01_-_The_Alchemyst

its back, tiny horns visible as they jutted from its forehead. It peered over the
square far below, tracking the movements of the late-night stragglers or those
who had no homes to go to, looking for a suitable meal. If anyone had
chanced to glance up, the gargoyle would have been indistinguishable from
any of the countless stone carvings on the building.
Dee had walked to the edge of the roof and looked across the city. All
of nighttime Paris was laid out below him, thousands of winking lights from
cooking fires, oil lamps and candles, the smoke rising straight up into the still
air, the countless dots of light split by the black curve of the Seine. From this
height, Dee could hear the buzz of the city—a low drone, like a beehive
settling down for the night—and smell the noxious stench that hung over the
streets—a combination of sewers, rotting fruit and spoiled meat, human and
animal sweat and the stink of the river itself.
Perched over the cathedral’s famous rose window, Dee waited. The
study of magic had taught him many things—especially the value of patience.
The scholar in him enjoyed the experience of standing on the roof of the
tallest building in Paris, and he wished he’d brought his sketch pad with him.
He contented himself with looking around, committing everything he saw to
his incredible memory. He recalled a recent visit to Florence. He had gone
there to examine the diaries of Leonardo da Vinci. They were written in a
strange cipher which no one had been able to break: it had taken him less
than an hour to crack the code—no one had realized that Leonardo had
written his diaries not only in code, but in mirror image. The diaries were
full of many amazing drawings for proposed inventions: guns that fired many
times, an armored coach that moved without the need of horses, and a craft
that could sail beneath the sea. There was one, however, that particularly
interested Dee: a harness that da Vinci claimed would allow a man to take to
the air and fly like a bird. Dee had not been entirely convinced that the design
would work, though he wanted nothing more in the world than to fly. Looking
out over Paris now, he began to imagine what it would be like to strap da
Vinci’s wings to his arms and sail out over the roofs.
His thoughts were interrupted as a flicker of movement caught his
attention. He turned to the north, where a shape was moving in the night sky, a
black shadow trailing scores of smaller dots. The smaller shapes looked as if