The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

OF
    PRISONERS ARE SUBJECT
    TO PROSECUTION AND
    IMPRISONMENT
    With the last of his strength Nicholas threw his aura over the stones and watched it freeze into a series of crude steps. Then he held out his hand to his wife and helped her over the slippery stones. The trident’s blade sheered through the fence and the couple crawled on all fours up to a damp and narrow footpath beneath the sign. They collapsed, rolled over onto their backs and looked up at the flaking sign.
    “Welcome to Alcatraz,” the Alchemyst said. Exhausted and shaken, they climbed to their feet and collapsed once more onto a wooden bench. In previous years, tourists would have seated themselves on the very same benches to look out across at the city and bridge. The couple sat for a moment, catching their breath, and then Nicholas turned to look at his wife. The fog gave her face an almost unearthly appearance, making it even more beautiful than usual. “I’ve just realized something,” he said in archaic French.
    Perenelle nodded. “I know.”
    “We’re not going to get off this island alive, are we?”
    “No, we’re not.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
    HEKATE, THE GODDESS with Three Faces, sat in the throne room of the living tree.
    The room was surprisingly small, little more than a round antechamber scooped out of the Yggdrasill. The chamber had been waxed and polished to a mirrorlike sheen, and a stunted gnarled branch had been shaped and worked into an ornate throne. The walls were bare, and the only item in the room was a white candle as thick and as tall as an adult human, positioned to the right of the throne. The warm yellow flame was protected by an enormous crystal globe. The top was open, and an almost invisible trail of black smoke had left a perfect circle on the ceiling above.
    Prometheus stood to the left of the throne, arms folded across his massive chest. Scathach had taken up a position beside the door, with her back to the wall. Palamedes mirrored her position on the opposite side of the door. Shakespeare stood by the window, mouth agape as he looked down into the heart of the tree. He was scribbling shorthand notes on a scrap of yellowed paper with the chewed stump of a pencil. Hand in hand, Joan and Saint-Germain stood before the throne and looked at the Elder.
    Hekate had aged with the day.
    Her Change was unique: she was a young girl in the morning who slowly turned into a mature woman in the afternoon and rapidly aged into an old woman as the day wore on. The ancient woman was laid to sleep in a long, narrow, hollowed root of the Yggdrasill, and with the dawn she was young again. The young girl who awoke in the morning had no knowledge of the woman she had been the previous day, and the old woman she became in the evening forgot all that had transpired during the hours of sunlight. Only the mature woman, who ruled during the afternoon hours, when the sun rode high in the sky, had complete knowledge and comprehension of the other aspects of herself. She was inextricably linked to the tree, and the tree was older than the Shadowrealm, its origins long lost in the mists of history. Many believed that it was sentient.
    “I have but moments, and there is much that must remain unspoken,” the white-haired woman on the throne said. “I’m aging fast, and in a few minutes, I may not even know who you are.” Her teeth flashed white against her dark face in a smile, but no one laughed. They knew she wasn’t joking.
    “Events are moving to a conclusion,” she said quickly, looking from face to face. “I do not know who most of you are—though your coming was foretold by Abraham, and that is good enough for me. The Mage told me that humani from the Time to Come would arrive to stand with us, to fight for the survival of my world and the future of theirs.” Rainbow colors shimmered iridescent, flowing up the length of her dress. “We live in dangerous times. I have been told, though I do not fully comprehend it, that in this particular time stream there exists an opportunity to shape the future and remake everything. It sounds remarkable, outrageous, even, but then, we live in the age of the extraordinary. It appears that others are attempting to reshape the future to their particular needs. Abraham and Chronos have assured me that if those others succeed, then untold billions of lives will simply cease.” She shook her head. “I will not allow it.”
    “So you are preparing for war,” Scathach said. “We saw the