Scepter of the Ancients by Derek Landy Read Free Book Online

as they walked. The flame intensified, and Stephanie could feel her hair drying.
    “Wow,” she said.
    “Wow indeed,” Skulduggery responded, and thrust his hand out, sending the ball of fire shooting through the air. It burned out as it arced in the night sky, and faded to nothing.
    “What about earth?” Stephanie asked, but Skulduggery shook his head.
    “You don’t want to see that, and hopefully you’ll never have to. The earth power is purely defensive, and purely for use as a last resort.”
    “So what’s the most powerful? Is it fire?”
    “That’s the flashiest, that gets all the ‘wows,’ but you’d be surprised what a little air can do if you displace it properly. Displaced air doesn’t just disappear—it needs somewhere to be displaced
to
.”
    “Can I see?”
    They reached the edge of the car park and passed the low wall that encircled it. Skulduggery flexed his fingers and suddenly splayed his hand, snapping his palm toward the wall. The air rippled and the bricks exploded outward. Stephanie stared at the brand-new hole in the wall.
    “
That
,” she said, “is so cool.”
    They walked on, Stephanie glancing back at the wall every so often. “What about the Adepts, then? What can they do?”
    “I knew a fellow, a few years ago, who could read minds. I met this woman once who could change her shape, become anyone, right in front of your eyes.”
    “So who’s stronger?” Stephanie asked. “An Elemental or an Adept?”
    “Depends on the mage. An Adept could have so many tricks up his sleeve, so many different abilities, that he could prove himself stronger than eventhe most powerful Elemental. That’s been known to happen.”
    “The sorcerer, the worst one of all, was he an Adept?”
    “Actually, no. Mevolent was an Elemental. It’s rare that you get an Elemental straying so far down the dark paths, but it happens.”
    There was a question Stephanie had been dying to ask, but she didn’t want to appear too eager. As casually as she could, thumbs hooked into the belt loops of her jeans, she said, as if she had just plucked this thought out of thin air, “So how do you know if you can do magic? Can anyone do it?”
    “Not anyone. Relatively few, actually. Those who can will usually congregate in the same areas, so there are small pockets of communities all over the world. In Ireland and the United Kingdom alone, there are eighteen different neighborhoods populated solely by sorcerers.”
    “Can you be a sorcerer without realizing it?”
    “Oh yes. Some people walk around every day, bored with their lives, having no idea that there’s a world of wonder at their fingertips. And they’ll live out their days completely oblivious, and they’ll die without knowing how great they could have been.”
    “That’s really sad.”
    “Actually it’s quite amusing.”
    “No, it’s not; it’s sad. How would you like it if you never discovered what you could do?”
    “I wouldn’t know any better,” he answered, stopping beside her. “We’re here.”
    She looked up. They had arrived outside a crumbling old tenement building, its walls defaced with graffiti and its windows cracked and dirty. She followed him up the concrete steps and into the foyer, and together they ascended the sagging staircase.
    The first floor was quiet. It smelled of damp. On the second floor, splintered shards of light escaped through the cracks between doors and doorways into the otherwise dark corridor. They could hear the sounds of a TV from one of the apartments.
    When they got to the third floor, Stephanie knew they had arrived. The third floor was clean, it didn’t smell, and it was well lit. It was like an entirely different building. She followed Skulduggery to the middle of the corridor and noticed that none of the doors were numbered. She looked at the door Skulduggery knocked on, the door that had a plaque fastened to it. LIBRARY.
    While they stood there, Skulduggery said, “One more thing. No matter