Fyre

  Sir Hereward, on guard in the shadows, faithfully awaiting Jenna’s return, had seen it all before. He watched the arrival of each object with approval, pleased to see the old traditions continuing. He was less pleased to see the precious objects carelessly thrown into an ever-increasing pile beside the doors.

  Sarah had become almost used to the visitations. She had given up telling people she was not the Comptroller—whatever that was—she had even stopped telling people she was not going on a journey, thank you, when she realized it referred to Jenna’s Journey, but she wished they would stop. As soon as she had begun to do something she would hear the tinkling of the bell in the entrance hall. If she ignored it the duty doorperson would come and find her—because no Keeper would leave without personally handing the object over to “the Comptroller.”

  Sarah could not help but be anxious about Jenna, but she did her best not to show it. She wanted her four Forest boys to enjoy their time “back home,” as she called it. Sarah nursed hopes that they might decide to stay, so she tried to hide her fears. But Nicko understood how his mother felt. He knew how much she had fretted when he had been lost in another Time and he wanted to make things up to her.

  A few nights after Jenna had gone, Sarah was sitting at her window watching darkness fall. It was a bad time of day for Sarah—yet another night was drawing in and she could not help but wonder where Jenna was and what she was doing. As Sarah gazed out toward the river, she saw lights flickering by the Palace landing stage. Excited, she sprang to her feet. Jenna was back already! She ran out of the room only to cannon straight into Nicko.

  “Oof! Hello, Mum. Good timing,” said Nicko with a big smile.

  “She’s back,” said Sarah. “What a relief.”

  “Who’s back?”

  “Jenna!”

  “Oh, that’s brilliant. Sam’s got plenty of fish.”

  “Fish?” Sarah was flummoxed.

  “It’s a surprise, Mum. We’re having a Forest supper. For you.”

  “Forest supper?”

  “Down on the riverbank. See?” Nicko pointed to the lights outside.

  “Oh.” Sarah gazed out at the lights. Now that she looked closely she could see the burly figures of her four Forest sons tending a fire and yes, standing beside the river, holding lanterns, were Simon and Septimus talking to Silas, Edmund and Ernold.

  “Mum, are you all right?” asked Nicko.

  Sarah shook off her disappointment. She knew that only a few months ago if someone had told her that she would have all her boys with her, safe and happy, she would have been ecstatic. Count your blessings, Sarah Heap, she told herself sternly. And smile.

  “I’m fine, Nicko love. Thank you. Now, where’s this wonderful supper?”

  While the Forest Heaps cooked fish for Sarah and Silas, down on Snake Slipway another supper was in progress. Marcellus, Simon and Lucy were sitting in the long, narrow dining room that ran from the front to the back of the house, at an equally long, narrow table lit with so many candles that Lucy found it hard to see anything in the glare.

  “I have some bad news,” Marcellus announced.

  Simon looked at Lucy anxiously. He still expected things to go wrong, and he braced himself, thinking that Marcellus was going to say that he no longer wanted him to be his Apprentice.

  “The Alchemie Chimney has fallen down,” said Marcellus.

  “It’s the frost,” Lucy said. “The mortar won’t set.”

  “So they say,” said Marcellus gloomily.

  “You need to put heaters inside the scaffolding tarpaulin,” said Lucy.

  Marcellus looked suddenly attentive—why hadn’t the builder thought of that? “And you should make them build it like CattRokk lighthouse,” Lucy added.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. CattRokk has huge granite blocks as foundations, then bricks. They get smaller as they go up. You need the lower part of the chimney to be a good wide base for the upper part.”

  Marcellus was impressed. So much so that by the end of the evening, Lucy was in charge of building the Alchemie Chimney. Later, as they walked across the road back to their little house, Simon said proudly, “There’s no way the new chimney will fall down, Lu. Not with you in charge. It wouldn’t dare.”

  While Sarah fretted about her Forest sons leaving, the one group of Heaps who Sarah would have been very happy to wave good-bye to showed no signs of wanting to go. In fact, to Sarah’s dismay Ernold and Edmund Heap showed every sign of wanting to stay—permanently. They found themselves a suite of rooms at the far end of the Palace and set up camp, as Sarah put it. “The trouble is, Silas,” Sarah said one afternoon, “we can’t say we don’t have the room, can we?”

  “We won’t when we move back home,” said Silas. “They’ll have to go then.”

  The morning after the supper by the river, Silas was due at the Wizard Tower on Seal Watch. Sarah begged him to take Ernold and Edmund with him. “They are driving me nuts, Silas—they follow me everywhere and they don’t stop talking. All I want is a quiet morning in the herb garden without having to listen to a comedy double act.” Silas dutifully took his brothers along to the Wizard Tower. He signed them in as visiting Wizards—which they both claimed to be—and left them to explore the open areas of the Tower. Half an hour later, when he had finished his Watch, Silas found himself in trouble.

  Head fuzzy from staring at Magyk, Silas emerged to find an angry Marcia Overstrand waiting for him with Edmund and Ernold standing sheepishly at her side.

  “Are these yours?” Marcia demanded, as though Silas had left a pair of smelly socks on the floor.

  “Er, yes. I signed them in,” Silas had to admit.

  “As visiting Wizards?” Marcia sounded incredulous.

  “As indeed we are, Madam,” Edmund piped up.

  “Totally, utterly and entirely at your service, ExtraOrdinary Madam,” Ernold supplied.

  “I am not an ExtraOrdinary Madam,” said Marcia severely. “I am an ExtraOrdinary Wizard. Silas, before signing people in as visiting Wizards I would expect you to at least check that they are bona fide Wizards. As these two persons”—with some effort, Marcia fought off the urge to refer to the visitors as idiots—“clearly are not.”

  “Oh, but we are,” chorused the twins.

  “We trained with the Conjurors of the Calm Green Seas . . .”

  “. . . in the Wayward Islands of the West.”

  “Absolute rubbish!” said Marcia.

  “No, we did.”

  “Really, we did. Honest.”

  “You misunderstand me,” said Marcia. “I meant that Conjuring is rubbish. It is mere trickery and bears no relation to Magyk. I do not doubt you know a few tricks—the singing pink caterpillar infestation in the fourth-floor communal houseplant is testimony to that—but that does not make you Wizards. Take them home, Silas. At once.”

  The thought of what Sarah would say if he returned with Edmund and Ernold after only an hour made Silas brave. “Marcia, my brothers are not here for long—”

  “Oh, but we are,” said Edmund.

  “No, you’re not,” retorted Silas. He turned to Marcia. “My brothers would dearly like to learn about Magyk. Education is one of the purposes of the Wizard Tower, isn’t it? They are willing to take their turn in all tasks and they humbly apologize for the caterpillars—” Silas kicked Ernold on the shin. “Don’t you?”

  “Ouch!” said Ernold. “Yes. Absolutely. Edmund didn’t mean to do it.”

  “But I didn’t do it!” protested Edmund.

  “You did.”

  Marcia looked at the squabbling brothers. “How old are you?” she inquired.

  Silas answered for them. “Forty-six, believe it or not. Marcia, please let them stay. I think it would be really good for them. I will never let them out of my sight, I promise.”

  Marcia considered the matter. Recently Silas had been frequenting the Wizard Tower on a regular basis. He had told Marcia that so very nearly losing the Tower to the Darke Do
maine had made him realize how much he valued the place. Marcia knew that Silas had taken more than his fair share of the unpopular Seal Watch and there was a chronic shortage of Wizards available to do it. She supposed that even a couple of Conjurers might be trained to Watch. Marcia relented.

  “Very well, Silas. I will ask Hildegarde to issue each of them with a Visitor Pass. It will restrict them to communal Wizard facilities only. You can train them as Watchers and they can take their turn, providing they pass the elementary Watch test.”

  “Oh, Marcia, thank you,” said Silas. It was more than he had hoped for.

  “My condition is that you must, as you promised, accompany them at all times. Is that understood?”

  Silas smiled. “Yes, it certainly is. Thank you so much.”

  23

  THE ALCHEMIE CHIMNEY

  Septimus’s vacation flew by and soon his month was nearly over. The Big Thaw set in. Sarah Heap had been dreading it—now there was nothing to keep her Forest boys in the Castle. But determined not to think about it, Sarah busied herself by trying to organize all the “Coronation Clutter,” as she called the multitude of offerings that were still arriving. Sarah was particularly pleased when she saw her old friend Sally Mullin coming up the drive—Sally always took her mind off things. Sarah hurried to the entrance hall, past the huge pile of “Clutter” watched over by a rather disapproving Sir Hereward. Barney Pot was on weekend door duty, sitting on a tall chair, happily swinging his legs and reading his new comic from the Picture Book Shop.

  “Don’t worry, Barney,” Sarah told him. “I’ll get the doors.” She pulled them open and a gust of wind blew in. Sarah and Barney shivered. It was a dismal, raw day. “Come in, Sally, it’s so nice to see you, I’ve been—”

  “Comptroller,” Sally began hurriedly in an oddly strangled voice. “I bring you this Wonder for the Coronation. We, the family Mullin, are honored to be the Keepers of the Coronation Biscuit Tin and as is our bounded duty since Time Began, we now present this to thee, Oh, Comptroller, for its sacred duty. Safe Journey.” Sally handed over a very battered golden tin, which sported a beautifully engraved crown on its lid.

  Sarah took the tin. “Oh!” she said, nearly dropping it. It was heavy. Clearly it was made from solid gold.

  Studiously avoiding Sarah’s amused gaze, Sally bowed three times and then walked backward across the plank bridge. As soon as she reached the other side, her suppressed giggles erupted and both she and Sarah collapsed in laughter.

  “Oh, Sally,” gasped Sarah, “I had no idea. Come in and have a cup of herb tea.”

  Sally scurried gratefully back over the bridge. “Ta. It’s perishing out here. Blasted biscuit tin weighed a ton, too.”

  The slamming of the Palace front doors woke Septimus, who was sleeping in a large room at the front of the Palace. Blearily, he sat up in the creaky old bed—yet another dream of the red eye of Fyre still vivid in his mind—and remembered that it was the last day of his vacation.

  Septimus had enjoyed his time off far more than he had expected. He had spent the first few days at the Wizard Tower pottering about the Library with Rose and dutifully visiting Syrah—who still did not recognize him—in the Sick Bay, until Marcia had shooed him off and told him to take a break, Septimus. So he had come to stay at the Palace, much to Sarah’s delight. Soon he was hanging out with his brothers around their campfire on the riverbank, helping Silas to file his Magyk pamphlets, and spending time with Sarah in the herb garden. He had stayed over with Beetle and gone out with a bunch of scribes to the Little Theater in the Ramblings and had even ventured back to the Pyramid Library to visit Rose a few times. It was the very first time in his life that Septimus had been free to do what he pleased day after day, and he was sorry to think it was very nearly over.

  Septimus got out of bed and padded across the threadbare rugs to the window. He drew back the moth-eaten curtains and looked out of the window onto a dismal scene. Overnight it had rained, turning everything soggy and miserable, and now a watery mist hung in the air. Along Wizard Way piles of dirty snow and gritty, gray ice were heaped up; the only color was the Wizard Tower at the far end, which shone with its indigo morning Magyk lights flickering gently through the misty gloom.

  The Wizard Tower now had a strange twin: the Alchemie Chimney at the end of Alchemie Way. It sat in the middle of a large circular space, which people had begun calling by its old name, Alchemie Circus. The chimney was covered with a blue tarpaulin, which glistened with water and shone with its own, more basic lights—the lanterns that Lucy Gringe had had set up inside it to enable building work to continue all night. There were always a few onlookers but today Septimus saw that a fairly substantial crowd was gathered. Suddenly he heard the sound of Lucy Gringe yelling through a megaphone, “Stand back! Stand back! Will you all get out of the way!” There was a noise like thousands of flapping sheets, and the tarpaulin fell to the ground.

  This was greeted by cheers evenly balanced with boos. Now revealed, the Alchemie Chimney stood tall and oddly out of place. It looked to Septimus like a stranded lighthouse.

  Five minutes later, Septimus hurriedly looked into Sarah’s sitting room. Sarah and Sally were giggling by the fire. “I’m off, see you later,” he said.

  “Bye, love,” said Sarah. “Don’t forget, I’m cooking a special supper for your last night.”

  “I won’t. Bye, Mum, bye, Sally.”

  “Lovely lad,” said Sally, as Septimus closed the door.

  Septimus ran out of the Palace and headed up Alchemie Way, pleased that the mist—and Jo-Jo’s old Forest tunic that he had taken to wearing—meant that people would be unlikely to recognize him. Something told him that Marcia would not be happy about where he was heading. As Septimus reached Alchemie Circus, he caught sight of Lucy’s distinctive multicolored dress fluttering like a bright butterfly against the granite-gray stones of the base of the chimney. He weaved his way through the onlookers to get a closer look. The sound of Lucy making the scaffolders refold the tarpaulin reached him. “That’s rubbish. Do it again—and do it right this time!”

  Septimus was glad Lucy Gringe was not his boss—she made Marcia look like a softy.

  “Hey, little bro!” Lucy called out. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Septimus looked up at the chimney. Below the tracery of scaffolding, he saw stone cut so precisely that you could scarcely see the joints and above the stone, the neat circles of frostproof, heatproof and pretty-much-everything-proof brick began. The bricks were graded by size, getting smaller as they delicately traveled upward, each circle subtly different. “Brilliant!” Septimus called back.

  Lucy beamed with delight.

  Some lettering carved into the great granite slabs at the base of the chimney caught Septimus’s eye. There was the date, followed by:

  MARCELLUS PYE: LAST AND FIRST ALCHEMIST.

  SIMON HEAP: ALCHEMIE APPRENTICE.

  LUCY HEAP: ARCHITECT.

  HEATHER, ELIZABETH AND SAMSON SNARP: STONEMASONS AND LIGHTHOUSE BUILDERS.

  Septimus looked at the names for a few minutes, taking them in. There it was, set in stone—he was no longer anything to do with Marcellus. Or Alchemie. Or the Fyre. Where his name could have been, there was Simon’s.

  Lucy was so busy supervising the dismantling of the scaffolding that she did not notice Septimus wandering away disconsolately and disappearing into the shadows of Gold Button Drop. The mist in the Drop was thicker than in Alchemie Way. It settled around him like a blanket; it muffled the sound of his boots and set his Dragon Ring glowing in the dull light. The conical shape of the lock-up solidified out of the mist, flat at first like a cardboard cutout; then details came into view: the rough stone blocks, the dark arch of the door. And then he saw the door open and a black-and-red-cloaked figure emerge.

  “Marcellus!”

  “Ah, Septimus. Well, well, what a coincidence. I was on my way to find you.”

  Septimus brightened. “Really?”

  “Indeed.
The chimney is complete and we are about to bring the Fyre up to its operating level. I would like you to see this, so that when you become ExtraOrdinary Wizard—”

  “ExtraOrdinary Wizard?” said Septimus. “Me?”

  Marcellus smiled. “Yes, you. Do you not expect to be?”

  Shaken by seeing Simon’s name carved into the chimney, Septimus was full of regrets for Alchemie. He shook his head. “No. Oh—I don’t know.”

  “Well, just in case it turns out that way. I want the Fyre to be as much part of your life as it is part of mine or, indeed, Simon’s. I want you to trust it and understand it, so that never again does an ExtraOrdinary Wizard even think of killing the Fyre.”

  “I would never do that. Never,” said Septimus. “The Fyre is amazing. It makes everything, even the Wizard Tower, feel dull.”

  “Ah. But you have made your decision, Septimus.”

  “I know,” Septimus sighed. “And it’s set in stone.”

  Marcellus and Septimus took the climbing shaft and tunnel down to Alchemie Quay and then transferred to a much narrower and steeply sloping tunnel that wound its way in a spiral, down between the web of Ice Tunnels that radiated off from below the Chamber of Alchemie. It was over half an hour later that they reached the end of the tunnel where the upper Fyre hatch, illuminated by a Fyre Globe, lay.

  “This is but a short climb down, Apprentice,” said Marcellus. “But we must make it a fast one. This is the one point where we can be seen on the Live Plan. And I do not wish to be seen just yet. You do understand?”

  “Yes,” said Septimus a little guiltily.

  Marcellus placed his Alchemie Keye into the central indentation of the hatch and it sprang open. A waft of heat came up to meet them. Septimus waited while Marcellus swung himself into the shaft, then he quickly followed and pulled the hatch shut. He clambered down the metal ladder and waited while Marcellus opened the lower Fyre hatch, then dropped down after Marcellus onto the flimsy metal platform.