Fyre

by Angie Sage

  Jenna knew what to say. “Keeper, I give it.”

  “Your Grace, I also give it,” Aunt Zelda replied. She handed the chain to Jenna, who had to stand on tiptoe to fasten it around Wolf Boy’s rather grubby neck.

  “Gosh,” said Wolf Boy. He touched the delicate chain and the echoes of all those who had worn it before ran through his fingers.

  From another pocket, deep in her faded patchwork dress, Aunt Zelda took a bunch of keys, all different shapes and sizes, and handed it to Wolf Boy. “You will be a good Keeper, Marwick,” she said.

  “Thank you, Zelda,” said Wolf Boy. He looked around at his friends and shook his head in disbelief. “Wow. Hey. Well, I’d better get on. Got work to do. Uncles to fix. And fast.”

  Aunt Zelda hugged Wolf Boy hard. “And you will do it, Marwick. I know you will . . .” Her voice trembled for a moment, then she swallowed hard and said brightly, “Well, now. You don’t want me hanging around getting in the way. I shall go and talk to the Dragon Boat.”

  Wolf Boy, Jenna, Nicko and Septimus watched Aunt Zelda walk away down the path to the Mott.

  “Oh, dear,” said Jenna. She took out a red silk handkerchief and blew her nose.

  “Yeah . . .” said Wolf Boy. He looked at his friends. “I’ll do my best, I promise. I’d better go now. Get there as quick as I can.”

  “Good luck, Marwick!” Jenna called out.

  Wolf Boy raised his hand in acknowledgment and disappeared into the shadows of the cottage.

  Jenna, Septimus and Nicko walked slowly down the path. The Dragon Boat lay still and majestic in the water, her head dipped down to Aunt Zelda, who was stroking the dragon’s soft, velvety nose. Spit Fyre watched. He looked, thought Septimus, a trifle jealous.

  Aunt Zelda gave the dragon a last affectionate pat and stepped away. “Well, dears, you had better be off. I must say the Dragon Boat looks beautiful. You have cared for her very well.”

  Jenna looked at Septimus as if to check something out with him. He nodded.

  “Aunt Zelda,” Jenna said. “Would you like to come with us in the Dragon Boat?”

  Aunt Zelda shook her head sadly. “I can’t leave the cottage empty. We have an awful Marsh Brownie problem at the moment. They’ll be in as soon as I’m gone. They’ll eat everything.” She looked regretfully at the Dragon Boat. “Oh, but I would have so loved to.”

  Five minutes later a reluctant Spit Fyre was outside Keeper’s Cottage. “Spit Fyre, I declare you official Dragon Guardian of Keeper’s Cottage,” Septimus told him. “Do not let a Marsh Brownie—or any other Marsh creature—within ten yards of Keeper’s Cottage until Aunt Zelda returns. Understood?”

  Spit Fyre thumped his tail crossly. He understood all right—he had been outmaneuvered. He began his first Dragon Guardian circuit of the cottage and wondered what Marsh Brownies tasted like. He intended to eat as many as he could.

  In a great spray of muddy Marsh water, the Dragon Boat took off from the Mott. Septimus wheeled the Dragon Boat around the cottage to check up on Spit Fyre and then they flew out across the Marshes, heading for the dunes and the sparkling sea beyond. Aunt Zelda sat up at the prow with Jenna, her hand resting on the smooth scales of the dragon’s neck. She smiled contentedly, gazing out into a distant future that only she could see.

  41

  DEEP TROUBLE

  Down in the Deeps, behind the Cauldron, Marcellus was squashed into a Drummin burrow. The rock face of the Fyre Chamber was peppered with entrances that led to a hidden city—a complex system of chambers and branching tunnels shaped like a hollowed-out tree within the rock. The main trunk was a wide, winding thoroughfare, big enough for even a human to clamber up, and from this branched many smaller tunnels. These were the Drummin public spaces, lit by GloGrubs, with the larger chambers lit by tiny Globes of Everlasting Fyre. The smaller tunnels led to groups of private chambers (which the Drummins called nests) where they slept. These were arranged in clusters branching off a central passage, and although Drummins preferred not to share a nest, the clusters were sociable affairs and often occupied by groups of friends who had grown up together.

  Marcellus was in the largest public chamber of all, one that he could actually sit up in. Beside him squatted the compact figure of Duglius Drummin. Like all Drummins, Duglius was hard to spot unless you knew he was there. Drummins had a look of the earth about them. Their long hair was plaited and knotted into thick ropes, which were smeared with earth. Their chalk-white skin, which had never seen daylight, was covered with a fine dust from the rock, and their broad fingers and toes—which ended in fat, squashy suckers that allowed them to swarm across both rock and Cauldron alike—were grimy with dirt. If there was one word that could be used to describe a Drummin, it was “grubby.” But from the grime and dirt two big, round black eyes, bright and questioning, took in every detail of Marcellus Pye. From the moment he had tapped his old Master on the shoulder, Duglius Drummin had not stopped smiling—so broadly that Marcellus could see the Drummin’s tiny yellow teeth.

  Marcellus and Duglius were conversing in the sign language the Drummins preferred to use. Duglius was telling Marcellus, Julius Pike, he did drag you away so roughly that we thought he would do away with you. Most sorrowful were we as we made all safe and repaired the breach that caused the Fyre and then did set all ready for when the Fyre might begin once more. Ah, Alchemist, it were terrible cold by then and we was horrible slow. But we got back to our nests in time for to catch the last bit of rock warmth—enough to make our cocoons.”

  Cocoons? signed Marcellus.

  Aye. To sleep the long sleep.

  I did not know.

  Duglius winked at Marcellus. We Drummins must have our secrets too, Alchemist, he signed. The cold is our lullaby, the warmth of the Fyre our morning sun.

  Marcellus had forgotten the lyrical lilt of Drummin talk, which spilled over into their signing so that their hands seemed to dance as the words tumbled out. He relaxed, forgetting the danger for a moment. He was back home with his family and together they could work something out.

  A little later Marcellus was not so optimistic. He had crawled out of the burrow only to be confronted by a frighteningly bright red glow filling the cavern. The light sparkled off the ancient twisted metal embedded in the rock so that the vaulted roof of the cavern seemed to be covered in the shining silvery web of a giant crazed spider. The air seemed to crackle and spark as Marcellus breathed it in, and it left the taste of metal on the tip of his tongue. Suddenly another Time Slip took him back to the very beginning of the Great Alchemie Disaster. This was how the air tasted then.

  Fighting back panic, Marcellus dropped down into the shadows below the Cauldron. The heat was oppressive; already the sweat was pouring down his brow and his woolen robes hung heavy and hot. Marcellus crept stealthily under the round belly of the Cauldron. Tortoiselike and purposeful, he moved out from the protection of the Cauldron until he saw the massive shadows of Shamandrigger Saarn and Dramindonnor Naarn cast onto the opposite wall of the cavern. Marcellus watched them for some minutes, but they were motionless and gave no clue as to what they were doing. A slight movement behind him caught his eye and Marcellus’s heart raced with fear. Very slowly he turned around only to see a line of Drummins looking up at him, their black eyes wide in the darkness, seeing far more than he could ever see. Marcellus smiled—he had forgotten the Drummins’ habit of following him around. He signaled that they should stay where they were and, determined to see what was happening, he began to move slowly out from the protection of the Cauldron.

  And then Marcellus saw them—high above on the Inspection Walkway, directing pencil-thin beams of red light onto the top of the Fyre, the intruders were walking slowly around the Cauldron, as though they were stirring a huge pot of broth. Marcellus saw the Alchemical blue flames leaping up to meet them, like fish jumping for bugs, and he knew what was happening—slowly but surely, the Fyre was being Accelerated.

  Alchemical Fyre has many contradictions—on
e of these being that, unlike normal fire, the addition of coal will calm and contain it. Like a lion rendered drowsy by devouring a small antelope, Alchemical Fyre will be soothed by a blanket of coal.

  Marcellus knew he must act fast. Hidden in the roof of the Fyre Chamber was a huge hopper of cannel coal, but the levers to release it were in the control room—and the only way for him to get there was in full view of the Wizards. He decided to make a run for it—but to give himself a chance first he needed to take off his shoes.

  The movement caught the eye of Shamandrigger Saarn. Rapier blades of red light left the Fyre and swung down across the floor, searching. Marcellus froze, balancing on one leg like a stork. Methodically, the rays swept across the floor, back and forth, back and forth, getting ever closer to Marcellus. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable.

  Therunnk. The sound of the Fyre hatch opening echoed through the cavern. The red beams swung upward. Marcellus opened his eyes. He saw Simon drop down, stop, and then shoot back up the ladder like a rat up a drainpipe. Simon was very nearly through the hatch when one of the beams caught his rapidly exiting boot and sliced into it. Marcellus heard a scream and then the claaaang of the Fyre hatch slamming shut.

  Marcellus sank back into the shadows, shocked. Had Simon gotten out? More to the point, had all of Simon gotten out? Or was his foot still lying on the Upper Platform? No, Marcellus told himself sternly, he must not think like that. He must believe that not only had Simon gotten out, but that he was on his way to Marcia to warn her what was happening. Because now, after Duglius had told him the truth of what caused the Great Alchemie Disaster, Marcellus wanted Marcia to know everything.

  Simon’s experience at the hands of the Ring Wizards had made Marcellus realize that he had no chance of getting to the Control Room alive. But the Drummins just might.

  Back in the Drummin burrow, Marcellus sat with Duglius and his deputy, Perius.

  Duglius, Marcellus signed. I am going to get help.

  Duglius looked doubtful. He didn’t see what help Marcellus could get. But it was not his job to question the Alchemist. He merely signed: What can we do, Alchemist?

  Marcellus had it planned. One set—this was what working parties of Drummins called themselves—to go to the control room, where they must let down the coal to protect the Fyre rods. One set each to the water inlet and to the outlet to keep the water flowing. All sets on call to replace any sets, er . . .

  Destroyed, signed Duglius, matter-of-factly.

  Yes. Unfortunately that will be necessary, signed Marcellus. “And now, Duglius, I shall take the Drummin way out.”

  Duglius looked at his Master critically. “You won’t fit,” he said.

  “I will have to fit,” said Marcellus.

  Like a blindworm, Marcellus crawled up through the main Drummin way—the large burrow that ran up inside the rock like the hollowed-out trunk of a tree. There was not much space for a six-foot-tall Alchemist who had recently been eating too many potatoes.

  Marcellus saw the way winding ahead, speckled with tiny wriggling lights, the GloGrubs that had colonized the burrows thousands of years in the past. The trunk went up at a slope that was gentle for a Drummin but fiendishly steep for a human. It was hot and horribly stuffy and, like a Drummin, was coated with a fine dust. The dust made the climb even more difficult—it caused Marcellus to slip and slide and it got into his lungs, making him wheeze and gasp for breath.

  But anger drove Marcellus on. Anger at what Duglius Drummin told him he had found beneath the Cauldron after Julius had shut down the Fyre. Anger at how he had been misled. But most of all, Marcellus was angry that, because of the deceits of Julius Pike, the Castle had once more been put at risk. And so he scrabbled and scraped his way up through the main burrow, past the tiny branching burrows that led to Drummin nests that until only a few hours ago had been filled with Drummin cocoons.

  As he climbed painfully upward, Marcellus noticed that the rock was becoming cooler and he guessed that he was now moving out of the cavern, away from the Fyre. The branches leading to the Drummin nests had ceased, and to Marcellus’s relief the escape burrow had actually widened. The gradient had also eased and the burrow settled into a series of loops like a huge corkscrew along which Marcellus was now able to crawl rather than climb. Spirits rising by the minute, Marcellus crawled fast, no longer caring about skinning his knees or scraping his fingers or the fact that, with the GloGrubs growing sparse, he was crawling in semidarkness. He was, he was sure, very nearly at the escape hatch that would take him into the lower Ice Tunnel beneath the Great Chamber of Alchemie.

  And then disaster struck. As he rounded another turn of the corkscrew, Marcellus crawled at some speed into a rockfall. With the hollow thud of a coconut hitting the ground, Marcellus’s head made contact with the rock. A shower of stars exploded in his eyes, he reeled back and collapsed into the dust. And there he lay, eyes closed, blood trickling from a spreading bruise on his forehead.

  Far below in the Chamber of Fyre, a Drummin set—the third to try—at last reached the Control Room. They swarmed up the wall and swung the first of the bank of levers down. Seconds later, with a thunderous roar, a cascade of coal tumbled down the chute in the roof and fell through the air into the Cauldron. As the rain of soft coal hit the flames, a tremendous hisssss filled the Deeps and a great cloud of black dust rose into the air, covering the Ring Wizards and turning their green carapaces a dusty black. Buzzing with anger, like two wasps emerging from hibernating in the ashes of the grate, the Wizards wheeled around searching for victims but found none—a Drummin in a dusty cloud is very nearly invisible. Thwarted, the Wizards swung their red light beams across the blanket of coal that now rested on top of the Fyre. With a great whooomph, the coal ignited and a sheet of flame leaped into the air. The Wizards were jubilant.

  Far below in the sooty dust, the Drummins, too, were happy. As long as the coal burned, the Fyre was safe.

  Slowly, slowly, the flames from the coal fire began to creep beneath the Castle. They spread through the Vents that Marcellus had so recently opened, warming the rock above and the floors of the older houses. People threw open their windows, complaining of the late afternoon heat, and when the evening clouds came in from the Port, the rain sizzled as it hit the pavement.

  Up in Search and Rescue, Hildegarde saw the first flame as it licked up through the pavement in front of Terry Tarsal’s shop. She raced down to the Great Hall, where Marcia had set up what she called her “command post.”

  “Fire!” yelled Hildegarde. “Fire, fire, fire!”

  42

  FORYX

  While Marcellus lay unconscious in the dark, the Dragon Boat flew into the night—across the sea, over the Isles of Syren where the CattRokk Light shone bright, and on toward the Land of the House of Foryx. Septimus, Nicko and Jenna took turns at the tiller—not to guide the dragon, who knew where she was going, but to keep her company on her journey. The night was calm and clear and the stars glittered like ice crystals spilled across the sky. Lulled by the up-and-down-and-up-and-down of the Dragon Boat, Nicko lay on his back staring up at the night until he began to believe he was back at sea, rolling through a storm swell riding in from the ocean.

  In the small hours of the morning Septimus saw landfall and took the Dragon Boat down low to see where they were. As they flew over a long sandspit dotted with fishermen’s shacks on stilts, Septimus caught sight of a little girl gazing out of a lighted attic window. He waved and the child waved back. She watched the Dragon Boat go on her way, then fell asleep and dreamed of dragons.

  The Dragon Boat flew on, above the Trading Post where a necklace of lights showed its line of harbors, across the inlet on which they lay and then over a maze of sandbanks that gave way to marshes, then miles of flatness of drained farmlands. They were now in the Land of the House of Foryx.

  While it was still dark back at the Castle—and darker still where Marcellus lay—for those on the Dragon Boat the night began to slip a
way. Aunt Zelda, who was sitting in the prow with Jenna, who was sleeping curled up under a quilt, saw a thin band of pale green appear on the horizon above the darkness of the nighttime fields.

  “We are flying into the sun,” Aunt Zelda whispered.

  Steadily, up-and-down-and-up-and-down, the Dragon Boat flew on. Wrapped in another of Aunt Zelda’s quilts, Nicko dozed, while Septimus drowsily held the tiller and watched the land passing below. In the encroaching dawn he saw the shapes of scattered farmhouses dark against the land and the glow of the occasional lonely light as people began to wake and go about their early-morning tasks.

  The band of pale green spread slowly across the sky and washed into a dull yellow. Far below the shining band of a river wound through a patchwork of fields dusted with snow. Jenna woke and yawned. She felt stiff and cold but the sight of the lightening sky ahead, which was now taking on a delicate pink hue, revived her. She became aware of Nicko moving around the deck and turned to blearily say good morning.

  Nicko was advancing with two mugs in one hand, holding on to the gunwales with the other. “Morning, sleepyhead,” he said. “Drinkies.”

  He passed Jenna and Aunt Zelda mugs of hot chocolate.

  “Wow, Nik, thanks.”

  “You can thank Sep. He’s got some new gizmo in that bag of his.”

  “A hot-chocolate Charm?” Jenna smiled.

  “Yep. Each in its own mug. Neat, hey?”

  “Thanks, Sep,” Jenna called down the boat.

  “S’okay, Jen. Hey, I can see the forest now!”

  Jenna looked down and saw that the landscape was changing fast. The dusting of snow had become a continuous blanket of white that showed dark lines of tracks winding through large expanses of trees. As she watched, the treetops grew closer and closer together and the tracks disappeared, hidden beneath the canopy of white.