

Prometheus came away from the barbecue carrying two plates, one piled high with hamburgers, the other filled with small cocktail sausages festooned with toothpicks.

Sophie watched Mars stiffen as Prometheus approached. Then she saw Tsagaglalal reach out to grip Mars’s arm. The old woman lowered her voice, but the girl caught her words. “You’re a guest in my house. I want you to behave yourself.”

“Of course, mistress,” Mars murmured. He nodded to Prometheus, who smiled in return. “What happened to your hair?” he asked.

“I got old,” Prometheus said. “Unlike you, I see.” He held out the two plates of food to the small group and everyone shook their heads except Mars and Hel. Mars lifted one of the small sausages, breathed in its aroma and then nibbled almost delicately at it. “The first real food I’ve had in millennia,” he admitted.

Hel leaned forward and opened her mouth. A long black tongue shot out and wrapped around a thick hamburger. She pulled it whole into her mouth, her jutting fangs ripping it apart. The juices mingled with the black fluids running down her chin as she smiled at Sophie. “I’m not a vegetarian.”

“I guessed,” Sophie said, looking away quickly and swallowing the bile at the back of her throat.

“I made them rare just for you,” Prometheus said.

“You remembered,” Hel rasped.

“Well, if you recall, the last time we met, you were planning on eating me.”

“I was going to cook you first.”

Odin picked up a piece of sushi and a napkin. He disassembled the sushi, removing the curl of salmon and wrapping the remains of the rice in the napkin.

Black Hawk nodded his thanks as he looked over the plate. “Is that spicy tuna?”

Sophie nodded. “Looks like it.”

“I’ll stick with the salmon. Spicy food disagrees with me.”

Niten appeared with two more plates of sushi. “Freshly made,” he announced. “I cut some sashimi for you,” he said to Odin, and pointed to the neat slivers of white and red fish. “Albacore and salmon.” He looked at Black Hawk. “And cucumber and tuna rolls for you. No spices.”

“You have a good memory.” Black Hawk smiled.

“Of course.”

Sophie looked at the two immortals. She still found the idea of the Swordsman and the Native American knowing one another astonishing. “How do you know one another?”

“We met just over a hundred and thirty years ago,” Niten said.

Black Hawk nodded in agreement. “Just after the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876.”

“What a day that was,” Niten murmured. “A day for warriors.”

Sophie picked up one of the trays of meat and offered it to Hel. The Elder nodded gratefully and grabbed two burgers, one in each hand, before wrapping her tongue around a third. “We came through several leygates to get here,” she explained over a mouthful of barely cooked meat, spraying
fragments everywhere. “And you know what that’s like—they make you ravenous.”

Sophie drifted away from the group, heading into the house with the empty platter. She stopped at the doorway and glanced back and was immediately struck by how completely bizarre the scene was. There was Niten talking to Black Hawk; Mars Ultor and Prometheus were deep in conversation, while Odin and Hel were listening intently to Tsagaglalal. It seemed like any other backyard barbecue, with food and drink and the smells of cooking in the air. And yet some of these beings were more than ten thousand years old and far from human.

“Maybe it’s a dream,” she said softly, “and I’m about to wake up.”

“More like a nightmare,” a woman’s voice answered quietly. “And you’re not even dreaming.”