After dispatching Catchpole, Marcia took the silver spiral stairs back up to her rooms at the top of the Wizard Tower. Something was bothering her. It was so unlike Septimus to miss an exam; something felt wrong. Still on nighttime mode, the silver stairs slowly corkscrewed their way to the top of the Wizard Tower, and Marcia, who was never at her best early in the morning, began to feel queasy with the movement of the stairs and the smells of bacon and porridge, which were competing with the incense that drifted up from the hall below. As Marcia rose past the fourteenth floor, still puzzling over Septimus, something occurred to her. Something important.
“Come on, hurry up,” Marcia snapped impatiently at the spiral stairs. Taking her at her word, the stairs sped up to double daytime speed, and Marcia shot up through the rest of the Tower, surprising three elderly Wizards who were up early for a fishing trip. The stairs stopped with the same enthusiasm with which they had obeyed Marcia's earlier command; in one seamless movement the ExtraOrdinary Wizard exited at the twentieth floor and hurtled through the heavy purple door that led to her rooms. Luckily the door saw her coming and flung itself open just in time. Moments later Marcia was racing up the steps to the Pyramid Library.
With a worried frown, Marcia swiftly leafed through the Prediction Practical Papers until she came across what she was looking for: a series of closely written formulae and interpretations that Jillie Djinn, the new Chief Hermetic Scribe, had provided from the All-Seeing Almanac. Marcia pulled out the piece of paper, and taking her illuminating pen from her pocket, she ran it over the formulae. As the pen moved across the page, the numbers began to rearrange themselves. Marcia stared at them in disbelief for several minutes.
Suddenly she threw down her pen and ran to the darkest corner of the Library, which housed the Sealed shelf. Trembling, Marcia tried three times until she clicked her fingers loud enough to light the massive candle that was set beside it. The flame illuminated the two thick Sealed silver doors that covered the shelf and opened only with the touch of the Akhu Amulet, which was passed from one Extra-Ordinary Wizard to the next. Marcia removed the lapis lazuli and gold amulet from around her neck and pressed it against the long purple wax Seal that covered the crack between the doors. The Seal recognized the amulet, the wax rolled itself up into a coil and, with a soft hiss, the doors swung open. Behind them was a deep, dark shelf from which the smells of stale air from hundreds of years ago drifted out. Marcia sneezed.
Marcia had never opened the Sealed section before. She had never had cause to until now. Alther had once shown her how to do it after he had decided that he wanted her to succeed him as ExtraOrdinary Wizard. Marcia remembered how encouraging Alther had been to her when she had been his Apprentice, and a twinge of guilt stabbed at her for being so short-tempered with the ghost.
With some trepidation, Marcia shoved her arm into the recesses of the shelf, for one never knew what might lurk in a Sealed place or what might have grown there since it had last been opened. But it did not take her long to find what she was looking for, and with a sense of relief, Marcia pulled out a solid-gold box. She checked the box in the light of the candle, ReSealed the doors and took it down to the desk. Taking a small key from her ExtraOrdinary Wizard belt, Marcia opened the box and lifted out a decaying leather book. As she cradled it in her hands, Marcia could see that it had once been beautiful. The small, thick book was tied with a faded red ribbon and covered in the fragile remains of soft leather on which intricate gold-leaf designs were visible—as was the title: I, Marcellus. Gently Marcia placed the book on the table, and as she did so the ribbon fell to pieces, a scattering of fine red dust covered her hands, and the black seal that had bound its two ends fell to the floor and rolled away into the shadows. Marcia did not bother to pursue the seal, for she was anxious—and yet afraid—to open the I, Marcellus.
Heart beating fast, Marcia gingerly lifted the cover, sending a shower of leather dust into the air.
“Atchoo!” she sneezed. “Atchoo, atchoo, atcboo!” and then, “No, oh, no!” for the pages of the book had fallen prey to the dreaded Pyramid Library paper beetle.
Marcia took a pair of long-nosed tweezers from a pot on the desk, and one by one, she lifted the delicate lace-wing pages, inspecting them closely with a large magnifying glass. The I, Marcellus was divided into three parts: Alchemie, Physik, and the Almanac. The first two sections, and much of the last section, were unreadable. Shaking her head, Marcia moved swiftly through the book until she came across a very fat, squashed paper beetle wedged under some astronomical calculations. With an air of triumph, Marcia lifted up the beetle with her pliers and dropped it into a glass jar on the desk, which already contained a collection of squashed paper beetles. Flipping faster now through the undamaged pages of the rest of the Almanac, Marcia soon came across the present year. Scanning down the cryptic entries, and occasionally consulting some tables at the back that were covered in ink blots, Marcia at last found the date she was looking for, the day of the Autumn Equinox—which was oddly out of sequence—and drew out an ancient piece of paper with familiar spidery writing scrawled over it.
Marcia's expression as she read this piece of paper changed from initial puzzlement to one of dawning horror. Shaking and deathly pale, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard staggered to her feet, gently placed the scrap of paper in her pocket and set off for the Palace as fast as she could.
10
The Queen's Robing Room
Over at the Palace, in Sarah Heap's small sitting room, Septimus was beginning to stir. His head felt fuzzy as he opened his eyes, wondering where he was. A dull grayish light filtered through Sarah's flowery curtains and Septimus could feel the dampness from the river in the air. It was not the kind of morning that made him want to get up.
Jenna yawned, still sleepy. She pulled her crocheted blanket up over her head and wished the day would go away. A strange feeling of foreboding was weighing her down, although she could not remember why.
“Morning, Sep,” she said. “How are you?”
“Wherrr...” Septimus mumbled blearily. “Where am I?”
“Um ... Mum's sitting room,” Jenna mumbled sleepily.
“Oh, yes, I remember ... Queen Etheldredda—”
Jenna was wide awake all of a sudden, remembering what her sense of foreboding had been about. She wished she hadn't.
Suddenly Septimus remembered something else: his Prediction Practical. He sat up, his straw-colored curls standing on end, a look of panic in his bright green eyes. “I gotta go, Jen, or I'll be late. I knew I was going to mess this up.”
“Mess what up?”
“My Prediction Practical. I knew it.”
“Well, then, that's all right, isn't it?” Jenna sat up and grinned. “I guess you've passed.”
“Don't think it works like that, Jen,” said Septimus gloomily. “Not with Marcia, anyway. I'd better go.”
“Look, Sep,” said Jenna. “You can't go back yet. You have to come see something first. I promised.”
“Promised? What do you mean, promised?”
Jenna did not reply. Slowly, she stood up and carefully folded the crocheted blanket.
Septimus saw a dark and anxious look in her eyes and decided not to push things any further. “Well, don't worry,” he said, reluctantly crawling out of his makeshift bed,
“I'll come see whatever it is first and then I'll go back. If I run fast I might just make it.”
“Thanks, Sep,” said Jenna.
As Jenna and Septimus closed the door of Sarah Heap's sitting room behind them, the ghost of Queen Etheldredda descended through the ceiling with a look of satisfaction on her sharp features. She settled herself down on the sofa, picked up the small book that Sarah had left on the table and, with fascinated distaste, began to read True love Never Lies.
Septimus and Jenna made their way along the Long Walk, the wide passageway that ran the length of the Palace like a backbone. It was deserted in the dim light of the morning, for the Palace servants were quietly employed elsewhere getting things ready for the day, and the various Ancients who haunted the Long Walk at night had fallen asleep in the early-morning light. Some were propped up in doorways, others were contentedly snoring in some of the moth-eaten chairs that were scattered along the Walk for the benefit of those who found the distance too far to travel in one trip.