THE LAST DAY
Septimus awoke early in his little bedroom at the top of the house on Snake Slipway. Outside the snow was falling fast and the room was dull with the gray winter morning light. He lit his bedside candle and leaned back against the pillow, reluctant to get out of bed. That was one thing he would not miss. The Wizard Tower was always a perfect temperature. Marcellus’s house was, like all old Castle houses during the Big Freeze, bitterly cold.
An hour later Septimus was with Marcellus in an old lock-up at the end of Gold Button Drop—a dead-end alleyway just off the end of Alchemie Way. The lock-up was a cover for a secret entrance to Alchemie Quay, which Marcellus had recently reopened. After locking the little iron door behind them, Marcellus pulled open the circular manhole cover in the center of the earthen floor. A glow of red light shone upward, lighting the rough stones of the lock-up’s conical roof. Carefully, Marcellus unhooked a small Fyre Globe from its peg just below the manhole cover, clipped it onto his belt, and began the descent down the iron rungs set into the brick chimney. Septimus swung himself in after Marcellus and pulled the trapdoor shut with a clang.
There followed a long descent down a brick-lined shaft, eerily lit with the red light from the Globe. Eventually Marcellus and Septimus reached a wide, brick-lined tunnel and set off along it. Some minutes later, they emerged into the first curve of the Labyrinth, but instead of turning left, as they normally did for the Great Chamber, Marcellus turned right and led Septimus out onto Alchemie Quay.
“It is your last day, Apprentice,” Marcellus said.
“It is,” agreed Septimus, wondering what Marcellus had in mind. He hoped it was going to be more interesting than cleaning sand out from cupboards with a toothbrush.
“Septimus,” said Marcellus. “I wish to apologize for sending you off on a wild-goose chase to collect the Cloud Flask. I needed time to think.”
“Oh?” said Septimus.
“Indeed. And your absence made me realize how much I valued you. I have made an error in not telling you everything that I am doing here.”
“Ah,” said Septimus, not entirely surprised.
Marcellus took a deep breath, aware that he was taking an irrevocable step. “I want to show you the Fyre,” he said.
Septimus did not understand. “But you haven’t lit it yet.”
“Apprentice, the furnace that you see in the Great Chamber is a decoy. The true Fyre has already begun.”
Suddenly things began to make sense. “Where?”
“Come. I will explain.” Marcellus led Septimus over to the edge of the Quay, where the pink paddleboat bobbed quietly, tethered to its ring. Marcellus kept it just in case—an Alchemist always had an emergency escape route. The UnderFlow Pool lay dark at their feet and the familiar feeling of vertigo that always got to Septimus when he stood on the edge of the UnderFlow Pool made him feel dizzy.
“See the currents in the water?” asked Marcellus.
Septimus nodded.
“A hundred feet down from here is a sluice gate. Some weeks ago I opened it. Now water is flowing through it, pouring down a channel bored through the rock to a reservoir far below. This is the water that is making the Fyre.”
“But water doesn’t make Fyre,” said Septimus.
“Alchemical Fyre is different,” said Marcellus. “It is a beautiful, living thing. And life needs water. Before you leave me, Septimus, I want you to see it. So that when you return to the Wizard Tower, you will understand that whatever they may tell you about the Fyre, it is not true.”
Septimus was puzzled. “But no one has ever told me anything about the Fyre,” he said.
“They do not speak of it,” said Marcellus. “But if they ever do, I would like you to understand that it is not the terrible thing they say it is.”
“Right.”
“But . . . there is one little thing.”
“Yes?” said Septimus warily.
“Promise me that you will tell no one what you see today.” Marcellus glanced around as though he expected to find Marcia lurking in a corner. “Not even Marcia.”
“I can’t promise that,” Septimus said regretfully. “Not now that I am going back to Marcia. Anyway, Marcia asked you to start the Fyre, didn’t she, so she knows already.”
“Marcia thinks the Fyre we are lighting is in the Great Chamber of Alchemie. She does not know that the true Fyre is in the place that all ExtraOrdinary Wizards fear and have promised to keep Sealed forevermore—the Chamber of Fyre. If she knew that she would close it down, just as Julius Pike once did.”
“I don’t think Marcia would close it down, because she doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Of course she knows about it,” said Marcellus. “She is the ExtraOrdinary Wizard.”