Alther, what do you mean, he spent the night at the Palace?" Marcia demanded very early the next morning. "Why?"
"Well . . . er, it's a little complicated, Marcia," Alther replied uncomfortably.
"Isn't it always, Alther?" snapped Marcia. "You do realize that if he doesn't get back right away he's going to miss his Prediction Practical?"
Marcia Overstrand was sitting at her desk in the Pyramid Library at the top of the WizardTower. The Library was dark and gloomy in the early morning light, and the few candles that Marcia had lit flickered as she thumped Septimus's Prediction Practical Papers down on the desk in exasperation. Her green eyes flashed crossly as Alther Mella floated along the book stacks peering at some of his favorite titles.
"This is very bad, Alther. I spent all day yesterday setting up the Prediction Practical and it's got to begin before 7:07 A.M. Any later than that and all the stuff will have started to happen - and then it's just Telepathy and Cognizance, which is not the point."
"Give the lad a break, Marcia. He fell into the Moat last night and - "
"He did what?"
"Fell into the Moat. I really think you should postpone - "
"How come he fell into the Moat, Alther?" Marcia asked suspiciously.
Eager to change the subject, Alther wandered over to Marcia and sat down companionably on the corner of her desk. He knew he would regret it, but he could not resist saying, "Well, perhaps you should have predicted this would happen, Marcia, and scheduled the Prediction Practical for later in the day."
"That's not funny," snapped Marcia, checking through the papers. "In fact, you are getting horribly predictable yourself. Predictably childish. You are spending far too much of your time flying around with Septimus and generally showing off when at your age you should know better. I shall send Catchpole down to the Palace to fetch Septimus right now. That will wake him up."
"I imagine you'll have to wake up Catchpole first, Marcia," Alther commented.
"Catchpole's on night duty, Alther. He's been awake all night."
"Funny habit he's got, that Catchpole," said Alther pensively, "of snoring while he's awake. You'd think he'd find it irritating, wouldn't you?" Marcia did not deign to reply. She got up from her desk, drew her purple robes around her and stormed out, slamming the Library door behind her.
Alther floated through the hatch that led onto the golden Pyramid roof and wandered up to the top of the Pyramid itself. The autumn morning air was cool and a fine drizzle fell. The base of the WizardTower had disappeared into a thick white mist. A few roofs of the taller houses were visible as they broke through the white blanket, but most of the Castle was lost to view. Although as a ghost, Alther did not feel the cold, he felt like shivering in the wind that eddied around the top of the WizardTower. He drew his faded purple cloak around him and looked down at the hammered-silver platform that surmounted the Pyramid. Alther had always been fascinated by the hieroglyphs inscribed in the platform, but he had never deciphered them, as indeed no one else had. Many hundreds of years ago one ExtraOrdinary Wizard had been brave enough to climb to the top of the Pyramid and taken a rubbing of the hieroglyphs, which now hung in the Library. Every time Alther, as ExtraOrdinary Wizard, had looked at the old gray piece of paper framed on the Library wall, he had felt a horrible sense of vertigo, for it reminded him of the time when, as a young Apprentice, he had been forced to chase his Master, DomDaniel, up to that very place.
But now, as a ghost, Alther was fearless. He experimented with standing on the platform first on one leg and then the other; then he threw himself off, tumbling and turning through the air. As he fell, he tried to imagine what it must have felt like to fall as a human being, as DomDaniel had once done. Just above the mist he leveled out and set off for the Palace.
Catchpole was having a bad dream and it was about to get worse. He hated being on night duty down in the old spell cupboard beside the huge silver doors to the WizardTower. It wasn't so much the lingering smells of decaying spells that upset Catchpole; it was the fear of being asked to do something by a more senior Wizard. Catchpole was only a sub-Wizard and he was not progressing as fast as he had hoped - he had had to retake his Primaries twice and still had not passed - which meant that all Wizards in the Tower were senior to him. After years of being deputy to the fearsome Hunter, Catchpole hated being told what to do, especially when he always seemed to do it wrong. So when Marcia Overstrand strode into the old spell cupboard and demanded to know just what he thought he was doing, sitting there with his eyes closed and looking about as useful as a dead sheep, Catchpole's heart sank. What was she going to ask him to do? And what was she going to say when, as usual, he made a mess of it? Catchpole was incredibly relieved when all Marcia did was tell him to get down to the Palace at once and bring her Apprentice back with him. Well, he could manage that - and it would get him out of the cramped cupboard. What was more, thought Catchpole, as he ran down the marble steps and into the misty Wizard Tower courtyard, it seemed that that upstart Young Army boy who had inveigled his way into becoming the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice was, for once, in the wrong. He would enjoy that, he thought with a smirk.
Catchpole had now reached a large kennel-like structure. It was built of great granite blocks, was the height of a small cottage and was at least twice the length. There was a line of tiny windows just below the eaves to provide much-needed ventilation and for the occupant to look out if he wanted. At the front of the kennel was a hefty wooden ramp leading to a barn door that was made of thick oak planks. The door was firmly closed and had three iron bars holding it in place. Above the door someone had written in neat handwriting, SPIT FYRE. As Catchpole trotted by, something inside the kennel hurled itself against the door. There was a loud splintering sound and the middle iron bar on the door bent a little, but not enough for the door to give way. Catchpole's smirk vanished. He shot off at high speed and did not slow down until he was halfway along Wizard Way and could see the light from the palace torches glimmering through the mist.
After dispatching Catchpole, Marcia took the silver spiral stairs back up to her rooms at the top of the WizardTower. 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 pided 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.