Fyre (3 page)

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.

Marcellus swung himself onto the metal ladder that led down from the upper platform and cautiously began the descent into the
Fyre
Chamber—or the Deeps, as the Drummins had called it. The ladder shook with each step as Marcellus headed doggedly downward toward a wide platform far below from which yet more
Fyre
Globes winked up at him. Some ten long minutes later, he set foot on what was known as the Viewing Station, and stopped to take stock.

Marcellus was now level with the top of the
Fyre
Cauldron. He peered down at the star-shaped tops of the
Fyre
rods glistening with the dull shine that undamaged
Fyre
rods possessed. The last time he had seen them they were on fire, disintegrating before his eyes and now . . . Marcellus shook his head in admiration. How had the Drummins done it?

A narrow walkway known as the Inspection Circle ran around the rim of the Cauldron. It was made of metal lattice, which Marcellus could see had been repaired where it had buckled in the heat. Very carefully, he stepped down onto it, holding tight to the guardrails on either side. From his tool belt he took a small hammer, known as a drummer, and clasping it tightly he set off. Every few paces he stopped and tapped the metal rim of the
Fyre
Cauldron, listening intently. To his ears it appeared to be sound, although he knew his hearing was nowhere near as acute as it needed to be for the job.

This was what the Drummins had done all day, all night, all the time. They had swarmed over the Cauldron, drum, drum, drumming with their tiny hammers, listening to the sounds of the metal, understanding everything it told them. Marcellus knew he was a poor substitute for a Drummin but he did the best he could. After walking the Inspection Circle, he returned to the Viewing Station, knowing that he could put off no longer the thing he had been dreading the most. He must go down to the floor of the Chamber of
Fyre
.

A flight of curved metal steps wound their way around the belly of the Cauldron down into the dimness below, which was lit by a few scattered
Fyre
Globes. Slowly, Marcellus descended into the depths and the smell of damp earth came up to meet him. On the bottom step, he stopped, gathering the courage to step onto the ground. Marcellus was convinced that the cavern floor must be strewn with the remains of the Drummins and he could not bear the thought of crunching their delicate little bones like eggshells underfoot.

It was some minutes before Marcellus stepped off. To his relief there was no sickening crunch. He took another step—on tiptoe—then another, and felt nothing below his feet but bare earth. Carefully, Marcellus tiptoed around the base of the Cauldron, tapping it with his hammer, listening, then moving on. Not once did he tread on anything remotely crunchy. He supposed that the delicate bones had already turned to dust. After a circuit of the underside of the Cauldron, Marcellus knew that all was well.

It was now time to begin the
Fyre
.

Back on the Viewing Station, Marcellus headed off along another frighteningly flimsy walkway that was strung out across the cavern, thirty feet up. He walked cautiously, glad of the light from a corresponding line of
Fyre
Globes placed on the ground. At last he arrived at a chamber burrowed into the rock face at the back of the cavern and stepped inside. He was back in his old control room.

Below the coating of hundreds of years’ worth of dust, Marcellus could see that the walls had been repainted white and everything shone—there was no sign of the greasy soot that had covered everything. Marcellus walked across to the far wall where, beside a line of iron levers, there was a large brass wheel set into the rock. Taking a deep breath, Marcellus grasped the wheel. It moved easily. As he slowly turned it, Marcellus could feel the slip and slide, the
clunk
and the
thunk
of the chain of command, which reached up through the rock into the depths of the UnderFlow. Somewhere far above him a sluice gate opened. A great gurgle echoed around the sooty darkness of Alchemie Quay and the sluggish waters began to move. Marcellus felt the rumble inside the rock face of the tumbling water as it poured through ancient channels and began to fill the reservoir deep within the cavern walls.

Now Marcellus turned his attention to a bank of twenty-one small wheels farther along. Once the
Fyre
was begun, he must have a way of getting rid of excess heat. In the old days the heat had been dispersed through what were now the Ice Tunnels and used to warm the older buildings of the Castle. Marcellus had given the current ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Marcia Overstrand, his word that he would preserve the Ice Tunnels. This meant he needed to open up the secondary venting system—a network of pores that snaked up to the surface of the Castle.

Marcellus dared not risk discovery yet. He needed precious time to set the
Fyre
going, time to prove that it was not a danger to the Castle. Although Marcia had agreed that he could start up the
Fyre
, Marcellus knew that she assumed that the
Fyre
was the small furnace in the Great Chamber of Alchemie and Physik. Indeed, that was what he had led Marcia to think. Julius Pike had told Marcellus that he would make sure that no ExtraOrdinary Wizard would
ever
give permission to open up the Chamber of
Fyre
again—and Marcellus had believed him.

And so now Marcellus turned his attention to the little brass wheels that would open heat vents scattered throughout the Castle and wick excess heat safely away from the awakening
Fyre
. Marcellus had given this some thought—the trick was to open vents in places where the unusual heat could be explained away as something else. He took a rumpled piece of paper from his pocket and consulted a list. Counting carefully along, he spun nine selected wheels until they stopped. Marcellus checked his paper again, checked the wheels and stood back satisfied.

By now a red pointer on a dial was telling him that the reservoir was nearly full; Marcellus turned the wheel to close the sluice gate, rechecked his list and left the control room. Job done.