PathFinder

  Jenna resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at Septimus. She was twenty-one now, she told herself sternly, she was the Castle Queen and it would not do. Particularly now, she thought, as she looked at Septimus’s purple wool cloak lined with indigo fur and the thick gold-and-platinum belt he wore around his purple tunic, that he was the Castle’s ExtraOrdinary Wizard. Which Jenna—and even Septimus himself—still found hard to believe.

  Like those in the Circle on the beach below, Jenna was performing a MidSummer tradition. Every MidSummer Day for many thousands of years, Castle Queens had visited the Dragon Boat where she had lain in an ancient temple beneath the ground, hidden there by the Castle’s first-ever ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Hotep-Ra. But times changed and when Jenna was eleven years old, she and Septimus had flown the Dragon Boat back to the Castle. And now that Jenna was herself Queen and Septimus was able to freely visit Hotep-Ra, every MidSummer Day they took the Dragon Boat to see her old master, Hotep-Ra. It was a time both Jenna and Septimus looked forward to, a precious space where they could be themselves once more—just brother and sister, plain Jenna and Septimus Heap.

  This year was even more precious. Because Septimus was now ExtraOrdinary Wizard, he had been reluctant to go. However, the Castle Queen had insisted on it. Septimus still wore the gold-and-emerald Dragon Ring that made him master of the Dragon Boat, and therefore it was his duty, Jenna had told him sternly. And so Septimus had left behind an assortment of deputies in the Castle’s Wizard Tower—both ghostly and human—and hoped that everything would be all right.

  And now, as the orange ball of the sun turned the sky a luminous pink and a flight of ducks flew quacking across their path, Septimus laughed out loud. He was so pleased that Jenna had insisted.

  DISCOVERED

  Later, as Tod and Dan were wandering home along the beach, watching the early-morning sparkle of sunlight glancing off the MidSummer waves, Tod said, “Dad, why do you suppose Aunt Mitza was hiding in the dunes while we had our Circle?”

  “Was she?” Dan Moon looked at Tod uneasily.

  Tod nodded. “Yes. When everyone was waving at the Dragon Boat, I saw her get up and scurry away. And I know it was her, because she waddles like a duck. Like this.” Tod did an accurate impression of Aunt Mitza’s flat-footed walk, but Dan Moon was not amused.

  “You must respect your elders, Tod.”

  “But I don’t like her, Dad. And neither do you.”

  Dan Moon did not deny it. “Even so, Tod, you must give your mother’s stepsister respect. We must both show her hospitality.”

  Tod fell quiet. Her mother had died when she was only five and Tod knew that anything relating to her mother was precious to Dan—as it was to her, too. She knew that was the only reason that Dan had made Aunt Mitza welcome when she had turned up on the doorstep the previous week, expressing a wish to meet “her darling little step-niece” after all these years. But Aunt Mitza’s sharp-eyed looks when Dan was not around had not endeared her to Tod. Unlike Dan, she drew the line at Aunt Mitza. Tod could not believe her mother had ever liked her stepsister, and she was sure that her mother would not have tolerated Aunt Mitza eavesdropping on their secrets.

  “But Aunt Mitza was listening in on our Circle, Dad,” said Tod. “She heard our secret—the one we all promised never to tell. That’s not respecting us, is it? Or our hospitality. Or Mum.”

  Dan Moon frowned. “What’s heard is heard. It can’t be undone. But you are right, Tod. She has not respected your mother. Tomorrow I will ask her to leave.”

  But it wasn’t Mitza who left the next day. It was Dan.

  PART II

  THE HOUSE OF FORYX

  The Dragon Boat flew steadily eastward. She knew the way perfectly, and all Jenna and Septimus needed to do was to watch the world going by and eat their way through the first picnic basket. It was late morning when they saw the grim fortress where Hotep-Ra lived. The octagonal granite towers of the House of Foryx, dark against the perpetual snow that surrounded them, reared up from a pillar of rock surrounded by an abyss. Both Jenna and Septimus shivered—the House of Foryx was an eerie place.

  The Dragon Boat flew lower. She circled the House of Foryx once, then her long neck dipped down and she went in to land. Jenna shut her eyes—this part always scared her. The Dragon Boat was heading for a wide, white terrace of marble, and even though Jenna knew it would be all right, it felt as if they were about to crash into solid stone. But as the Dragon Boat’s keel touched down, the marble changed into a milky liquid and they landed softly with a long, low shishhhh.

  Septimus brushed down his purple robes and tightened his gold-and-platinum ExtraOrdinary Wizard belt. This was the first time he had met Hotep-Ra in his role as ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and he wanted to look his best.

  Jenna put the landing ladder over the side and gave Septimus a hug. “You’ve got the Questing Stone?” she asked—as she always did.

  “Jen, don’t be a pest. Of course I do.”

  “Show me,” Jenna insisted, remembering the one terrifying day that Septimus had left the Questing Stone in the boat. She had gone racing after him with it and had only just reached him in time.

  Septimus put his hand in his pocket and held out an iridescent black stone, round and smooth, with a gold “Q” set into it. He flipped it over and showed her Hotep-Ra’s own symbol Magykally incised into the back. This was Septimus’s key to freedom; it allowed him to come out of the House of Foryx safely back into his own Time.

  “Good,” said Jenna. “Nervous?”

  Septimus gave Jenna a strained smile. “A bit,” he admitted. “I’m wondering if I might see him—I mean, me—this time.”

  “Do you think you might?”

  “Yeah, I do. When I did see me—I mean, him—my robes looked really new.”

  “It will be fine,” Jenna said reassuringly. “Just don’t touch him—I mean, you. That’s the important thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And I didn’t touch him or me then, so I know it’s okay. Well, it was then. But who knows, maybe it will be different this time. Right, here goes. I’ll see you in a sec.” With that, Septimus swung himself onto the ladder and a few moments later was hurrying off across the marble terrace toward the forbidding gray fortress.

  Jenna watched him stride up to a towering door made from great planks of ebony held together with iron bars and rivets. It looked, she thought, like the door to a prison—and it was, in a way. The House of Foryx, built by Hotep-Ra, was the place where All Times Do Meet. Here in the house, Time stood still, like a hub at the center of a spinning wheel. And although those in the House of Foryx were free to leave whenever they chose, they could not choose the Time in which they would appear. Only a person in possession of a completed Questing Stone could do this—and Septimus had the only one.

  A flurry of snow swept across the terrace, and through it Jenna saw Septimus reach up and tug the bellpull. She saw the door open and the little batlike doorman step aside to let him pass. Then the door closed and Septimus was gone.

  Jenna hated this part of their visit; she was always afraid she would never see Septimus again. To take her mind off things, she set about rigging up a red-and-gold awning over the Dragon Boat. Then when Septimus came out, however hard the snow might fall, however chill the wind might blow, they would sit with Hotep-Ra under the awning and have the lunch that she had brought. This was how it always went, and this, she told herself, was how it would be today.

  DOPPELGÄNGER

  Inside the House of Foryx, Septimus found himself in a small lobby with a black-and-white checkerboard floor and a striking chair carved in the shape of a dragon. He pushed open the lobby door—which always opened more easily than he expected it to—and hurtled into the vast candlelit entrance hall. He stood for a moment to collect his thoughts and breathed in the strange, stagnant air of the place where All Times Do Meet. The entrance hall was wreathed in candle smoke and crowded with people milling around, some plucking up the courage to go out, some disorien
ted by having just—or so it felt to them—come in, but most of them in a Timeless daze, hardly knowing who or where they were anymore.

  Septimus could see little through the smoky haze that always hung around this place, but as he pushed his way through the crowd he could not help but glance anxiously up to the balustraded landing above. His heart missed a beat—he was there. His younger, fourteen-year-old self was up on the landing, staring down at him in dismay. Septimus gulped. Soon he would meet himself, just as he had done seven years previously. Since that meeting he had learned many things about meeting oneself in an earlier time—that one must not touch the other; that one may speak but not the other; that, above all, he must not change anything whatsoever about the meeting that had, for him, already happened and had made him who he was right then. As Septimus began to climb the stairs toward his past, there was so much he wanted to say to the fourteen-year-old Septimus. He wished he’d said more, but at least, he thought, he had managed to blurt out the most important thing of all.

  The wide, sweeping staircase curved elegantly upward. As he climbed higher the candle smoke cleared and Septimus looked up, straight into the eyes of . . . himself. Septimus saw that his younger self was now shaking hands with Hotep-Ra; now he was turning to go and looking just as spooked as his present self felt.

  Two steps below Hotep-Ra, both the Septimuses stopped.

  They must not touch. The older Septimus held up his hands to stop the younger from coming closer. He tried to appear cool and in control but he came across, he thought, like a prized dillop. He had thought that then and he thought it now.

  One may speak but not the other. “Whoa,” he said. “Don’t speak. Bit dangerous, Timewise, apparently. I wondered when we’d meet—if it might be this Time.” He was pleased that everything seemed to be going just as he remembered it had seven years back. “Marcia’s fine,” he said. “And that is all you want to know right now.”

  The young Septimus gave him a relieved half smile, hesitated, then ran off down the stairs. Septimus watched himself in his scruffy green Apprentice robes thread his way through the crowded hall below.

  He must not change anything whatsoever. He waited for himself to glance back up and then he waved. The young Septimus returned his wave and was gone. Out to another Time, out to a different world.

  GOING OUT

  There are many things that a brand-new ExtraOrdinary Wizard will want to ask the very first ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and Septimus was no exception. He spent what felt to him like many hours of House of Foryx Time with Hotep-Ra up in the old Wizard’s rooms. When at last Septimus had asked all his questions, Hotep-Ra said eagerly, “I think it is time for lunch, do you not, Septimus?” Hotep-Ra had become rather fond of the picnics that Jenna made.

  The two ExtraOrdinary Wizards threaded their way through the crowds of the hazy entrance hall and went into the lobby. The dragon chair was now occupied by a striking girl dressed in white furs. Septimus noticed she had brilliant blue fingernails and her white-blond hair was dressed in tiny braids gathered into a thick ponytail. The girl sprang to her feet and grabbed hold of Septimus’s arm. “Tell me, please,” she said in a heavily accented voice. “You are the man with the Magyk stone, aren’t you? You always go out into the Time you came in?”

  Septimus clutched the Questing Stone tightly in his hand, afraid that the girl might try to grab it. “Yes, I am. And I do.”

  The girl looked deep into Septimus’s eyes. He was mesmerized. “Please, oh please, I beg of you,” she said. “Take me Out.”

  Hotep-Ra did not like the prospect of his precious lunch with his Dragon Boat and his favorite Queen being disrupted. “Madam, you are in no need of being ‘Taken Out,’ as you put it. You are free to leave at any time.”

  The girl glared at the old man. “I don’t want any Time. I want his Time.”

  Septimus knew how the girl felt. He, too, had once been terrified of which Time he would step out into, but it was a terror that Hotep-Ra would never understand. “Of course you may Come Out with me,” he said. “It would be a pleasure.” He would have offered her his arm, but she already had it.

  TAXI

  Jenna was still trying to put up the awning when she saw Septimus emerge from the House of Foryx with—who was that? Jenna frowned. What was Septimus thinking, bringing someone—some new girlfriend, no doubt—to intrude on their precious time together? From the expression on Hotep-Ra’s face she could see that the ancient Wizard was no happier about it than she was.

  Their guest introduced herself as the Snow Princess Driffa, the Most High and Bountiful. “But I am known to my friends,” she said, settling down in the Dragon Boat and kicking off her fur boots to reveal long white feet with bright blue toenails, “as Driffa.” She bestowed a glittering smile on her three companions. “And I hope that you will consider yourselves as my friends.”

  “Of course we will,” said Septimus. Jenna and Hotep-Ra smiled icily.

  Hotep-Ra thawed a little at the sight of the salmon mousse and elderflower champagne, but he said little—the Snow Princess spoke enough words for them all. She told them how she had gone to the House of Foryx to find an ancestor who had asked her to meet her there. After giving her a frightening message, her great-great (and then some) grandmother had told Driffa to wait for “a beautiful blond young man in purple who had a Magyk stone.” Driffa had waited for what felt like centuries until Septimus had at last appeared.

  The Snow Princess put her thin white hand on Septimus’s and said, “I can never thank you enough for Going Out with me. Never.” Driffa reclined languidly, so that snowflakes fell onto her upturned face. She breathed in deeply. “Ah,” she murmured. “I had forgotten the smell of snow.”

  Septimus gazed at Driffa, entranced. Hotep-Ra and Jenna exchanged exasperated glances.

  Hotep-Ra did not linger. Jenna was waving him good-bye, watching the dark door of the House of Foryx close upon the old Wizard once more, when she heard Septimus saying, “It would be our pleasure to take you home, Driffa. I have always wanted to see the Eastern SnowPlains.”

  Jenna bit back a retort of Since when? and gave Septimus one of her Queenly disapproving stares. It had no effect.

  The Snow Princess Driffa, the Most High and Bountiful, was not a good passenger. She spent most of the journey lying prone on the deck of the Dragon Boat, groaning loudly. She protested whenever Jenna roused her to ask for directions, and when she looked out to see where they were, she was promptly sick over the side. “All down the lovely gold leaf,” Jenna complained to Septimus. It took two swelteringly hot days and two bitterly cold nights to reach the Eastern SnowPlains. Night was falling when they at last reached the place that the Snow Princess recognized as home—a high snow-covered plain surrounded by mountains, where the air was thin and the wind blew with a low-pitched moan.

  “There! I see it. Our Blue Pinnacle!” Driffa called out.

  Septimus and Jenna peered out through the snow clouds and glimpsed what looked like a spire of pure lapis lazuli shooting up from the snow. Then the snow closed in and everything became a dull white once more.

  Driffa turned to Septimus, her dark blue eyes shining with excitement. “Can you not feel its wonderful Enchantment?”

  Septimus could feel an Enchantment, but he would not have called it wonderful. It felt Darke to him. Unwilling to upset the Snow Princess, he used the opaque Wizard-talk that he had recently acquired to get him out of situations he did not entirely understand. “I am sure there is many a wonderful Enchantment in this enchanting place.”

  “Oh,” said Driffa, and she blushed.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Jenna muttered under her breath. Ever since Septimus’s longtime girlfriend Rose had dumped him for a certain scribe named Foxy, Septimus had turned into what Jenna considered to be an outrageous flirt.

  The glimpse of the Blue Pinnacle—Enchanted or otherwise—was enough to guide the Snow Princess home. As the Dragon Boat dropped down through the clouds they caught a brief
glimpse of beautiful snow-covered towers soaring up from the foothills and the welcoming glow of lanterns strung out along delicate walkways, but then a blizzard came howling in and they were lost from view.

  There was nowhere for the Dragon Boat to land, but Septimus took her down until she was hovering a few feet above the snow. Jenna threw out the landing ladder and slipped into graceful-Queen mode, something she was extremely good at after seven years’ practice. “Snow Princess Driffa, the Most High and Bountiful,” she said. “It was our pleasure and privilege to return you to your beautiful country. We wish you much happiness among your kin. Farewell.”

  Determined to outdo Jenna’s speech, the Snow Princess replied, “Oh, Castle Queen and ExtraOrdinary Wizard, you are truly the most generous of beings and I thank you from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. May your snowfall be soft and your skies be blue. May the Grula-Grula guide you true.”

  Septimus was puzzled at the mention of “Grula-Grula.” He wanted to ask the Snow Princess what she meant, but one look at Jenna’s expression told him that his Castle Queen wanted their passenger gone. Obediently, Septimus helped the Snow Princess onto the ladder. She held his hand for as long as possible and then she dropped down into the soft snow below and was gone, her white furs blending into the blizzard.

  “I hope she will be all right,” Septimus said.

  “People like that usually are,” Jenna observed.

  Septimus took the Dragon Boat low across the center of the SnowPlain to take another look at the intriguing Blue Pinnacle. As they drew near, the clouds briefly parted.