Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [69]
“It’s all right,” said Hildegarde. “It’s only the signal to the Cordon to Activate.” At that a strange humming sound, like a mass of bees on a warm summer’s day, drifted toward them. It was oddly unsettling—bees did not belong to a dark winter’s night with snowflakes falling.
Jenna looked back at the Palace—her Palace, as she now thought of it. Every night, since Alther had been Banished, she would walk down the river and talk to the forlorn ghost of Alice Nettles. She and Alice would look up at the Palace and Alice would say how beautiful it looked now that every window had a light in it, and Jenna would agree. But now, like Alther, the lights were gone—every one of her candles snuffed out. It reminded Jenna of how the Palace had been when she had first moved in with Silas and Sarah, but there was one important difference: there had always been one window with a light in it—Sarah’s sitting room, where they had sat every evening. Now there was nothing.
All eyes were upon them as Hildegarde, Silas, Jenna and Maxie walked slowly toward the Cordon. Hildegarde chose a spot between two scribes, Partridge and Romilly Badger, who were holding either end of the Cord in front of the entrance to Sarah Heap’s herb garden. Somehow Partridge had managed to share his Cord with Romilly, rather than have a Wizard spacer between them, as was recommended practice. On either side of Romilly and Partridge, the circle of Wizards, scribes and Apprentices, linked with various lengths of purple cord, stretched out into the night. All were making the long, low drone that prepared the Cord for Marcia to raise the Safety Curtain.
Romilly and Partridge nodded at Jenna but neither smiled—they had both seen what had happened. Resolutely they continued their low drone.
Silas stepped forward.
“Don’t touch!” yelled Hildegarde, somewhat frazzled and—after his leap into the sitting room—not entirely trusting Silas to be sensible.
Silas looked annoyed. “I wasn’t going to,” he said indignantly. “We can’t touch the Cord,” he whispered to Jenna. “It will break the Magyk.”
“So how are we supposed to get out?” Jenna asked irritably.
“It’s all right, Princess Jenna,” Hildegarde said soothingly. “We can get out, but there’s a particular way of doing it. We need some of this . . .” Hildegarde reached into her sub-Wizard belt for her own piece of Conducting Cord. She drew it out and held up a very short length of purple cord. “Oh,” she said. “I don’t think that’s long enough.”
“Standard sub-Wizard length,” said Silas. “Enough for one person only.” He took a much longer length from his Ordinary Wizard belt. “Use mine. I may as well do something useful. Now, this is what we do; we all stand really close together and—Maxie come back!”
Jenna raced after Maxie and dragged him back; the wolfhound regarded her with big, brown, accusing eyes. She held Maxie close and Silas proceeded to encircle them all with his purple Conducting Cord. A few minutes later, a walking parcel of three people and a wolfhound shuffled toward the Cord held by Partridge and Romilly. Any other time Jenna would have giggled her way along, but now it was all she could do to blink back tears—every step took her away from Sarah, marooned in the Darke. She glanced back at the Palace and saw that a Magykal shimmer of purple had crept over it like a veil, Quarantining everything within. She wondered if Sarah knew what had happened. She wondered if Sarah now knew anything at all . . .
Silas meanwhile was carefully tying both ends of his Conducting Cord to the main Cordon Cord, without actually touching it himself. Partridge and Romilly obligingly lifted their Cord like a jumping rope and the parcel of people and wolfhound shuffled underneath the Cord and out the other side.
“Well, that’s it,” sighed Silas. “We’re out.”
“Mum’s not,” said Jenna as they set off slowly through the kitchen garden, along Sarah’s neat paths that wound through the herb beds.
“I know,” Silas said quietly. “But she won’t be there forever, Jenna.”
“How do you know that?” asked Jenna.