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Nicko was advancing with two mugs in one hand, holding on to the gunwales with the other. “Morning, sleepyhead,” he said. “Drinkies.”
He passed Jenna and Aunt Zelda mugs of hot chocolate.
“Wow, Nik, thanks.”
“You can thank Sep. He’s got some new gizmo in that bag of his.”
“A hot-chocolate Charm?” Jenna smiled.
“Yep. Each in its own mug. Neat, hey?”
“Thanks, Sep,” Jenna called down the boat.
“S’okay, Jen. Hey, I can see the forest now!”
Jenna looked down and saw that the landscape was changing fast. The dusting of snow had become a continuous blanket of white that showed dark lines of tracks winding through large expanses of trees. As she watched, the treetops grew closer and closer together and the tracks disappeared, hidden beneath the canopy of white.
Like the forest beneath them, the Dragon Boat’s crew fell silent. The steady swoosh-whoosh of the wingbeats was the only sound as the dragon flew onward until all that could be seen below was a featureless sea of snowy treetops stretching out to the wide horizon. On and on they flew, gazing down at the trees, until they lost their sense of direction and even Septimus began to wonder if the Dragon Boat was flying around in circles.
All traces of pink were gone from the sky when the crew sensed a change in the Dragon Boat’s flight. The wings began to slow to a swoosh-oooosh-whoosh, the dragon’s neck dipped and Jenna saw her emerald eyes scanning ahead.
A sudden flash of sunlight from a gap in the clouds lit up a fragile silver arc strung high above the trees, making it sparkle like a giant, dew-drizzled spiderweb—and the bridge to the House of Foryx was revealed. Even Septimus, who had terrifying memories of crossing the bridge, was taken aback by how beautiful it looked. A few seconds later the sun slipped behind the clouds and the bridge was gone, blending once more into the white skies. The Dragon Boat leaned sharply into a turn and headed downward.
And then, suddenly, the House of Foryx was there. Stark-black against the snow, a great fortress of granite, it sat in solitary splendor on a pillar of rock encircled by a deep and dark abyss. Its four huge octagonal towers, which surrounded an even larger octagonal core, reared up into the white sky, and above them wheeled a murder of crows, cawing at the morning.
“Oh, dear,” whispered Aunt Zelda.
Nicko slid along the deck and came to sit next to Aunt Zelda. She put her arm around him and wrapped him in her quilt. Nicko, who did not like to be “fussed,” as he called it, did not resist. Together he, Aunt Zelda and Jenna watched the House of Foryx draw closer.
Nicko shivered. What really spooked him was not the building—it was the knowledge that inside the fortress below, where Time did not exist, there were so many people, their lives suspended while they waited to go back out once more to their own Times. Just as he and Snorri had once waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Nicko looked down at the blind windows, covered with a shifting film like oil on water, and wondered which one it was that he and Snorri had spent what had felt like an eternity gazing out from. Suddenly he got up and made his way up the sloping deck to Septimus.
“Sep. Don’t go back in there. Please.”
“Hey, Nik, it’s okay,” said Septimus. He pulled the Questing Stone out of his pocket and turned it upside down to show Hotep-Ra’s hieroglyph underneath it, gold against the black. “See, this is my pass. It means I can come and go as I please. I can always return to my Time. It really is okay this time.”
Nicko shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”
“Nik, even if you don’t believe the pass will work, it is still okay. You and Jenna are here. Aunt Zelda is here. In our Time. If I don’t come out, you can ring the bell and ask for me, and then I can walk back out into our Time. You know that.”
Nicko shook his head again. “You can’t trust them.”
Septimus knew there was nothing he could say to win Nicko over. He renewed his grip on the tiller and began to guide the Dragon Boat low across the House of Foryx, toward a glass dome in the very center, invisible from below. Unlike the dead windows in the rest of the House of Foryx, a soft yellow light spread up from the dome and glowed in the gray morning air.
Hotep-Ra had become a creature of habit. In a place where Time did not exist, the ancient Wizard had created his own rhythm of time. Every day, to the second, he did the same thing, and often he even thought the same thoughts. The last time his routine had changed had been when a young Apprentice named Septimus Heap had come to see him at the end of his Queste. How long ago that had been, Hotep-Ra had no idea. It could have been the previous day. It could have been hundreds of years in the past. In the House of Foryx it made no difference.
That morning, Hotep-Ra’s routine and thoughts traveled their usual tracks: he lit a candle, lay back in his chair beneath the dome, gazed up into the white-snow sky and thought about his Dragon Boat. So when Hotep-Ra actually saw the brilliant gold and green of the Dragon Boat fly overhead, he was not at first surprised. It was only after her second pass that Hotep-Ra realized that his Dragon Boat actually was outside. In what Time she was, he did not know. But she had come for him, as he had known one day she would.
Hotep-Ra got out of his chair and said to his Apprentice, Talmar Ray Bell, “I am just going outside. I may be some time.”
Talmar looked horrified. “Don’t say that!”
Hotep-Ra smiled at his Apprentice. “Why ever not?”
“It’s bad luck,” she said. “Someone said it once and never came back.”
“I’ll be back,” said Hotep-Ra.
“Someone said that once too.”
The Dragon Boat was coming in to land. She knew where she was heading, but her crew did not. Septimus felt the tiller move beneath his hand as the Dragon Boat tipped forward in a steep dive. With her wings outstretched and her tail down like a brake, she dropped down toward the wide, flat marble terrace at the front of the House of Foryx.
“Sep, she can’t land there!” Jenna yelled.
All, except for Aunt Zelda, closed their eyes. And so it was only Aunt Zelda who saw a ripple pass across the surface of the marble like wind over silk, and the marble become a lake of milk-white water. The Dragon Boat glided in with practiced ease—for she had landed there many times before. Then she folded her wings and settled down in front of the House of Foryx like a bird on its nest.
Septimus peered over the side—the marble looked solid once more. “It’s Thixotropic,” he said.
“It’s what?” said Nicko.
“Solid. But goes liquid under pressure.”
“Don’t we all,” said Nicko gloomily.
“Actually, Nik, we don’t,” said Jenna. “And you in particular do not. Don’t let this place get to you. You forget that without it you wouldn’t be here with us at all.”
Nicko nodded. “Yeah. I know. I just want to keep it that way.”
“We all want to keep it that way, Nik. And we will.”
“Time to go,” said Septimus. He dropped the gold-and-azure boarding ladder over the side of the boat, and climbed down. Nicko followed. A minute later they were standing on the steps of the House of Foryx, where five hundred years in the past Nicko had once waited with Snorri, and not quite so long ago Septimus had stood with the Questing Stone in his hand. Then it had glowed a brilliant red; now it was a deep blue-black with Hotep-Ra’s shining gold hieroglyph giving him safe passage back to his own Time. He hoped.
The door to the House of Foryx towered above them. It was a forbidding sight—huge planks of ebony held together with iron bars and massive rivets. The grotesque monsters and bizarre creatures carved into the doorframe stared down at Septimus and Nicko as if daring them to ring the bellpull, which emerged from the mouth of an iron dragon that thrust its head through the granite wall.
Septimus did dare. The sound of the bell clanged distantly and some minutes later, as he expected, a small batlike man wrenched the door open.
“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees?” said the man.
Septimus knew how argumentative the little man could be and he got in fast. “I have come to see Hotep-Ra. I have a pass.” He showed the man the Questing Stone, hieroglyph side up. The doorman peered at the stone and Septimus braced himself, expecting trouble—which he got.
