Fyre (15 page)

“Welcome to the Great Chamber, Princess Jenna,” Marcellus said rather formally. “I am delighted that you have come to see it so soon. It is an integral part of the Castle in which the Queens have always taken a great interest. Much greater, I believe, than in the Wizard Tower.”

Jenna nodded—she could believe that. Remembering what she had come for, she placed the leather bag on the table and took out the two bowls.

Marcellus looked at them with interest. “Ah,” he said. “The
Triple
. How nice.” He waited for Jenna to put the third bowl on the table.

“There isn’t another one,” she said. “The python ate it.”

Marcellus looked shocked. “You must get it back right away. Kill the wretched snake if you have to.”

“It’s not that easy,” said Jenna. “You see—”

Marcellus got to his feet. “Well, Marcia will just have to go without her silly shoes.”

“Shoes?” asked Jenna, confused.

“Her purple pythons. Isn’t that the only reason Terry Tarsal keeps that ghastly snake? Marcia may not believe it, but some things are worth more than shoes and this set of bowls is one of them. Terry Tarsal will just have to kill his precious python.”

Now Jenna understood. She sighed. “It’s not Terry Tarsal’s python, Marcellus. I wish it were.”

“Then whose python is it?”

“It isn’t anybody’s python. It’s the giant Marsh Python.”

Marcellus sat down. “Ah. Unfortunately not quite so easy to catch.”

“No.”

“Well, that’s a great shame. To lose the
Triple
after all this time.”

“I told Jenna that you could
Clone
them,” Septimus said anxiously.

Marcellus laughed. “You have great faith in me, Apprentice. But there is much to do before we can even think of that.” He sighed and stood up as if to end the meeting. “I am so sorry, Princess,” he said. “I cannot
Clone
the gold for you now. We are not yet ready.”

“So that’s it, then,” said Jenna flatly. “She’s going to die.”

Marcellus looked shocked. “Who is going to die?”

“The Dragon Boat.”

“What, the Dragon Boat of Hotep-Ra?”

Jenna nodded, too upset to speak.

“If you will forgive the question, Princess, why do you think she is going to die?” Marcellus asked.

“I haven’t heard her heart beat for a whole five days now. I go every day in the Big Freeze. Aunt Zelda said I should. And I do hear it. Even though no one else can,
I
always do. And now . . . now it’s stopped. And the only thing my mother has ever asked me to do, I
can’t
.”

Marcellus thought that Jenna had the same look that his sister Esmeralda used to have when teetering on the edge of a tantrum. He decided to tread carefully.

“Tell me, Jenna, what is it that Sarah has asked you to do?” he asked gently.

“Not Sarah—not
mum
. My mother. The Queen.”

“The Queen? Her ghost has spoken to you?”

“We
think
we heard something,” Septimus said doubtfully.

Jenna was distractedly tracing her finger around the design of the sun cut into the ancient wood of the table. “Sep, I heard my mother. I
know
it was her.” She looked up at Marcellus. “Her ghost spoke when we were in the Queen’s Room.”

“Ah. Then it
is
your mother,” said Marcellus. “That is where the ghost of the previous Queen always resides.”

“Does she? Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Jenna.

“Well, I assumed you knew,” said Marcellus.

“No. No one tells me anything,” Jenna declared. “Not even my
mother
.”

Marcellus stood up. “Then it seems to me, Princess, that as your nearest relative on the
royal
side, it is time I stepped in. I will tell you all I know from my dear dead sister and my, ahem, less dear but thankfully dead mother.”

Jenna looked surprised. She had never thought of Marcellus as a relative, but it was true; he was in fact a great, great—and then some—uncle. Suddenly she felt a weight lifted from her shoulders. The Dragon Boat was no longer her worry alone. “Thank you,” she said, smiling for the first time that day.

“My pleasure, niece,” said Marcellus. “Now, I suggest we repair to the boatyard and open the Dragon House.”

“But what for? We’ve lost the
Triple
so we can’t revive her,” said Jenna, exasperated. She wondered whether Marcellus had actually listened to what she had been saying.

“There is more than one way to skin a cat,” said Marcellus.

Jenna’s patience ran out. Angrily, she stood up, scraping the old oak chair back across the stone floor. “Stop talking in riddles, Marcellus,” she snapped.

Marcellus put his arm out to stop Jenna from going. “Forgive my obscure speech, Princess,” he said. “What I mean is, there is more than one way to revive a dragon.” He stood up and put his arm around Jenna’s shoulders. “The
Magyk
way is beyond us now, so I shall show you the Physik way.”

Jannit Maarten was sitting in her snow-covered hut in the boatyard, cooking her favorite sausage and bean stew when, to her dismay, she saw the new Castle Alchemist walk by with the Princess, the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice and then—as her tiny snow-dusted window filled with green—
ohnonotthatwretcheddragon
. Jannit muttered a sailor’s curse and got to her feet.

During the Big Freeze, Jannit hibernated like a tortoise in her hut. She looked forward to the peace and quiet that the first flakes of snow brought with them. She sent her Apprentices and dockhands home, and waited happily for the day the Moat froze over and not even the Port barge could disturb the serenity of the boatyard. For the rest of the year Jannit worked day and night, eating, sleeping and dreaming boatyard business, but the Big Freeze was her holiday. As she had grown older, Jannit had begun to look forward to it so much that she had recently considered barring the way through the tunnel to ensure she was not disturbed by anyone from the Castle. The sight of three Castle dignitaries walking by her tiny snow-dusted window, accompanied by a notoriously heavy-footed dragon, made her wish she had done just that. There was a sharp rap on her door and Jannit briefly toyed with the idea of pretending she was not there in the hope they would go away. But the thought of them poking unsupervised around her boatyard and, even worse, the heavy-footed dragon trampling on the delicate shells of the upturned boats, got Jannit opening the hut door with a growled,
“What?”

The new Castle Alchemist spoke. “Good day, Mistress Maarten, I—”

Jannit bristled. “I am no one’s
mistress
, Alchemist.” Jannit, who disapproved of Alchemie, managed to make “Alchemist” sound like an insult. “Jannit Maarten is my name and Jannit Maarten is what I answer to.”

“Ah. Forgive me. Jannit Maarten. Yes. Indeed. Ahem.”

Jannit, who was nearly a foot shorter than Marcellus, folded her arms belligerently and squinted up at the Alchemist. “What do you want?”

Marcellus looked down at the small, wiry woman swathed in a thick blue-black woolen sailor’s coat that was far too big for her and reached almost to the ground. He could see she meant business. Her iron-gray hair was scraped back into a sailor’s pigtail that seemed to bristle with annoyance, and every deep-set, wind-burned line in her face showed just how displeased she was to see him. Marcellus took a deep breath. He knew that what he had to say was not going to go down well.

“We have come to open the Dragon House,” he said. “I am sorry for any inconvenience it may cause.”

Jannit looked flabbergasted. “You what?”

Jenna decided to step in. “I’m really sorry, Jannit,” she said. “But I think the Dragon Boat is dying. We have to get into the Dragon House. We
have
to try to save her.”

Jannit liked Jenna, who reminded her of how she had been as a girl: a confident, taking-charge kind of person. That, thought Jannit, was how girls should be.

“Well, Princess, I am most sorry to hear that. Of course you must open the Dragon House, though how you propose to do that I have no idea. You do realize there is no opening anymore—just a solid wall?”

Jenna nodded. “Yes. That’s why we have Spit Fyre with us.”

“So I noticed,” said Jannit drily. She looked up at the dragon, and Spit Fyre’s green eyes with their red ring of
Fyre
around the iris met her disapproving stare. Spit Fyre shifted uneasily from one foot to another. He felt as though he had done something wrong, although he wasn’t sure what. He finished chewing the cow bone that Septimus had just fed him and a large glob of dribble headed for Jannit’s sealskin boot.

Jannit moved her boot just in time. “Well, I suppose if you must. Don’t let him tread on anything, will you?” she said. “I don’t want anything broken.”

“We shall naturally take great care,” said Marcellus and gave a small bow. Jannit—who thought bowing was an affectation—harrumphed and turned to go back inside her hut.

“Thank you, Jannit,” said Jenna. “Thank you so much.”

Jannit thawed a little more. “I hope you find your boat is well, despite your fears, Princess Jenna,” she said. She stood at the hut door, watching the group pick its way across the boatyard as they headed toward the Castle wall within which the Dragon House was secreted. Jannit was just closing the hut door (and looking forward to her sausage and beans) when she saw Spit Fyre about to step on a large pile of snow, under which lay her favorite rowboat.

“Stop!” she yelled, running out of the hut and waving her arms. The group did not hear. Jannit saw that Spit Fyre was about to lower his foot—suddenly she remembered something from her childhood. “Freeze!” she screamed. It worked. Everyone stopped in midstep, including Spit Fyre, whose great foot hovered a few inches above the pile of snow. Jannit raced out into the snow. “Wait right there!” she yelled. “Don’t move an inch.”

Spit Fyre stood with his foot swaying uncertainly in midair, looking increasingly unsteady. Jannit hurtled to a halt beside them. “Don’t step there!” she said.

Spit Fyre looked down at Jannit and wobbled. Any minute now, Septimus thought, he will topple over and squash someone.

“Easy now, Spit Fyre,” said Septimus. “Put your foot down here—next to mine.” He looked at Jannit. “It’s okay there?”

Jannit sounded relieved. “Yes, thank you, Apprentice.”

“Ouch!” Septimus gasped. Spit Fyre’s foot had come to rest on his boot.

Jannit now insisted on piloting the party across the yard. Dragons and boatyards did not mix, she told the visitors sternly. They reached the other side without any breakages and came to the edge of the Cut, which was a short and apparently dead-end run of water that led off the Moat and ended at the high Castle wall. Because the water in the Cut was virtually unaffected by the Moat’s currents it froze early. It was, Jannit informed them, easily thick enough to support the weight of a dragon.

Septimus was not so sure. Spit Fyre was—as his throbbing foot was telling him—extremely heavy. But it was true; the Cut was an ideal spot for the dragon to take off from, safely away from the boatyard clutter. To get to the nearest alternative takeoff area, Septimus would have to walk his dragon back through the boatyard, and he didn’t relish telling Jannit that. The Cut it would have to be.

Septimus climbed up into the dragon’s Pilot Dip. “Okay, Spit Fyre. Forward. One foot at a time and
slowly
.”

Spit Fyre looked at the ice and snorted doubtfully.

“Come on, Spit Fyre,” Septimus urged. “Foot down.”

Spit Fyre stretched out his huge right foot; its green scales glistened against the smooth white snow that covered the Cut. He leaned out from the icy edge, tipped forward a little and suddenly Spit Fyre went sliding onto the Cut. A groan came from deep within the ice and Septimus felt the surface beneath the dragon’s feet shift.

“Up!” he yelled to Spit Fyre. His shout was lost in the
craaaaack
that spread across the ice like the sound of the ripping of a thousand sheets. Spit Fyre needed no urging to go. He thrust his wings down just enough to raise his weight off the ice at the very moment it fell away beneath his feet. In a spray of ice splinters and snow Septimus and Spit Fyre were airborne.

Jenna, Marcellus and Jannit watched Spit Fyre rise up and head slowly toward the blank wall at the end of the Cut. Jannit, who appreciated how difficult it was to maneuver odd-shaped craft in confined spaces, was impressed. When Spit Fyre was only a few feet away from the wall, he stopped and hovered so that his nose was level with the burnished gold disc set into the Castle wall. The disc was just above a line of dressed stones that arched gracefully through the Castle wall—this was the only clue to the hidden entrance to the Dragon House.

A thrill of excitement ran through Septimus. He and Spit Fyre were going to make
Fyre
for real, not some practice run trying to hit the metal
Fyre
target in the Dragon Field. This was actually going to do something—it was going to open the Dragon House. He steadied Spit Fyre and patted his neck.
“Ignite!”
he yelled.

A deep rumble began inside Spit Fyre’s fire stomach, taking the phosphorus from the bones that Septimus had hastily fed him on his way to the boatyard, and turning it into the gases that would combine to make
Fyre
. The plume of gas swept up through Spit Fyre’s fire gullet and hit the air where it spontaneously
Ignited
with a loud
whuuuuuumph
. A thin, blindingly bright jet of
Fyre
streamed from the dragon’s mouth and hit the very center of the gold disc. The disc began to glow and turn from a dull gold to a dusky orange, to bright red, to a blinding white. Then there was a sudden flash of brilliant purple, which caused everyone to flinch and shut their eyes—Spit Fyre included.

When the watchers beside the Cut opened their eyes there was a collective sharp intake of breath. The wall was gone and the Dragon House was revealed: a towering lapis lazuli–domed cavern, covered in golden hieroglyphs. And below, held fast within clear blue ice, lay the Dragon Boat, her head resting on a marble walkway, where it had been laid almost three years earlier.