The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

everywhere now, and he could clearly hear mocking laughter drifting down from above. “You didn’t think this through, did you? Marethyu spoke to you and suddenly you were off raising a revolution.”
    “No,” she admitted. “Everything happened so fast.”
    “Are you regretting it?” he asked.
    “Absolutely not!” she snapped. “When the English, the French and the Spanish invaded my country, I could have—I
should
have—stood against them. But I didn’t. I might have made a difference.”
    Dee frowned. “What are you talking about? You’re English.”
    “I’m an American,” she said proudly. “I am the first European born on American soil.” Virginia’s hair began to rise in a crackling sheet as her anger buzzed through her. “Look around you, Doctor: what do you see?”
    He shrugged. “The people of Danu Talis. The ordinary people,” he added.
    “Who are enslaved by the Elders, who use monsters to enforce their laws. I’ve seen this before, on this world and many other worlds, and not all monsters wear the shapes of beasts. I watched it happen in my homeland. I will not allow it to happen again,” she said fiercely.
    “You could die here,” he said quietly.
    “I could.”
    “For people you do not know . . .”
    “I know them. I have seen people like them all my long life. And now fate has brought me here.”
    “Well, actually,
I
did. Though the hook-handed man had a lot to do with it.”
    A moan ran through the crowd as the prison gates creaked open and troops started to pour out and form into long straight lines. The evening sunlight ran bloodred off their armor and weapons.
    “And I have to believe that I am here to make a difference.” She poked the Magician in the chest, hard enough to make him stagger. “So what are you here for, Dr. Dee?”
    She had asked him the question that had been troubling him from the moment Marethyu had restored his health, if not his youth. Why was he here? The day had been one of such extraordinary mixed emotions. He’d gone from triumph to despair in a matter of moments; he’d been dying, then been revived. And for what? His long life had equipped him with extraordinary skills. How should he use them?
    The old man sighed as he looked around. The crowd in the square had doubled to around two thousand people. They were shouting and chanting Aten’s name, but none dared approach the prison’s sloping walls too closely. In a moment, the animal-headed monsters would attack, and Dee had no doubt there would be a terrible slaughter in the square. There was a time when that would not have bothered him. But he’d been immortal then, more than human. Now he was just a man again. And that gave him a different perspective.
    “Well,” Dee said finally. “I did spend a good portion of my mortal life advising England’s greatest queen. I helped defeat the Spanish Armada. So it seems that at the end of my life, I return, full circle, to my original role: as advisor to a queen.”
    Virginia blinked in surprise. “I’m not a queen.”
    “Oh, you will be,” he said confidently. “So here’s what I suggest.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
    SCATHACH WANDERED THE outskirts of Danu Talis wrapped in a white robe, her blazing red spiky hair hidden under a conical straw hat.
    The streets were almost deserted. A few elderly men and women sat in darkened doorways and watched her hurry past. Tiny children in rags played on the unpaved streets and looked at her with wide curious eyes.
    Scathach paused by a crumbling fountain and allowed a handful of the brackish water to dribble into her hand. She sipped cautiously; it tasted vaguely of salt and bitter soil. Looking around, she tried to get her bearings. Here, at the very edge of the city, neighborhoods that were little better than slums gradually gave way to bigger homes, and then, farther in, closer to the center of the city, she could see the pyramids, ziggurats and palaces of the nobility rising into the sky. Beyond them, dominating everything, lay the Pyramid of the Sun.
    Turning, shielding her eyes against the dipping sun, she looked into the west. The slanting light was blinding—Huitzilopochtli had deliberately timed the attack so that the sinking sun would help to conceal the arrival of the vimanas and fliers. But she saw them, vague dots against the sky. They would arrive soon.
    A scratch of movement made her spin, hands falling to the weapons concealed beneath her white robe. A young girl with huge brown