In the Vaults of the Manuscriptorium, The Live Plan of What Lies Beneath was unrolled on a large table. Lit by a bright lantern that hung above the table, the large and fragile sheet of opalescent Magykal paper lay weighted down by standard Manuscriptorium paperweights—squares of lead backed with blue felt. The Live Plan of What Lies Beneath was a map of all the Ice Tunnels that ran below the Castle—apart from the section that traveled out to the Isles of Syren. As its name suggested, the Live Plan was a little more than just a plan. Magykally, it showed what was happening in the Ice Tunnels at that very moment.
Gathered around it were the new Chief Hermetic Scribe, O. Beetle Beetle; Romilly Badger, the Inspection Clerk; and Partridge, the new Scribe of Maps. If you had walked into the Vaults at that moment it would not have been clear who actually was the Chief Hermetic Scribe. Beetle’s long blue-and-gold coat of office had been banished to a nearby hook because its gold-banded sleeves scratched the delicate Live Plan and he was wearing his comfortable old Admiral’s jacket, which kept out the chill of the Vaults. With his dark hair flopping forward over his eyes, Beetle looked very much at home as he leaned over the Live Plan, concentrating hard.
Suddenly Romilly—a slight girl with light brown hair and what Partridge thought was a cute, goofy smile—squeaked with excitement. A faint luminous splodge was moving along a wide tunnel below the Palace.
“Well spotted,” said Beetle. “Ice Wraiths are not easy to see. I reckon that’s Moaning Hilda.”
“There’s another one!” Romilly was on a roll. “Ooh . . . and look, what’s that?” Her finger stabbed at a tiny shadow near the old Great Chamber of Alchemie and Physik.
Partridge was impressed. There was a minuscule blip at the end of Romilly’s finger. “Is that an Ice Wraith too?” he asked.
Beetle peered closer. “No, it’s too shadowy. And slow. Look—it is hardly moving at all compared to Moaning Hilda, who is way over there now. And it is too well defined; you can see it actually has a shape.”
Romilly was puzzled. “Like a person, you mean?”
“Yes,” said Beetle. “Just like a—bother!”
“It’s gone,” said Romilly sadly. “That’s a shame. It can’t have been a person then, can it? Someone can’t suddenly disappear. It must have been a ghost.”
Beetle shook his head; it was too solid for a ghost. But the Live Plan was telling him that all the Ice Tunnel hatches remained Sealed, so there was nowhere the person could have gone. Only a ghost could disappear from the middle of an Ice Tunnel like that.
“Weird,” he said. “I could have sworn that was human.”
It was human—a human named Marcellus Pye.
Marcellus Pye, recently reinstated Castle Alchemist, had just dropped down through a hatch at the bottom of an unmapped shaft, which went close enough to an Ice Tunnel to show on the Live Plan. As soon as he was through the hatch Marcellus knew he was safe—the Live Plan did not show anything lower than this level.
A pole with foot-bars led down from the hatch and Marcellus climbed down it with his eyes closed. He reached a flimsy metal platform and stood, not daring to open his eyes, not believing that after nearly five hundred years he was back in the Chamber of Fyre.
However, Marcellus did not need to open his eyes to know where he was. A familiar metallic sweetness that found its way to the back of his tongue told him he was back home, and brought with it a flood of memories—the tear that had run up from the base of the Cauldron, the sharp crack of the splitting Fyre rods and the heat of the Fyre as it spun out of control. Swarms of Drummins working ceaselessly, trying to contain the damage. The smell of burning rock as the flames spread beneath the Castle, setting the old timber houses alight. The panic, the fear as the Castle threatened to become a raging inferno. Marcellus remembered it all. He prepared himself for a scene of terrible devastation, took a deep breath and decided to open his eyes on the count of three.
One . . . two . . . three!
A jolt of surprise ran through him—it was as if nothing had happened. Marcellus had expected black soot to cover everything, but there was none—quite the reverse. Illuminated by the neatly placed Fyre Globes, which still burned with their everlasting flames, the metal platform shone. Marcellus picked up a Fyre Globe, cupping it in his hands. Marcellus smiled. The flame inside the ball licked against the glass where his hands touched it, like a faithful dog welcoming its owner home. He replaced the ball beside his foot and his smile faded. He was indeed home, but he was home alone. No Drummin could have survived.
Marcellus knew that he must now look over the edge of the dizzyingly high platform on which he was standing. This was when he would know the worst. As he gingerly walked forward, he felt the whole structure perform a slight shimmy. A feeling of panic shot up through his feet—Marcellus knew exactly how far he had to fall.
Nervously he peered over the edge.
Far below lay the great Fyre Cauldron, its mouth a perfect circle of blackness ringed by a necklace of Fyre Globes. Marcellus was immensely relieved—the Fyre Cauldron was intact. He stared down into the depths, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the dark.
Soon he began to make out more details. He saw the metal tracery that was embedded in the rock and covered the cavern like a huge spider’s web gleaming with a dull silver shine. He saw the peppering of dark circles in the rock that marked the entrance to the hundreds, maybe thousands, of Drummin burrows. He saw the familiar patterns of Fyre Globes that marked out paths of the walkways strung across the cavern hundreds of feet below and, best of all, he could now see inside the Cauldron the graphite glitter of one hundred and thirty nine stars—the ends of the Fyre rods that stood upright like fat little pens in an inkpot.
Marcellus shook his head in utter amazement. He had found his Fyre Chamber cleaned, repaired, neatly put in mothballs and, by the look of it, ready to go. The Drummins must have survived much longer than he had realized. They had worked so hard and he had never even known. Something caught in his throat; he swallowed hard and wiped his eyes. Suddenly Marcellus experienced what he called a Time Slip—a flashback to all those years ago, when he had been standing on the very spot where he was now.
His loyal Drummins are swarming around him. Julius Pike, ExtraOrdinary Wizard and one-time friend, is on the upper platform, yelling above the roar of the flames, “Marcellus. I am closing this down!”
“Julius, please. Just a few hours more,” he is begging. “We can control the Fyre. I know we can.” Beside him on the platform old Duglius Drummin is saying, “ExtraOrdinary, we Drummins do guarantee it, we do.”
But Julius Pike doesn’t even recognize a Drummin as a living thing. He completely ignores Duglius. “You have had your chance,” Julius yells. “I am Sealing the water tunnels and Freezing them. It is over, Marcellus.”
He is dragged toward the hatch by a bunch of thickset Wizards. He grabs hold of Duglius, determined to save at least one Drummin. But Duglius looks him in the eye and says sternly, “Alchemist, put me down. My work is not done.”
The last thing he sees as the hatch slams shut is the old Drummin sadly returning his gaze—Duglius knows this is the end.
After that, Marcellus had cared no more. He had handed Julius his Alchemie Keye; he had even helped to Seal the Great Chamber of Alchemie and done nothing more than shrug halfheartedly when Julius, smiling the kind of smile a pike would if it could, had told him that all memories of the Chamber of Fyre would be expunged. “Forever, Marcellus. It shall never be spoken of again. And in the future, no one will know what is here. No one. All records will be destroyed.”
Marcellus shook himself out of the memory and the distant echoes of the past faded. He told himself that all were long gone. Even the redoubtable Julius Pike was now no more than a ghost, said to have gone back to where he grew up—a farm near the Port. But he, Marcellus Pye, was still here, and he had work to do. He had the Fyre to start and the Two-Faced Ring to destroy.