The Necromancer Part 30

The Saracen Knight leapt through the henge in the last moments before the gates themselves dissolved to dust.

The hook-handed man waited until Palamedes had appeared. "Glad you could join us," he said. "I was hoping you would not linger too long." Then he turned to the small group and lifted his left arm. The hook glowed with warm golden light, partially illuminating the ma.s.sive cave. "Welcome to Xibalba," Marethyu said. "Thankfully, there is no time for sightseeing. We need to get out of here right now," he added, and set off at a run. "Our body heat and auras will attract some spectacularly foul guardians. Follow in my footsteps. And do not, whatever you do, step off the path."

"I hate this place," Scathach grumbled, holding her nose shut in an attempt to block out the stink of sulfur.

"You've been here before?" Marethyu asked, surprised.

"So you don't know everything," she said with a quick grin.

"Not everything," he said. "I just know enough."

"Where are we going?" Saint-Germain called.

"I'm going to take you through a series of gates...," Marethyu said.

"Not more leygates," Scathach groaned.

"I am afraid so. Though these are not your normal leygates. I did a favor for Chronos, and in return he sequenced these gates for me. But you will all have to stick close behind me. We're going into Shadowrealms which each have thirteen gates-we must go through the correct ones in the proper order."

"Otherwise...?" Will demanded.

Marethyu shook his head. "Trust me: you do not want to know."

"I do, actually," the Bard muttered.

They raced along a narrow path that snaked across an enormous pool of black-crusted lava. Bubbles gathered and burst on the surface, sometimes spitting firework-like streamers of liquid rock high into the air. Occasionally, the ribbons would fly high enough to touch the ceiling far above, and then the molten threads would stick and dangle for a moment, swaying, before cras.h.i.+ng to the ground below like fiery hailstones.

"This way!" Marethyu shouted, pointing to the narrowest of nine openings in the huge circular cave. "These are the Nine Gates to the Shadowrealms. From here, you can travel throughout the myriad realms." Although all the gates were decorated with archaic glyphs, Shakespeare noticed that the designs over the gate they were running toward looked older, cruder than the rest. "The zero gate," Marethyu said before he plunged through.

They followed him...

Into a crystal world, where even the sun was gla.s.s, and the ground was made of shards of broken crystal. Thirteen translucent gates stood on a mirrored lake.

"Through the first gate," Marethyu said, pointing to a delicate tracery of spun gla.s.s. They raced through...

Into a realm of green sand that rippled and s.h.i.+fted in hypnotic patterns. A giant red sun dominated the sky, close enough that they could see the flares curling off it. The solar flares matched the pattern in the sands. Here the thirteen gates were shaped from sparkling silica.

"Again, the first gate," Marethyu said, darting between two squat pillars.

And now the world was ice and stank of sour milk, and the thirteen gates were like curdled cream.

"Through the second gate..."

Into a world of metal, where the ground was steel and the sky the color of lead, and the thirteen gates were slabs of rusty iron.

"The third gate..."

A world of noxious yellow fog filled with what sounded like the piteous crying of babies. The thirteen gates were amorphous s.h.i.+fting pillars of smoke, barely distinguishable from the fog.

"The fifth gate..."

Into a world of black oil and sticky tar, where metallic insects ate the oil and the thirteen gates were intricately carved from single blocks of coal.

"The eighth gate..."

A world devastated by a cataclysm, an empty sh.e.l.l of a city, and rain that tasted of ashes. A building that might once have been a hotel had thirteen gaping doorways.

Marethyu pointed. "The final gate, the thirteenth..."

They came out onto a gently sloping hillside covered in tiny yellow and white flowers. The sky overhead was the palest blue, streaked with white clouds, and the air was warm and tasted of salt.

They all breathed deeply, clearing their lungs of the noxious odors and tastes of the Shadowrealms. Marethyu walked up the side of the hill and stopped at the top, looking into the distance. One by one, the immortals climbed the hill to stand beside him.

They were looking down over an island paradise.

Below them, as far as the eye could see, spread a golden city. From this great height it looked like a maze, sparkling blue waterways encircling and weaving through the city. Countless multicolored flags and pennants waved over the buildings, and the sound of music and laughter drifted faintly on the perfumed air.

Dominating the center of the island was a huge stepped pyramid. The top of the pyramid was flat and filled with hundreds of flagpoles, and the tiny dots moving up and down its sides gave some indication of its incredible size.

"You are looking at the legendary Pyramid of the Sun," Marethyu said, pointing with his hook. "Welcome to the Isle of Danu Talis."

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX.

Prometheus folded the cell phone and looked at Nicholas and Perenelle. The Elder had visibly aged in the past hour. His red hair was streaked with white, and he looked tired and ill.

"That was Niten," he said very quietly, and the Flamels knew it was not good news. "Josh called Coatlicue. Sophie, Niten and Aoife arrived just as she stepped out from her Shadowrealm, but she was still trapped by some spell of Dee's. Josh accidentally released her into this world." His voice thickened, and the tears that rolled down his face were touched with white smoke. "Aoife sacrificed herself to drag Coatlicue back to her Shadowrealm prison. The warrior is gone. Gone forever."

"And the twins?" Perenelle breathed.

"Sophie is safe with Niten. But when the Magician and Dare fled, Josh left with them. He went by choice. We've lost him to the Dark Elders."

End of Book Four

AUTHOR'S NOTE

ALCATRAZ.

"I named this island Isla de los Alcatraces [Island of the Pelicans] because of their being so plentiful there."-Spanish lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala, 1775 The locations used in The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel are all real. In the four books published so far, it is possible to trace the twins' journey across San Francisco to Mill Valley; through the streets of Paris; from St. Pancras Station in Euston Road, England, to Stonehenge; and from Sausalito to Point Reyes and back into the heart of the city of San Francisco. There is one place that has played an important role in all four books, one location around which the rest of the story revolves: Alcatraz.

The Rock is central to this series.

Although it was officially "discovered" and named by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, the indigenous Ohlone or Costanoan Indians had been gathering eggs and fis.h.i.+ng off the island for generations. There is no evidence that there was ever a permanent settlement there, though nearby Angel Island was inhabited.

In 1853, Alcatraz became home to the first lighthouse on the West Coast. Because fog often rendered the light ineffective, the lighthouse originally had a fog bell, which would have been rung by hand. One hundred and ten years later, in 1963, the light was automated. The Fog Bell House survives to this day; the light is still operational.

Nowadays we think of Alcatraz as a former federal prison, but there are records dating to around 1861 showing that it held Civil War prisoners. The first official jailhouse was built there in 1867. It was originally a military prison, but in the aftermath of the great earthquake in 1906, it temporarily housed inmates from the mainland. Alcatraz remained a military prison until 1933, when it became a federal prison. Most of the legends surrounding the Rock and its notorious inhabitants-including Al Capone, who was incarcerated there from 1932 to 1939-date from this time. Alcatraz was a federal prison for only thirty years, before it finally closed in 1963.

Six years later, a party of eighty Native Americans representing more than twenty different tribes landed on the abandoned and decaying island and attempted to reclaim it for the native peoples. In a political statement, the group, who called themselves Indians of All Tribes, offered to purchase the island from the American government for "$24 in gla.s.s beads and red cloth." The ironic offer was meant to convey the tribes' conviction that the island had been stolen from them. They wanted to take back what they saw as Indian land and to establish a Center for Native American Studies and a Great Indian Training School. The Native American occupation of Alcatraz lasted nineteen months, and while it ultimately failed and the occupiers were removed, it successfully drew attention to the plight of Native Americans across the United States. Graffiti evidence of this period can be found around the buildings on the island today, most noticeably on the wall behind the large sign on the dock. Around the official United States Penitentiary sign, the words Indians Welcome and Indian Land have been daubed in red paint.

In 1972, Alcatraz became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and every year more than a million people visit the island.

When I began to develop the idea that became the series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, I needed a location that fulfilled several requirements. It had to be close to a major city and yet relatively inaccessible. It had to be big enough to hold a vast army of creatures, and, of course, it had to be firmly rooted in history. Over a number of years, I looked at abandoned mining towns in California, particularly Bodie; ghost towns in the Old West; deserted homesteads along the Boston Post Road; and some of the forts on the Sante Fe Trail. Each one offered interesting possibilities, but none was quite right.

Then, finally, eight or nine years ago, I visited Alcatraz. I knew, almost from the moment I stepped off the boat, that it was perfect. And that single decision shaped everything else. Choosing the island meant that the series had to be set in San Francisco, and from that flowed all the other West Coast locations. Not only did Alcatraz become a key location, it became almost another character in the series. Here was a tiny island-only twenty-two acres-that was also rich in history. Juan Manuel de Ayala became its "voice."

I have been back to Alcatraz countless times over the years, and every time, I discover something new. If you get a chance to visit the Rock, go at night: that's when you'll hear the whispers of the ghosts of Alcatraz...