Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [21]
The inside of the rubbish chute was as cold and slippery as ice. It was made from a highly polished black slate, seamlessly cut and joined by the Master Masons who had built the Wizard Tower many hundreds of years ago. The drop was steep, too steep for Jenna to have any control over how she fell, so she tumbled and twisted this way and that, rolling from side to side.
But the worst thing was the dark.
It was thick, deep, impenetrable black. It pressed in on Jenna from all sides and although she strained her eyes desperately to see anything, anything at all, there was no response. Jenna thought she had gone blind.
But she could still hear. And behind her, coming up fast, Jenna could hear the swish of damp wolfhound fur.
Maxie the wolfhound was having a good time. He liked this game. Maxie had been a little surprised when he had jumped into the chute and not found Silas ready with his ball. He was even more surprised when his paws didn’t seem to work anymore, and he had briefly scrabbled around trying to find out why. Then he had bumped his nose on the back of the scary woman’s neck and tried to lick a tasty morsel of something off her hair, but at that point she had given him a violent shove that had flipped him over onto his back.
And now Maxie was happy. Nose first, paws held in close, he became a streamlined streak of fur, and he overtook them all. Past Nicko, who grabbed at his tail but then let go. Past Jenna, who screamed in his ear. Past Boy 412, who was curled into a tight ball. And then past his master, Silas. Maxie felt uncomfortable going past Silas, because Silas was Top Dog and Maxie was Not Allowed in Front. But the wolfhound had no choice—he sailed by Silas in a shower of cold stew and carrot peelings and carried on down.
The rubbish chute snaked around the Wizard Tower like a giant helter-skelter buried deep inside the thick walls. It dropped steeply between each floor, taking with it not only Maxie, Silas, Boy 412, Jenna, Nicko and Marcia but also the remains of all the Wizards’ lunches, which had been tipped into the chute that afternoon. The Wizard Tower was twenty-one stories high. The top two floors belonged to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and on each floor below that there were two Wizard apartments. That’s a lot of lunches. It was wolfhound heaven, and Maxie ate enough scraps on his way down the Wizard Tower to keep him going for the rest of the day.
Eventually, after what felt like hours but was in fact only two minutes and fifteen seconds, Jenna felt the almost vertical drop level out, and her pace slowed to something that was bearable. She did not know it, but she now had left the Wizard Tower and was traveling below the ground, out from the foot of the Tower and toward the basements of the Courts of the Custodians. It was still pitch-black and freezing cold in the chute, and Jenna felt very alone. She strained her ears to hear any sounds that the others might be making, but everyone knew how important it was to keep quiet and no one dared to call out. Jenna thought that she could detect the swish of Marcia’s cloak behind her, but since Maxie had hurtled past her she had had no sign that there was anyone else with her at all. The thought of being alone in the dark forever began to take hold of her, and another tide of panic started to rise. But just as Jenna thought she might scream, a chink of light shone down from a distant kitchen far above, and she caught a glimpse of Boy 412 huddled into a ball not far in front of her. Jenna’s spirits lifted at the sight of him, and she found herself feeling sorry for the thin, cold sentry boy in his pajamas.
Boy 412 was in no state to feel sorry for anyone, least of all himself. When the mad girl with the gold circle on her head had pushed him into the abyss he had instinctively curled himself up into a ball and had spent the entire descent down the Wizard Tower rattling from side to side of the chute like a marble in a drainpipe. Boy 412 felt bruised and battered but no more terrified than he had been