Even Marcia ignored the barley cake’s well-known tendency to glue the teeth together and ate almost a whole slab. Boy 412 gulped down his share and finished off all the bits that anyone else had left too. Then he lay back on the damp sand and wondered if he would ever be able to move again. He felt as though someone had poured concrete into him.
Jenna put her hand in her pocket and took out Petroc Trelawney. He sat very still and quiet in her hand, Jenna stroked him gently, and Petroc put out his four stumpy legs and waved them helplessly in the air. He was lying on his back like a stranded beetle.
“Oops, wrong way up.” Jenna chuckled. She set him the right way up, and Petroc Trelawney opened his eyes and blinked slowly.
Jenna stuck a crumb of barley cake on her thumb and offered it to the pet rock.
Petroc Trelawney blinked again, gave the barley cake some thought, then nibbled delicately at the cake crumb. Jenna was thrilled.
“He’s eaten it!” she exclaimed.
“He would,” said Nicko. “Rock cake for a pet rock. Perfect.”
But even Petroc Trelawney could not manage more than a large crumb of barley cake. He gazed around him for a few more minutes and then closed his eyes and went back to sleep in the warmth of Jenna’s hand.
Soon the water in the can over the fire was boiling. Silas melted the dark chocolate squares into it and added the milk. He mixed it up just the way he liked it, and when it was about to bubble over, he poured in the sugar and stirred.
“The best hot chocolate ever,” Nicko pronounced. No one disagreed as the can was passed around and finished all too soon.
While everyone was eating, Alther had been practicing his casting technique with his fishing rod in a preoccupied manner, and when he saw that they had finished, he wafted over to the fire. He looked serious.
“Something happened after you left,” he said quietly.
Silas felt a weight lurch to the bottom of his stomach, and it wasn’t just the barley cake. It was dread.
“What is it, Alther?” asked Silas, horribly sure that he was going to hear that Sarah and the boys had been captured.
Alther knew what Silas was thinking.
“It’s not that, Silas,” he said. “Sarah and the boys are fine. But it is very bad. DomDaniel has come back to the Castle.”
“What?” gasped Marcia. “He can’t come back. I’m the ExtraOrdinary Wizard—I’ve got the Amulet. And I’ve left the Tower stuffed full of Wizards—there’s enough Magyk in that tower to keep the old has-been buried in the Badlands where he belongs. Are you sure he’s back, Alther, and it’s not some joke the Supreme Custodian—that revolting little rat—is playing while I’m away?”
“It’s no joke, Marcia,” Alther said. “I saw him myself. As soon as Muriel had rounded Raven’s Rock, he Materialized in the Wizard Tower Courtyard. The whole place crackled with Darke Magyk. Smelled terrible. Sent the Wizards into a blind panic, scurrying here, there and everywhere, like a crowd of ants when you tread on their nest.”
“That’s disgraceful. What were they thinking of? I don’t know, the quality of the average Ordinary Wizard is appalling nowdays,” said Marcia, casting a glance in Silas’s direction. “And where was Endor? She’s meant to be my deputy—don’t tell me Endor panicked as well?”
“No. No, she didn’t. She came out and confronted him. She put a Bar across the doors to the Tower.”
“Oh, thank goodness. The Tower is safe.” Marcia sighed with relief.
“No, Marcia, it’s not. DomDaniel struck Endor down with a Thunderflash. She’s dead.” Alther tied a particularly complicated knot in his fishing line. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Dead,” Marcia mumbled.
“Then he Removed the Wizards.”
“All of them? Where to?”
“They all shot off toward the Badlands—there was nothing they could do. I expect he’s got them in one of his Burrows down there.”
“Oh, Alther.”
“Then the Supreme Custodian—that horrible little man—arrives with his retinue, bowing and scraping and practically drooling all over his Master. The next thing I know he’s escorted DomDaniel into the Wizard Tower and up to…er, well, up to your rooms, Marcia.”
“My rooms? DomDaniel in my rooms?”
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know he was in no fit state to appreciate them by the time he got up there, as they had to walk all the way up. There wasn’t enough Magyk left to keep the stairs working. Or anything else in the Tower for that matter.”
Marcia shook her head in disbelief. “I never thought DomDaniel could do this. Never.”
“No, neither did I,” said Alther.
“I thought,” said Marcia, “that as long as we Wizards could hang on until the Princess was old enough to wear the Crown, we would be all right. Then we could get rid of those Custodians, the Young Army and all the creeping Darkenesse that infests the Castle and makes peoples’ lives so miserable.”
“So did I,” said Alther, “but I followed DomDaniel up the stairs. He was blathering on to the Supreme Custodian about how he couldn’t believe his luck—not only had you left the Castle, but you had taken the one obstacle to his return with you.”
“Obstacle?”
“Jenna.”
Jenna gazed at Alther in dismay. “Me? An obstacle? Why?”
Alther stared at the fire, deep in thought. “It seems, Princess, that you have somehow been stopping that awful old Necromancer from coming back to the Castle. Just by being there. And very likely your mother did too. I always wondered why he sent the Assassin for the Queen and not for me.”
Jenna shivered. She suddenly felt very afraid. Silas put his arm around her. “That’s enough now, Alther. There’s no need to frighten us all out of our wits. Frankly, I think you just dropped off to sleep and had a nightmare. You know you get them every now and then. The Custodians are simply a load of thugs that any decent ExtraOrdinary Wizard would have seen off years ago.”
“I am not going to just sit here and be insulted like this,” Marcia spluttered. “You have no idea the things we have tried to get rid of them. No idea at all. It’s been all we can do to keep the Wizard Tower going sometimes. And with no help from you, Silas Heap.”
“Well, I don’t know what the fuss is all about, Marcia. DomDaniel’s dead,” Silas replied.
“No, he’s not,” said Marcia quietly.
“Don’t be silly, Marcia,” snapped Silas. “Alther threw him off the top of the Tower forty years ago.”
Jenna and Nicko gasped. “Did you really, Uncle Alther?” asked Jenna.
“No!” exclaimed Alther crossly. “I didn’t. He threw himself off.”
“Well, whatever,” said Silas stubbornly. “He’s still dead.”
“Not necessarily…” said Alther in a low voice, staring into the fire. The light from the glowing embers cast flickering shadows over everyone except Alther, who floated unhappily through them, absentmindedly trying to undo the knot he had just tied in his fishing line. The fire blazed for a moment and lit up the circle of people around it. Suddenly Jenna spoke.
“What did happen on top of the Wizard Tower with DomDaniel, Uncle Alther?” she whispered.
“It’s a bit of a scary story, Princess. I don’t want to frighten you.”
“Oh, go on, tell us,” said Nicko. “Jen likes scary stories.”
Jenna nodded a little uncertainly.
“Well,” said Alther, “it’s hard for me to tell it in my own words, but I’ll tell you the story as I once heard it spoken around a campfire deep in the Forest. It was a night like this, midnight with a full moon high in the sky, and it was told by an old and wise Wendron Witch Mother to her witches.”
And so, beside the fire, Alther Mella changed his form into a large and comfortable-looking woman dressed in green. Speaking in the witch’s quiet Forest burr, he began.
“This is where the story begins: on top of a golden Pyramid crowning a tall silver Tower. The Wizard Tower shimmers in the early morning sun and is so high that the crowd of people gathered at its foot appear like ants to the young man who is clambering up the stepped sides of the Pyramid. The young man has looked down at the ants once already and felt sick with the giddy sensation of height. He now keeps his gaze firmly fixed on the figure in front of him—an older but remarkably agile man who, to his great advantage, has no fear of heights. The older man’s purple cloak flies out from him in the brisk wind that always plays around the top of the Tower, and to the crowd below he looks like nothing more than a fluttering purple bat creeping up to the point of the Pyramid.