first prophecy Abraham speaks of.
I know the prophecy, Hekate'snapped, her dress now shot through with red
and black veins. I was there when the old fool made it.
Flamel was about to ask a question, but kept his mouth shut.
He was never wrong either, Hekate muttered. He knew that Danu Talis would
sink beneath the waves and that our world would end.
He also predicted it would come again, Flamel reminded her. When the two
that are one and the one that is all have arrived, when the sun and moon are
united.
Hekate tilted her head and her slit-pupiled eyes flickered toward Josh and
Sophie. Gold and silver, sun and moon. She turned back to Flamel. Do you
believe them to be the basis of the prophecy?
Yes, he said simply, I do. I have to.
Why?
Because with the Codex now gone, Dee can begin to bring back the Dark
Elders. If the twins are those mentioned in the prophecy, then, with proper
training, I might be able to use them to prevent that and to help me rescue
Perry.
And if you are mistaken? Hekate wondered aloud.
Then I have lost the love of my life, and this world and all the humani on
it are lost. But if we are to have any chance of success, I need your help.
Hekate'sighed. It s been a long time a very long time since I took a
student. She turned to look at Scathach. And that didn't turn out too
well.
This is different. This time you would be working with raw talent, pure,
untainted power. And we don't have a lot of time. Flamel drew in a deep
breath and spoke formally in the ancient language of the sunken island of
Danu Talis. Daughter of Perses and Asteria, you are the Goddess of Magic and
Spells, I ask you to Awaken the twins magical powers.
And if I do it what then? Hekate demanded.
Then I will teach them the Five Magics. Together we will retrieve the Codex
and save Perenelle.
The Goddess with Three Faces laughed, the sound bitter and angry. Have care,
Nicholas Flamel, Alchemyst, lest you create something that will destroy us
all.
Will you do it?
I will have to think upon it. I will give you my answer later.
Sitting in the car on the other side of the clearing, Sophie and Josh
suddenly became aware that Flamel and Hekate had turned to stare at them. The
twins shivered simultaneously.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
brother s room, holding her expensive cell phone up to her face. I Can't get
a signal anywhere. She moved around the room, watching the screen, but the
signal bar remained flat.
Josh looked blankly at his sister. Wrong with this house? he repeated
incredulously. Then he spoke very slowly. Sophie, we re inside a tree! I d
say there s something wrong with that, wouldn't you?
When Hekate had finished speaking with Flamel, she had turned and disappeared
into the woods without saying a word to them, and it had been left to Flamel
to bring them to the goddess s home. Instructing them to leave the car, he
led them down a narrow winding pathway that cut through the overgrown woods.
They had been so intent on the strange flora huge bruise-colored flowers that
turned to track their movements, vines that slithered and squirmed like
snakes as they followed them, grasses that had not existed since the
Oligocene era that they failed to notice that the path had opened out, and
that they were facing Hekate's home. Even when they looked up, it took them
several moments to make sense of what they were seeing.
Directly ahead of them, in the center of a broad, gently sloping plain
sprinkled with vast swathes of multicolored flowers, was a tree. It was the
height and circumference of a large skyscraper. The topmost branches and
leaves were wreathed in wisps of white cloud, and the roots that burst from
the ground like clawing fingers were as tall as cars. The tree itself was
gnarled and twisted, its bark scored and deeply etched with cracks and lines.
Long vines, like huge pipes, wrapped around the tree and dangled from the
branches.
Hekate's home, Flamel explained. You are the only living humani in the
last two thousand years to see it. Even I ve only ever read about it.
Scatty smiled at the looks on the twins faces. She nudged Josh. Where
exactly did you expect her to live? A trailer?
I wasn't I mean, I don't know I didn't think , Josh began. The sight was
incredible, and from the little he had studied about biology, he knew that no
living thing could grow so huge. No
Sophie thought the tree looked like an ancient woman, bent over with age. It
was all very well for Flamel to talk about the distant past and a
two-thousand-year-old warrior or a ten-thousand-year-old goddess: the numbers
meant almost nothing. Seeing the tree was different. Both she and Josh had
seen ancient trees before. Their parents had taken them to see the
three-thousand-year-old giant redwoods, and they had spent a week camping
with their father in the White Mountains in the north of California as he
investigated the Methuselah Tree, which, at nearly five thousand years old,
was supposed to be the oldest living thing on the planet. Standing before the
Methuselah Tree, a gnarled and twisted bristlecone pine, it was easy to
accept its great age. But now, seeing Hekate's tree house, Sophie had no
doubt that it was incredibly ancient, millennia older than the Methuselah
Tree.
They followed a smoothly polished stone path that led to the tree. As they
got closer, they realized that it was more like a skyscraper than they d
first thought: there were hundreds of windows cut into the bark, with lights
flickering in the rooms beyond. But it was only when they reached the main
entrance that they appreciated just how vast the tree was. The smoothly
polished double doors towered at least twenty feet tall, and yet they opened
at the merest touch of Flamel's fingers. The twins stepped into an enormous
circular foyer.
