Septimus Heap, Book Six_ Darke - Angie Sage [99]
“I suspect not many Princesses ever do. Although now you have other, er, allegiances, you might find that will change,” Marcellus said with a smile. “The Canyons are not, shall we say, salubrious places. Those using them generally have reasons to hide. However, I know them well and we can slip through the night unnoticed. I am much practiced at the art.”
That did not surprise Jenna. Marcellus threw his long black cape around himself with a dramatic swirl and, equally theatrically, Jenna followed suit with her witch’s cloak, pulling the hood over her head to cover her gold circlet. Compared with his companions, Septimus felt a little conspicuous in his Apprentice green. He followed in their footsteps, feeling like an apprentice thief shadowing his masters.
Almost immediately Marcellus dived into a tiny gap between the houses. An ancient sign half hidden behind some ivy announced its name: SQUEEZE GUTS OPE. With the rough bricks snagging at their cloaks, they threaded their way through the warren between the jumble of houses that were packed in behind Snake Slipway. Their footsteps made no noise as they trod on years of leaves, moss and the occasional soft mound of a small dead animal. Feeling like a small animal himself scuttling through its burrows, Septimus kept glancing up, hoping to see the sky. But the dark of the moon and the snow-laden clouds gave nothing away. Once or twice he thought he saw a star, only to be obscured by the black shape of a chimney or a twist of a roofline as he turned yet another corner. The only light came from the comforting glow of his Dragon Ring as he held his right hand out in front of him.
As they went deeper in, the Canyons narrowed, sometimes so much that they were forced to walk sideways, squeezing past towering walls that threatened to press them flat. Septimus had an image of them squashed between the walls like the dried herbs Sarah Heap kept between the pages of her herb book. He longed to be able to stretch his arms out wide in all directions without his knuckles hitting brick, to be able to run freely in any direction he wanted to, not crawl like a crab between rocks. With every step he felt as though he were going deeper into a place from which he would never escape.
Septimus tried to take his mind off the encroaching walls by looking out for lighted candles in windows but there were hardly any windows to see. The sheer sides of stone rising up on either side blocked any view, and few people had put a window in a wall that looked out onto another wall no more than an arm’s length away. But once or twice Septimus saw the telltale glow of a candle way up above them, shining onto the opposite wall, and his spirits raised a little.
At last they followed Marcellus into a wider gap and the Alchemist raised his hand in warning. They stopped. At the end of the gap was a bank of Darke Fog—they had reached the edge of the Darke Domaine.
Jenna and Septimus exchanged anxious glances.
“Apprentice,” said Marcellus, “it is time to open your tinderbox.”
Jenna watched with great interest as Septimus took a battered tinderbox from his pocket and pried off the lid. She saw him draw something from it, but what it was, she could not tell. He muttered some strange words that she could not catch and threw his hands upward. She got the impression that something floated down very slowly and settled onto him, but she couldn’t be sure. He looked no different. In fact, it seemed more like a mime than anything else—the kind of thing they had had to do in drama classes in the Ramblings Little Theatre, which Jenna had always found rather embarrassing.
However, Marcellus and Septimus seemed satisfied, so Jenna guessed something must have happened. And then she did notice a change—the light from Septimus’s Dragon Ring seemed more fleeting somehow, as if thin gauze was moving across it. And, when she looked at Septimus and tried to catch his eye, she realized that something about him eluded her.