she slowly backed away, turned and raced toward the burning Yggdrasill. For
the first time in millennia, she was frightened.
Nicholas dragged himself to his feet and staggered toward Sophie, Josh and
Scatty. He stepped up to Sophie. Perenelle? he whispered.
Sophie turned her head to him, eyes blank and unseeing. Her mouth worked, and
then, as in a badly dubbed movie, the words came.
she spoke again, the words came quicker than Sophie s lips could move, and
the girl s silver aura began to fade and her eyes started to close.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
there was every possibility that he was going to have to take an active part
in the battle.
Flamel, Scatty and the twins had managed to escape from the interior of the
Yggdrasill and were now fighting on the opposite side of the field, no more
than two hundred yards away, but he couldn t get to them it would mean
crossing a battlefield. The last of the Torc Allta, both in their human and
boar form, fought running battles with the cat-and birdmen. The nathair had
already been defeated. Initially, the winged serpents had brought chaos and
confusion to the cats and birds, but they were lumbering and awkward on the
ground, and most had been killed once they d landed. The massive army of Torc
Allta had thinned considerably, and he guessed that within the hour, there
would be no more wereboars left in North America.
But he could not afford to wait that long. He had to get to Flamel now. He
had to retrieve the pages of the Codex as soon as possible.
From his hiding place behind a clump of bushes, Dee watched the Elders.
Hekate was standing in the doorway to her tree home, surrounded by the last
of her personal Torc Allta guard. While the boars fought the cats and birds,
Hekate alone faced down the combined forces of the Morrigan and Bastet.
The three ignored the half-human animals fighting around them. To the casual
observer it would have seemed as if the three Elders were simply staring at
one another. Dee, however, noted the purple-gray clouds that gathered only
above the Yggdrasill; he saw how the delicate white and gold flowers strewn
around the huge tree withered and died, turning to black paste in an instant;
he had seen the unsightly sheen of fungus that appeared on the smoothly
polished stone path. Dee smiled; surely it would not be long now. How much
longer could Hekate'stand against the two Elders, aunt and niece?
But the goddess showed no sign of weakening.
And then she struck back.
Although the air, now stinking from the burning tree, was still, Dee watched
as an invisible, unfelt breeze whipped the Morrigan s cloak about her
shoulders and buffeted the huge Bastet, making her tilt her head and lean
forward into the wind. The patterns on Hekate's metallic dress whirled with
blinding rapidity, the colors blurred and distorted.
With growing alarm, he saw a dark shadow flowing across the withering grass
and then watched as a swarm of tiny black flies settled on Bastet s fur,
crawling into her ears and up her nose. The Cat Goddess howled and staggered
back, rubbing furiously at her face. She fell to the ground, rolling over and
over in the long grass, attempting to free herself from the insects. More and
more kept coming, and they were joined by fire ants and recluse spiders,
which crawled out of the grass and swarmed over her body. Crouched on all
fours, she threw back her head and screamed in agony, then turned and ran
across the field, rolling and crawling in the grass, splashing through a
little pool, trying to clean the insects from her body. She was more than
halfway across the field before the thick, swirling cloud left her. She
rubbed furiously at her face and arms, leaving long scratches on her skin,
before climbing to her feet and striding back toward the Yggdrasill. And then
the swarm of flies, thicker now, re-formed in the air before her.
In that moment, Dee considered that perhaps just perhaps Hekate could win.
Splitting Bastet and the Morrigan had been a master stroke; ensuring that
Bastet could not get back was simply genius.
Realizing that she could not return to the Yggdrasill, Bastet hissed her
rage, then turned and raced over to where Flamel, Scatty and the twins were
trying to defend themselves. Dee saw her leap an incredible distance and
bring the Alchemyst to the ground. That gave him some satisfaction, at least,
and he allowed himself a slight smile, which quickly faded he was still
trapped on this side of the field. How was he going to get past Hekate?
Even though the Yggdrasill was burning furiously, with whole sections
blazing, burning leaves and blackened strips of branches spiraling down,
sticky streamers of sap exploding from collapsing branches, Hekate's powers
seemed undiminished. Dee ground his teeth in frustration; all his research
indicated that Hekate had brought the tree to life by imbuing it with a
little of her own life force. In turn, as it grew, it renewed and replenished
her powers. Burning the tree had been his idea. He had imagined that as it
burned, she would weaken. But on the contrary: setting the tree alight had
only served to enrage the goddess, and her anger had made her all the more
deadly. When Dee saw Hekate's lips twitch in what might have been a smile and
the Morrigan stagger and then step back, he began to realize that here, in
her own Shadowrealm, the Goddess with Three Faces was simply too strong for
them.
Dee knew then that he would have to act.
Keeping to the shadows of the trees and tall grasses, he moved around the
trunk of the enormous Yggdrasill. He was forced to crouch down and hide as a
Torc Allta in its boar shape crashed through the undergrowth directly in
front of him with at least a dozen cat-people and twice that number of
birdmen clinging to him.
Dee came out of the undergrowth on the opposite side of the tree from where
Hekate and the Morrigan fought. To his right, he could see that something was
happening with Flamel's group; birds and cats were scattering in every
direction and then he realized that he was seeing
cats fleeing, not the half-human creatures. The Morrigan s and Bastet s
