by Angie Sage
From the Front Office of the Manuscriptorium, Beetle, who was showing his new clerk how to operate the Day Book, saw Marcellus and Simon stride angrily by. A few minutes later he saw Septimus chase down Wizard Way. Some minutes after that he saw Marcellus and Simon walking swiftly back, with Septimus beside them. A few seconds later the Manuscriptorium door crashed open, and Septimus came into the Front Office, breathless.
“Beetle!” said Septimus, and then, seeing that Beetle was with a scribe, Septimus thought he should be more formal. “Chief Scribe. The ExtraOrdinary Wizard requests your presence. At once.”
Beetle looked surprised. “Yes. Of course. I’ll come right now.” He turned to his new clerk, Moira Mole. “Moira, when’s my next appointment?”
Moira looked at the Day Book. “Not until two thirty, Chief. It’s Mr. Larry.”
Beetle’s ex-employer had taken to booking appointments to discuss the finer points of translation. Beetle was not at all sorry to miss him. “Moira, I’m going to the Wizard Tower. If I’m not back by then please give Larry my apologies.”
“Okay, Chief.” Moira smiled.
“Any problems, ask Foxy.”
“Will do.”
Moira Mole—a plump girl with short, dark curly hair, and tiny bottle-glass spectacles perched on her nose—watched Beetle and Septimus leave. She peered around the Front Office nervously. She hoped no one else came in.
But at two o’clock Marissa turned up. Marissa scared Moira. She reminded her of the big girls at school who used to pinch her when no one was looking. Moira told herself that she was not at school anymore and, more comfortingly, there was a big desk between her and Marissa. Moira asked Marissa what she wanted but all Marissa would say was: “I want to ask Beetle something.” Moira told her she didn’t know when he would be back but, to her dismay, Marissa declared that she would wait.
At two fifteen, two rats knocked on the Manuscriptorium window. Moira recognized one of them as Stanley, head of the Rat Office. The other rat, a little smaller and a lot leaner, she did not recognize. She let them in and they jumped onto the Day Book on the Front Office desk. Moira hoped they had wiped their feet on the way in.
Moira was gaining confidence. Marissa was sitting on a wobbly stool pretending to be interested in an old pamphlet. Moira had the comfortable chair and important things to do. And now she had a Message Rat.
“Speeke, Rattus Rattus.” Moira said the words with such aplomb that no one would have guessed she had never said them before.
Stanley prodded the smaller rat. “Go on, Florence. Do what the Office Clerk says.”
The small rat looked nervous and squeaked.
“Go on,” urged Stanley. “No need to be shy. You can’t be a Message Rat and be shy, Florence.” Stanley looked at Moira apologetically. “Sorry,” he said. “Staff training.”
“Of course,” said Moira with the air of one who knew all about the problems of staff training. “Shall I say it again?”
“Oh, yes, please.”
Moira looked at Florence, who was staring at her feet in embarrassment. “Speeke, Rattus Rattus.”
“Come on now, Florence,” Stanley said sternly. “Or I won’t bring you out again. You will have to stay in the office and do the filing.”
Florence gulped and took a deep breath. “First . . . I have to ask . . . er . . . is William Fox here?”
“Who? Oh, Foxy. Wait a mo, I’ll go and get him.” Moira disappeared into the Manuscriptorium and returned with Foxy.
“Is that him?” Florence whispered to Stanley.
“Now, Florence, I won’t always be here to ask, will I? You must ask him yourself.”
“So it is him?”
“Possibly. But you have to ask.”
“First . . .” squeaked Florence, “I have to ask . . . er . . . is William Fox here?”
“Yep, that’s me,” said Foxy.
There was a silence broken by Stanley. “Go on, Florence.”
Florence gulped. She stood up tall and took a deep breath. “Message begins: ‘Foxy. Please close the Manuscriptorium immediately and initiate LockDown. Keep enough scribes with you to guard all entrances and send the rest home, right now. Let no one in, even if you recognize them. If it is me, I will give the password. If I don’t, don’t let me in. Keep LockDown active until I return. This message is sent from O. Beetle Beetle. Chief Hermetic Scribe. PS: don’t worry.’ Message ends.”
“Don’t worry . . .” said Foxy. “Yikes.” And then remembering the Message Rats, he said, “Thank you. Message received and understood.”
Stanley nudged Florence again.
“Oh!” said Florence. “Um . . . I regret that we are not at liberty to take a reply. The sender’s whereabouts are confidential.”
“Okay,” said Foxy. “Thanks anyway.”
“Well done, Florence,” said Stanley. He looked at Foxy and Moira. “Thank you for your patience,” he said. The rats jumped down from the desk and Moira held the door open for them to leave.
Foxy sat down in the Front Office chair with a thump. “Jeez,” he said. “That was the most scary message I have ever heard.”
Marissa, however, was rather excited by the message. “Can I stay too?” she asked.
Foxy was not sure. “Well, I don’t know. Beetle said scribes.”
“Oh, please let me. You never know, I might be useful. I am a witch, you know.”
“I thought you’d given all that up,” said Foxy disapprovingly.
“Yeah, I have. But you know what they say, once a witch, always a witch.”
Foxy reckoned that a witch might actually come in handy. “Okay,” he said.
“Bother,” said Moira, who was looking out of the door, watching the rats run off. “Larry’s on his way.”
Marissa jumped to her feet. “I’ll get rid of Larry for you, shall I?”
“Oh, yes, please,” said Foxy and Moira in unison.
Marissa shot out of the door. Foxy and Moira didn’t know what Marissa did, but Larry never appeared. Half an hour later most of the scribes had gone home and a very nervous Foxy was starting the LockDown—a procedure that, as deputy, Foxy had had to learn. Foxy’s hands shook as he peered at the new LockDown protocol that Beetle had worked out from some faded old documents, but with the help of Romilly Badger, Partridge, Moira Mole and Marissa, Foxy managed to get through to the end.
“I think it’s called battening down the hatches,” said Moira, who came from a fishing family. “It’s what you do when a storm is coming.”
Foxy had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t like storms.
27
MYSTERY READING
Up in the Pyramid Library a crisis meeting was in progress. Although it was only early afternoon, the windows were shuttered and the Library was dark except for a single candle that burned on a large desk in the center of the room. Gathered around the desk were Marcia Overstrand and the two people—Septimus and Beetle—and the one ghost in the Castle whom she trusted implicitly. There were also two other people she trusted less implicitly but had been persuaded to include by Alther.
“We have a problem,” she said. “And it could be a big one.”
The candle flame flickered in the air currents that circulated around the Library, wafting in through tiny vents in its golden roof. Marcia’s green eyes, sparkling in the light, were worried. “Two things I don’t understand: First, how did those idiot Heaps break the Seal? Second, they were on Seal Watch at half past midnight, so what happened between then and when I discovered them? And why can’t we find them? Search and Rescue should have easily tracked them down by now. I just don’t get it.”
“That’s three things, Marcia,” Alther pointed out.
“What?”
“Nothing. Sorry, just being pedantic.”
“Alther, can’t you at least try to be helpful?” Marcia was still annoyed with Alther for insisting they include Marcellus and Simon.
Alther floated around the end of the desk a
nd settled himself onto an empty shelf. “I’ve been going to the Mystery Readings recently—you know, in the Little Theater in the Ramblings. They read a mystery story every week.”
Marcia looked confused. If Alther had still been alive she would have suspected that he was going a little peculiar, but that could not happen to a ghost. A ghost remained as sane—or crazy—as he or she was on the day they entered ghosthood. And Alther had been absolutely fine on that day.
Marcia impatiently tapped the end of her pencil on the desk. “Well, Alther, I’m glad you are getting out and about. Now, please, we must get on.”
“Yes, quite. So you see, every Mystery Reading begins with the audience being told a mystery—”
“Alther, enough!”
“Marcia, be patient. I am trying to explain. The person on stage tells us the mystery. Then two more people appear. One is clever, and the other is . . . well, not so clever, shall we say. The not-so-clever person is involved in the mystery in some way but they don’t understand the significance of what they know or have seen. So the clever person makes the not-so-clever person tell them every little detail that happened. And then the clever person works out the solution purely from what the not-so-clever person has told them. Or even gets the not-so-clever person to work it out for themselves. It’s very interesting.”
Marcia looked displeased. “I think I know where this is going.”
Alther had a distinct feeling that he had not explained things as well as he could have, but he plowed on. “So, Marcia, if you tell us everything that happened today, no matter how insignificant it may have seemed to you—”
“As the not-so-clever person.”
“No! Goodness, Marcia, I don’t mean that at all.”
“Well, I seem to be fitting the part rather nicely. Which makes you, Alther, the clever person, who will soon be able to tell us where the Two-Faced Ring is. Right?”
“Not necessarily. But it might help us think. Besides, Beetle needs to hear everything that happened. As do Marcellus and Simon.”
“You could have just said that in the first place, Alther. It would have saved you a lot of trouble. I am quite happy to go over everything for Beetle.”
“Jolly good, Marcia. I suggest you begin at the beginning. When you woke up this morning.”
Marcia took a deep breath. The morning felt a very long time ago. “I woke up late. I’d had my usual bad dream over and over again and I hadn’t slept at all well.”
“Describe your dream,” said Alther.
“No, Alther. That’s witchy stuff. Dreams are not important.”
“Everything is important,” Alter insisted.
“Oh, very well. It’s the usual horrible dream. I’ve been having it since we discovered those puddles. There is some kind of fire under the Castle.”
Septimus gave a start of surprise and Marcellus flashed him a warning glance.
Marcia, lost in her dream, did not notice. “I keep trying to put the fire out, but just as I think I have, I see flames coming up through the floor of the Wizard Tower. It gets hotter and hotter and then I wake up.” Marcia shuddered. “It doesn’t sound like much, but it is not nice.”
“And then?” prompted the clever one.
“Well, I was not happy about waking up so late. I went straight downstairs and into the kitchen. Septimus had just come down from doing the hieroglyphs and he asked if I wanted some porridge but I wasn’t hungry. I couldn’t shake off the dream. I knew it was silly, but I had to go down to the Great Hall to check there were no flames coming up through the floor.” Marcia laughed, embarrassed. “And of course there weren’t. But I still felt something was not quite right so I decided to go and check on the Seal before I went back upstairs. As soon as I went into the lobby, I knew something was wrong—Edmund and Ernold were on Seal Watch.”
“What was wrong with that?” asked the clever one.
“Plenty. First, they were not on the rota for that morning. Second, Silas was not supervising, as he was meant to do. Third, they looked . . . weird.”
“They always look weird,” said Septimus, who had not taken to his uncles.
“But it wasn’t their usual weird,” said Marcia, who knew exactly what Septimus meant. “There was a greenish light all around them and they kind of glowed. I asked them what they were doing, and where was the Wizard on Seal Watch. They laughed and said that there would be no need for Seal Watch anymore. And you know what was really horrible? They both spoke in unison. Like some kind of . . .” Marcia searched for the words. “Twin machine.
“I was actually quite scared and I decided to get help. I backed out of the lobby, intending to Lock the door on them. But I didn’t get that far. They turned around and they looked so dangerous that instinctively I threw up a Shield.” Marcia’s voice caught in her throat. “I felt something hit me. Twice. Like being punched. Here.” She put her hand over her stomach. “I couldn’t get my breath . . . it felt like forever. All I could do was watch them. They came toward me, moving in a really weird way, like those automatons that Ephaniah makes, and Threw something else at me. It shook the Shield and knocked me back against the wall. They walked by, laughing—I think they thought I was dead. As they went past I felt there was something absolutely, utterly terrifying about them.”
Silence fell. Everyone, including Alther, looked shocked. Septimus glanced uneasily at the door, as if expecting his uncles to burst in at any moment.
“Where did they go?” asked Beetle.
“Out of the Wizard Tower—they knew the password, of course. Some Wizards chased after them but they had vanished. I got the Search and Rescue onto them right away. They were last seen outside Larry’s Dead Languages and after that nothing—nothing at all.”
“Is Hildegarde in Search and Rescue?” asked Alther.
“Yes, I insisted on it.”
“So when did you discover the Two-Faced Ring was gone?” asked Alther.
Marcia sighed. “I knew it was gone. They had it when they went by. That was what I could feel. It has a presence, does it not, Septimus?”
“Yes. It does.”
“But you did check?” asked Marcellus anxiously.
“Of course I checked. They had left a false Seal on the door so that it looked okay, but when I put my hand on it there was nothing there. I did an Override Command to the door to let go of the false Seal and it took three goes for the Override to work. I guess I was a bit shaken up. And then, of course, I saw the truth. The door was open and beyond it I could see the tunnel snaking away. With the false Seal gone, the Magyk began to drain and the door started to bang to and fro. I left some guard Wizards at the entrance and I walked down to the Sealed Cell. I knew what I would find and I did. The door to the Sealed Cell was open; there was a hole in the Bound Box. The ring was gone.”
Marcellus put his head in his hands. Simon sighed.
“What then?” asked Alther.
Marcia shrugged. “I informed Search and Rescue and called a meeting in the Great Hall. Just as it began, Silas walked in.”
“And what did he have to say for himself?” asked Alther.
“Not much. He was here late last night. He did his own Seal Watch, and he remembers supervising his brothers’ Watch but he doesn’t remember them finishing it. He remembers nothing else until this morning, when he woke up feeling very weird. He suspects he has been the victim of a Forget Spell. He has the classic symptoms. Which are, Septimus?”
“A blue fuzz around people. A slight ringing in the ears. An inexplicable sensation that something is missing.”
“Very good. So it seems that the Heap uncles were not mere Conjurors after all,” Marcia said. “Their actions have the stamp of powerful Wizards.” She turned to Alther. “So, clever one, what do you make of that Mystery Reading?”
Alther shook his head.
There was silence while everyone thought about what had been said.
Marcia looked at Beetle. “Beetle—if you were the clever one in the Mystery Reading
, what would you be telling the audience now?”
Beetle ran his hand through his hair. “I suspect I am the not-so-clever-one,” he said ruefully. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Simon coughed apologetically. It still felt strange to him to be included in a meeting like this. “Actually, I think it does,” he said.
All eyes were on Simon. “Marcia, it’s exactly what you said: their actions have the stamp of powerful Wizards.”
“Oh?”
“That, unfortunately, is the answer.”
“Apprentice, what do you mean?” asked Marcellus.
“Please continue, Simon,” said Marcia. “I suspect you know more about this than I do.”
Simon nodded uneasily. He didn’t like being the one with the Darke knowledge, but he knew that was the way it would always be. And if he could use it for good, then at least there was some purpose in what he had once done. “You said there was a hole in the box?” he asked Marcia.
Marcia stared at Simon, the awful truth beginning to dawn on her. Of course. She had been too focused on the Heap twins to think it through properly.
Simon saw Marcia’s expression. He coughed apologetically. “I believe that the Two-Faced Ring has . . .” He glanced at Marcia.
“Migrated,” Marcia finished for him.
“Surely not,” said Alther. “It takes thousands of years for that to happen.”
Marcia put her head in her hands. “It was on its way a few weeks ago. Septimus and I had to put it back in the Bound Box.”
