Septimus Heap 4 - Queste (36 page)

The Toll-Man was not big, but he was strong, and without Beetle’s weight—and willingness to land some good punches—Septimus would not have stood a chance. To Jenna’s relief, the snowball stopped just short of the edge with Septimus and Beetle on top of the Toll-Man. “Shove him over, Sep—now!” yelled Beetle.

“No!” yelled Jenna, horrified at the thought of pushing someone to his death. “No. You can’t do that. You can’t!”

It seemed that Jenna was right. As if buoyed by her shout—and the boys’ temporary loss of concentration—the Toll-Man found some extra strength. With an angry shove he threw Beetle off and sent him sprawling into the icy bank of the footpath. There was a sharp crack

as Beetle’s head met the wall of ice. He slumped down, a trickle of red running from behind his ear and staining the ice with a pinkish tinge.

Jenna glanced at Beetle. At least he was safe, and well away from the edge—Septimus was not. Septimus’s head was in fact hanging over the edge of the precipice, and the Toll-Man was about to make sure that the rest of him followed.

Septimus stared into the abyss, trying not to imagine how far the ground was below the fog. While he struggled against the relentless pushing from the Toll-Man—whose sharp intakes of breath he could feel on the back of his neck—Septimus wished more than ever that he had the Flyte Charm. He could see it so clearly, he could almost feel it in his hand. The little white wings of his own Charm that Marcia had given him, which had become part of the Flyte Charm, were fluttering…

Then suddenly, Septimus was

over the edge. As he began—incredibly slowly, so it seemed to him—to fall, he grabbed on to one of the bridge stanchions and there he hung, swinging above the abyss.

Uncaring now about whether the Toll-Man fell to his death or not, Jenna swung her fist at him and caught him by surprise. There was a thud as the man fell forward into the snow and knocked one of his gold teeth out. Blearily, he scrabbled in the snow to retrieve it.

Jenna’s face appeared over the edge of the precipice, white and scared, afraid of what she would see. “Take my hand, Sep. Quick.”

“No, Jen. I’ll pull you over too.”

Jenna looked fierce. “Just do it, Septimus!” she yelled.

Septimus did it. He grabbed Jenna’s hand and to their surprise he came up so easily that they both went staggering back into the snow.

The Toll-Man meanwhile had found his tooth, but when he picked up the bloodstained chunk of gold an expression of exasperation crossed his features and he threw the tooth away in disgust. This was not what he had come here for—what was he doing? But before he had time to answer his own question, two relentless forces met him and toppled him over the edge.

Jenna looked shocked at what they had done. “He’s gone,” she said.

Septimus was not so sure. Warily he leaned over the precipice to check. Suddenly a gloved hand shot up from the mist and grabbed Septimus’s cloak. Septimus lurched back and wrenched the hand away—the Toll-Man was hanging from the very same stanchion that Septimus had been. His angry eyes glared at Septimus. “There’s no escape, Apprentice,” he growled. “The Darkening is done.”

“Who…what are you?” asked Septimus.

The Toll-Man laughed. He pulled his left hand from his glove, which had frozen to the metal stanchion, and made another grab for him. Septimus caught the Toll-Man’s wrist in midair. On the Toll-Man’s little finger was exactly what he had expected to find: a small, black licorice snake.

“I’ll take that,” said Septimus. He pulled the band from the Toll-Man’s finger, whereupon the Toll-Man began a loud rant in what Septimus knew was Darke Tongue. It was foul. The Darke imprecations flew into his ears, wormed their way into his brain and tried to unsettle his mind, but Septimus remembered his Anti-Darke chants and muttered them over and over again while he fought to pry the remaining hand off the stanchion.

But still the Darke

shouts flowed and Septimus felt himself weakening. “Help me, Jen!” he yelled. The next moment Jenna was beside him, and together she and Septimus twisted the Toll-Man’s hand out of his glove. And then, suddenly it was done. All that remained of the Toll-Man was a pair of brown woolen gloves stuck to the stanchion—and a rapidly disappearing scream in the mist.

Jenna slumped down onto the ice and put her head in her hands. “I can’t believe we did that,” she said. She looked at Septimus, a horrified expression in her eyes. “Sep, we’ve just killed someone.”

“Yes,” said Septimus simply.

“But that’s awful,” said Jenna. “I…I never thought I would…”

Septimus looked at Jenna, his green eyes serious. “It’s a luxury, Jen,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Septimus stared at the scraped and bloody snow at his feet. It took him some moments to reply. “I mean…” he began slowly. “I mean that if you go through life and never face a situation where, in order for you to survive, someone else has to die, then you’re lucky. That’s what I mean.”

“That’s terrible, Sep.”

Septimus shrugged. “Sometimes that is how it is. I learned that in the Young Army. It’s either the chief cadet in the wolverine pit, or you.”

Jenna shook her head very slowly, still not able to believe what she had done.

“Jen—look. Does this make you feel better?” asked Septimus quietly. He held out a small black licorice snake ring.

“Oh.”

“It was on his left little finger. It was the Thing, Jen. It was him or us. And it had to be us—you know it did.”

“It was the Toll-Man too,” said Jenna.

“Yes. I know.”

Slowly, Septimus got to his feet and gingerly approached the precipice. He stood as near as he dared then, and murmuring an Anti-Darke chant, he crushed the licorice ring between his fingers and sprinkled it into the void.

A low moan came from behind him. Jenna leaped to her feet. “Beetle!”

“Eurgh…wherrrmi?” came the answering groan.

It took a lot of persuasion to get Beetle up to the Toll-Man’s tree house, even with the help of the steplike notches they found cut into the bark of the tree. Septimus pushed and Jenna pulled and somehow they all made it up to the ramshackle collection of planks and skins on a platform wedged between the two main branches. Covering the entrance to the tree house was the hide of a large, reddish animal with huge curved claws that clattered when Jenna gingerly lifted the door flap. The inside of the tree house smelled musty—and strangely familiar. She peered in but the interior was pitch-black; all she could tell was that the floor, too, was covered with fur.

With a last heave and a push, Jenna and Septimus got the dopey—and very heavy—Beetle into the tree house, and then crawled in themselves.

There was someone already in there.

REUNITED

A half-rat, half-human

face was eerily illuminated in the yellow glow of Septimus’s Dragon Ring. Jenna suppressed a scream.

The body of Ephaniah Grebe was propped up in the far corner of the tree house, exactly where the Thing had left him for the more agile frame of the Toll-Man. Ephaniah’s head lolled forward like a broken doll’s, and his white robes looked like a pile of dirty sheets waiting to be washed. As soon as Jenna saw him, she knew he was UnInHabited—the difference between Ephaniah now and the last time she had seen him was obvious. This was Ephaniah—she felt no revulsion, no sense of overwhelming rat-ness and none of the feeling of pity and hopelessness that the InHabited Ephaniah had filled her with. And, she saw, his left little finger was ring-free. She rushed over to the rat-man and touched his hand. It felt cold.

“Oh, Sep, can you Hear…anything?” she whispered.

Septimus knew what Jenna was asking. He Listened for the Sound of Human Heartbeat. “I don’t think so,” he said, then he saw Jenna’s expression and added hurriedly, “but I think that’s because there’s so much rat there. All I can Hear is Beetle’s, which is slow and steady, and yours, which is really loud.”

“Oh,” said Jenna, surprised. “Sorry. What about yours?”

“You can never Hear your own,” said Septimus. He thought for a moment. “We’ll do it the old way,” he said.

Septimus kneeled beside Ephaniah and took his emergency Physik tin from his pocket. The tin was crammed full of things that Jenna had no idea why he could possibly want. From it he selected a small, round mirror and held it close to Ephaniah’s slightly open mouth from which two long, narrow teeth protruded. A light misting appeared on the glass.

“Well, he’s still breathing,” said Septimus.

“Oh, Sep, that’s wonderful.” Gently, Jenna stroked the rat-man’s soft nose, intrigued at the way the human features merged so well with the rat fur. As she stroked the fur, Ephaniah’s eyes fluttered open for a brief moment. “He saw me,”

whispered Jenna. “His eyes smiled. He’s okay. I know he is.”

“It’ll take a while to be sure about that,” said Septimus, who knew enough Physik to know that nothing is certain. “But at least he’s got a chance.”

The tree house was surprisingly comfortable, if a little strange. It was completely lined with a coarse reddish fur, and once the door flap was closed no light entered at all. In the opposite corner from where Ephaniah lay, his head resting on a pillow that Jenna had made from the Toll-Man’s blankets, there was a small stove set on a thick piece of slate. After several attempts to light it with Beetle’s tinderbox, Jenna finally coaxed a large yellow flame from the big round burner.

Septimus took the battered old pan that hung from a hook above the stove, climbed down the tree and scooped up some snow. With his pan piled high with snow, poised to climb back to safety, he stopped for a moment and listened. A bloodchilling ululating howl—the same one that they had heard the night before—pierced the air and Septimus felt the ground tremble beneath his feet.

Startled, he looked up and saw a long, dark shape moving along the path around the chasm. It was coming toward him—fast. With a sudden certainty Septimus knew what it was—and what had gone past them earlier hidden in the fog.

He did not waste a moment; he dropped the pan and shot back up the rope ladder. As he threw himself into the tree house, the whole tree began to shake.

“Earthquake!” cried Jenna.

Septimus shook his head. “No,” he said. “Foryx!”

Terrified and fascinated at the same time, Jenna peered out of the door flap. A phalanx of Foryx was hurtling through the snow, so fast that Jenna’s only impression was a long, red streak of galloping fur and tusks as the Foryx thundered past on the path below the tree house.

“They’re real!” said Jenna.

“A bit too real,” said Septimus.

A few minutes later, pointing to the walls of the tree house, Jenna said, “You know what fur this is, don’t you?”

“Foryx,” said Septimus with a grimace.

Jenna smiled. “Which means, if you think about it, that we are already in a House of Foryx.”

“Well, I wish Nik were here,” said Septimus glumly.

“I know. So do I.”

Jenna made Septimus go back for some snow. “We’ll hear them if they’re coming back,” she said when Septimus had objected. “And make sure you get the snow from a clean patch. We don’t want Foryx dribble for supper.”

Septimus broke the record time for snow collection. While Jenna boiled up some witches’ brew, Septimus sat next to Beetle and looked through his Physik tin with a feeling of anticipation. At last he was getting a chance to try out the Physik he had learned on a real patient. Beside him his unwitting patient dozed peacefully on the floor of the tree house, pale but breathing steadily. The thick yellow flame of the stove filled the tree house with a comforting glow and the warmth began to bring out the pungent smell of the Foryx skins. Septimus decided it was time Beetle woke up and drank some witches’ brew. He took out a small phial labeled Sal Volatile and was about to waft it under his new patient’s nose when Beetle suddenly opened his eyes. Foryx skin reek was as effective as any phial of Sal Volatile.

Beetle had a nasty gash behind his right ear and now that he was warming up it was beginning to throb painfully.

“Ouch!” he protested as Septimus cleaned up the dried blood with some sphagnum moss dipped in antiseptic.

Jenna looked up as she was dropping three squares of toffee into the boiling water. “You’re turning him purple, Sep.”

She laughed.

“Purple?” said Beetle. “Wotcha doing, Sep?”

“It’s Gentian Violet,” Septimus explained. “It will stop the cut from getting infected. But we need to keep the edges together. Wait, I’ve got something here.” Septimus picked up a large needle.

“What’s that for?” asked Beetle suspiciously.

“Oh, that? Well, when I was learning about Physik, Marcellus took me to watch a surgeon at work,” said Septimus.

“Someone came in with a deep cut and he sewed the edges together.”

“He did what?” Jenna asked, wide-eyed.

“You’re joking,” said Beetle.

Septimus shook his head.

“Eurgh, Sep, that’s disgusting,” said Jenna. “You can’t sew people up like…like bags of flour.”

“Why not? It works.”

“Well, you’re not doing it to me,” Beetle told him. “So you can put that needle away right now.”

Septimus smiled, pleased that Beetle sounded like his old self. “I wasn’t going to sew you up, Beetle,” he said. “Your cut’s not big enough and it’s in an awkward place for stitches anyway. I was just looking for a bandage. Ah, here it is.”

Beetle allowed Septimus to put a clean piece of moss over his cut and wrap a bandage around his head. He obediently drank all of the witches’ brew that Jenna had made and was soon asleep on the Foryx skin floor.

“Marcellus would say that we ought to wake him every few hours to check that he’s sleeping and not unconscious,” said Septimus.

“But he won’t be sleeping if we wake him, will he?” Jenna objected. “He’ll just be grumpy and tired tomorrow.”

“I know,” said Septimus. “Anyway, I think he’s fine. His breathing is good.”

Jenna smiled. “You know,” she said, “even though it was horrible, you being trapped in Marcellus’s Time, you’ve come back really different—in a good way. You know stuff. Stuff that no one else does. Not even Marcia.”