The Darke Toad (6 page)

Alice paused, suddenly unwilling to disturb Marcia. Suppose she had made a mistake. Suppose it really was just some Hallowseeth reveler. “Come on, Alice,” she told herself firmly. “You
know
it was him. And Marcia has to know too. Now. Before something awful happens.”

And so Alice, never one to do things by halves, took her Customs House gavel out of her pocket and thumped Marcia's door. Hard.

M
arcia was on the Port
Barge. A shark was slamming against the side, and only she knew why—it was trying to get to Septimus
and eat him
.

Bang! Bang!
Bang!

Septimus, who was sleeping in the box room near the door, leaped out of bed and stood at attention with the familiar feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach at the thought of the Do-or-Die night exercise that surely lay ahead. It took him a full minute to remember that he was no longer in the Young Army and that he was actually
safe
.

Bang! Bang!
Bang!

Septimus opened his bedroom door and peered out into the entrance lobby, which was dimly lit by a small night candle.

Bang! Bang!
Bang!

The sturdy oak panels of the door shook with the blows—
someone was trying to break the door down
. Septimus padded across to Marcia's door but as he reached it, it was thrown open.

“Septimus?” said Marcia, bleary in her purple night robe. “What
is
going on?”

Bang! Bang!
Bang!

“There's someone at the door,” Septimus said, rather unnecessarily.

“Marcia!” a voice called. “Marcia, it's me, Alice!”

Marcia tugged open the doors. “Alice? Goodness, you look awful. Come in.”

“Marcia. I'm really sorry to wake you but …” Alice glanced over her shoulder, half-afraid that DomDaniel might be lurking in the dark corridor behind her, listening. Alice dropped her voice to a whisper. “
DomDaniel's outside.
”

“
What?
” Marcia gasped.

“Come and see.” Alice took Marcia—with Septimus following—over to the round window on the landing that looked down onto the Quayside. She looked out and her heart sank. The Quayside was packed with even more Hallowseeth revelers, who were gathered excitedly at the water's edge around the Port Witch Coven show. There was no sign of DomDaniel anywhere.

Alice shook her head. “Oh, I can't see him. There are
so
many people.”

Marcia looked down at the bizarre crowd below. She respected Alice Nettles very much indeed, but she could not help but think that Alice had mistaken someone dressed up as DomDaniel. How could she possibly tell the difference in such a muddle of people, and at night, too? Marcia sighed. What unfortunate timing for Septimus's visit to the Port. Why hadn't she remembered it was their Hallowseeth?

Alice felt horribly embarrassed. “I am
so
sorry to wake you up, Marcia. But it really was DomDaniel; I am sure of it. He came right up to my window and stared at me. And he had that ring with those two evil green faces …” Alice shuddered. “It was horrible.”

Marcia saw how shaken Alice was, and she knew that Alice was not given to fanciful imaginings. “Don't worry, Alice,” she said. “I'll go down and take a look.”

“I'll come with you,” said Alice.

“So will I,” said Septimus.

“No, Septimus,” said Marcia. “You will stay here.”

“But I'm your Apprentice now. It's my job to come with you,” Septimus said.

“Not this time, Septimus. I don't want you anywhere near that evil old Necromancer. You may watch if you must.”

Marcia hurried back to her room. She put her ExtraOrdinary Wizard belt around her purple night robe, threw her cloak over her shoulders and pulled on her pointy purple python shoes. She was ready.

Marcia and Alice emerged from the Customs House unnoticed. The Quayside was thronged with so many bizarre costumes that no one paid any attention to an ExtraOrdinary Wizard in a night robe. “Over there.” Marcia pointed to the center of activity surrounding the Port Witch Coven. “Something's going on.”

“It's some kind of performance, I think,” said Alice. “About the Port Witch Coven.”

The sound of chanting began and the crowd started clapping along in time, vigorously stamping their feet.

“Let's take a closer look,” said Marcia. “Alther always said that if you found trouble, you would find DomDaniel in the middle of it.”

Alice smiled at the mention of Alther. “Well, that
is
where DomDaniel was before he came over to my window.”

“There you are, then,” said Marcia. “Let's go and see.”

The throng was so thick that Marcia and Alice had to skirt around the outside. They passed by the archway that led into Fishguts Twist—a dark and slimy place that smelled of old cabbage. Marcia stopped.

“What is it?” whispered Alice.

Marcia shook her head. Something
Darke
was nearby, but not as
Darke
as she would have expected if it were DomDaniel. “I don't know,” she said.

“Not
him
?” asked Alice.

“Hmm. Let's have a look.” Marcia took a small glass ball from her ExtraOrdinary Wizard belt, warmed it in her hand, then, holding it between finger and thumb, she gingerly put her hand into the gloom of the archway. The little ball glowed brightly, and to Marcia's surprise it showed no shadows of
Darke
at all—just an old stone bench to their left and ahead the winding, torch-lit alley with its
Magykal
bookshops, which Marcia was looking forward to visiting with Septimus. Marcia shrugged. “That's odd,” she said to Alice. “I was sure there was
something
in here.”

From its hiding place underneath the stone bench, the
Darke
Toad was keeping out of the way of the heavily booted Port feet. All human feet looked much the same to the
Darke
Toad—big, ugly and, when they were wearing their foot armor, dangerous. But when a pair of purple pointy python shoes stopped in front of it, the
Darke
Toad shrank back in fear. These were the most terrifying shoes he had ever seen. The
Magyk
surrounding them was as strong as the dreadful smell of snake that emanated from them. The
Darke
Toad quickly backed into the end of a drainpipe and hoped the snakes did not come after it. It waited anxiously until the snakes turned and went away, then it rubbed itself in a convenient pool of slime to get rid of the prickling sensation of
Magyk
. Five minutes later, its Master found it.

DomDaniel sat down on the stone bench very carefully and heaved a sigh of relief. Despite an unpleasant slipping sensation inside him whenever he moved, his
Clothed Bones
had worked well enough to allow him to throw up a
Darke Screen
and do a bit of
Selective Invisibility
on old Marcia Overstrand—or Nastier Overstrand, as he liked to call her—and that annoying woman she was with. What was her name? Malice Dock Leaf, that was it. Of course, he could have had a showdown if he had wanted to, but he preferred to bide his time. He was planning something rather special for old Nastier and he didn't want to spoil it.

DomDaniel looked out from the archway, watching the Hallowseeth revelers milling around the harborside. He thought how amusing it would be to make them become what they were dressed as for real—that would show them. He smiled. Maybe next year, when Nastier had been disposed of and he was ExtraOrdinary Wizard once more. But right now he fancied a little nap.

Simon Heap returned with a bag of hot Hallowseeth herrings (a Port delicacy) for his Master—as he'd been instructed—and found him snoring. Simon put the herrings down on the bench and tiptoed away to join the throng. The lure of normal life—or as normal as it got at Hallowseeth in the Port—was irresistible.

M
arcia and Alice pushed their way
through the stamping, clapping and highly excited crowd. Marcia was unused to people not making way for her at once. “Excuse me,
excuse me
,” she repeated irritably, over and over again.

“Oi! Just because you're dressed like old Bossy Boots doesn't mean you have to behave like her too,” a giant Bogle Bug remonstrated as Marcia tried to elbow it out of the way. Marcia then found her path to the witches deliberately blocked by the Bogle Bug's friends—a giant Water Nixie, a luminous Specter and two pink Magogs.

“Stop
pushing
, will you?” one of the pink Magogs told Marcia. “We can't all be at the front!”

Marcia resisted the urge to send a self-propelled
Sting Bug
into the Magog's costume and doggedly carried on through the throng. She and Alice were heading for a space at the front of the crowd, where an open metal box lay on the edge of the Quay. Around the box—in which a sea of worms wriggled and writhed—were Linda, the Witch Mother, Veronica and Daphne, who had her fists tightly clamped over her eyes.

It was Linda who was running the show—she had the crowd in the palm of her hand and was chanting an
Incantation
in time to the stamping feet. At the end of each phrase she turned to the crowd and yelled, “Yeah!” which the crowd repeated with gusto. Linda's eyes shone with exhilaration; with every “Yeah!” the crowd added their energy to the spell. This is going to be
massive
, Linda thought.

“Let them
fly
way up
high
! Yeah!” Linda screamed.

“
Yeah!
” the crowd yelled in return.

“Let them
grow
when they
go
! Yeah!”

“
Yeah!
”

“Let what we
see
no longer
be
! Yeah!”

“
Yeah!
”

“Let them
be
part of the
sea
! Yeah!”

“
Yeah!
”

“Let them be …
gribble
!”

There was a sudden, shocked silence.

“Gribble?” a mummy in front of Marcia muttered to its fellow mummy. “But isn't that one of those worms?”

“Yeah. Er, I mean yes. Ship-eating worms.”

The first mummy laughed. “Hey, Bill, we're acting like it's real.”

Bill-the-Mummy laughed uneasily. “Felt like it,” he said.

Linda had forgotten she was in the middle of a crowd of people who were closely connected with all things maritime. Almost every person on that Quay knew what gribble worms were—little marine worms that ate their way through ships' timbers in no time at all. A ship could set off from Port with a few gribbles buried in its timbers and a couple of weeks later disappear into the ocean, leaving nothing more than a froth of wood dust on the surface of the water.

But Linda was no fool; she sensed that the crowd was turning against her. The
Incantation
needed time to brew—there were thousands of worms to turn—and Linda knew she had to get the crowd back on her side for at least another two minutes.

“But hey, guys, we don't want to do that—do we?” she yelled.