01_-_The_Alchemyst

the next wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Taking Perry’s advice, he had
founded hospitals, established orphanages and funded schools in his native
Paris. Those had been good times…no, more than that—they had been great
times. Life had been so much simpler then. They had not known about the
Elder Race, had not begun to suspect even the tiniest portion of dark
knowledge the Codex contained.
In recent years, Nicholas would sometimes awaken at the quietest hour
of night with a single thought spinning round and round in his head: if he had
known then what he knew now about the Codex, would he have continued his
research into the philosopher’s stone? That path had ultimately brought him
into contact with the Elder Race—notably the Dark Elders—and had brought
Dr. John Dee into his life. It had forced Perry and him to fake their own
deaths and flee Paris and ultimately to spend the next half millennium in
hiding. But the study of the Codex had also made them both immortal. Most
nights he answered yes: even knowing all he knew now, he would still have
continued his studies and become the Alchemyst.
But there were rare occasions, like today, when the answer was no.
Now he stood to lose Perenelle, probably the lives of the innocent twins and
the not-so-innocent Scathach—though she would not be so easy to kill—and
there was also a chance that he had doomed the world.
Nicholas felt himself grow cold at the thought. The Book of Abraham
was full of what he had first assumed to be stories, legends, myths and tales.
Over the centuries, his research had revealed that all the stories were true,
all the tales were based on fact, and what he believed to be legends and
myths were simply reports of real beings and actual events.
The Elder Race existed.
They were creatures that looked human—sometimes—but had the
powers of gods. They had ruled for tens of thousands of years before the
creatures they called the humani—humankind—appeared on the earth. The
first primitive humani worshipped the Elder Race as gods and demons and
over generations had constructed whole mythologies and belief systems
based around an individual or a collection of Elders. The gods and
goddesses of Greece and Egypt, of Sumeria and the Indus Valley, of the