Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [177]
After the Seeing Aunt Zelda had been in turmoil. She knew enough about what people called second Sight to know that really it should be called first Sight—it was never wrong. Never. And so she knew that despite Marcia’s insistence that she herself would be flying Spit Fyre to get Jenna, Nicko, Snorri and Beetle, it would actually be Septimus on the dragon. What she had Seen would surely happen. There was nothing she could do to stop it. All she could do was send Septimus the best kind of SafeCharm she had—and this was it.
Aunt Zelda squeezed out of the cupboard and very carefully took the live SafeCharm over to the window. She held the little bottle up to the daylight and turned it around, checking the ancient wax seal around the stopper. It was still intact—there were no cracks or any sign of disturbance. She smiled; the Charm was still Sleeping. All was well. Aunt Zelda took a deep breath and in a weird, singsong voice that would have given goose bumps to anyone listening, she began to Waken it.
For five long minutes Aunt Zelda sang one of the rarest and most complicated chants that she had ever performed. It was full of rules, regulations, clauses and subclauses, which, if written down, would have put any legal document to shame. It was a binding contract, and Aunt Zelda did her very best to make sure there were no loopholes. She began by describing Septimus—the recipient of the Charm—in great detail and, as she sang his praises, her voice rose to fill the tiny cottage. It cracked three panes of glass, curdled the milk and then curled out of the chimney into the breezy spring Marsh morning.
As Aunt Zelda chanted, her witchy voice went past the range of normal human hearing and reached the pitch that Marsh creatures use for danger calls. A family of Marsh Hoppers hurled themselves into the Mott, and five Water Nixies buried themselves deep in the Boggart’s favorite mud patch. Two Marsh voles ran squealing across the Mott bridge and fell into a sludge pit, and the Marsh Python, which was just taking the turn into the Mott, decided against it and headed off to Chicken Island instead.
At last the chant was done, and the panic among the Marsh creatures outside the cottage subsided. Aunt Zelda strung a fine leather cord through the twisted silver loop around the neck of the bottle and carefully placed it in one of the many deep pockets of her dress. Next she went out to the tiny kitchen at the back and set about one of her favorite tasks—making a cabbage sandwich.
Soon the cabbage sandwich had joined the live SafeCharm in the depths of the pocket. She knew that Septimus would enjoy the cabbage sandwich—she wished she could be as sure about the SafeCharm.
EXCERPT FROM
SEPTIMUS HEAP
BOOK SIX
Darke
PROLOGUE:
BANISHED
It is a Darke and stormy night.
Black clouds hang low over the Castle, shrouding the golden pyramid at the top of the Wizard Tower in a dim mist. In the houses far below, people stir uneasily in their sleep as the rumble of thunder enters their dreams and sends nightmares tumbling from the sky.
Like a giant lightning conductor, the Wizard Tower rears high above the Castle rooftops, Magykal purple and indigo lights playing around its iridescent silver sheen. Inside the Tower the duty Storm Wizard prowls the dimly lit Great Hall, checking the StormScreen and keeping an eye on the UnStable window, which has a tendency to panic in a storm. The duty Storm Wizard is a little on edge. Magyk is not usually affected by a storm, but all Wizards know about the Great Lightning Strike of Long Ago, which briefly drained the Wizard Tower of its Magyk and left the rooms of the ExtraOrdinary Wizard badly scorched. No one wants that to happen again— particularly the duty Storm Wizard.
At the top of the Wizard Tower in