Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [74]
“Thank you, Rose,” said Bertie Bott meekly.
Bertie watched Rose and Marcia walk off into Wizard Way and sighed. He stamped his feet in the chill air and drew his cloak around him as another flurry of snow came in from the river. It was going to be a very long hour.
Chapter 24
Palace Things
While Merrin wandered around the Manuscriptorium, intimidating Jillie Djinn and writing rude words on the scribes’ desks, the events he had set in motion were beginning to unfold.
At the top of the Palace, a Thing UnLocked the door of a tiny, windowless room at the end of Merrin’s corridor.
“It . . . is . . . time,” it said.
Muddy, disheveled and aching all over from being Fetched, Simon Heap slowly got to his feet.
“Follow,” came the Thing’s hollow voice.
Simon did not move.
“Follow.”
“No,” croaked Simon, his throat painfully dry from lack of water.
The Thing leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe and looked at Simon with what might have been a mixture of amusement and boredom. “If you do not follow, the door will be Locked,” it intoned. “It will be Locked for a year. After a year has passed, the only person able to UnLock it will be your mother.”
“My mother?”
“She will be pleased to see you again, no doubt.” The Thing made a noise like a strangled chicken, which Simon knew was, in Thing terms, a laugh. “Even though you will be no more than a pile of slimy rags in her attic.”
“In her attic? Is that where I am?” asked Simon, who had no memory of the Fetch.
“You are in the Palace.” The Thing moved back through the doorway. “If you do not follow now, I shall shut the door. Then I shall Lock it.” The door began to close. Simon imagined Sarah Heap pushing it open some time in the future—maybe years later.
“Wait!” He ran out of the room.
Simon followed the Thing as it moved in its peculiar crablike shuffle along the attic corridor and descended cler-clump cler-clump the same narrow stairs that Jenna and Beetle had climbed that afternoon. Simon dreaded what he was going to find. Were his parents prisoners of the Thing too—or worse? And what about Jenna? He knew that if any of them saw him with the Thing, they would assume this was his doing. They would blame him for everything. Simon felt a wave of his old self-pity come over him but he pushed it away. He only had himself to blame, he told himself sternly.
The Thing shambled surprisingly swiftly along the wide upstairs corridor and Simon followed in its wake, feeling as though he were wading through molasses. He took this as a good sign; he had been told that this was what walking through the Darke felt like but he had never noticed before.
An oppressive silence pervaded the Palace. Even the nighttime ghosts who regularly haunted the Palace were quiet and stilled, except for one—a governess—who was in a complete panic. Her intermittent screams cut through the air and sent shivers down Simon’s spine. Many of the ghosts had been making their regular evening promenade along the corridor, hoping for a glimpse of the Princess, when the Darke had unexpectedly descended. They were now stuck, unable to move through the thickness of the Darke, and Simon could not help but Pass Through them. Every time he felt the soft waft of chill, slightly stale, air he felt sick. But one ghost that Simon did not Pass Through was Sir Hereward—Sir Hereward Passed Through him.
During the onset of the Darke Domaine, Sir Hereward had remained faithfully at his post outside Jenna’s bedroom, his sword at the ready. What it was at the ready for, Sir Hereward was not sure, but the ghost was not going to be caught napping by a little bit of Darke. But as the Darke deepened and infiltrated every last nook, every last cranny, even Sir Hereward got twitchy. Twice the ghost had felt something go into Jenna’s room—he had heard the telltale