The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #6) (23 page)
Read The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #6) Online
Authors: Michael Scott
Tags: #Magic
I am Abraham of Danu Talis, sometimes called the Mage, and I send greetings to you, Virginia Dare, daughter of Elenora, child of Ananias.
By this word
, Croatoan,
a word whose meaning is known only to you, shall you know that everything I say to you now is the truth. So when I say to you that I have watched over you all the days of your life, you will know this to be true. When I say to you that I have protected you and cared for you, you will know this also to be true. I directed you to the cave in the Grand Canyon where you discovered your precious flute. And I allowed you to kill your Elder master and protected you from the consequences.
I know who you are, Virginia Dare, and more importantly, I know what you are. I know what you are looking for, what you seek more than anything else in the world.
And today you can achieve your life’s ambition.
Today, you can make a difference.
You will not walk the Earth Shadowrealm for more than nine millennia. And yet you receive this tablet from me this very day. You will hold it in your hands mere hours after it has left mine. When I first began to follow your time line, I never imagined it would loop back and we would both end up on the same continent in the same time stream.
You are a remarkable woman, Virginia Dare.
You survived when all around you died. And you did more than survive. You thrived. You lived alone and feral in the heart of the forest. But you were never truly alone. Did you ever wonder why the wolves never hunted you and the bears avoided you, why you never succumbed
to illness or fell ill from rotten food or stagnant water? And in the depths of winter, when the snow thickened on the ground, you never developed sickness. You were never short of food, never went hungry, never even broke a bone or chipped a tooth. When the plagues devastated the native tribes, you remained unscathed. When your enemies came in search of you, they became lost in the forest. When trappers hunted you for the reward, they came to sudden and mysterious ends.
Truly, you lived a charmed life.
And while I watched over you, Marethyu, the hook-handed man, protected you. He was your shadow, your guardian. Together we kept you safe, because we knew that one day we would need you.
We need you today, Virginia Dare—just as you have always wanted to be needed.
Being abandoned and orphaned as a child, being left alone for years to run wild, should have made you selfish, greedy and perhaps even a little mad.
And yet you are none of those things.
It is a testament to your courage, to your strength of will, your integrity.
When you had food to spare, you shared it with the native tribes. Even when you had little enough for yourself, you left parcels of food hanging from the branches of trees. You ensured that their traps and nets were always filled. You cared for them in ways you yourself had never been cared for. The natives knew it and honored you for it.
You accepted immortality from an Elder you despised simply so that you would have more time to help those who needed it. And for centuries now, you have hidden your passion for justice behind an uncaring facade. Few know you, and those who do assume you are interested only in yourself. Even the English Magician, who thinks he knows you better than any man alive, knows nothing about you. He does not know the real Virginia Dare.
I know you.
I know you have always resented the arrogance of authority. You have always stepped forward and spoken for those who had no voice of their own. And now you find yourself in a land where an entire class is voiceless, where a handful of Elders, many of whom are so Changed that they are barely recognizable, continue to hold on to power. Worse, they have no intention of ever letting it go. They intend to destroy or enslave the humani. They are determined that the world you know, the world you grew up in, will cease to exist. The people of Danu Talis need a voice, Virginia Dare. They need someone to speak for them.
They need you.
Virginia’s tears sizzled and steamed off the stone.
A white-robed shape moved in the alleyway and she quickly blinked away the tears. No man had ever seen her cry. She shoved the tablet under her shirt. The stone felt cool against her skin.
“I got one too,” Marethyu said gently. “Abraham left
them for those he loved or respected. Dee didn’t get one,” he added, eyes crinkling.
“I don’t know this Abraham,” she said, eyes huge behind unshed tears.
“He knows you,” Marethyu answered.
“He said you also watched over me in the forest.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“To keep you safe. Abraham kept you out of trouble, made sure you were fed and clothed. I … well, I protected you.”
“Why?”
“You were kind to me once … or rather, you will be kind to me in the future.”
“I know you, don’t I?” Virginia whispered. “I have met you before.”
“Yes.”
“Death was not always your name,” she said.
“I have had many names.”
“I will find out who you are,” she promised. “I will find out your real name.”
“You can try. Perhaps you will succeed.”
“I’ll hypnotize you with my flute,” she threatened, half seriously. “You’ll tell me then.”
Marethyu shook his head. “None of the artifacts have any effect on me.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I am,” he said simply. “But I need to
know: Will you stand with us, Virginia? Will you fight for the humans of Danu Talis and the future of your world?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“I need to hear you say yes.”
“Yes,” she said simply.
S
ophie Newman stared at her reflection in the polished-silver-framed mirror. For a moment, she didn’t recognize herself.
Memories flickered and danced.
… of a girl in silver armor on the top of a pyramid …
She blinked and there was a rapid succession of images of girls and young women down through the ages, in a variety of costumes, some in battle, others in fields or classrooms, in caves and castles, in tents on windswept steppes …
And while the faces were different, they all had her blond hair and blue eyes.
Sophie reached out and touched the glass. She realized she was seeing the line of her ancestors across thousands of years and hundreds of generations. But was she the first … or the last of her line?
She’d found the silver armor when she returned to the
room. It was laid out on the bed like a three-dimensional metal jigsaw puzzle. She’d sat down on the end of the bed and looked at the armor and thought for a long time about whether she would put it on.
And finally, for reasons she did not quite understand, she began to pull on the armor, piece by piece.
The young woman who looked back at her from the mirror was dressed in semitransparent silver armor that was molded to the shape of her body. It fit her so precisely that it could have been made for no one else. The armor was unadorned and had been polished to a mirror sheen. Partially visible through the metal was the silk-soft chain-mail shirt beneath. She wore knee-high chamois-lined silver boots with wicked spiked toes, and her articulated silver gloves had been fitted with long extended nails, like claws. Sophie didn’t even like the look of them. Strapped to her back were two empty silver sheaths, and although she’d searched the room and gone through the wardrobe, she hadn’t been able to find weapons anywhere.
There was a tap on the door. “It’s me,” Josh called.
“It’s open,” Sophie answered.
Josh stepped into the room, wearing an almost identical suit of armor. His was gold, as was the chain-mail vest he wore beneath. He was grinning, eyes sparkling with delight. “Did you ever think we’d get suits of armor?” He opened and closed his hands, flexing his fingers. The metal whispered like silk. “It’s metal, but it’s also glass. Sort of a ceramic or something. It has to be really high-tech.”
Sophie watched her brother in the mirror. “Does yours fit?”
“Like a glove,” he began, and then stopped. “Do you think these were made for us?”
Sophie nodded. There was no question. “Just for us.”
He turned slowly. “What do you think—fancy, right?”
She smiled. “Very fancy. Did you have any problems putting it on?” she asked.
He shook his head quickly. “You know, I was thinking about that. It was weird—I climbed into this as if I’d been wearing it all my life. I knew where each buckle and clip was, where all the straps went, how to cinch it.”
Sophie nodded. “Me too.” She tapped his shoulder where the empty sheaths were visible. “It looks like they don’t trust us with the final part of our costumes.”
“I bet these are for the four Swords of Power. Two for me, two for you.”
“I wonder which two you’ll get,” Sophie asked lightly, though somewhere in the deepest part of her consciousness, she already knew the answer.
“Dee used the swords to create the leygate on Alcatraz.” Josh stopped examining himself and looked up at his sister. “Did the swords fall through the gate with us? I don’t remember seeing them.”
“I do,” Sophie said. “When I jumped in after you, they tumbled through. I saw them when I opened my eyes. I thought they were rusted spars of metal, but then Osiris collected them just before we took off and I realized they were important.”
“What happens now?” Josh asked.
Sophie caught her brother’s arm and led him over to the glass wall. Pushing it back, she stepped out into the garden. The perfumed air was touched by the rotten-egg stench of sulfur from the volcano, and tiny speckles of black grit and gray ash swirled in the air. The garden was deserted, and Sophie led Josh to a fountain where a carved mammoth shot water into the air from its upraised trunk. The tinkling sound of the water created a low musical buzz.
“What are we going to do?” she asked in an urgent whisper. “Every time I start to think about what’s been going on I feel sick. These people …” She waved her gloved hand in the direction of the house. “… These people—and I’m not even sure if they’re our parents—they’re different.”
“They
are
different,” Josh agreed. “For a while there I thought Mom and Dad had been kidnapped and replaced by look-alikes, like in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
.”
“And now?” Sophie asked.
“I think they’re the same people we grew up with. They look like them, walk and talk like them, even have their little mannerisms, but they’re not the people we know.”
“They’re not,” Sophie agreed.
“And obviously now that they have us here, under their control, they’ve dropped whatever act they had on earth. We’re seeing them as they really are.” He dipped his glove into the water and watched as the water turned golden. The air suddenly smelled of citrus. “Look! It’s orange juice!”
“Josh. Focus!”
“You sound just like Mom or Isis or whatever her name is.
They’re different,” he repeated. “But you know what: when they were at home, they were always a little strange. They weren’t like normal parents.”
Sophie nodded. “I’m not sure what normal parents are like,” she said.
“Think about it. They didn’t encourage us to have friends. We never had sleepovers, we weren’t allowed to stay over at anyone’s house. We never went on field trips.”
“And we kept changing schools,” Sophie whispered. “They isolated us.”
“Exactly.”
“But we
did
have friends.”
“Casual friends, but not best friends. Who’s your best friend?” Josh gave his sister a challenging look.
“Well, there’s Elle….”
“Who’s in New York, and who you haven’t seen in how long?”
Sophie nodded. “A long time.”
“We never had a regular childhood,” Josh continued. “Dad—Osiris. Oh, I’m just going to call him Osiris from now on—is right: we were trained in amazing things. And don’t get me wrong. Some of it was fun. But is visiting an ancient archaeological site a normal family outing? The year I wanted to go to Disneyland, we ended up at Machu Picchu.”
“Where you stepped in the …”
“I know. We learned about history, archaeology, we were shown ancient languages, taken to museums to look at weapons and armor.” He tapped his metal fingers against his chest.
“When I first looked at this, it was so familiar to me. How many other sixteen-year-olds—”
“Fifteen and a half,” Sophie corrected.
“—fifteen-and-a-half-year-olds would know that this is Gothic-style armor from the late fifteenth century?”
Sophie laughed. “I didn’t know that.”
“But I did.”
“You are kind of a geek,” she reminded him.
“What are your shoes called?” he asked.
Sophie looked down at her spike-toed metal boots. “Sabatons,” she said immediately.
Josh grinned. “I’m sure every fifteen-and-a-half-year-old knows that. I bet your fashion-conscious friend Elle probably has a pair.”
Sophie laughed. “She’d have found hers in a boutique in the Village.”
“And she would have sent you a long email …”
“With photos …”
“With photos of the shoes, the boutique and the coffee and bagel she had afterward.”
The air trembled and a vimana swept in low over the house and then dropped out of sight. They both caught a glimpse of Osiris at the controls, and their laughter faded.
“They’ve been preparing us,” Sophie said. “Training us. So what do we do?”
“We do what we feel is right,” he answered.
“But right for who? For us, for them?”