The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)
“Stop it now.”
“I have a little left,” he said. “I can lead it away from here.” He started moving toward the door and the crab tracked his movements with its enormous beady eyes.
“No, Mars, you can’t,” she whispered, realizing what was happening.
The Elder’s odor had changed, becoming bitter and sour, and although the aura was still radiating off his flesh, it was flickering wildly. The crab lurched after him, following the rich smell.
“Come taste the aura of Mars Ultor, who was also Ares and Nergal and a dozen other names besides.” Mars concentrated and his aura blazed higher, brighter, stronger. “But before I was Nergal, I was Huitzilopochtli, I was the Champion of Humankind. It is the name I have always been proudest of.”
Then his aura died.
Abruptly, Mars turned and ran through the empty doorway. He barely made it before he exploded into a fine white ash. When his aura had consumed all his energy, it had fed off his flesh.
Nicholas Flamel leaned his head against the shell protecting Areop-Enap. They had lost.
Another wall shattered as the Karkinos ripped apart the remainder of the building.
The Alchemyst looked up to find the orange crab looming over him, claws clicking. Nicholas desperately needed one more spell, one final transformation, one incantation to awaken the Old Spider, but his aura was spent. He had nothing left to give. He was just a tired old man and Perenelle an old, old woman, looking small and frail now, her life force almost finished. Their friends and allies were no more. They had come close, so very, very close, to defeating the Dark Elders. And they had failed.
“I’m sorry,” Nicholas Flamel said to no one in particular. He looked down at the thin crust surrounding the Old Spider and discovered eight tiny bruise-colored eyes regarding him impassively.
Areop-Enap had awakened.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
TSAGAGLALAL AND HER brother had been brought to life by Prometheus’s aura.
Prometheus and his sister Zephaniah had been sent to an abandoned city of black glass and glittering gold at the very edge of the world. The Nameless City sat on the cusp of many ley lines and at the confluence of seven Shadowrealms. There were stories that the city of black and gold existed simultaneously in all seven realms.
Legend had it that the city had been built by the Archons, but Abraham the Mage held that they had simply taken up residence in the massive buildings, which he believed dated from the Time Before Time. Eventually, even they abandoned it, and the forest quickly reclaimed what had once been a vast metropolis.
Every aspect of the Nameless City suggested that it had been built by inhuman creatures. The doors were too tall and too narrow, the windows were small, the steps were shallow, and the irregular angles of the buildings made them hard—almost disturbing—to look at. Most of the buildings were covered with intricately carved whorls and spirals. Elder lore was filled with the stories of individuals who had become entranced by the circles. They had stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the designs, refusing to move, taking neither food nor water, and when they did speak it was to report both wonders and horrors.
Abraham had sent Zephaniah and Prometheus to the Nameless City with instructions to search for any of the mysterious crystal skulls that sometimes turned up in Archon and Ancient ruins.
It was in an enormous chamber in the heart of the library that they had found the clay statues.
Intricately carved and delicately beautiful, the statues ranged in color from deep black to palest white. Every inch of their perfectly sculpted bodies was covered with archaic script, hieroglyphs from a forgotten language. But their faces were blank, unmarked and unfinished: little more than vague ovals, without eyes, ears, noses or mouths. Male and female stood side by side in identical positions, tall, elegant and otherworldly. They looked not unlike the Elders or even the legendary Archons but were obviously different from those races.
When Prometheus had stepped into the statue-filled chamber, his fiery aura had popped alight, washing over the closest statues. Red sparks ran across the curling script, bringing it to life, and his aura sank into the clay, which shifted and flowed with the heat. Features began to form on their blank faces: clay running off the foreheads into peaks that formed noses and chins, depressions shaping into eyes, cracks hinting at
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher