SandRider

by Angie Sage

  Tod slowly climbed the wide white marble steps that led up to the silver doors of the Wizard Tower. She spoke the Password, the doors swung open and Tod stepped into the Great Hall with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  She wasn’t looking forward to seeing Septimus at all. She really wasn’t.

  DARIUS WRENN

  Kaznim gazed up at a sign that read: The Magykal Manuscriptorium and Spell Checkers Incorporated. Kaznim was a little disappointed. She had been expecting a building as big, shiny and Magykal as the Wizard Tower, but found herself outside a small, insignificant shop. She stared in the window, which was piled high with books and had a handwritten sign plastered across it proclaiming:

  PROUD SPONSOR OF THE ANNUAL MANUSCRIPTORIUM SLED RACES.

  WE ARE CLOSED THIS AFTERNOON FOR THE RACING.

  PLEASE NOTE: NO BETS ARE TAKEN ON THESE PREMISES.

  Kaznim got rid of her UnSeen, took a deep breath and pushed the shop door. It opened with a friendly ping and she walked into a long, narrow office. Sitting on a pile of books opposite the door was a nasty-looking fat little ghost dressed in blue robes trimmed with faded gold. The ghost—the previous Chief Hermetic Scribe who went by the name of Jillie Djinn—glared at her and said, “What do you want, little girl?”

  Kaznim had grown up with many spiteful Sand Spirits and knew well enough not to answer back. Careful to avoid catching the ghost’s dark little eyes, she headed toward the large desk at the end of the office where a small boy sat, almost hidden behind it. He was nervously chewing the end of his pen.

  The boy’s name was Darius Wrenn. He was ten years old and small for his age. His short spiky, fair hair stuck out as though in shock, and his dark brown eyes had a permanently worried expression, which was accentuated by his nervous tic of blinking rapidly. Darius was from the Port orphanage and had recently been picked for the Early Starters Scheme at the Manuscriptorium. He wasn’t enjoying the experience at all and that week was the worst so far. He was on duty in the front office, which scared him because anyone at all could walk in, and now the Chief Hermetic Scribe had gone to inspect the racecourse and left him all on his own.

  “Just be helpful,” Beetle had told Darius, rather unhelpfully. “Oh, and if any scribes bring in their younger brothers and sisters to show off where they work—which they are allowed to do today—you must make sure that there are no running games between the desks. But remember, today is the day when we want to make people feel that this is their Manuscriptorium and that we are here to help them with anything we possibly can. If someone asks for something you don’t understand, ask Foxy.” With that the Chief Hermetic Scribe was out of the door before Darius had time to tell him that Foxy was out on the racecourse too. In fact, everyone was out. As Beetle had closed the door, Darius thought its ping was the loneliest, scariest sound that he had ever heard. He sat behind the big office desk, shivering with the cold and dreading who might come in and expect him to help them.

  And so when the door ping announced Kaznim, Darius was very relieved to see someone who was actually a bit smaller and younger than he was. He blinked nervously and in a shy squeak repeated what he’d been told to say. “Good morning. How may I help you?”

  Kaznim was not sure how to begin. “Um. I’ve got this,” she said, and pushed the much-folded blue piece of paper across the desk to Darius. He looked at it for barely a second—Darius could read a whole page in a single glance.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It is from here?” Kaznim asked nervously.

  “Yes,” Darius said. He was not sure if he was allowed to talk about the papers. The Chief and various scribes had told him so many different things. He looked anxiously at the ghost of Jillie Djinn. The ghost seemed unusually friendly. She nodded reassuringly and Darius’s confidence returned. He smiled at Kaznim.

  Encouraged, Kaznim asked, “Do you know the place where it went to?”

  Darius remembered the excitement when Foxy and the Chief had returned from their amazing journey. They had not stayed long, but Beetle had made sure he knew where they—and the leaflets—had ended up. “We want to know where our first international customers come from,” he had said, laughing.

  “The Port of the Singing Sands,” Darius told Kaznim proudly.

  “Oh!” Kaznim gasped. “I live in the Desert of the Singing Sands.”

  Darius’s eyes widened. “Wow. That’s a long way away.”

  Kaznim bit back tears. “I know.”

  Darius possessed one precious book in the orphanage. It was called The Wonders of the Seven Sands. It had his father’s name written inside it, lots of small dark type and three beautiful colored pictures of people in long robes and desert tents. Whenever Darius felt cold in the orphanage—which was often—all he had to do was to open the book and he was warm again. “I love deserts,” Darius said dreamily. “And tents.”

  “I live in a tent,” Kaznim said.

  “Wow . . .”

  “It has stars all over it.”

  “Beautiful . . .”

  “It is. And my mother—she’s an Apothecary—she works there, and . . . I miss her. I just . . . I just want to go home.”

  Darius was speechless. He would want to go home too if he lived with his mother in the middle of a nice warm desert. Darius could just about remember his mother, although he tried not to. It made him too sad.

  “But I don’t know how to get home,” Kaznim was saying. “I thought you might be able to help me. I thought you might know the way.”

  Darius did not answer straightaway. He was thinking about how he would so much rather live in a tent than the Manuscriptorium, which was just like the orphanage—full of rules that he did not understand.

  Kaznim took Darius’s silence as a refusal. She remembered how her mother had told her that if you wanted something from an official you must give a gift to show that you were serious about wanting it. So she reached deep into her secret pocket, took out the Egg Timer and showed it to Darius.

  Darius’s eyes widened. He had never seen anything so small and yet so perfectly made. “That’s beautiful,” he said.

  “It’s for you,” Kaznim said. “To show you how much I want to go home.” And she pushed the Egg Timer across the desk. With a feeling of wonder, Darius picked it up.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s an Egg Timer,” Kaznim said.

  Darius thought it was far too beautiful to be given away. “I can’t take it,” he said.

  Kaznim’s face fell. “Don’t you like it?” she asked.

  “Of course I like it,” Darius said. “But it’s yours.”

  “I want you to have it,” Kaznim told him. “Because I want you to tell me the way home. Please. I . . . I miss my mother so much.”

  That did it for Darius. If someone knew a way for him to find his mother again, he would be devastated if they did not tell him. “All right then, I’ll tell you,” he said. “I can remember the numbers. If you like, I could write down the Ways to your home?”

  “Oh, yes, please,” said Kaznim.

  Darius closed his eyes and the numbers he needed were there, as clear as if they were in front of him on a piece of paper. He dipped his beautiful new Manuscriptorium pen into the inkpot and carefully wrote out a series of symbols, II-X-IV-I-XI-X-V-III-IV-VIII, onto Kaznim’s precious blue paper. He pushed the paper across the desk with a smile. “There,” he said.

  Kaznim was horribly disappointed. These were Way numbers. Even if she could get through the Hidden arch in the Wizard Tower courtyard she could get no farther than the Sealed Hub beyond. “They’re no use to me,” she said miserably. “Everything’s Sealed.”

  “Not here,” Darius said proudly. “We have a Way here, and the Chief wouldn’t allow it to be Sealed. You can go anywhere in the world from here.”

  At that moment Romilly Badger came through the Manuscriptorium door. Darius looked up and shoved the Egg Timer guiltily into his pocket. Romilly gave Darius a stern look. “I
hope you’re not talking about what I think you are, Darius,” she said.

  “No!” said Darius quickly. “No, I’m not.”

  “Good. Remember your Promise, now.”

  “Yes . . . yes, I will,” Darius said, blushing bright red. Romilly eyed the two children and decided they could not get up to much harm. She was already late for her duties on the racecourse. The ping of the closing door brought Darius back to reality. With Romilly’s words ringing in his ears, Darius realized what he had just done—he had broken the Manuscriptorium Promise.

  Darius thought fast. He had to get the numbers back, but one look at Kaznim tightly clutching her blue paper told him that it would not be easy. “I, er, I think I made a mistake in one of the numbers,” he said. “I’ll just fix it, shall I?”

  Kaznim was not fooled. She saw Darius’s flustered expression and she knew he was lying, just like everyone else in the horrible Castle. “No!” she said.

  Desperation made Darius Wrenn brave. He raced around to the front of the desk and snatched the paper. Kaznim grabbed it back and gave Darius a shove, sending him flying backward. But Darius was not giving up. One thing he had learned in the orphanage was how to fight. He ran straight at Kaznim and dived at her knees. Kaznim neatly stepped to one side and Darius crashed into the pile of books on which the ghost was sitting, watching the fight with some amusement. The books cascaded onto the floor and the ghost leaped up and set about kicking Darius. The kicks Passed Through him and Darius felt nothing, but it is always a frightening experience to be kicked by a ghost. Darius, however, was not to be deflected. He struggled to his feet and ran at Kaznim, who was heading rapidly for the door. He grabbed her shoulder and Kaznim swung around and punched him on the nose. It was the most painful thing that had ever happened to Darius. Ever. His hands flew to his face and he felt the wet warmth of blood streaming onto his palms.

  As Darius stood clutching his nose, overwhelmed by pain, he did not notice the ghost of Jillie Djinn beckoning Kaznim to follow her into the Manuscriptorium. The next thing Darius did notice was the discrete ping of the door as the Chief Hermetic Scribe came back from his inspection of the racecourse.

  Beetle stared at the books strewn across the floor and Darius with his hands over his face and blood dripping through his fingers. “What on earth is going on?” he asked.

  Darius stared at his boss in dismay. Two fat tears ran down his cheeks and joined the drops of blood dripping onto the floor.

  Beetle knew he should not have left such a new and timid scribe alone. “Hey,” he said, putting his arm around Darius. “Don’t take it to heart. It gets a bit rough here on race day. Were they the big boys from Gothyk Grotto?”

  Darius shook his head. “It was a little girl,” he whispered.

  “A little girl?” To Darius’s chagrin, Beetle sounded amused. “Well, I must admit, we do have some fierce ones in the Castle. Never mind, Darius. I’ve just got the sled lane order to sort out and then we’ll lock up for the day. Okay? And you can have a nice glass of FizzFroot. How about that?”

  Darius nodded and managed a weak smile. He didn’t like FizzFroot—all the bubbles went up his nose and it tasted weird—but Darius didn’t care. The girl had run away and the Chief Hermetic Scribe was never going to find out what he’d done. And he had a really cute Egg Timer, too.

  THE MANUSCRIPTORIUM WAY

  The ghost of Jillie Djinn took Kaznim through a dimly lit room full of high desks and down some stairs. At the bottom of the stairs were some swing doors where the ghost paused, put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Shh. I will show you how to go home, but you must be quiet and take care no one sees you. There are bad people down here.”

  Wide-eyed, Kaznim nodded. She could believe that.

  “So push the doors, then,” the ghost said testily.

  Tentatively, Kaznim pushed. The doors swung open so easily that Kaznim very nearly fell through and then, to her horror, they swung back so fast that they hit the ghost in the face. Aghast, Kaznim waited for the ghost to yell at her and bring the bad people running. But the ghost managed a strained smile and beckoned Kaznim onward.

  Kaznim followed the dumpy, shimmering figure in dark blue along a wide white corridor with a line of hissing white lights on the ceiling. It felt very exposed. There were workrooms—none of them with doors—opening off the corridor. They all appeared to be uninhabited, containing only a table with a selection of objects indicating various projects in progress: glass cases, piles of paper, pots, brushes, small tools and, in one room, a large press. Kaznim would have liked to have stopped and looked, but she remembered what the ghost had said about the bad people and tiptoed carefully by, checking each room as she did.

  To Kaznim’s shock, the very last room before the corridor turned a corner was occupied. A boy with curly red hair was watching a strangely misshapen creature swathed in white doing something at a workbench. They had their backs to the corridor but as Kaznim tiptoed by, the boy noticed the movement and turned around. Kaznim froze. The boy looked very odd; he was wearing thick magnifying spectacles through which his eyes looked like huge blue marbles. He looked surprised and said, “Oh! Queen Jenna!”

  The boy was Oskar Sarn. He pulled off his magnifying spectacles and hurried out to the corridor to see if the Queen was lost and he could be of any help. But all Oskar saw was a small girl in a long red coat. He thought nothing of it—the Manuscriptorium was full of scribes’ younger brothers and sisters that day. Oskar put his spectacles back on and returned to helping the Conservation, Preservation, and Protection Scribe, Ephaniah Grebe, put together a particularly complicated automaton.

  The ghost of Jillie Djinn was waiting at the turn of the corridor, tapping her foot impatiently. “Hurry up,” she said to Kaznim.

  Kaznim did not need to be told. The boy had scared her and she was around the corner in seconds. To Kaznim’s relief, the wide, exposed brightness now gave way to the dimness of rushlights and narrow brick-lined corridors. Now the ghost picked up speed, seeming to almost fly along the passageways. The light grew ever dimmer as the rushlights became spaced farther apart, and Kaznim had to concentrate hard to pick out the dark blue robes from the shadows.

  After a reckless dash down some steep stone steps, Kaznim found the ghost waiting for her in front of an iron door with four massive bolts drawn across it. “Now, little girl, first we need the key. It is hidden behind that loose brick there. No . . . down there. Where I am pointing, child.” The ghost sighed impatiently.

  Kaznim scrabbled at the brick and managed to free it. Behind was a long, thin key.

  “Very well,” said the ghost. “Now take out that brick up there. No . . . there. Goodness, do you not have eyes?”

  Flustered by the ghost’s impatience, Kaznim fumbled awkwardly with the second brick, which she had to stand on tiptoe to reach. But she was determined to do it. At last she pulled the brick out and saw a metal plate with a keyhole set behind it.

  “Put the key in there and turn three times to the right very quickly, then four times to the left,” the ghost told her.

  Kaznim did as she was told and she felt a mechanism inside the door shift.

  The ghost seemed pleased. “The bolts are free now,” she said. Kaznim went to open the lowest bolt but the ghost stopped her. “No, little girl. Did your mother never teach you to tidy up? Put the key back and the bricks. Leave it as you found it.”

  Kaznim hated how the ghost talked about her mother but she said nothing. Meekly, she put the key and then the bricks back and waited.

  “Well, get on with it then,” the ghost said snappily. “Pull the bolts back. You’ve only got . . . ooh, let’s see, about fifty seconds now until they lock themselves again.”

  Kaznim was horrified. She wrenched at the bolts—which luckily were freshly oiled and moved easily—and the door swung open.

  Behind it was a brick wall.

  Kaznim felt utterly wretched. “There’s just a wall,” she said.

  “Ah. So
you don’t really want to go home,” the ghost said. “I thought as much.”

  “But I do want to go home,” Kaznim protested, very nearly in tears. “I do, I do!”

  “Well, go through there then,” the ghost said.

  “Through the wall?”

  The ghost looked annoyed. “Through the arch,” she said, stabbing an impatient finger at the wall.

  “Arch?” asked Kaznim. She stared at the blank wall, willing the tears to go away.

  “But you can’t see it, can you, little girl?” the ghost taunted.

  Kaznim remembered what Marwick had told her about Hidden arches: If you want to see them badly enough, you will. With practice. In time. There was no doubt in Kaznim’s mind that she wanted to see this arch very badly indeed, but she had no time to practice. It had to happen right now. So she stretched her arms out, placed both hands onto the rough brick and imagined she was Marwick—Marwick, who could see the Hidden arches and who traveled the Ways as easily as if they were desert paths. At last, after the longest twenty seconds in Kaznim’s life, she began to see the shimmering shape of an arch glowing through the brick. Elated, she said, “I see it! I see it!”

  “Be quiet, little girl,” the ghost said. “The bad people will hear. Now show me your blue paper.”

  Keeping a very tight grip on her precious piece of paper, Kaznim held it up. The ghost peered at it closely. “See the first symbol on the list that that silly little boy wrote for you?”

  Kaznim nodded.

  “That is the number two, which is this arch here. You just follow the symbols and you get home. Understand?”

  Kaznim understood more than Jillie Djinn realized. She understood that the ghost was taking a delight in not explaining the Ways properly and she correctly suspected that although the ghost clearly wanted Kaznim to Go Through the Manuscriptorium Way, it was for some nasty reason of her own, not because she wanted to help her. The fat little ghost was, Kaznim thought, as unpleasant as everyone else in the nasty Castle—except for Sam and Marwick. They were the only people she was sorry to be leaving. Kaznim knew that Marwick would have honored his promise to take her home. But she also knew that was not going to be for some time, and she wanted to go home right now.