Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [41]
“When Alther stumbles out through the huge, solid silver doors that guard the entrance to the Wizard Tower, he is greeted by a gasp. But nothing more is said, for there is no arguing with the presence of a new ExtraOrdinary Wizard. Amid a few quiet mutterings the crowd disperses, although one voice calls out.
“‘As you have gained it, so will you lose it.’
“Alther sighs. He knows this is true.
“As he makes his lonely way back into the Tower to begin the work of undoing DomDaniel’s Darkenesse, in a small room not so very far away a baby boy is born to a poor Wizard family.
“He is their seventh son, and his name is Silas Heap.”
There was a long silence around the fire while Alther slowly regained his own form. Silas shivered. He had never heard the story told like that before.
“That’s amazing, Alther,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I had no idea. H-how did the Witch Mother know so much?”
“She was watching in the crowd,” said Alther. “She came to see me later that day to congratulate me on becoming ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and I told her my side of the story. If you want the truth to be known then all you need to do is tell the Witch Mother. She will tell everyone else. Of course, whether they believe it or not is another matter.”
Jenna was thinking hard. “But why, Uncle Alther, were you chasing DomDaniel?”
“Ah, good question. I didn’t tell the Witch Mother that. There are some Darke matters that should not be spoken of lightly. But you should know, so I will tell you. You see, that morning, like every morning, I had been tidying up the Pyramid Library. One of the tasks of an Apprentice is to keep the Library organized, and I took my duties seriously, even if they were for such an unpleasant Master. Anyway, that particular morning I had found a strange Incantation in DomDaniel’s handwriting tucked into one of the books. I had seen one lying around before and hadn’t been able to read the writing, but as I studied this one, an idea occurred to me. I held the Incantation up to the looking glass and discovered I was right: it was written in mirror writing. I began to get a bad feeling about it then, because I knew that it must be a Reverse Incantation, using Magyk from the Darke side—or the Other side, as I prefer to call it, as it is not always Darke Magyk that the Other side puts to use. Anyway, I had to know the truth about DomDaniel and what he was doing, so I decided to risk reading the Incantation. I had just started when something terrible happened.”
“What?” whispered Jenna.
“A Spectre Appeared behind me. Well, at least I could see it in the looking glass, but when I turned around it wasn’t there. But I could feel it. I could feel it put its hand on my shoulder, and then—I heard it. I heard its empty voice speaking to me. It told me that my time had come. That it had come to collect me as arranged.”
Alther shivered at the memory and raised his hand to his left shoulder as the Spectre had done. It still ached with cold, as it had ever since that morning.
Everyone else shivered too and drew closer around the fire.
“I told the Spectre that I was not ready. Not yet. You see I knew enough about the Other side to know you must never refuse them. But they are willing to wait. Time is nothing to them. They have nothing else to do but wait. The Spectre told me it would return for me the next day and that I had better be ready then, and it faded away. After it went, I made myself read the Reverse words, and I saw that DomDaniel had offered me up as part of a bargain with the Other side, to be collected at the time I read the Incantation. And then I knew for sure he was using Reverse Magyk—the mirror image of Magyk, the kind that uses people up—and I had fallen into his trap.”
The fire on the beach began to die down, and everyone clustered around it, huddling together in the fading glow as Alther continued