by Angie Sage
“When I did actually wake up, I thought for a moment that I was in a dream. But it smelled so different from home—so damp and old—that I soon remembered. I tried to get back to sleep but I couldn’t, so I decided to explore. Someone had lit a candle and left it on a table by the door, so I took it and crept out of the room.
“Once I was out of my stuffy room and in the upstairs hall, I felt quite excited. It was much nicer being on my own and not feeling upset all the time about my mother. So I decided to look around. It was dark and my candle didn’t shed much light but I could see delicate old chairs and tiny sofas, each with a table, set along the walls between the massively tall double doors that opened off. On every table burned a candle so I could see the walls really clearly, especially as they were covered in gold leaf, which shone even though I could tell it was very old. It was a beautiful place.”
“Palace,” Nicko said, grinning. “Another one.”
Jenna stuck her tongue out at her brother. “Yes, Nicko, another Palace. One needs at least three. So anyway, rude boy, I decided to head for the huge window at the end of the hall and see what was outside. I tiptoed past beautiful paintings hung all over the wall—all of people who looked a little bit like me, I thought. But they weren’t Queens or anything special, just people in all kinds of old-fashioned clothes. And as I went by I felt like they were all looking down at me, kind of saying hello. It was weird, but nice too because I began to feel that I belonged, that somehow I was part of this place just as much as I was part of the Castle back home.
“So I got to the huge window—which had rows of little circles of glass in it—and I looked out. It was amazing. Outside there was a river, not very wide compared with ours, but totally different. It had houses all along it on both sides and there was no riverbank because all the houses went straight down into the water. And they were really, really old. Some were kind of falling into the water, some were wrapped up in what looked like shiny paper and others were just about okay. There were lights on and I could see people moving about inside them; I could look right into their rooms. But no one noticed me and I just watched and watched. A few boats came down the river; some were quite big and made a strange noise. And they moved without sails or oars too. There weren’t many because I could tell it was really late, but I could still hear the sounds of people laughing and talking and having fun.”
Jenna continued. “So there I was, watching from the window, feeling quite happy, really, when I heard a soft, smothered cough from somewhere way back in the big room behind me. I decided to act like I had known whoever-it-was had been there all the time—which I was suddenly sure they had been. I swung around and stared into the dark. I could see nothing in the middle, just the edge of the room in the low lights of the little candles on the tables and the soft shine of the walls, but I wasn’t going to let the watcher know that.
“‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe we have been introduced.’ My voice sounded weird in the dark and I realized that this was the first time I had spoken in that place.
“‘Good evening,’ came a reply. The voice surprised me—it was a girl. She had a really weird accent and she sounded a bit like that stupid witch Marissa. So I wasn’t about to like her.”
“You and Marissa fallen out, have you?” teased Nicko.
“She’s a two-faced cow,” said Jenna.
“Fair enough.”
“Anyway, I told this girl that it was rude to hide away in the shadows and stare. By then I could see better in the dark and I saw that she was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. I saw her get up and walk toward me. I decided not to move. She could come to me.” Jenna smiled. “I guess I was already picking up some Queen stuff.
“As she came closer I could see that she looked nothing like Marissa at all, so I felt a lot better about her. She turned out to be really nice. She came up and kissed me on both cheeks—that’s what they do there to say hello—”
“Sounds fun,” Nicko said with a grin.
“Nicko, you have become so rude recently,” Jenna told him sternly. “You spend too much time in the Port.”
Nicko looked sheepish.
“Actually, if you had been there you would never have met any girls at all, because it turned out that girls pretty much weren’t allowed out. If they did go somewhere they were never on their own. I wasn’t allowed out, that was for sure. If it hadn’t been for Julia—that was her name—I wouldn’t have seen anything but the inside of that crumbly old Palace and what I could see from the window. All the time that I spent there I was with my mother and grandmother.” Jenna sighed. “Gosh, I was so bored sometimes. They droned on and on about our family and where they came from, all the things I was expected to do when I got home, blah blah blah.”
“So if girls weren’t allowed out, how did you and Julia get away with it?” asked Nicko.
“We wore masks. At night anyone could go anywhere with a mask on. All you needed was a long cloak and a pair of boy’s shoes. As long as you didn’t speak, everyone thought you were a boy. It was brilliant. Julia took me to all kinds of places. It was a beautiful city.”
Jim Knee finished his last potato. Very quietly he got to his feet and moved away into the shadows. He felt sick, not because he had eaten nearly two pounds of roast potatoes and half a greasy chicken, but because he had spent thirty years of a life in the place that Jenna described—and fifteen of those had been in a prison just below the waterline that had flooded with every high tide. The dank, nasty smell of it had suddenly washed right over him.
No one noticed Jim Knee get up. Jenna continued her story. “If it hadn’t been for Julia I would never have met the Alchemists.”
“There were Alchemists there?” asked Septimus.
“You bet. I know so much more about Marcellus now. That’s where they come from, Sep. The same place as I do—or my family did once, a very, very long time ago. They are from an island in the Lagoon.”
“The Lagoon?”
“Yep. That’s what the whole place was called. It was full of islands. We were on the biggest one, but there was another where the Alchemists lived—where they made a special kind of dark Glass. You know, Sep, like the one that Marcellus made.”
“Oh. That.” Septimus grimaced. He still had nightmares about being pulled through Marcellus’s Glass.
Jenna looked around and lowered her voice. “There was loads of Castle stuff there, Sep. I wished so much that you could have been there to see it all too. In fact, there was so much I—what was that?”
There was a loud crash behind them. A hidden door in the paneling sprang open and from it two wild-eyed Heap uncles came screaming into the hall.
32
HEAPS VERSUS HEAPS
There was a moment of stillness while the opposing Heap camps stood staring at each other, both equally shocked. With their typically Heap straw hair awry, their old multicolored robes hanging from them, wet and filthy with mud, it looked like it was just daft old uncles Edmund and Ernold who had crashed out of the wall. A pang of pity went through the four genuine Heaps at the sight of them. Jenna had to fight back a desire to rush over and ask them to come and sit by the fire. For some moments no one moved. The invaders took stock, their gaze traveling around the hall, eyes like searchlights, alighting on each occupant, noting them and moving on to the next as if checking off a list.
Those on the list stared back, like frozen rabbits. Time slowed; the moment seemed to last forever until—crash!—the door in the paneling slammed shut. In a flash Simon threw himself in front of Jenna but Nicko shoved him away. Simon swung around angrily. “I’m not going to hurt her, Nik!”
“I know that. But you’re needed. You gotta stop them. You and Sep. Use your Darke stuff, Si—anything!”
Simon grinned—Nicko had called him Si. It was all Heaps together now, just like it used to be. Heaps against the world, although right now it still felt like Heaps against Heaps. It was hard not to believe Ernold and Edmund were play
ing a bizarre practical joke.
Suddenly any lingering doubts evaporated—they spoke. Switching seamlessly from one to another, in voices cold and empty as if they came from the bottom of a deep, dark cave.
“We have.”
“Come for.”
“The.”
“Princess.”
Their voices had a bad effect on Jenna. It was as if some ancestral memory had kicked in. Fighting off the urge to run screaming from the room—which she guessed was exactly what the Wizards wanted—Jenna steeled herself to reply. Maybe, she thought, if she answered calmly, they would merely pay their respects and leave. Jenna took a deep breath to steady her voice only to find, to her irritation, that Simon was answering for her.
“She is not here,” he said.
The Wizards exchanged knowing smiles.
“Nomis.”
Simon flinched at the mention of his Darke name.
“You are.”
“One.”
“Of us.”
“No!” said Simon. “I am—”
“Not,” Septimus finished for him, deliberately echoing the Wizards.
“You.”
“Lie,” snarled the Wizards.
“We see.”
“The Princess.”
“And you are.”
“One of.”
“Usssssss.” The last word was hissed like a snake rearing up to strike.
With that, the Heap uncles lurched forward, like a pair of automatons. This odd gait was mainly due to their utter exhaustion, but it was also because there was still just enough of Ernold and Edmund Heap left to resist the Darke Wizards’ intentions.
Septimus, Nicko, Jenna and Simon backed away toward the door. In the shadows behind the approaching Wizards Septimus could see the nervous wobble of a yellow stack of doughnuts, but he put Jim Knee out of his mind. Right now he needed to focus on one thing. He had to raise a SafeShield—something he had never done before.
Deciding to Shield only Jenna and Nicko—the less people Shielded, the more effective the Shield—Septimus put his arm around Simon’s shoulders and walked him sideways out of the Shield space and then he spun around, clenched his fists and threw them open. To Septimus’s relief a bright band of purple light shot out from his raised hands and, to Jenna and Nicko’s surprise, dropped over them to form a small, cloudy dome. It was a very basic SafeShield, but it did the job. Jenna and Nicko stared out like a couple of mice trapped under a bell jar. The Darke Wizards laughed.
“How very.”
“Quaint.”
There was a sharp snap like bones cracking, a flash of light, and suddenly Edmund and Ernold Heap were each holding a gleaming black stave, smooth as glass.
Simon stared at the staves in horror. He had never seen one, but he knew at once what they were: Volatile Wands. He knew that within them, concentrated in the tiny silver spine that ran through the length of the Wand, lay a distillation of Darke power. Volatile Wands were powerful, accurate and incredibly dangerous. Simon felt sick—they didn’t have a chance.
There was a thunderous craaaack. The walls of the hall shook and from the ends of each Wand a bullet of light emerged, zub zub, heading straight for the SafeShield. Jenna and Nicko threw themselves to the ground but the bullets never reached the Shield—Simon twisted his cloak up into the air and caught them. His cloak burst into flames and, unperturbed, as though his cloak caught fire on a regular basis, Simon threw it to the floor and stamped on it.
“Come on,” he dared the Wizards. “You can do better than that.”
Septimus thought Simon was being a little rash. He had no doubt that not only could the Wizards easily do better than that, but they were about to prove it.
Simon, however, knew the game to play. He knew Darke Wizards fed off fear and that a scornful disdain was the best defense. He also knew that he had to back it up with a show of strength, and so Simon reneged on his promise to Lucy that he would never again mess with the Darke.
Using the last of the flame from his cloak, he Conjured a FireSnake and sent it blazing through the air. It hit the Wizards and wrapped itself around them once, twice, three times and began to tighten. But like all things Darke it was a two-sided weapon. In a moment Shamandrigger Saarn and Dramindonnor Naarn had turned it to their advantage. Using the flame they sent up a plume of black smoke and Threw it over Simon and Septimus, imprisoning them in a circle of burnt-snake fumes. Then Shamandrigger wound the FireSnake around his Wand and hurled it into the smoke, where it scorched Septimus’s hair and fell writhing to the floor. Simon had the presence of mind to stamp on it, but neither he nor Septimus could find a way out of the choking smoke.
Now the Darke Wizards headed across to the SafeShield. Holding their Wands like javelins, they stabbed them into the shimmering purple dome. It emitted a wounded groan and the purple light began to grow dim.
“Jen, I’ll distract them and you make a break for it,” whispered Nicko. “Get to the Queen’s Way. They can’t follow you there.”
“Shut up, Nik,” said Jenna.
“You what?” asked Nicko, not sure he’d heard right.
“Just be quiet, will you?” Jenna snapped.
Nicko felt scared. Something odd had happened to Jenna.
With that the SafeShield died.
Jenna found herself looking into the eyes of her pitiful, bruised, battered and utterly terrified uncles. But lurking deep within she saw the Darke Wizards’ malice. Jenna had been scared a few times since the day she had learned she was Princess, but had never felt as frightened as she did now. Nicko grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and Jenna regained her courage. She squared up to the disheveled, muddy figures and demanded, “What do you want?”
The reply came, filling the hall with fear.
“The end.”
“Of your.”
“Line.”
“As we.”
“Promised.”
Jenna reached up and took off her gold circlet—the one that so very long ago Hotep-Ra had given to the Queen.
“No, Jen!” whispered Nicko, thinking she was surrendering.
“Yes, Nik,” said Jenna. She held the circlet in both hands at arms length as though offering it to the Wizards, while Nicko looked on, shocked and unsure what to do.
Among the many things that Jenna had listened to on her Journey was the story of the Queen’s Committal of the two Darke Wizards to the ring. She had listened to it carefully because it was about something she recognized. But the story had come at the end of a long and tedious day involving many rules and regulations and Jenna had been sleepy. She remembered her grandmother chanting the Committal to her as the evening sun came streaming through the tiny round windowpanes. She even remembered dozily chanting it back. Now—hoping that it would come back to her as she spoke—Jenna began the one thing that the Ring Wizards dreaded to hear: “By our Power, at this hour, we do you . . .”
At the onset of the Committal, the Wizards shrank back.
From within the Darke smoke Septimus and Simon saw a chink of light and threw themselves at it. They burst out, spluttering, to find to their amazement the two Wizards backing away from Jenna. Now was their chance.
Eject? mouthed Septimus to Simon.
Simon nodded and made the sign of two crossed index fingers for the Darke.
Septimus gave him the thumbs-up. If ever there was a time to use the Darke it was now.
“Tceje!”
Nothing happened. Shamandrigger Saarn and Dramindonnor Naarn swung around and pointed the Volatile Wands at them instead of at Jenna, who was still speaking.
“Not working. Need their Darke names,” hissed Simon.
Thinking of his own Darke name, Sum, Septimus took a gamble. “Tceje!” he yelled. “Tceje, Reg and Ron!”
“No!” shouted Jenna as—as if on castors—the Darke Wizards shot away from her, exiting backward like all respectful courtiers had done in the past—but at ten times the speed.
At last Jim Knee sprang in
to action. He opened the door in the paneling, bowed politely as the Wizards shot through it and then slammed it shut. Beaming, the jinnee leaned against it, looking as triumphant as if he himself had Ejected the Wizards.
“Good one, Sep!” said Simon.
“Yeah.” Septimus grinned.
But Jenna did not agree. “You dumbos!” she said.
“What?” Septimus and Simon said in amazement.
“What did you do that for?” Jenna demanded.
“Just trying to save your life, Jen. That’s all,” said Septimus, looking at Jenna as though she had gone crazy. “Is that a problem?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean . . . oh, Sep, you dillop. I had just remembered all the words. For the Committal. But you and Simon just helped them escape.”
33
SCORPION
Jim Knee was shocked. He’d come very close to jinnee suicide, which is what a jinnee is considered to have committed if he allows his Master to be murdered in his presence. Not only is this fairly disastrous for the Master, it is also pretty bad for the jinnee: he is evaporated on the spot into a convenient receptacle, which more often than not ends up in the hands of the murderer. There is an old jinnee saying, “Murderers do not good Masters make,” which is true. However, Jim Knee was not about to impart this information to his Master. It was desirable that his shock appeared to be due to the narrow escape his Master had had.
But no one noticed Jim Knee’s shock—everyone in the room was in a similar state. They gathered around the little door in the paneling where the Wizards had so recently been Ejected.
“What I don’t understand is how they got into the cupboard in the first place,” Nicko was saying. “And when? Me and Jen were here on our own for ages and they could easily have got us then.” He shuddered at the thought. “So why wait until we were all here?”
“It is not a cupboard,” said Simon. “It’s some kind of old tunnel. You can smell it. We wouldn’t have Ejected them into a cupboard, Nik.”
“It is Smugglers’ Bolt.” Jim Knee’s voice gave everyone a surprise. The jinnee had been unusually quiet since he had arrived at the Port Palace.