The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

fifteen-and-a-half-year-old knows that. I bet your fashion-conscious friend Elle probably has a pair.”
    Sophie laughed. “She’d have found hers in a boutique in the Village.”
    “And she would have sent you a long email . . .”
    “With photos . . .”
    “With photos of the shoes, the boutique and the coffee and bagel she had afterward.”
    The air trembled and a vimana swept in low over the house and then dropped out of sight. They both caught a glimpse of Osiris at the controls, and their laughter faded.
    “They’ve been preparing us,” Sophie said. “Training us. So what do we do?”
    “We do what we feel is right,” he answered.
    “But right for who? For us, for them?”
    “When in doubt, we follow our hearts. Words can be false, images and sounds can be manipulated. But this . . .” He tapped his chest, over his heart. “This is always true.”
    Sophie looked at him, eyes wide in surprise and admiration.
    “Someone told me that,” he added quickly, a touch of red on his cheeks.
    “Flamel?” she guessed.
    “Dee.”
    The sliding glass door opened and Isis and Osiris appeared. They were dressed in plain white ceramic armor and were each carrying two swords, one in each hand.
    “They look like they just stepped out of
Star Wars
,” Josh muttered. He began to hum the Imperial March under his breath.
    His sister bit her lip and tapped him with her pointed shoe to make him stop. Something told her that laughing wouldn’t go over well.
    Isis and Osiris stopped before the children—Isis before Josh, Osiris in front of Sophie.
    “You look magnificent,” Isis said. “You will make a wonderful impression.”
    “You look like rulers,” Osiris agreed. “And every ruler needs a sword, a symbol of authority and power. And it is only right that the twins of legend should each have two swords—twin blades.”
    Isis lifted the two swords she held. They were almost identical; the details on the leather-wrapped hilts differed in subtle ways. The swords were each about twenty inches long and were shaped from a single piece of glittering gray stone. “Old these are, older than the Elders, the Archons or even the Ancients. It is said they were shaped by the Earthlords, but I doubt it: they worked in different materials. These swords have had many names down through the millennia, and have been worn by emperors and kings, carried by knights and simple warriors. But they have always been yours, Josh.” She held the two stone swords high and sun shimmered off the blades. “Here is Clarent, the Sword of Fire, and this is its twin, Excalibur, the Sword of Ice.” Isis moved around behind Josh as she spoke and slipped the two swords into the empty sheaths on his back: Clarent on the left, Excalibur on the right.
    “And you Sophie, have Durendal, the Sword of Air, and Joyeuse, the Sword of Earth,” Osiris said, slipping the weapons into the empty silver sheaths on the girl’s back. “These are the weapons carried by the rulers of Danu Talis for generations. Now you have them.”
    Isis and Osiris stepped back. “I have dreamt of this moment for millennia,” Isis whispered. “The moment when the twins of legend would stand before us in the armor of the Lords of Danu Talis.”
    “Come now,” Osiris said, “let us go claim your birthright.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
    HE WAS ATEN , Lord of Danu Talis.
    Yesterday, he had ruled over the greatest empire ever to stretch across the earth.
    Yesterday, he had been worshipped, honored and respected by millions of people: Great Elders, Elders, humankind and everything else, even the beasts and hybrids paid him homage. In his long life he had achieved so much, but uniting the peoples of the island empire and the world beyond had been one of his proudest achievements.
    Yesterday, he had met Death.
    And in that moment everything had changed.
    He’d been betrayed by his mother and brother, accused of treachery, captured and cast into a cell deep below Tartarus, the fortress prison. There was a single cell on this level: a circular stone cage on a round island in the middle of a bubbling lava pool. The only way on or off the island was via a stone bridge that it took three huge anpu to lift and set in place. The furnacelike air was almost unbreathable, filled with particles of burning stone and grit. Lava frothed against the edge of the island, splashing it with long streamers of molten rock. Aten had not been burned yet, but he knew it was only a matter of