Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [120]
Suddenly Boy 412 clutched Jenna’s arm so hard that she nearly cried out. He pointed to DomDaniel’s waist. Jenna glanced down and then looked at Boy 412 in despair. So it was true. She had hardly been able to believe what Alther had told them but here, in front of her eyes, was the truth. Around DomDaniel’s waist, almost hidden in his dark robes, was the ExtraOrdinary Wizard’s belt. Marcia’s ExtraOrdinary Wizard belt.
Jenna and Boy 412 stared at DomDaniel with a mixture of disgust and fascination. The Necromancer’s fingers gripped the ebony arms of the throne; his thick yellow fingernails curved around the ends and clipped on to the wood like a set of claws. His face still had the telltale gray pallor it had acquired during his years spent Underground, before he had moved out into his lair in the Badlands. It was an unremarkable face in many ways—maybe the eyes were a little too deep set, and the mouth a little too cruel for it to be wholly pleasant—but it was the Darke that lay beneath that made Jenna and Boy 412 shudder as they gazed at it.
On his head DomDaniel wore a cylindrical black hat shaped like a short stovepipe, which, for some reason he did not understand, was always a little too big for him, regardless of how often he had a new one made to fit. This bothered DomDaniel more than he liked to admit, and he had become convinced that since his return to the Wizard Tower his head had started to shrink. While the Necromancer slept, the hat had slipped down and was now resting on the top of his whitish ears. The black hat was an old-fashioned Wizard hat, which no Wizard had worn, or had wanted to wear, since it had been associated with the great Wizard Inquisition many hundreds of years ago.
Above the throne a dark red silk canopy, emblazoned with a trio of black stars, hung heavily in the drizzle, dripping every now and then onto the hat and filling up the indentation in the top with a pool of water.
Boy 412 took hold of Jenna’s hand. He remembered a small, moth-eaten pamphlet of Marcia’s he had read one snowy afternoon called The Hypnotik Effect of the Darke, and he could feel Jenna being drawn in. He pulled her away from the sleeping figure toward an open hatch.
“Marcia’s here,” he whispered to Jenna. “I can feel her Presence.”
As they reached the hatch there was a sound of footsteps running along the deck below and then rapidly climbing the ladder. Jenna and Boy 412 jumped back and a sailor holding a long, unlit torch ran up onto the deck. The sailor was a small, wiry man dressed in the usual Custodian black; unlike the Custodian Guards he was not shaven-headed but had long hair carefully tied back in a thin dark plait that straggled halfway down his back. He had baggy trousers that reached to just below his knee and a top with broad black and white stripes running across it. The sailor took out a tinder box, struck a spark and lit his torch. The torch flared to life, and a brilliant orange flame lit up the gray drizzly afternoon, casting dancing shadows across the deck. The sailor walked forward with the blazing torch and placed it in a holder on the prow of the ship. DomDaniel opened his eyes. His nap was over.
The sailor hovered nervously beside the throne, awaiting his instructions from the Necromancer.
“Are they returned?” came a low, hollow voice that made the hair on the back of Boy 412’s neck stand up.
The sailor bowed, avoiding the Necromancer’s gaze.
“The boy is returned, my lord. And your servant.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, my lord. But…”
“But what?”
“The boy says that he captured the Princess,