Marcellus kneeled down at the doors, which were mistily visible through the ice. He unwrapped his black velvet scarf and began to gently rub the ice until it was clear of hoar frost, and peered through the glassy surface of the ice to the mysterious azure blue doors below. “Apprentice, I wonder if you have something that would melt this ice?”
Septimus fished a small candle-end out of his pocket. “I’ve got my tinderbox. I can light this.”
Marcellus heaved a sigh. “That will take hours, Apprentice. Do you have, er, anything else?”
Septimus grinned. So much for Marcellus insisting on no Magyk while you’re my Apprentice. “You mean something like a spell?” he asked.
“A spell will be fine, thank you.”
Septimus kneeled down beside Marcellus and placed his hands on the ice that covered the doors. With his palms threatening to stick fast, he quickly muttered a simple Melt. Then he leaned all his weight onto his hands and pressed hard. He felt the heat of his palms spread out into the ice and soon there were two rapidly growing hand-shaped holes in the ice, water was running down the inside of his sleeves and his hands were through to the smooth wood below. Septimus rocked back on his heels, shook the warmth back into his freezing hands and watched the ice retreat to reveal two shiny, deep blue lacquered doors, each with a simple dragon symbol enclosed in a lozenge shape.
“Stop now,” said Marcellus. “I think it is safer to keep the temperature low until we find out what . . . what we are dealing with.”
“You mean, until we find out if she’s dead,” said Jenna.
“Personally, I do not believe she is dead,” said Marcellus. “Now we must open the doors.”
Septimus shook his head. “They don’t open. In fact, I think they’re false doors. Just one piece of wood.”
“That, Apprentice, is what they are made to look like. But they are not. I have opened them once before.”
“When before?” asked Jenna.
“You forget I was the husband of a Keeper,” Marcellus answered. He took off the heavy gold disc that hung around his neck—his Alchemie Keye—and placed it in a shallow indentation where the doors joined, saying, “My dear Broda once had a similar panic as you, Princess.”
“I am not panicking.”
“During a particularly cold Big Freeze she too was sure that . . . aha, the doors are opening!”
Jenna and Septimus crouched down beside Marcellus and watched the doors swing open to reveal a deep, red-tinged darkness. Gingerly, Marcellus leaned forward and looked inside; then he sat back on his heels and beckoned to Jenna to come closer. “Can you hear anything now?” he said in a hushed voice.
Jenna leaned forward through the hatchway into the dark. A sense of being deep inside the Dragon Boat made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She could smell something like warm iron; it was rich and strange and made her feel a little queasy. “Is this where her heart is?” she whispered.
Marcellus nodded. “Wait a few minutes. Her heart beats slowly when it is so cold.”
Like surgeons gathered around a patient on an operating table, they waited for a heartbeat. Marcellus took out his timepiece and looked at the second hand moving round. It made three sweeps of the dial, then four, then five.
“Nothing,” Jenna said miserably. “Nothing.”
“No,” said Marcellus heavily. “You are right, Princess. Of course.”
“She’s dead,” said Jenna despairingly. “She’s dead.”
“I do not think so. If she were dead I believe she would be frozen all the way through. But possibly she is getting near to it.” Marcellus looked up at Jenna, a serious expression in his eyes. “As your mother so rightly said, only you can save her.”
“But how?”
“It is something the Queens pass down one to another.”
“But no one’s passed it down to me.”
Marcellus was soothing. “I know. But I can tell you. That day in the Big Freeze when my Broda could no longer hear a heartbeat, she went to get my sister Esmeralda, who was Queen. I came with Esmeralda because she always panicked in the Queen’s Way. And I watched what Esmeralda did.” Marcellus gave a wry smile. “And what a fuss she made about it.”
“About what?” asked Jenna, irritated. Sometimes she thought that Marcellus enjoyed being obscure.
“I will tell you.”
By the time Marcellus was nearly through his explanation Jenna had a good deal of sympathy with Esmeralda. So did Septimus.