Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [49]
The Wizard Tower was chill and gloomy with the absence of Magyk. A cold wind moaned as it was drawn up as if through a huge chimney, and doors banged mournfully in the empty rooms. As DomDaniel descended, becoming quite dizzy from the never-ending spirals of the stairs, he noted all the changes with approval. This was how the Tower was going to be from now on. A place for serious Darke Magyk. None of those irritating Ordinary Wizards prancing around with their pathetic little spells. No more namby-pamby incense and plinky-plonky happy sounds floating in the air, and certainly no more frivolous colors and lights. His Magyk would be used for greater things. Except he might fix the stairs.
DomDaniel eventually emerged into the dark and silent hall. The silver doors to the Tower hung forlornly open. Snow had blown in and covered the motionless floor which was now a dull gray stone. He swept through the doors and strode across the courtyard.
As DomDaniel stamped angrily through the snow and made his way along Wizard Way to the Palace, he began to wish he had thought to change out of his sleeping robes and slippers before he had stormed out. He arrived at the Palace Gate a somewhat soggy and unprepossessing figure, and the lone Palace Guard refused to let him in.
DomDaniel struck the Guard down with a Thunderflash and strode in. Very soon the Supreme Custodian was roused from his bed for the second night running.
Back at the Tower, the Apprentice had stumbled to the sofa and fallen into a cold and unhappy sleep. Alther took pity on him and kept the fire going. While the boy slept, the ghost also took the opportunity of Causing a few more changes. He loosened the heavy canopy above the bed so that it was hanging only by a thread. He took the wicks out of all the candles. He added a murky green color to the water tanks and installed a large, aggressive family of cockroaches in the kitchen. He put an irritable rat under the floorboards and loosened all the joints of the most comfortable chairs. And then, as an afterthought, he exchanged DomDaniel’s stiff black cylindrical hat, which lay abandoned on the bed, for one just a little bigger.
As dawn broke, Alther left the Apprentice sleeping and made his way out to the Forest, where he followed the path he had once taken with Silas on a visit to Sarah and Galen many years ago.
18
KEEPER’S COTTAGE
It was the silence that woke Jenna in Keeper’s Cottage the next morning. After ten years of waking every day to the busy sounds of The Ramblings, not to mention the riot and hubbub of the six Heap boys, the silence was deafening. Jenna opened her eyes, and for a moment thought that she was still dreaming. Where was she? Why wasn’t she at home in her cupboard? Why were just Jo-Jo and Nicko here? Where were all her other brothers?
And then she remembered.
Jenna sat up quietly so as not to wake the boys who were lying beside her by the glowing embers of the fire downstairs in Aunt Zelda’s cottage. She wrapped her quilt around her as, despite the fire, the air in the cottage had a damp chill to it. And then, hesitantly, she raised a hand to her head.
So it was true. The gold circlet was still there. She was still a Princess. It hadn’t been just for her birthday.
All through the previous day, Jenna had had that feeling of unreality that she always got on her birthday. A feeling that the day was somehow part of another world, another time, and that anything that happened on her birthday was not real. And it was that feeling that had carried Jenna through the amazing events of her tenth birthday, a feeling that, whatever happened, it would all be back to normal the next day, so it didn’t really matter.
But it wasn’t. And it did.
Jenna hugged herself to keep warm and considered the matter. She was a Princess.
Jenna and her best friend, Bo, had often discussed together the fact that they were in fact long-lost Princess sisters, separated at birth, whom fate had thrown together in the form of a shared desk in Class 6 of East Side Third School. Jenna had almost believed