The Sorceress by Michael Scott Page A

his twin’s hand. The dogs were close enough for him to see that their eyes were completely red, without a trace of white or pupil. Teeth clicked, and he felt wet lips brush against his fingers. The animals exuded a stale musty odor like rotting leaves. Although the dogs weren’t large, they were incredibly muscled—one bumped against Josh’s legs, knocking him forward into Sophie. The twins’ auras sparked and the dog pressing against Josh’s legs tumbled away, hair bristling.
    “Enough!” Palamedes’ voice boomed and echoed across the car lot. “This is no trap.” The knight leaned over Nicholas, his huge hands still locked onto each shoulder, pushing him into the ground. “I may not be your ally, Alchemyst,” Palamedes rumbled, “but I am not your enemy. All I have left now is my honor, and I promised my friend Saint-Germain that I would take care of you. I’ll not betray that trust.”
    Flamel tried to shake himself free, but Palamedes’ grip was unbreakable. The Alchemyst’s aura sparkled and flared, then suddenly fizzled out, and he slumped in exhaustion.
    “Do you believe me?” Palamedes demanded.
    Nicholas nodded. “I believe you—but, why is
he
here?” With a look of absolute disgust on his face, the Alchemyst raised his head to look at the small man cowering just inside the hut, peering around the corner of the door.
    “He lives here,” Palamedes said simply.
    “Here! But he’s—”
    “My friend,” the knight said shortly. “Much has changed.” Loosening his grip, Palamedes caught Nicholas by both shoulders and heaved him to his feet. Spinning him around, the knight straightened his rumpled leather jacket; then he snapped a word in an incomprehensible language and the animals surging around the twins flowed back to the shelter of the hut.
    Josh glanced down at the sword on the ground and wondered if he was fast enough to reach it. He looked up and found Palamedes’ deep brown eyes watching him. The knight smiled with a flash of white teeth and dipped down to pluck Clarent from the mud. “I’ve not seen this for a long time,” the knight said softly, his accent thickening, hinting again at his Middle Eastern origins. The moment he touched it, his aura bloomed into life around him, and for an instant he was sheathed in a long hauberk of black chain mail, complete with a close-fitting hood that covered his arms to his fingertips and finished low on his thighs. Each link of the chain mail winked with tiny reflections. As his aura faded, Clarent’s stone blade shimmered red-black, like oil on water, and a sound, like the wind through long grass, sighed across the blade.
    “No!” The dark stone blade winked bloodred again, and Palamedes drew in a deep shuddering breath and suddenly dropped the sword, a sheen of sweat on his dark skin. The weapon stuck point-first in the muddy ground, swaying to and fro. The mud immediately hardened in a circle aroundthe tip of the sword, dried and then split and cracked. Palamedes rubbed his hands briskly together, then brushed them against his trousers. “I thought it was Excal—” He rounded on Flamel. “What are you doing with this … thing? You must know what it is?”
    The Alchemyst nodded. “I’ve kept it safe for centuries.”
    “You kept it!” The knight clenched his hands into huge fists. Veins popped out along his forearms and appeared on his neck. “If you knew what it was, why didn’t you destroy it?”
    “It is older than humanity,” Flamel said quietly, “even older than the Elders or Danu Talis. How could I destroy it?”
    “It’s loathsome,” Palamedes snapped. “You know what it did?”
    “It was a tool; nothing more. It was used by evil people.”
    Palamedes started to shake his head.
    “We needed it to escape,” the Alchemyst said firmly. “And remember, without it, the Nidhogg would still be alive and rampaging through Paris.”
    Josh stepped forward, pulled the sword from the ground and wiped the muddy tip of