The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

name written in a script and language still undiscovered by the humans. They had wept together as she reminded him of all they had once been. “I will never forget you,” he said as she’d stood to leave. She watched him scribble her name on his scraps of paper but knew that he would not be able to recall her face or name within the hour. Tsagaglalal was cursed with a memory that forgot nothing; Gilgamesh was doomed never to remember.
    Fitting the key in the lock, she opened the armoire door.
    There was a wash of musty stale air, a hint of old leather, bitter spices, the whiff of long-withered mothballs and the merest suggestion of jasmine.
    A nurse’s uniform was on a hanger facing Tsagaglalal and she reached out to touch it, running her fingers across the thin cloth. The memories it evoked left her shaking. She’d been a nurse in both of the great wars, and in just about every war for the previous hundred years. She was one of the thirty-eight volunteers who had nursed with Florence Nightingale in the Scutari barracks in the Crimea. Tsagaglalal had seen—and caused—so much death over the centuries; serving as a nurse had been her small way of trying to repair all the hurt she had done.
    Behind the uniform were the clothes of half a dozen centuries: costumes in leather and linen, silk and synthetics, fur and wool. Here were the shoes given to her by Marie Antoinette, the pearl-strewn dress she’d sewn for Catherine the Great of Russia, the bodice Anne Boleyn had worn the day she’d married Henry. Lifetimes of memories. Tsagaglalal smiled, showing perfect teeth. Museums and collectors would pay a fortune for these clothes.
    At the back of the wardrobe was a thick burlap bag.
    Effortlessly Tsagaglalal hauled out the sack and dragged it from the spare room into her own bedroom. She heaved it up onto the bed and tugged at the leather drawstring. It resisted for a moment; then the ancient leather snapped and crumbled to dust and the bag fell open.
    Reaching in, Tsagaglalal lifted out a suit of white ceramic armor and laid it on the bed. Elegant yet unadorned, it had been designed to fit her body like a second skin. She ran her fingers across the smooth breastplate. The armor was pristine, gleaming as if it were new. The last time she’d worn it, it had been slashed and scored by metal and claws, but the armor could heal and repair itself. “Magic?” she’d asked her husband, Abraham.
    “Earthlord technology,” he’d explained. “We will not see its like again for millennia, or hopefully, never.”
    At the bottom of the bag, she found two ornate wood and leather scabbards. They each held a metal kopesh, the curved sickle-like sword favored by the Egyptians, though its origins were much older. She pulled one of the kopesh from its sheath. The blade was so sharp it whistled as she moved it through the air.
    Tsagaglalal ran smooth white-nailed fingers across the featureless armor. Ten thousand years ago, her husband, Abraham the Mage, had presented her with the weapons and armor. “To keep you safe,” he said, his speech a slurred mumble. “Now and always. When you wear it, think of me.”
    “I’ll think of you even when I’m not wearing it,” she promised, and never a day went by when she did not think of the man who had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to make and save the world.
    The memory of him was vivid.
    Abraham stood tall and slender in a darkened room at the top of the crystal tower, the Tor Ri. He was wrapped in shadow, turned away from her so she wouldn’t see the Change that had almost completely claimed his flesh, transforming it to solid gold. She remembered turning him to the light so she could look at him for what she knew might be the very last time. Then she had held him, pressing his flesh and metal against her skin, and wept against his shoulder. And when she looked into his face, a single tear, a solid bead of gold, rolled down his cheek. Rising up on her toes, she had kissed the tear off his face, swallowing it. Tsagaglalal pressed her hands to her stomach. It nestled within her still.
    She Who Watches had worn the white armor on the last day of Danu Talis. It was time to wear it again.

CHAPTER TEN
    EVENING FELL AND fog crept into San Francisco.
    A few coiling wisps drifted in off the bay. They rolled along the surface of the water like threads of steam, then vanished. A few minutes later the fog reappeared, denser now, semitransparent gray-white bands rippling across