"I know it's a key. But where to?"

Jenna grinned. "An overlooked little fleapit down a dead end, with an outside window," she said.

Marcellus Pye closed the door of his house behind him with a sigh and looked up at his dark windows. Septimus had insisted he blow out all his candles and it had made him feel quite depressed.

"Come now, we must go," said Marcellus.

"I'll Call Spit Fyre," said Septimus. "Something must have spooked him. He can't have gone far."

Marcellus looked doubtful. He'd got along just fine without dragon flight for more than five hundred years and he wasn't in a hurry to change things. But Septimus was already letting out the ululating Call, which reverberated off the densely packed houses on Snake Slipway and made the Alchemist shiver. It was a primeval sound, Marcellus thought, one that went back way beyond Alchemie.

They waited nervously on the slipway, glancing at the shadows, imagining movements.

After a few minutes Marcellus whispered, "I do not believe your dragon is coming, Septimus."

"But he has to come when I Call," said Septimus, worried.

"Maybe he can't, Sep," whispered Jenna.

"Don't, Jen."

"I didn't meant that he was . . . well, I . . ." Jenna stopped. She could see she was only making things worse.

"Dragon or no dragon, we can wait no longer," said Marcellus. "With care we can travel short distances through the Darke Domaine. My cloak has certain . . . abilities, shall we say, and you, Apprentice, have a small tinderbox that may prove useful." Jenna shot Septimus a questioning look. "And you, Princess, will be protected well enough with your membership of . . ." Marcellus peered at the markings on her witch cloak. "My, you don't do things by halves, do you? The Port Witch Coven! Now, we must go. We will travel by the Castle Canyons."

"Castle Canyons?" asked Jenna, who liked to think she knew most things about the Castle. "I've never heard of them."

"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. .h.i.tting 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 cla.s.ses in the Ramblings Little Theatre, which Jenna had always found rather embarra.s.sing.

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. He was there, and yet he was not there. A little spooked, Jenna stepped back. Sometimes she felt Septimus was part of things that she would never fully understand.

Marcellus regarded his two charges closely. They were as prepared as they could ever be, he thought. Now they would have to put things to the test-it was time to step into the Darke Domaine. He beckoned them to the end of the pa.s.sageway. They stopped where the Fog rolled in front of them, close enough to reach out and touch, and Marcellus said, "I will go first, then you two walk together. Keep a steady pace, breathe quietly. Keep your mind clear, for it will tempt you to stray from our path with beguiling thoughts of those you once loved. Do not react to anything and above all, do not panic. Panic draws Darke things to it like a magnet. Understood?"

Jenna and Septimus nodded. Neither could quite believe they were about to step into the shifting wall of Darkenesse of their own free will. Both Septimus's Darke Disguise and Jenna's witch cloak protected them from the beguiling thoughts that drew people into the Darke Domaine. It was odd, thought Jenna, that her witch cloak allowed her to see the Darke Domaine for what it truly was: a terrifying blanket of evil.

Once again they exchanged glances, then together they followed Marcellus into the Darke Fog.

Septimus's Darke Disguise felt like a second skin. He moved easily through the thick Darke Fog, but both Marcellus and Jenna struggled. Jenna's witch's cloak gave her less protection-it did not totally enclose her in the way Septimus's Darke Disguise did and it was not nearly as powerful. Marcellus's cloak gave even less protection-he did not dabble with the Darke quite as much as he liked people to think he did. But any remnants of Darke offer protection in a Darke Domaine and Marcellus and Jenna managed to struggle along, even though they felt as though they were wading through glue and breathing through cotton wool. Waves of fatigue washed over them, but by force of will they managed to keep going.

After some minutes they came to a halt-they had reached Wizard Way. Marcellus peered cautiously out. He looked right and left and right again in exactly the way Jenna remembered Sarah doing when they used to cross the Way when she was little. Then Jenna had known what Sarah was looking out for, but now she had no idea what it was Marcellus was watching for-or how he could possibly see anything. Marcellus beckoned them forward and they stepped out into Wizard Way.

It was not a good place to be. The Darke Domaine felt heavier here and it moved around them like a living thing. Sometimes they felt something brush past them, and once a Thing's finger poked at Marcellus but he swept it off with a Darke curse and the Thing scuttled away. They walked steadily down the middle of the Way and concentrated on breathing slowly and calmly, in and out, in and out, as they measured their steps along the familiar-yet now so strange and frightening-Wizard Way.

As they walked on, Septimus began to get a strong sensation that there was something approaching behind them. It was a sense that he had learned to develop over his Apprentice years and he knew it was good. Remembering what Marcellus had said, he fought the urge to look back, but he could not rid himself of the feeling of a great creature bearing down on them fast. So fast that if they didn't jump out of the way right now . . . Septimus gave Marcellus and Jenna a hefty shove-not so easy in a Darke Domaine-and leaped to the side.

He was just in time. A huge black horse thundered past, his eyes wide and wild, mane streaming in the Darke and Lucy Gringe clinging on, screaming silent, terrified screams.

Thunder's flight had the effect of clearing a temporary path through the Darke. Marcellus quickly recovered himself and steered Jenna and Septimus into the horse's wake, where they moved quickly along the horse-shaped tunnel that Thunder had created through the swirling blackness. For Marcellus and Jenna it was a relief to be out of the weight of the Darke, although they knew it would not last long-the s.p.a.ce was already being invaded by a dull murkiness. At the end of the tunnel they could see that Thunder had halted, and the m.u.f.fled sounds of shouting drifted toward them.

Jenna risked an excited whisper to Septimus. "Mum . . . I can hear Mum."

Septimus was not sure it was Sarah. It sounded more like Lucy Gringe to him, and there was a deeper voice there too.

Thunder's tunnel was slowly collapsing under encroaching wisps of Darke Fog moving into the s.p.a.ce like smoke from a fire burning something foul. The sounds at the end of the tunnel faded into ghostly whispers, but in those faraway echoes, Jenna was absolutely convinced she could hear Sarah's voice. Suddenly, much to Marcellus's disapproval, she broke into a run. She could not bear the sound of her mother being obscured by the Darke once more. She had to get to her this time.

Jenna flew along the s.p.a.ce, forcing Septimus and Marcellus to follow the departing witch's cloak, which spread out behind her like a huge black wing. They arrived at a scene of which Septimus, let alone Marcellus, could make no sense at all.

At first all Septimus could see was Thunder, stamping and tossing his head, rolling his eyes from side to side-a terrified horse longing to flee. A man had hold of his mane and was talking to him in a low voice without much effect, it seemed to Septimus. On the other side of the horse, mostly obscured by Thunder's bulky body and starry horse blanket, he saw the hem of Lucy Gringe's embroidered robes and chunky boots and then he saw Jenna's witch's cloak-with four feet coming from beneath it. And then, as Thunder did a sudden turn, he saw Jenna. She was wrapped in Sarah's arms and had enfolded her mother in her cloak as if to never let her go. Lucy was also hanging onto someone . . .

"Simon!" gasped Septimus. He turned to Marcellus. "My brother. It had to be. Of course it did. He's behind all this. So that's what his creepy letter was about: Beware the Darke. I get it now."

Simon heard every word. "No!" he protested. "No, it's not that. It is not. I-"

"Shut up, you toad," snapped Septimus.

Marcellus did not know what was going on. But what he did know was that the middle of a Darke Domaine was not the place to have a family argument.

"Believe me, this is nothing to do with me," said Simon, half pleading, half angry at being blamed yet again for something he had not done.

"Liar!" exploded Septimus. "How dare you come here and-"

"Be silent, Apprentice!" snapped Marcellus.

Shocked at being spoken to in that way, for Marcellus was always scrupulously polite, Septimus stopped in mid sentence.

Marcellus took advantage of the surprised silence. "If you value your lives, you will-all of you-do as I say," he said with great command. "Immediately."

The peril of their situation hit home. Everyone-even Simon-nodded.

"Very well," said Marcellus. "Jenna, you know where to go so you will lead the way with the horse. It will help that you will both clear the air a little." Simon went to protest but Marcellus stopped him. "If you wish to survive you will do as I say. Septimus, your mother is very weak; you will find your Disguise will stretch to two. It will shield her from the worst of it. I will follow with the young lady and with Simon Heap-for I presume you are he?" Simon nodded. "We shall move in this formation: one, two, three. It is the most efficient way to move through viscosity. We will go silently as one. There must be no dissent. None whatsoever. Is that understood?"

Everyone nodded.

And so like winter geese they set off in their V formation, Jenna with Thunder, Septimus and Sarah Heap sharing the Darke Disguise, followed by Marcellus, who had thrown his cloak around Simon on one side and Lucy on the other.

As they set off, Jenna muttered their destination under her breath. She didn't know why she did, but as soon as she had, Jenna felt sure that she would find the way. She moved quickly out of Wizard Way and into the alleyways that would take her to the nearest entrance to the Ramblings. Deep in the Darke Fog Jenna found that the silence suited her. It allowed her to concentrate, and there was something about the witch's cloak that gave her a feeling of safety within the danger that surrounded them. She moved easily through the Darke, and when she glanced around to check that everyone was still following her, she saw that, like Thunder, she was clearing a path for those behind. Not for the first time she wondered at her cloak's powers.

There was no one in the Castle that terrible night who moved through the Darke Fog with anything approaching Jenna's lightheartedness. Her happiness at finding Sarah safe overwhelmed everything. She hardly cared about the Darke Domaine or Simon's sudden, suspicious appearance. She had her mum back and that was all that mattered.

And every route she had learned for her Extramural Ramblings Certificate all those years ago led to the very place she was now headed: The Big Red Door, There and Back Again Row.

Chapter 34.

The Big Red Door

The Darke Domaine stopped at the Ramblings.

It had faded slowly. First they began to hear the sound of Thunder's hooves, m.u.f.fled and distant but growing louder every step. Hazy shadows began to form recognizable shapes-Lucy first heard, then saw Marcellus's mangled shoe flapping on the paving stones-but they knew they had reached the boundary when they could at last make out the glimmer of a distant rushlight. As they stepped out of the Darke Fog, they found themselves in an alleyway not far from Ma Custard's Cake Stop. Feeling as though a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders, everyone exchanged strained glances-although only Lucy and Sarah met Simon Heap's eyes. No one spoke.

Free of the Darke Fog, Thunder snorted and pulled away from Jenna's grasp. As he headed noisily back to his master's side Jenna let go and, to her surprise, saw a rat clinging to Thunder's mane.

"Stanley?" she said, but the rat did not respond. Its eyes were shut tight and it was muttering something that sounded like, "Stupid, stupid stupid rat." It did not look happy, thought Jenna.

Marcellus looked about anxiously. The border of a Darke Domaine was not a place to relax-this was where outriders patrolled, extending its boundaries, pulling the Domaine ever outward. He placed a finger on his lips for silence and, reverting to what Septimus called old-speak-as he did when a little tense-he whispered to Jenna, "Whither now, Princess?"

Jenna pointed at the lone rushlight, which illuminated the entrance to the Ramblings she had been heading for-a tumbledown archway covered in ivy and a purple flowering plant that grew out of untended walls in the Castle. The purple flowers were long gone in the dead of winter but the woody twigs of the plant hung down and brushed their heads as they stepped through the old stones into the hush of the Ramblings backwater.

Muttering, "I knaht uoy, esaelp eriter," Septimus was busy returning his Darke Disguise to its tinderbox. It folded up as helpfully as his House Mouse and as thin as a piece of tissue paper. He pushed the lid on tight and placed the little box back in his deepest pocket, along with the precious key to Dungeon Number One.

"I'll put a SafeScreen on the arch," he said. "At least that will keep the Darkenesse out for a little while longer."

Marcellus disagreed. "No, Apprentice. We must leave no clue that we have come this way. We must leave it as we found it."

Freed from the Darke Domaine, the party split into its natural alliances, which meant that Septimus and Simon got as far away from each other as possible. Marcellus and Septimus led the way. Simon-grabbed by Lucy on one side and Sarah on the other-stayed back, hiding his awkwardness at being near Jenna and Septimus by fussing with Thunder. Jenna hovered between the two groups like a magnet, attracted by the presence of her mother and repelled by the presence of Simon. Eventually, after two wrong turnings, Jenna joined Marcellus and Septimus and once again led the way.

The Ramblings was a strange place that night. Normally on the Longest Night it had a festive atmosphere. Doors would be flung open to reveal welcoming rooms with candles ablaze and tables piled high with delicacies from the Traders' Market. People would sit chatting with friends while children, allowed to stay up late and run free, played in the corridors. It was always a noisy, riotous time, fueled by plates of sugared biscuits and bowls of sweets, which were traditionally left beside the numerous candles that roosted on any free perch in the pa.s.sageways.

But as Jenna led the way through the empty corridors, the only sounds to be heard were low, worried conversations drifting through closed doors and the occasional wail of a disappointed child. It felt, she thought, as though everyone was waiting for the onslaught of a violent storm.

But despite the sense of trepidation pervading the place, the candles still shed their warm light on the newly swept pa.s.sageways and the bowls of biscuits and sweets sat untouched in their niches, although not for long. Jenna, who had had nothing to eat since "Edifice" with Beetle, spied her favorite iced pink rabbit biscuits and grabbed a handful. Septimus was particularly pleased to find a whole bowl of Banana Bears, and even Marcellus permitted himself a small toffee.

And so they walked on through the deserted corridors, Thunder's hooves clip-clopping as they went. The sound of the hooves brought one or two worried faces to the tiny, candlelit windows that looked out onto the pa.s.sageways, and once or twice a door was held open an inch or two and frightened eyes gazed out. But the door was soon slammed and the candles quickly snuffed out-no one seemed rea.s.sured at the sight of the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice in the company of a witch, an ancient Alchemist, and that disgraced Heap boy-what was his name?

With Thunder in mind, Jenna led them up what was known as a trolleyway-a sloping pa.s.sage with no steps. Trolleyways were longer, although not always wider, than the normal pa.s.sageways, which often had very steep flights of steps. They were, naturally, designed for trolleys-an everyday feature of Ramblings life and an essential piece of equipment for people who lived on the top floors. "Trolley" was a term that covered a mult.i.tude of wheeled carts, the number of wheels varying between two and six. Those on the lower floors considered them to be the bane of Ramblings life, especially late at night when rowdy groups of teens would take them to the top of the steepest trolleyway and hurtle down through the various levels. Two-wheelers were the most popular for this sport, as they were easier to steer and had the advantage of being able to use the handles as brakes-if you leaned back at the right moment. But that night there was no danger of being run down by a trolley rider yelling, "Way! Way!" as a warning. All trolley riders were behind closed doors, fearful, bored and having to be nice to their visiting aunts-while the visiting aunts were deeply regretting their decision to come to the Castle for the Longest Night festivities.

With Thunder's hooves slipping on the worn surface of the bricks, the group trooped up the final and by far the steepest incline and stepped thankfully out into a wide pa.s.sageway known locally as Big Bertha. Big Bertha wound through the top of the Ramblings like a lazy river and many tributary pa.s.sageways branched off from it. This was one of the most difficult areas of the Ramblings to understand-some of the corridors were dead ends but did not appear to be, while others looked like dead ends but were not. Most twisted and turned in such a way as to disorientate even the most experienced traveler.

But Jenna had gotten top marks in her Ramblings Certificate and now it showed. Holding the key to the Big Red Door in her hand as if it were a compa.s.s, she led the way straight across Big Bertha into a corridor that appeared to be a dead end but was not. The wall at the end was a screen that had the entrances to two pa.s.sageways hidden behind it. Jenna skirted the wall-which sported a line of multicolored pots, each containing a tall, thin candle stuck into a mound of boiled sweets-and took the right-hand entrance. It was a tight corner and Thunder had some trouble getting around it. Jenna wondered if Thunder might be a little spooked by the narrow confines, but for a horse that once lived in an old Land Wurm's Burrow, the Ramblings pa.s.sageways were positively airy and s.p.a.cious.

The pa.s.sage led into a Well Hall-a circular s.p.a.ce open to the sky. In the middle was the well, which was protected by a low wall and a wooden cover, on which stood three buckets of varying sizes. Above the well was a complicated pulley system that allowed heavy buckets to be easily drawn up from the huge fresh water cistern built into the foundations of the Ramblings. Rushlights cast a warm glow across the smooth, damp stones, which were warm enough to melt the occasional snowflake that drifted down. Set into the curved walls were some well-worn stone benches; pots with candles and wrapped sweets had been left on the benches and gave the Well Room a festive look. But even this popular meeting place was, like everywhere else, deserted.

Jenna waited by the well while everyone caught up. She caught Sarah's eye and smiled, hoping that Sarah recognized the place where she used to draw water and spend many hours chatting to her neighbors. But to Jenna's distress, Sarah just gazed blankly back.

"Nearly there," said Jenna, trying to keep cheerful.

"Hey, Jens, remember when you dropped your bear down the well and I fished it out in a bucket?" said Simon.

Jenna ignored him. She didn't think Simon had any right to use the old name he used to call her by before he kidnapped her and planned to kill her-no right at all. She spun on her heel and strode off into a narrow whitewashed corridor, which was lined with an array of multicolored candles. After a minute or so the party emerged once again into Big Bertha, having cut off a huge loop. They went around one more bend and then Jenna turned down a wide alleyway, which proclaimed itself There and Back Again Row. A few moments later she was standing outside the door to the room where she had lived for the first ten years of her life.

It looked different. No longer a scuffed and dismal black, the door was now painted bright, shiny red, just as it had been in what people still called The Good Old Days. In her hand Jenna held the precious key that she remembered Silas locking the door with every night, and which had hung on a high hook on the chimney the rest of the time. No one but Silas or Sarah had been allowed to touch the key because-as Silas had informed everyone one night when its hook had fallen out of the wall and Maxie had hidden the key under his blanket- it was a precious Heap heirloom. The Big Red Door, complete with lock and key (with Benjamin Heap inscribed on the bow) was the only thing that Silas's father had left him.

Jenna knew exactly what to do with the key. She handed it to Sarah.

"You open it, Mum," she said.

Sarah took the key and looked at it.

Jenna watched Sarah anxiously. She glanced up and saw that everyone else was watching too. Even Marcellus. It felt like an eternity while Sarah Heap stared at the big bra.s.s key lying on her palm. And then, very slowly, recognition dawned in Sarah's eyes and the corners of her mouth flickered into the beginnings of a smile.

Hesitantly Sarah placed the key in the lock. The door recognized Sarah, and when she began, very weakly, to turn the key, the lock did the rest for her and the door swung open.

Chapter 35.

The Longest Night

A large variety of animals had spent time-sometimes their whole lives-in the room behind the Big Red Door, but Thunder was the first horse. Sam had once brought a goat in but only for a few seconds. Sarah Heap did not, in those days, have things with hooves in her room. But this time Sarah had no problems with hooves. She was perfectly happy to have a huge black horse standing in the corner while her Simon fed him some withered apples that he had found in a bowl on the floor.

Sarah was amazed at the transformation of her old home. As she stood gazing about her, taking in all the changes that Silas had secretly made over the previous year, happy memories came flooding back and began to displace the heaviness and gloom that the Darkenesse had left within her. Now she understood why Silas was always disappearing.