SandRider (14 page)

As Darius stood clutching his nose, overwhelmed by pain, he did not notice the ghost of Jillie Djinn beckoning Kaznim to follow her into the Manuscriptorium. The next thing Darius did notice was the discrete
ping
of the door as the Chief Hermetic Scribe came back from his inspection of the racecourse.

Beetle stared at the books strewn across the floor and Darius with his hands over his face and blood dripping through his fingers. “What on earth is going on?” he asked.

Darius stared at his boss in dismay. Two fat tears ran down his cheeks and joined the drops of blood dripping onto the floor.

Beetle knew he should not have left such a new and timid scribe alone. “Hey,” he said, putting his arm around Darius. “Don't take it to heart. It gets a bit rough here on race day. Were they the big boys from Gothyk Grotto?”

Darius shook his head. “It was a little girl,” he whispered.

“A little
girl
?” To Darius's chagrin, Beetle sounded amused. “Well, I must admit, we do have some fierce ones in the Castle. Never mind, Darius. I've just got the sled lane order to sort out and then we'll lock up for the day. Okay? And you can have a nice glass of FizzFroot. How about that?”

Darius nodded and managed a weak smile. He didn't like FizzFroot—all the bubbles went up his nose and it tasted weird—but Darius didn't care. The girl had run away and the Chief Hermetic Scribe was never going to find out what he'd done. And he had a really cute
Egg Timer
, too.

The ghost of Jillie Djinn took Kaznim through a dimly lit room full of high desks and down some stairs. At the bottom of the stairs were some swing doors where the ghost paused, put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Shh. I will show you how to go home, but you must be quiet and take care no one sees you. There are bad people down here.”

Wide-eyed, Kaznim nodded. She could believe that.

“So push the doors, then,” the ghost said testily.

Tentatively, Kaznim pushed. The doors swung open so easily that Kaznim very nearly fell through and then, to her horror, they swung back so fast that they hit the ghost in the face. Aghast, Kaznim waited for the ghost to yell at her and bring the bad people running. But the ghost managed a strained smile and beckoned Kaznim onward.

Kaznim followed the dumpy, shimmering figure in dark blue along a wide white corridor with a line of hissing white lights on the ceiling. It felt very exposed. There were workrooms—none of them with doors—opening off the corridor. They all appeared to be uninhabited, containing only a table with a selection of objects indicating various projects in progress: glass cases, piles of paper, pots, brushes, small tools and, in one room, a large press. Kaznim would have liked to have stopped and looked, but she remembered what the ghost had said about the bad people and tiptoed carefully by, checking each room as she did.

To Kaznim's shock, the very last room before the corridor turned a corner was occupied. A boy with curly red hair was watching a strangely misshapen creature swathed in white doing something at a workbench. They had their backs to
the corridor but as Kaznim tiptoed by, the boy noticed the movement and turned around. Kaznim froze. The boy looked very odd; he was wearing thick magnifying spectacles through which his eyes looked like huge blue marbles. He looked surprised and said, “Oh! Queen Jenna!”

The boy was Oskar Sarn. He pulled off his magnifying spectacles and hurried out to the corridor to see if the Queen was lost and he could be of any help. But all Oskar saw was a small girl in a long red coat. He thought nothing of it—the Manuscriptorium was full of scribes' younger brothers and sisters that day. Oskar put his spectacles back on and returned to helping the Conservation, Preservation, and Protection Scribe, Ephaniah Grebe, put together a particularly complicated automaton.

The ghost of Jillie Djinn was waiting at the turn of the corridor, tapping her foot impatiently. “Hurry
up
,” she said to Kaznim.

Kaznim did not need to be told. The boy had scared her and she was around the corner in seconds. To Kaznim's relief, the wide, exposed brightness now gave way to the dimness of rushlights and narrow brick-lined corridors. Now the ghost picked up speed, seeming to almost fly along the passageways.
The light grew ever dimmer as the rushlights became spaced farther apart, and Kaznim had to concentrate hard to pick out the dark blue robes from the shadows.

After a reckless dash down some steep stone steps, Kaznim found the ghost waiting for her in front of an iron door with four massive bolts drawn across it. “Now, little girl, first we need the key. It is hidden behind that loose brick there. No . . . down there. Where I am pointing, child.” The ghost sighed impatiently.

Kaznim scrabbled at the brick and managed to free it. Behind was a long, thin key.

“Very well,” said the ghost. “Now take out that brick up there. No . . .
there
. Goodness, do you not have eyes?”

Flustered by the ghost's impatience, Kaznim fumbled awkwardly with the second brick, which she had to stand on tiptoe to reach. But she was determined to do it. At last she pulled the brick out and saw a metal plate with a keyhole set behind it.

“Put the key in there and turn three times to the right very quickly, then four times to the left,” the ghost told her.

Kaznim did as she was told and she felt a mechanism inside the door shift.

The ghost seemed pleased. “The bolts are free now,” she said. Kaznim went to open the lowest bolt but the ghost stopped her. “No, little girl. Did your mother never teach you to tidy up? Put the key back and the bricks. Leave it as you found it.”

Kaznim hated how the ghost talked about her mother but she said nothing. Meekly, she put the key and then the bricks back and waited.

“Well, get on with it then,” the ghost said snappily. “Pull the bolts back. You've only got . . . ooh, let's see, about fifty seconds now until they lock themselves again.”

Kaznim was horrified. She wrenched at the bolts—which luckily were freshly oiled and moved easily—and the door swung open.

Behind it was a brick wall.

Kaznim felt utterly wretched. “There's just a wall,” she said.

“Ah. So you don't really want to go home,” the ghost said. “I thought as much.”

“But I
do
want to go home,” Kaznim protested, very nearly in tears. “I do,
I do
!”

“Well, go through there then,” the ghost said.

“Through the
wall
?”

The ghost looked annoyed. “Through the arch,” she said, stabbing an impatient finger at the wall.

“Arch?” asked Kaznim. She stared at the blank wall, willing the tears to go away.

“But you can't see it, can you, little girl?” the ghost taunted.

Kaznim remembered what Marwick had told her about
Hidden
arches:
If you want to see them badly enough, you will. With practice. In time.
There was no doubt in Kaznim's mind that she wanted to see this arch very badly indeed, but she had no time to practice. It had to happen
right now
. So she stretched her arms out, placed both hands onto the rough brick and imagined she was Marwick—Marwick, who could see the
Hidden
arches and who traveled the Ways as easily as if they were desert paths. At last, after the longest twenty seconds in Kaznim's life, she began to see the shimmering shape of an arch glowing through the brick. Elated, she said, “I see it! I see it!”

“Be quiet, little girl,” the ghost said. “The bad people will hear. Now show me your blue paper.”

Keeping a very tight grip on her precious piece of paper, Kaznim held it up. The ghost peered at it closely. “See the
first symbol on the list that that silly little boy wrote for you?”

Kaznim nodded.

“That is the number two, which is this arch here. You just follow the symbols and you get home. Understand?”

Kaznim understood more than Jillie Djinn realized. She understood that the ghost was taking a delight in not explaining the Ways properly and she correctly suspected that although the ghost clearly wanted Kaznim to
Go Through
the Manuscriptorium Way, it was for some nasty reason of her own, not because she wanted to help her. The fat little ghost was, Kaznim thought, as unpleasant as everyone else in the nasty Castle—except for Sam and Marwick. They were the only people she was sorry to be leaving. Kaznim knew that Marwick would have honored his promise to take her home. But she also knew that was not going to be for some time, and she wanted to go home right
now
.

With an air of satisfaction, the ghost watched Kaznim step into the
Hidden
arch of the Manuscriptorium Way. “Close the door behind you,” she said.

Kaznim did as she was asked—she didn't want the horrid ghost following her—and then, stumbling into the darkness,
she walked bravely forward.

In the gloomy corridor, the ghost of Jillie Djinn folded her arms and waited. Within seconds the four bolts slid silently across the door and the ghost heard the locking mechanism slip into place. She wafted away up the steps, heading back to the Manuscriptorium where the scribes worked. Then she sat on the steps that led to her old rooms and waited, a triumphant smile on her face.

Kaznim's route was not an easy one. It took her through a nest of snakes, a giant spiderweb, a tar pit, a circle of wailing spirits and many other strange and frightening places, but when at last she emerged into the evening sunshine that smelled of heat and the desert she knew she was home—or very nearly so. But as she walked across a quiet quayside, gazing up at the ships, Kaznim's luck ran out. A baby voice piped out, “Kazzie, Kazzie! See Kazzie!”

Kaznim looked up, amazed and delighted. She saw her baby sister on a beautiful ship, held tightly in the arms of a hard-faced woman. As Bubba pointed and gabbled excitedly, the woman hurried away. Moments later a familiar figure with
cropped hair and a steely stare appeared at the ship's rail, and Kaznim locked eyes with the sorcerer Oraton-Marr.

“Seize her!” he yelled to the guards at the foot of the gangplank.

“Who, sir?” they called up.

“The child in the red coat. Yes,
her
. Get her!”

Five minutes later, Kaznim was prisoner on board the
Tristan
. Now the Castle and the Wizard Tower did not seem so bad after all.

PART VI

F
ORTY
-T
WO
H
OURS TO
H
ATCHING

T
hat wretched Catchpole is an
officious prig,” Septimus was telling Tod. “He was just as bad when I was a boy. I loathed him.” He sighed. “I suppose you have no idea where Kaznim Na-Draa might be?”

Tod and Septimus were in the ExtraOrdinary Wizard's rooms on the twentieth floor of the Wizard Tower. Tod had just confessed that she had managed to lose not only their only clue to the whereabouts of the Orm Egg, but also the means of searching for it. Miserably, she shook her head. “I've no idea where she could be. She just vanished. It was almost as though she had done an
UnSeen
. In fact, I thought I felt something odd—a different kind of
Magyk
—when I first got outside the courtyard.”

“She's too young to keep an
UnSeen
going for long,”
Septimus said. “But that is very useful to know. I'm sending all the duty Wizards out to look for her, and they need to know to track any echoes of foreign
Magyk
.” He shook his head. “Though some of them would be hard put to track an elephant two feet in front of them.”

“I'd like to go too,” Tod said. “Seeing as I was the one who lost her.”

There was an awkward silence in which Tod hoped that Septimus might tell her that it didn't matter and she wasn't to worry, but he didn't. What he did say surprised her. “If we don't find Jim Knee I expect you'd like to be in the Apprentice Race this afternoon?”

Tod was embarrassed. She hoped Septimus didn't think she had deliberately lost Jim Knee so that she would be able to be in the sled race. “Oh no,” she said quickly. And then, when Septimus looked puzzled, she added, “I mean, yes, I would love to, but I must help you look for Kaznim. And Jim Knee.”

Septimus considered the matter. “I think you should race,” he said. “People expect the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice to run in the Apprentice Race. It will set alarm bells ringing if you're here and you don't race. The search party can go out right now and you can get down to the Sled Shed and tell your substitute
he's off the race. And as for Jim Knee . . . well, I don't want to
Summon
him but I may have to.” Septimus sighed. “I am beginning to regret giving him power over his own form.”

Tod could not help but feel a little sorry for Jim Knee. She wondered how it must feel to have no control over the most basic of things—the shape that one took in the world. She imagined being in the power of someone who could turn her into anything on a whim: a scorpion, a turtle, a little yellow crab. When Tod thought about it like that, she didn't begrudge Jim Knee his precious autonomy one bit. She just wished he had been a bit more helpful about what he did with it.

As Tod stood up to go, there was a knock on the door. Like a good Apprentice, she went to open it. Outside was Dandra Draa and her tortoise.

At the sight of Dandra, Septimus leaped to his feet. “Sam?” he asked anxiously.

“No, no, not Sam,” Dandra said hurriedly. “Sam is sleeping and his temperature is stable.”

Septimus could see that Dandra looked hollow-eyed and upset. She was clutching Kaznim's tortoise to her as though it was the most precious thing in the world. “But something
is
wrong?” Septimus asked.

Dandra took a deep breath. “Yes, it is. I, er, I have something, um, personal to tell you.”

“I'll go now,” Tod said diplomatically.

“Please stay, Alice,” Dandra said. “Your mother knew my story and you should too. And you need to understand what—I mean who—your new friend is.”

“New friend?” Tod asked, puzzled.

“Kaznim Na-Draa—the little girl with the tortoise. With
my
tortoise.”

“She's not a friend,” Tod said. She looked at Dandra, remembering what Kaznim had called her:
murderer
. No one who called Dandra such a thing could ever be a friend of hers.

“Take a seat, Dandra,” Septimus said. “I'm sure it can't be that bad.”

Dandra thought it could. She sat down on the exotic purple sofa and put Ptolemy carefully on her knee. The tortoise stuck his head out and stared impassively at the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. Septimus resumed his place in a low chair beside the fire and Tod sat on the edge of the sofa, at the other end from Dandra. They both looked expectantly at their visitor. Dandra felt so nervous that she seemed to have lost her voice.

“Would you like a drink of water?” asked Septimus.

Dandra shook her head. She took a deep breath and began her story.

“You know that I came to the Castle because I was invited by dear Marcia for my skills in
DisEnchantment
. Her summons arrived in the nick of time, as you say here. My life was in great danger.”

Tod looked at Dandra, surprised.

“Some months before Marcia's message, Karamander Draa and her baby daughter, Kaznim, arrived at my tent. They were destitute, but even so I was surprised to see Karamander. I thought I was the last person to whom she would turn. You see, I was the cause of her husband's death.”

“No!” Tod muttered under her breath. Surely Kaznim could not be right?

Dandra hurried to explain. “I did not desire his death—of course not. But it was my actions that led to it. I cannot deny that.”

“We cannot always predict the effect our actions will have,” Septimus said. “If they are performed in good faith, there can be no blame.”

Both Dandra and Tod looked gratefully at Septimus. He
had a way of making sense of things in a few words.

“Thank you, Septimus.” Dandra continued. “It all began when I was assistant to the court physician of the Red Queen. I worked at the palace in the Red City—so called, they said, for the color of the rock upon which it stood, but the people who lived there knew it was for the blood spilled within its walls. As assistant physician in the Royal Hospital I was relatively safe and I counted myself lucky. We were protected by the palace livery we wore and were not subject to the numerous acts of terror perpetrated by the city guards. Neither were we part of the court intrigues, which were the downfall of so many.

“We grew our medicinal herbs in the palace gardens and it was there that I met the Red Queen's son, Salazin. Salazin was fascinated by Physik, as you call it here, and he would ask me endless questions. Slowly, we fell in love. But it was hopeless. He was betrothed to another and even if he had not been, he would never have been allowed to marry a mere physician—despite the fact that actually that was what he himself dearly wanted to be. It was hopeless. We knew it was.” Dandra paused and looked up at Septimus. “So we planned to run away.”

“Yes,” said Septimus, and then he remembered that he was not meant to know the story. In the confidence of the handover from one ExtraOrdinary Wizard to another, Marcia had told him absolutely everything. With his new diplomatic skills, honed by his year as ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Septimus decided to say nothing but to listen to what Dandra said next. He resumed his neutral expression while Dandra continued.

“We disguised ourselves as traders. I cut my hair short and we became a boy and his merchant master with trading packs. I put Ptolemy into the top of one of the packs and told him to stay still. Then, early in the morning, when a caravan of traders left the city we tagged along. Apparently no one noticed our absence until Salazin did not arrive for an important meeting; even then it was not much remarked upon. It was not the first time he had missed a meeting, Salazin found Court life very tedious. I had covered my absence by leaving a note saying that I had gone into the desert to find a rare plant. However, as night fell, people began to talk. It seems our love was not the secret we had thought. The Queen was furious. She sent out a runner to track us down. The runner was my cousin Karamander's young husband.

“The Queen ran a cruel regime. It was a terrifying thing
to be chosen as a runner, for failure meant certain death. So I can only imagine what Karamander must have felt when her husband told her he had been chosen to go. Karamander's husband arrived at our caravan at midnight. I remember to this day seeing him silhouetted against the moon as he crested the nearby dune and cantered down to our encampment. Salazin and I knew we were in great danger and so I gathered all my
Magykal
powers and helped him use the
UnSeen
I had so carefully taught him. When I saw him slowly
Fade into the Aire
, I did the same
Unseen
so that we could still see each other.” Dandra laughed, embarrassed. “Oh, I apologize, ExtraOrdinary Wizard. I forget myself. You know such things.”

“A few,” Septimus admitted with a wry smile.

“We moved a safe distance away so that no one would bump into us and sat watching Karamander's poor husband search for us. The people we had traveled with were as puzzled as he was, for once he had explained who he was after they knew it was us. Soon the whole camp was in uproar looking for us. I became concerned that our footprints would give us away, but we stayed still and prayed that the fuss of the search and the darkness would cover them. Our prayers
were answered and we were not discovered. As dawn broke, we watched Karamander's unlucky husband head slowly for home, knowing he went to a terrible fate. I believe he was thrown to the Queen's lion that night. But what could we do? It was him or us.

“We dared not return to the caravan, so we stayed
UnSeen
and watched them pack up and leave. When they were gone we took our own way south, heading for a group of lakes where we knew good people lived. We had such plans . . .”

Septimus saw tears glistening in Dandra's eyes. “It's all right, Dandra,” he said. “You really don't need to tell—”

“But I
do
,” Dandra interrupted him. “For my Salazin's sake, I do. So that at least someone will know how brave he was.”

“Of course,” Septimus said soothingly. “Of course.”

“Our plans . . . Salazin would become my Apprentice and I would teach him all I knew so that he could fulfill his dream and become a physician too. We would be together. We would be happy. Simple dreams . . .” A tear escaped from Dandra's eye and landed on Ptolemy's shell.

“We traveled through the heat of the day and decided not to make camp that night but to carry on. We wanted to put a safe distance between us and the Red City, for we knew the
long arm of the Queen stretched far. But as we walked wearily into the dawn of our second day of freedom, we were spotted by a new band of runners. Quickly we did our
UnSeens
once again. But this time it did not go well.”

Dandra took a shuddering breath. Septimus felt great sympathy for Dandra. He still had flashbacks to his time as a boy soldier in the notorious Young Army, and even now a deep sense of fear would unexpectedly wash over him at odd times.

Clutching the tortoise to her like a comfort blanket, Dandra continued her story. Septimus and Tod heard how Salazin had bungled his
UnSeen
. They heard of Dandra's guilt that
her
UnSeen
had worked. How Salazin had refused to give her away. How he had looked straight at her
Invisible
self and how the expression in his eyes had told her farewell. How she had watched him being taken away, tied onto a horse facing backward, to what Dandra knew would be a terrible fate.

“I wandered
UnSeen
for days,” Dandra told them. “In fact, I decided to remain
UnSeen
for the rest of my life. I didn't want to speak to anyone ever again. But after many days I came to a large, faded tent covered with silver stars, and from within came the sound of wailing. It was a cry of grief that I understood. I knew someone in there had died. A
boy ran from the tent and he saw me. I will not trouble you with more details, but his father, an Apothecary, had died. Of course, you will guess what happened. I stayed to look after the boy, Mysor. I took over the practice and Mysor became my Apprentice. Things went well—until some months later, Karamander Draa turned up.

“I took her in. Of course I did. I felt I owed her
that
at the very least. All was good for a few months. Karamander was a willing helper and little Kaznim was a joy to be with. But then others began to arrive, people whom Karamander called cousins—although I recognized none of them. She asked me to let them stay awhile and I felt unable to refuse. If I dared to suggest it was time they moved on, Karamander would break down in tears about her husband and the terrible death he had endured. Still more ‘cousins' kept arriving, and I was soon vastly outnumbered and frightened by the amount of weapons the newcomers brought with them. My medical practice began to suffer as people who had trekked for miles to see me felt threatened. I began to suspect that Karamander had come to seek revenge.

“I was right. One morning I heard them plotting to kill me while I slept. That very day Marcia's message inviting me
to the Wizard Tower arrived, and never was a message more welcome. Late that evening I left a note for Mysor—who I knew would be safe, as Karamander clearly liked the boy—but I could not find Ptolemy. So alone once more I stole into the night and trekked to the Port of the Singing Sands. I took the first ship out the very next morning and as the land dropped beneath the horizon, I felt safe for the first time in years. But I was a fool to think I could run from this. Now Karamander has sent her daughter to take revenge and there is no escape. Not for me.”

Septimus was not convinced. “But a mother would never send such a young child on a revenge mission—surely she would come herself. And from what Marwick says, Kaznim never intended to come here.”

Dandra shook her head. “This morning, the child threatened to bring a powerful sorcerer to kill me.”

“I think,” Tod said carefully, “that Kaznim only wanted her tortoise back.”