Fyre (44 page)

“Forget it,” snapped Marissa. “I’ve got better things to do,” and she headed off to Gothyk Grotto.

Beetle headed up Wizard Way, pulling Jenna behind him. “Beetle,
wait
,” said Jenna, who had seen Septimus and Marcia hurrying up Wizard Way. “There’s Sep and Marcia. We have to tell them.”

“No!” said Beetle. “It’s not safe.”

“I’ll tell them,” said Foxy, determined to be brave. “You go on ahead.”

“We’ll
all
tell them,” said Partridge. “Come on, Foxy.”

As Jenna and Beetle hurtled through the Great Arch they overtook the ghost of Alther Mella, who was herding Merrin and Nursie across the Courtyard in the manner of a shepherd rounding up two particularly stupid sheep. He watched Jenna and Beetle disappear into the Wizard Tower and heard hurried footsteps behind him. Moments later Marcia and Septimus, along with an assortment of scribes, came pounding through the Great Arch. As soon as they were in, Marcia took off her amulet and pressed it into a small indentation beside the Arch. The pitted old Barricade came rumbling down through the middle of the Great Arch,
Sealing
the Courtyard.

Edmund and Ernold Heap dragged themselves up the long, steep steps from the Vaults. Behind them lay a badly damaged scorpion, its pincers mangled and burned.

The Ring Wizards were becoming angry—their hosts were putting up much more of a fight than they had expected. What the Wizards had not accounted for was that Edmund and Ernold Heap were identical twins. All through the nightmarish trek along the Bolt, if one weakened the other encouraged him onward; in this way the Heaps had managed to keep going far longer than would have been possible if two unrelated Wizards had been
InHabited
. But the Heap twins had used their very last ounce of energy in protecting Jenna and now, as they fell out of the concealed door and ricocheted through the desks of the Manuscriptorium like two slow-motion pinballs, they were at the end of their endurance—and the Ring Wizards were at the end of their patience. The twins were hurled through the flimsy door that separated the Manuscriptorium from the Front Office, smashed into the stacks of papers piled up by the window and thrown through the front window.

Edmund and Ernold Heap lay crumpled on the pavement in front of the Manuscriptorium, sprinkled with rainbow shards of glass. A few passersby rushed over to help—but they stopped dead when a green mist began to swirl out from the bodies of the Heaps and rise up to form two pillars at least ten feet tall. Recognizing the
Darke Magyk
for what it was, people ran to the Wizard Tower for help only to find, to their dismay, that the Barricade was down. They hurried home and locked their doors.

But two visitors, Vilotta Bott and Tremula Finn, who had just arrived on the night Barge for the
Magyk
of the Castle
tour, stayed to watch. The tour had not been going well. The Wizard Tower was unaccountably shut; not even the Courtyard was open. In the fabled Wizard Way most of the shops were closing, rather than opening, and now, to cap it all, the tour guide had run off.

“At least someone’s putting on a bit of a show,” Vilotta whispered to her friend.

Within the striking green pillars Vilotta and Tremula saw the mist circling slowly, purposefully, creating shadows and shapes. They were very impressed when within each one a human form began to solidify—ten feet tall, wearing the ancient carapace armor of a Warrior Wizard and a very odd cloak, which looked dark and sparkly at the same time. Vilotta and Tremula were pleased—this was more like it. They watched in delight as shimmering green particles spun around the two impossibly tall figures like candy floss.

“I suppose they’re on stilts,” whispered Tremula.

“They’re very good; it’s really hard to stay still on stilts,” replied Vilotta.

As each wandering atom found its place the beings became clearer. The mist began to evaporate, sending sparkling, dancing motes up into the beams of sunlight that glanced off the silver torchpost outside the Manuscriptorium.

“
So
pretty,” murmured Tremula.

Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light and four beams of thin red light shot from the beings’ brilliant green eyes.

Vilotta and Tremula gasped with excitement.

In unison, Shamandrigger Saarn and Dramindonnor Naarn flung out their arms and two new
Volatile Wands
appeared. They swung around, the pinprick beams from their eyes sweeping along Wizard Way. Vilotta and Tremula offered a shy round of applause.

“It’s very realistic, isn’t it?” said Tremula, a little nervously.

It was horribly realistic.

Four red rays of light swung back and came to rest on Vilotta and Tremula. “Ooh, that prickles,” giggled Vilotta.

“This is a bit scary,” whispered Tremula.

“It
hurts
!” Vilotta gasped. “Ouch! Get
off
me.” She tried to brush the beams away.

Tremula screamed.

Craaaaack!
A
Bolt
of lightning zipped from each
Wand
and Vilotta and Tremula fell to the ground, wisps of green smoke rising from their new trip-to-the-Castle summer dresses.

Shamandrigger Saarn and Dramindonnor Naarn looked at each other, the ghost of a smile playing about their thin lips. Thousands of years spent trapped side by side in the Two-Faced Ring had given them a communication that did not require speech.

Fyre
 . . . We smell it . . . In the air . . . The means of . . . Our destruction . . . Must be . . . Destroyed.

The Ring Wizards spun around and marched down Wizard Way in perfect step. They left behind two brightly colored piles of rags outside Bott’s Cloaks, and outside the Manuscriptorium what appeared to be two empty, muddy sacks, strangely sad in the late spring sunshine.

38

D
RAGONS
A
WAY

T
he fat, opalescent
Searching
Glass
sat like a crouching spider on its gimbals in the center of
Search
and Rescue. The circular black-walled room was dim with shadows, the only light coming from the
Magykal
Glass that floated mysteriously inside its delicate black frame. Marcia and Hildegarde were staring into its depths in horror.

Hildegarde had her hands clamped over her mouth.
“They’ve killed them!”
she cried.

“Oh, those poor,
poor
men,” Marcia murmured.

“I . . . I can’t believe it. It’s so
awful
,” said Hildegarde. “And those women. Fancy just standing there,
watching
.”

Marcia shook her head. “People forget that
Magyk
is a dangerous thing.”

The quiet gloom of the
Searching
Room mirrored their somber mood as Marcia and Hildegarde stared at the image of two ten-foot-tall armored figures striding off down Wizard Way, their cloaks streaming behind them, trailing wisps of
Darke
Light. Wizard Way was, Marcia was relieved to see, deserted—the
Alert
was obviously working.

“Where are they
going
?” Marcia muttered anxiously. “Why aren’t they coming here for Jenna and Merrin?”

“But they don’t know Jenna and Merrin are here, do they?” Hildegarde said.

Marcia was finding Hildegarde irritatingly dense. She wondered if she had made a mistake in allowing her to move from sub-Wizard to a full Ordinary. “Hildegarde, of
course
they
Know
. These Ancient Beings have links to their past like . . .” Marcia sought for a way to explain. “Like
fish
.”

“Fish?”

“On a line. A long line. Which you reel in.”

“So what are they reeling in now?” asked Hildegarde. “Haddock?”

Marcia glanced sharply at the new Wizard—was she being cheeky? But Hildegarde, who was a mistress of deadpan, looked utterly serious.

Marcia sighed. “Who knows?” she said. “Watch where they go. Keep me informed. Thank you, Hildegarde.”

Back in her rooms, the ghost of Jillie Djinn greeted Marcia in her own special way.

“A fine fish . . . a haddock is . . . reel it in . . . reel it in.”

Marcia gave a start. Jillie Djinn’s powers of speech had progressed a good deal and the ghost now had a disconcerting ability to know what she had just been talking about, which Marcia found extremely creepy. She rushed past and headed up to the Pyramid Library, where another almost equally annoying ghost greeted her.

“You will be pleased to know that we have found the Hotep-Ra
Committal Template
,” said Julius Pike.

“You
have
?”

“Here it is,” said Septimus. He pointed to a small square of yellowing vellum lying in the middle of the desk around which he, Rose, Beetle and Jenna—who was busy writing—were gathered. Marcia rushed over to inspect it. She took the delicate
Template
between finger and thumb and gazed reverentially at Hotep-Ra’s tiny, spidery writing, full of swirls and curlicues.

“
This really is it
. The
Committal Template
.” Marcia felt as though she had been given a reprieve. But something, she thought, did not make sense. She looked at Julius sharply. “So where was it?”

“In the
Hidden
Shelf in the Ancient Archives.”

Marcia was flummoxed. “But there
is
no
Hidden
Shelf in the Ancient Archives.”

Julius looked smug. “Clearly there is.”

“So why was this not recorded in the
Hidden
Index?”

The ghost did not reply. He looked, thought Septimus, decidedly shifty.

“It seems to me, Mr. Pike, that in your time as ExtraOrdinary Wizard you
Hid
a good many things without recording them,” Marcia observed tartly.

The ghost was evasive. “Like all ExtraOrdinary Wizards, I did what I considered best.”

“An ExtraOrdinary Wizard cannot take it upon themselves to decide what future ExtraOrdinaries will or will not need to know. Your behavior is worse than high-handed—it is downright dangerous. Your actions have put us all in great peril.”

There was an awkward silence—everyone knew that it was very rude of a current ExtraOrdinary Wizard to criticize previous incumbents—particularly to their face. Septimus decided to smooth things over. “Well, at least we have it now,” he said.

Jenna put down her pen and pushed a sheet of paper across to Marcia. “There—that’s what I said.”

“Thank you, Jenna.” Marcia took the paper. She placed it next to Hotep-Ra’s writing and compared the words on both. After some minutes she shook her head, puzzled.

“I don’t understand. Will you check them please, Septimus?” Painstakingly, Septimus compared what Jenna had written with Hotep-Ra’s
Template
—twice—and he, too, shook his head and passed it along to Beetle. Beetle did the same and passed it round to Rose.

“Well?” said Marcia.

“They’re the same,” all three said. “Identical.”

Marcia turned to Jenna, choosing her words with care. “Jenna, when you spoke the
Committal
you were in a terrifying situation. Maybe you didn’t say this
exactly
?”

Julius Pike chipped in impatiently. “Marcia, I assure you, the Princess said those very words. The problem is that the words were incomplete.” He stabbed a thin, ghostly finger at the vellum
Template
. “As is that. They are
both
missing the
Keystone
word.”

“Julius, don’t be ridiculous. How can Hotep-Ra’s very own
Template
be incomplete?”

Julius Pike spoke very slowly, clearly fighting to keep his temper. “I do not know. But it is. What is written there does not have a
Keystone
.”

“Not everything has a
Keystone
,” said Marcia, also trying to keep her temper.

“Everything that Hotep-Ra did had a
Keystone
. It is the ancient way.”

Marcia stared at the vellum. “Well, not in this one, Julius.
Clearly
.” She looked at Jenna. “I think you must have transposed or omitted a word.”

“But I
didn’t
.”

“Jenna, this is no reflection on you. But someone once said—someone I admire very much—that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable
, must be the truth. And it is impossible that Hotep-Ra has not written the
Committal
right.”

Jenna stood up angrily. “But this
is
what I said.”

Marcia adopted a soothing tone that really annoyed Jenna. “Jenna, you were incredibly brave. It cannot have been easy to remember—”

“There is no need to patronize me as well as disbelieve me, Marcia. Excuse me, everyone.” With that Jenna walked out of the library. They heard her rapid, angry footsteps clattering down the stone steps.