Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [128]
And then it reached the point of no return. With a suddenness that drew a gasp of dismay from everyone on Annie, it was whirled into the slipstream of the vortex. Spinning like a top as it raced around in ever decreasing circles, Septimus’s green cloak was the pivot around which his tiny black craft spun. There was a final acceleration as it tipped into the center of the whirlpool and was gone.
The creek was still. Annie was silent. No one could believe what they had just done.
Chapter 42
The Darke Halls
Septimus timed his Darke Disguise perfectly. As the coracle tipped into the center of the whirlpool he muttered “ehtolc Sum” and felt the coldness of the Darke veil spread over him like a second skin. After that things were not quite so perfect.
Septimus was sucked into the roar of the whirlpool, whirled around like a piece of flotsam and pulled into its maw. Down, down, down he fell, whirling so fast that all his thoughts spun into a tiny dark place in the middle of his mind and he knew nothing except the roaring of water and the relentless pull of the vast emptiness below.
At that point, without a Darke Disguise Septimus would, like most of the whirlpool’s previous victims, have drowned. He would have taken one last breath, filled his lungs with water and been pulled through a hole in the riverbed into a great underwater cave that was hollowed out in the bedrock like the inside of a hundred-foot-long egg. Here, for a few weeks, he would have circled until, one by one, his bones dropped and mingled with the pile of clean, white, delicate sticks scattered on the smooth cave floor—all that remained of those who had traveled the Bottomless Whirlpool over the many centuries that had elapsed since the Great Fight of the Darke Wizards.
The Darke Disguise did not spare Septimus the hole in the riverbed—through which he was sucked like a noodle into a greedy mouth—or the swash of the cave below. But it protected him like a glove and gave him the Darke Art of Suspension Underwater—something that Simon had spent many uncomfortable months with his head in a bucket learning to perfect. As Septimus swirled slowly around the underwater cave his thoughts unwound; he opened his eyes and realized that he was still alive.
The Darke Art of Suspension Underwater imparted an oddly distancing effect. The reason for this was to allay panic and so to conserve oxygen, although Septimus—indeed, most practitioners of the Art—did not realize this. It also allowed the eyes to see perfectly through the normal watery blurriness and this made moving underwater feel closer to flying than swimming. And so, as Septimus swam along with the circular currents of the egg-shaped cave, he found to his surprise that he was actually enjoying the sensation of being underwater. His Dragon Ring glowed brightly, turning the water around him a beautiful milky green and, when he drifted near the walls of the cave, the light made the crystals in the rock glitter as he passed.
But the Darke Art of Suspension Underwater does not last forever. After some long, hazy minutes, Septimus began to feel breathless and twitchy. Pushing aside the early signs of panic, he swam upward toward what he hoped was the surface and some air to breathe, only to hit his head with a painful crack on the roof of the cave. The panic welled up. There was no surface—there was no air.
Septimus sank a little and, holding his Dragon Ring out in front of him, he swam fast, looking upward, hoping to see some kind of space where he could draw a breath. Just one deep,