“The fire stop. Sand. Above the Chamber we kept a huge hopper of sand. If it all went out of control we could release the sand and fill the Chamber. To protect it. We had all kinds of fail-safes, you know. We were very careful, despite what people said.”

“But clearly not careful enough,” Marcia said crisply. She was shocked at what she had seen so far.

Marcellus slumped back against the wall. He looked defeated. “The heat has vitrified the sand.”

Septimus was intrigued. He pushed his nose right up against the glass and peered in. “You mean the Chamber is full of solid glass? Like those paperweights they sell in the Traders’ Market?”

“Yes,” said Marcellus. “The whole thing is . . .” He searched for something to say and could think of nothing that didn’t involve a rude word. He borrowed one of Septimus’s recent phrases, “. . . a dead duck.”

Marcia looked horrified. “But what about the Two-Faced Ring?”

“Oh, that will be all right,” said Marcellus wearily. He knew when he was beaten. It was time to tell Marcia the truth about the Chamber of Fyre. “You see, Marcia. The real Fyre is—”

But Marcia was not listening. She was busy shining the FlashLight beam onto the glass. “I’m sure there is sand behind this glass,” she said.

Marcellus stopped his confession. “Is there?”

“I’ll check, shall I?” suggested Septimus.

“Be careful,” Marcellus and Marcia said together—to their annoyance.

Septimus took a HeatStick from his Apprentice belt and placed it on the glass. The glass melted below the point and Septimus carefully pushed the HeatStick farther into the glass, making a hole. Deeper and deeper the HeatStick went until it had very nearly disappeared and Septimus began to think that the Chamber was indeed filled with solid glass. Then suddenly, the end of the HeatStick hit something solid. Septimus pulled the HeatStick out and a trickle of sand began to flow.

“Ta-da!” he announced.

Marcellus laughed with relief.

“I trust you have a couple of large wheelbarrows, Marcellus?” Marcia said.

Marcellus grinned. He didn’t care how many wheelbarrows he was going to need—his precious Great Chamber of Alchemie had survived. The fact that it lay buried beneath hundreds of tons of sand was a mere irritation. His Apprentice would fix that.

Marcellus led Marcia and Septimus back through the sooty snake of the Labyrinth to Alchemie Quay. Marcia looked at her Apprentice and shook her head—his clean-this-morning Apprentice robes were completely blackened with soot.

“I give you permission to wear your Alchemie robes this month, Septimus,” she said. “Frankly, after a day down here, I don’t think anyone will be able to tell the difference.”

6

LISTENING

Septimus’s month in the Great Chamber of Alchemie was not as interesting as he had hoped. After the initial excitement of removing the sand—which he managed in three days by fixing up a siphoning arrangement that drew the sand out through the Labyrinth, scouring it clean as it went, and sending the sand into the UnderFlow Pool—Septimus spent his time cleaning, unpacking and doing more cleaning. Marcellus was forever disappearing—checking things, Apprentice—and Septimus spent a lot of the time on his own. He began to count down the days to his return to the Wizard Tower.

Marcellus’s disappearances were, of course, when he was tending the Fyre. It was going well but he dared not leave it for too long. The water flow was good—he had been a little anxious about dumping the sand in the UnderFlow Pool, but it was deep enough to take it. His main concern now was venting the Cauldron heat, which was growing daily. Toward the end of Septimus’s month, Marcellus took a reluctant decision to open four more vents. He chose their positions carefully and hoped that no one would notice.

On a beautiful, bright dawn two days before the end of his month with Marcellus, Septimus was trudging to work, heading for the entrance to the Great Chamber that Marcellus had recently opened. His journey took him past the Palace and the bizarre collection of snow sculptures that were being created on the lawns in front. He stopped for a moment to look at the new ones and then reluctantly set off. It was going to be another beautiful day, but he would spend it underground in candlelight and it would be dark by the time he returned.

On the other side of the Palace, Jenna was drawing back the curtains from her bedroom window. She saw the sun climbing over the snow-covered hills in the distance, the pinky-green streaks of cloud low in the sky and the sparkling orange glints of light on the shining black surface of the river. It was beautiful—but it was cold. Jenna shivered. She was not surprised to see ice frosting the windows; it was now more than four weeks into the Big Freeze and a deep chill pervaded everything. She dressed quickly in her winter robes and, wrapping herself in her fur-lined cloak, was out of her bedroom fast.