05 The Warlock Read online

  “Not bad at all.” Machiavelli brought his hands together and the scent of Billy’s aura was swept away with the stench of serpent. A blaze of stark white light lit up the tunnel in sharp relief. The red bubble popped and burst. “My master, Aten, taught me that,” Machiavelli said.

  Billy the Kid quickly rubbed his hands together, tendrils of his purple-red aura dripping into the water at his ankles. “Nice,” he admitted, his voice muffled behind the bandana.

  Machiavelli glanced sidelong at the younger man. “You look like a bandit, wearing that bandana.”

  “I think it suits me.”

  The two men, one in a ruined suit and expensive Italian shoes, the other in jeans and beat-up boots, splashed down the corridor. The white light kept pace with them, sending red-eyed rats skittering into the darkness.

  “I hate rats,” Billy muttered.

  “They have their uses,” Machiavelli said softly. “They make excellent spies.”

  “Spies?” Billy the Kid stopped. He sounded confused. “Spies?”

  The Italian had walked on but stopped as well to look back at Billy. “Have you never looked through an animal’s eyes?”

  “No. I had a Navajo medicine woman tell me she could look through an eagle’s eyes, but I wasn’t entirely sure I believed her until she was able to tell me that thirty miles away, a lawman was putting together a posse to hunt me. She said it would take them two days to find me. And sure enough, two days later, they did.”

  “Projecting your will into an animal—or a human, for that matter—is fairly simple. Did your master teach you nothing?”

  Billy tilted his head to one side. “Guess not.” Then he added quietly, almost shyly, “Do you think you could teach me?”

  The Italian immortal looked at the American in surprise. “Teach you?”

  Billy shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, you’ve been around for a long time. You’re … well, you’re medieval. That’s really old.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you Europeans have all been trained by your ancient masters.…”

  “Your own master, Quetza … Quezza …”

  “Quetzalcoatl,” Billy finished.

  “He is as ancient as my master. Quetaz … Quezta …”

  “Call him Kukulkan.”

  “Kukulkan is an immensely powerful Elder. You heard him: he was on Danu Talis when it fell. He could teach you wonders. More, much, much more than I ever could.”

  Billy shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and suddenly looked far younger than his years. “Well, to be perfectly honest, he’s never really taught me anything. I saved his life and he made me immortal as a reward. And then I don’t think I saw him for another fifty years or so. Anything I learned about the Elders and my own immortality, I found out for myself, discovering things here and there.”

  Machiavelli nodded. “My own path was not dissimilar. My master left me to my own devices for half a century. Surely your research led you to other immortals?”

  “Not many, and not for a long time.” Billy grinned. “I didn’t even realize I was immortal until the day I fell off my horse on a trail on the Sierra Madre and rolled into a canyon. I could hear my bones breaking on the way down. I lay in the bottom of that ravine and watched this purple-red smoke rise off my skin, and I could feel my bones crunch and slot back together again. I saw my cuts heal and the skin mend, leaving not so much as a scar behind. The only evidence I had that I’d fallen down a mountainside was that my clothes were ripped to shreds.”

  “Your aura healed you.”

  “I had no name for it then.” Billy held up his hand and wisps of his purple-red aura curled off his fingertips. “But once that happened, I started to see the auras around people. It got so I could tell good from bad, powerful from weak, healthy from sick, just by looking at the colors around their bodies.”

  “I believe all humans once had this ability.”

  “And then one day I was in Deadwood, South Dakota, when I saw this amazingly powerful aura—steel-gray—wrapped around a man climbing onto a train. I had no idea who he was, but I actually ran up to the train and rapped on the window. And when he looked out at me, I saw his eyes—the same gray as his aura—widen and I instantly knew that he could see the color around me. I knew then that I was not alone, that there were other immortals like me.”

  “Did you ever find out who the man was?”

  “A century later I met him again: it was Daniel Boone.”

  Machiavelli nodded. “I have heard his name among the list of American immortals.”

  “Is my name on that list?”

  “It is not,” Machiavelli said.

  “I’m not sure whether I should be insulted or grateful.”

  “There is an old Celtic saying I am particularly fond of: ‘It is better to exist unknown to the law.’ ”

  Billy nodded. “I like that!”

  “However, it is a master’s duty to train his servant,” Machiavelli continued. “Kukulkan should have trained you.”

  Billy shrugged again. “Well, it’s not entirely his fault. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with authority. Got me into trouble when I was a youngster, kept me in trouble all my life. Never really got over it. Black Hawk trained me—when he wasn’t trying to kill me, that is. He taught me the little I know.” Billy paused and added, “There is so much I’ve only heard about or read about. So much I want to see.” He paused again and then said softly, “I want to see all the Shadowrealms.”

  “There are some you do not want to go to,” Machiavelli said automatically.

  “But there are many more I’d like to see.”

  “Some are wonderful,” the Italian agreed.

  “I could learn a lot from you,” Billy said. “And maybe even teach you a bit in return.”

  “Possibly. However,” Machiavelli added, “I haven’t taken a student in a long time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trust me,” Machiavelli said, “you really do not want to know.…” He stopped, tilting his head back, long thin nose testing the air. “Billy,” he said quickly, “I will take you as a student and teach you all that I know—on one condition,” he added.

  “What’s the condition?” Billy asked warily.

  “That you keep your mouth shut for the next ten minutes.”

  Even as he was speaking, the fetid reek of dead fish and rotting seaweed rolled down the tunnel.

  And a monster appeared out of the shadows.

  Billy the Kid took an involuntary step backward. “Oh man, you are one ugly—”

  “Billy!”

  he Isle of Danu Talis,” Marethyu said softly, wrapping his long cloak tightly around his body. “One of the lost wonders of the world.”

  Scathach, Joan of Arc, Saint-Germain, Palamedes and William Shakespeare were on a hill looking down over a huge golden city-island that stretched as far as the eye could see. The city had been laid out in a circular maze, with sparkling blue waterways surrounding and weaving through it. Sunlight glinted silver on the water, reflecting blindingly off the golden buildings. Some places were almost too bright to look at.

  Saint-Germain sat on the brilliant green grass and Joan lowered herself to sit beside him. “Danu Talis is no more,” he said evenly. “I seem to remember reading that it sank.”

  “We have stepped back ten thousand years,” the hooded man explained. A warm wind tugged at the hem of his cloak, pulling it back and revealing the flat metal hook that took the place of his left hand. “This is Danu Talis, just before the Fall.”

  “Before the Fall,” Scathach whispered. The Warrior walked to a knoll and shaded her eyes with her hands. She did not want the others to see that they were bright with tears. Taking a deep breath, she tried—and failed—to keep her voice from trembling. “My parents and brother are down there?”

  “Everyone is there,” Marethyu said. “All the Elders are on the island—they have not yet scattered throughout the Shadowrealms. Some—like Prometheus and Ze
phaniah—you have encountered in your own time, but here they are still young. They will not know you, of course, because they have not yet met you. You will know your parents, Warrior, but they will not recognize you, because you have not been born to them.”

  “But I could see them again,” Scathach whispered, bloodred tears rolling down her face.

  “You could. Though there may not be time.”

  “Why not?” Saint-Germain asked quickly.

  “Danu Talis is doomed. It could happen in a day, or two days, or maybe three. I do not know. What I do know is that it must sink soon.”

  “And if doesn’t?” Saint-Germain asked. He brushed his long hair back off his face. “What if the island survives and thrives?”

  “Then the world you know will cease to exist,” Marethyu said passionately. “The island must be rent asunder and the Elders spread out across the globe. The magic needed to destroy Danu Talis must poison the soil of the earth, the very air itself, the waters of the sea and the fire from the volcanoes, so that the children born to the Elders after the destruction of Danu Talis, the Next Generation, will be as different from their parents as their parents were from the Ancients who came before them.” The hook-handed man turned back to Scathach. “If the island does not fall, then neither you nor your sister will ever have existed.”

  Scathach shook her head. “But I am here, and therefore the island must have sunk.”

  “In that strand of time certainly—” Marethyu began, but Shakespeare interrupted him.

  “Tell me about the strands of time,” the bard said.

  The hook-handed man drew his cloak about him and turned to face the group. “There are many strands of time. Chronos the Elder can move back and forth through these various threads, though only as an observer. He never interferes. A single change would affect that entire strand of time and all the strands that flow from it.”

  “My master, Tammuz, could move through time,” Palamedes said.

  Marethyu nodded. “But he could only go back and see what had been. Chronos can go forward and see what might be.”

  Saint-Germain looked up at Marethyu. “I have dealt with that foul creature Chronos before. He is not to be trusted.”

  Marethyu’s blue eyes crinkled as he smiled. “He has no love for you, that is true. And let us hope you do not meet one another.”

  “So what makes this strand of time so special?” Saint-Germain asked quietly.

  Marethyu turned back to look at the golden island. “Every great event creates multiple time streams, various possibilities and what-ifs.” He waved his hand. “You can imagine that the destruction of this place created an extraordinary number of different time streams.”

  “Yes … and?” Saint-Germain said sharply.

  “We jumped through the thirteen Shadowrealm gates to get here. Chronos sequenced them for me so that we were moving not only back through time, but across the time streams. Here, now, we are in the primary time stream before the world sank and the time streams split.”

  “But why?” Will asked. “If we do nothing, then surely the world sinks and everything goes on as it always has?”

  “Ah, but the Elders, under the leadership of Osiris and Isis, have been working on a plan that will change everything. They intend to ensure that Danu Talis never sank.”

  Saint-Germain nodded. “I’d do the same if I were in their position, and I presume they have had millennia to perfect this plan.”

  “What happens if they succeed?” Joan asked.

  “Then everything you know simply ceases to exist,” Marethyu repeated. “Not only in this world, but in all the myriad Shadowrealms. Billions of lives, tens of billions, will be lost. But you—all of you here—have the power to prevent that.”

  Sitting on the low hill, gazing across the island, Joan of Arc reached out and caught her husband’s hand in hers. The Comte de Saint-Germain took her hand in both of his and she squeezed his fingers tightly. Leaning over, he kissed her cheek. “Think of it as just another adventure,” he whispered. “We’ve had so many.”

  “None like this,” she murmured in French.

  Shakespeare moved closer to Palamedes, the Saracen Knight. “I wish I were still writing,” he murmured. “What a tale this would make.”

  “It’s how this tale ends that worries me,” Palamedes rumbled. “I’ve never wanted anything more than a quiet life. And yet I always end up in the middle of wars and battles.” He shook his head.

  “How old is the city?” Saint-Germain wondered aloud. He squinted down at the maze of streets and waterways. “It reminds me a little of Venice.”

  Marethyu shrugged. “The city is younger than the island, and the island is younger than the earth. It is said that the Great Elders raised the island in a single day by combining all the Elemental Magics. It was considered the greatest feat of magic the world had ever seen.”

  “Has it a library?” Shakespeare asked.

  “It has, Bard. One of the most remarkable in the world. The Great Library of Danu Talis is in a vast chamber hewn out of the bedrock at the base of that pyramid. You could spend the rest of your life exploring just one shelf. And there are hundreds of miles of shelves. The island is relatively modern, but the civilization of Danu Talis is older, much, much older. The Great Elders ruled before the Elders, and there is a King List carved into the steps of the pyramid that stretches back hundreds of thousands of years. And before the Great Elders there were other races: the Archons, the Ancients and, in the very distant past, the Earthlords. One civilization building upon the ruins of the other.” Marethyu pointed with his hook to a huge stepped pyramid. “That is the Pyramid of the Sun, the very heart of not only the island but the empire. The Final Battle will be won or lost there.”

  “And you know all that because it has already happened,” Scathach said.

  “In one strand of time, yes.”

  “And what happens in the other strands?”

  Marethyu shrugged. “There are many strands, many possibilities, but we have come back to the point before those strands split apart, where our actions can shape the future.”

  “How do you know this to be true?” Scathach demanded.

  “Because Abraham the Mage told me.”

  “I think we should go and see this Abra—” Scatty stopped suddenly and whirled around, eyes flaring.

  The still morning air was filled with a low humming, the sound of distant bees.

  “Down …,” Marethyu began, and then choked and staggered as a flickering blue-white electrical discharge rippled across his chest, sparking and snapping into his hook. He collapsed to the ground, pale smoke rising from his body, white sparks crawling across the runes etched into his hook.

  Joan went to move to Marethyu’s side, but Saint-Germain caught her arm and held her back. He shook his head slightly. “No. Wait.”

  Shakespeare and Palamedes immediately moved apart, the bard taking up a position behind and to the left of his friend. If there was a battle, Will would guard his friend’s back.

  “Vimanas coming,” Scathach snarled. She crouched but made no move to reach for the matched swords on her back. “Remain still, touch no metal.”

  “What are vim …,” Joan began; then she followed Scathach’s finger. It was pointing straight up.

  The warm air trembled and turned chill and suddenly three large spinning discs dropped out of the clear sky and hovered just above their heads, buzzing and vibrating gently. Everyone looked up. On the undersides of the metal discs was etched a map of Danu Talis.

  “Vimanas,” Scathach explained. “Flying discs. A few survived the Fall of Danu Talis and made it to the Earth Shadowrealm. My father had one … until Aoife crashed it. She blamed me,” she added bitterly.

  The largest disc—which was at least twelve feet across—dropped lower but did not settle on the ground, and a thin sheen of ice appeared on the grass beneath it. Under a crystal dome on top of the disc, two black jackal-headed creatures with solid red eyes glared ou
t at them.

  “I hate these guys,” Saint-Germain muttered.

  “Anpu,” Scathach whispered. “I think we’re in trouble. Big trouble.”

  urn here.” Dr. John Dee leaned forward and pointed to the right. “Take the Barbary Coast Trail and continue around to the Embarcadero. Then follow the signs for the Oakland Bay Bridge.”

  Josh nodded, mouth clamped tightly shut, unwilling to speak and trying hard not to breathe too deeply. The Magician’s breath was foul with the stink of rotten eggs.

  “Where are we going?” Virginia Dare asked from the shadows.

  “Away from here,” Dee spat. “The streets will be swarming with police and firefighters.”

  Josh adjusted the mirror so that he could see into the back of the car. Dee was sitting almost directly behind him, outlined in the faintest tracery of yellow, while the young-looking woman sat on the right, as far away from the Magician as possible. She was tapping the wooden flute against her bottom lip.

  Josh focused on driving, keeping the heavy car under control and within the speed limit. He tried not to think about what had just happened and, more importantly, what had happened with his sister. She’d turned against him—or rather, the Flamels had turned her against him. But where was she now … and how was he going to tell his parents that he had lost her? He was supposed to look after her, protect her. And he’d failed.

  “What was the name of the comedian,” Virginia Dare asked suddenly, “part of a double act, who said, ‘Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into’?”

  “Stan Laurel,” Dee said.

  “Oliver Hardy,” Josh corrected him. His father loved Laurel and Hardy. Even though Josh preferred the anarchic humor of the Marx Brothers, one of his earliest memories was of sitting on his father’s lap, feeling his entire body shake as he laughed uproariously at Laurel and Hardy’s antics.