The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

every sound was distinct and divine, and even on the foulest of battlefields, his eyes would be drawn to something simple and elegant: a flower, the shape of a branch, the curl of a cloud.
    A hundred years ago, Aoife had given him a book as a birthday present. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that she’d missed his birthday by a month, but he had treasured the book, a first edition of
The Professor
by Charlotte Brontë. It included a line he had never forgotten:
In the midst of life we are in death
. Years later, he’d heard Gandhi take the same words and shift them around to create something that resonated deeply within him:
In the midst of death life persists
.
    Niten had long since fallen out of love with battle.
    There was no honor in war, less in killing and none in dying. But there was true dignity in how men comported themselves in battle. And there was always honor to be found in standing for a just cause and defending the defenseless.
    Cupping his hands in his lap, Niten called up a little of his aura. It puddled in his palms, a rich royal blue liquid trembling against his dark flesh, the skin seamed and calloused from centuries of holding a sword. He blew on it and the liquid thickened. Niten rolled it like dough between the palms of his hands, creating a tiny blue sphere, before flattening it to an irregular rectangle of what looked like stiff blue paper. With infinite care, the immortal carefully creased the edges of the paper, folding and refolding to create a delicate origami
kame
, a turtle.
    Placing the blue turtle on the bridge before him, Niten picked up his swords and faded into the gloom just as the first of the Spartoi appeared out of the fog.
    “Minikui,”
Niten breathed. “Ugly.”
    The immortal had fought monsters before and had learned a long time ago never to judge by appearances. Concepts of beauty changed from country to country and even generation to generation, but he doubted anyone would ever find the Spartoi pretty. Not even another Spartoi.
    Short and squat, it looked like a crocodile walking on two legs. It was five feet tall and thick-bodied, its skin gnarled and scaled, with the flat wedge-shaped head of a crocodile. Enormous, slit-pupiled bronze and gold eyes set wide apart on the top of its head penetrated the gloom. When it opened its mouth, it revealed rows of ragged teeth and a thick unmoving white tongue.
    Niten had seen serpent folk before: they turned up in the legends of just about every country on earth, and many of the nearby Shadowrealms were populated by lizard creatures. Almost without exception, the lizards despised the mammals and the mammals feared the lizards.
    Bareheaded, this creature was covered in a long knee-length poncho that looked like it was made from its own skin. It carried a small circular shield covered in the same material, and its almost humanlike hands clutched a massive studded war club.
    Niten assessed the creature with a warrior’s eye.
    The Spartoi was lightly armored; its head was vulnerable. It was armed only with the club, which was not as long as Niten’s short sword, so he would have the advantage of being able to attack without getting too close. The immortal was vaguely disappointed: he’d been expecting something a little more formidable. Maybe Quetzalcoatl thought the sight of the Spartoi would terrify the humans into submission. But then, in Niten’s experience, the Elders were often remarkably ill-informed about the race they wanted to rule and the world they needed to control.
    Niten watched the creature approach the blue origami turtle. If it was intelligent—well, if it were intelligent, it would never have come near the turtle in the first place—but if it was intelligent, it would fade back into the night and wait for reinforcements. Head swiveling from side to side, the Spartoi crept closer to the blue turtle. If it was really stupid, Niten predicted, it would probably fall on all fours to sniff at the object. The immortal’s grip tightened on his sword as he assessed the creature’s weaknesses: he would take it under the arms, perhaps, or through the mouth.
    The Spartoi dropped to all fours and moved its head over the origami.
    Stupid, then.
    Fog swirling around him like a cloak, Niten raced out of the night, katana raised, then lowering in a deadly whistle.
    And the Spartoi moved.
    Lightning fast, the lizard’s shield came up and Niten’s sword screamed off it in a blaze of sparks. The creature’s blunt