“You are absolutely sure?” asked Marcia. All kinds of impossible explanations were going through her head. None made sense. And all involved Septimus.
Terry Tarsal straightened up with a groan and rubbed his back. “Yes, I said. Look, do stop going on, Madam Overstrand.
I gotta concentrate here. These buttons are my best jade.”
“Best jade?” asked Marcia.
“Yes. Never find their like again. Just my luck…”
Marcia stood up and brushed down her robes, which were covered in dust—Terry preferred shoemaking to housekeeping. She clicked her fingers and muttered a Retrieve. From hidden cracks and crevices in Terry Tarsal’s floorboards the buttons gathered together, and as Terry watched open-mouthed, a fine green stream of buttons flew back into their jar.
Terry got to his feet, an expression of relief and amazement on his face. He had never actually seen any Magyk before and to have Marcia actually use it for something as mundane as finding his precious buttons touched Terry. “Thank you,” he muttered. “That’s…well, that’s very kind of you.”
“Least I could do,” said Marcia. “Now, can I see the order book?”
“Order book?”
“Yes, please, Mr. Tarsal.”
Bemused, Terry shook his head and went to fetch the order book. He returned with a heavy leather-bound ledger and thumped it down on the counter.
“I would like to see the order for those shoes,” said Marcia. “Please.”
Terry licked his finger and began leafing through to find the right day. “Here we are,” he said, pointing to an entry from three weeks ago.
Marcia took out her spectacles and peered at Terry Tarsal’s crabbed handwriting. The name Marcellus Pye jumped out and hit her. “I don’t believe it,” she muttered.
“Yeah. That’s him.”
“Was he very old?” asked Marcia, trying to make sense of things.
“No, he was young—about thirty. Quite good-looking if it weren’t for the funny haircut. I remember now, I had to measure his feet as he didn’t know what size he was. He kept giving me the old size—we stopped using those at least a hundred years ago. Even my old dad wouldn’t have remembered that. He had an odd accent, too—not that he said much.
Your Apprentice did most of the talking, if I remember.”
“Did he really?” asked Marcia, suddenly sitting down on the bench. “Well, I don’t know…”
“You all right, Miss Overstrand?” asked Terry. “You look a bit pale. I’ll get you a glass of water.”
Marcia was not all right. She felt strangely disconnected, as though the world was suddenly not quite what she had thought it was. Terry brought her a glass of water.
“Thank you, Terry.” Sitting with her purple-stockinged feet resting on the dusty floor, Marcia sipped her glass of water.
She knew that the real reason for her shock was not so much the presence of a young Marcellus Pye in her Time, which was weird enough, but the realization that Septimus—her trusted Septimus—had deceived her.
Watched by a concerned Terry Tarsal, Marcia drank the rest of the water and began to feel a little more like herself.
“Terry,” she said.
“Yes, ExtraOrdinary?”
“While you’re waiting for the heel to dry, put those jade buttons on my shoes, will you?”
13
WIZARD SLED
W hile Marcia waited for the
glue to dry, Septimus was doing something much more interesting—squeezing through a small trapdoor in the floor of Beetle’s hut.
“I didn’t know you could get to the Ice Tunnels through here,” Septimus said, as his feet found the rungs of the ladder fixed to the wall of ice below him.
“Tradesman’s entrance.” Beetle grinned up at Septimus. His breath was misting on the freezing air and his face was an unearthly color in the light of the flickering blue lamp he had just lit. “Miss Djinn makes me use it. Close the hatch, will you, Sep?”
“Yep,” said Septimus. He pulled down the heavy Sealed hatch—typical of all the Sealed entrances to the Ice Tunnels—that was hidden under the trapdoor, and heard the soft hiss as it settled onto its Seal. From beneath his Apprentice robes he took the Alchemie Keye
that he wore around his neck and pressed it into a circular depression in the middle of the hatch. Then he climbed down the icy metal ladder into the depths below Beetle’s hut and joined him on the slippery surface of the Ice Tunnel.
Septimus’s dragon ring, which he wore on his right index finger, gave off a dim yellow glow. But it was Beetle’s blue lamp that caught the beautiful white-blue sparkle of the ice covering the inside of the tunnel like cake icing and threw their distorted shadows across the icy vault of the high-arched roof.
“I’ll just nip up and Seal the hatch,” said Beetle. “Then we’ll be off.”
“It’s all Sealed,” said Septimus.
“No, Sep. I gotta use the Seal—see?” Beetle held up a wax disc—an exact copy of Septimus’s solid gold Keye. In reply Septimus drew out his Keye and waved it at Beetle with a grin. Beetle shook his head in amazement. “Sheesh…I am not even going to ask how you got that, Sep.”
“Marcellus gave it to me,” said Septimus. “It’s how Jenna and I got out.”
“Ah,” said Beetle, tactful enough not to mention Nicko, who had not gotten out and was still trapped in another Time.
Mentioning Nicko upset Septimus, which Beetle did not like to see. Beetle took a simple wooden sled from a hook nailed into the icy wall. “Want to hop on?” he asked.
Beetle held the rope of the sled while Septimus climbed on; then he took his place at the front and fixed his lamp so that it became a headlight. Remembering what Beetle’s sled driving was like, Septimus held on tight—and not a moment too soon. Before he had time to draw a breath the sled had shot off and was taking the first bend—a sharp right-hander—on one runner.
“Wheerrr…aaargh!” yelled Septimus. His shout was carried away on the icy air, traveling for miles joining with the many ghostly laments that lingered on the cold tunnel winds.
After almost two years as an Inspection clerk, Beetle was an expert sled driver—but unused to passengers. He took bends halfway up the icy walls, rounded corners using skid turns and if he had to stop he’d do what he called a double spin reverse whiz and end up facing the way he had come. After a few minutes Septimus was looking decidedly green.
He had a brief respite as the sled trundled slowly up a long incline, but as it teetered at the top Septimus realized the worst was yet to come.
In front of him, in the light of Beetle’s blue headlight, he could see a long brilliant white tunnel dropping into pitch-darkness, while above them the roof of the tunnel seemed to arch upward into a cavernous dome.
“This is my favorite part!” yelled Beetle over his shoulder. “Hold on tight!”
Septimus was already holding on so tight that he felt like his fingers had become welded to the sled. He took a deep breath and braced himself. The sled teetered as if it, too, were taking a deep breath. Then suddenly it went hurtling down the ice at breakneck speed, until Septimus felt a strange sensation, as though the ground was no longer there. He glanced down and realized to his horror that indeed the ground no longer was there. It was about twenty feet below them. They were airborne.
“Beeeeeee…tuuuuuuuul stop!” yelled Septimus, his voice whisked away by the wind.
Beetle was oblivious. This was the very best part of his week. It was something that, ever since he had perfected the sled jump, he had wanted to share with Septimus. It never crossed his mind that Septimus might not feel the same way.
They landed surprisingly smoothly, whizzing across a wide, flat expanse of ice and shooting straight into a tunnel so narrow that Septimus was forced to stop holding on to the sled for fear of his knuckles scraping the walls of ice. The tunnel twisted and turned. Beetle slowed down to avoid the sled getting stuck, but as they bumped slowly along between two great walls of ice Septimus began to get a horrible closed-in feeling. At last the tunnel widened out into a circular chamber with a high roof. Beetle drew to an unexpectedly sedate halt.
“We’re here,” he said in a low voice.
“Where?” asked Septimus, looking around at the huge Chamber. It felt familiar but he could not quite think why.