He walked over stone-tipped wooden arrows and leaf-bladed spears and discovered that the ground was littered with short crossbow bolts. The sight took him back to his youth. He’d attended sieges, had studied warfare at the court of Elizabeth and could tell from the broken remains what had taken place: the defenders had trapped most of the Wild Hunt in the narrow alleyway and reduced them to dust. But why had they not held this position and continued to fire down and into the attackers? he wondered. Because they had run out of ammunition, he thought, answering his own question, and had been forced to withdraw to a more defensible position. Beneath the white handkerchief, Dee’s lips broke into a broad smile. History had taught him that once the defenders started to retreat, the siege was coming to an end. Flamel and the others were trapped.

Emerging from the metal alleyway, he spotted the flaming moat. It completely encircled a mean-looking metal hut in the center of the camp. Dee hurried forward; he knew a dozen spells that would put out the fire, or he could transmute the oil into sand and use a separate Persian spell that would turn the sand into glass.

The Alchemyst and the twins stood on the opposite side of the fire, the boy and girl close together. Firelight turned their blond hair red and gold. Two other humani stood alongside them, one tall and bulky in black armor, the other short and slight in mismatched armor. Red-haired Gabriel Hounds, in both human and dog shapes, gathered protectively around the shorter man.

The Archon stood outlined before the dancing flames, firelight playing on its rack of antlers, while behind it what remained of the Wild Hunt waited patiently. The wolves’ human faces tracked Dee’s movements as he picked his way across the potholed expanse of mud. Without moving its body, Cernunnos twisted its head around to regard the Magician. The Horned God’s eyes fixed on the stone blade in his hands, which had now started to leak a cold blue smoke.

“Excalibur and Clarent together in the same place,” Cernunnos’s buzzing voice murmured in Dee’s skull. “These are indeed momentous times. Do you know when last these two swords were united?”