“I am trying to, Mama.”

“Well, try harder, dear. She’ll be gone in a moment. The young move so fast.”

Queen Cerys concentrated hard. “Daughter. Listen to me!”

Jenna glanced at Septimus. “Was that you?” she asked.

“Was what me?”

“A kind of whisper.”

Septimus shook his head. He longed to get out of the oppressive little room; it held bad memories for him. “Let’s go, shall we?” he said.

Jenna nodded.

Queen Matthilda was exasperated. “Cerys, tell her!”

“How can I concentrate when you keep going on at me?” Cerys demanded crossly, as she watched her daughter and the Alchemie Apprentice edge past her.

“Well, I shall tell her,” snapped Queen Matthilda.

“No, you will not.”

“I shall. She is my granddaughter.”

“And she is my daughter.”

“Sadly neglected if you ask me,” Queen Matthilda huffed. “You really should make more of an effort with her. Poor child. You know I would happily stay here in your place so that you could go to her. She needs you, Cerys.”

Jenna took the few steps across to the blank space in the wall where the hidden door to the outside lay. Septimus followed, glancing backward uneasily.

Cerys was fast descending into one of the legendary fights that she used to have with her mother. “Mama, you know The Queen Rules perfectly well. We do not Appear until the Time Is Right. You know that. How can my daughter ever become a true Queen if we keep Appearing to her, telling her what to do, preventing her from finding her own true path?”

“Absolute twaddle,” harrumphed Jenna’s grandmother. “I never did agree with that part of the Rules. Never.”

“You cannot cherry-pick from the Rules, Mama. It is all or nothing. Wait!”

The ghost of Queen Cerys saw her daughter take hold of the Apprentice’s hand and heard her say, “Let’s go, Sep!” Cerys began whirling around the room in frustration. Why couldn’t she speak? Why? As her daughter headed toward the wall, a faint, despairing cry found its way into the room: “Hear me! Only you can save the Dragon Boat!”

On the other side of the wall Jenna stared at Septimus openmouthed. “That was my mother!”

“Are you sure?”

“Sep, I know her voice. I know it. It’s my mother!”

“It was only her ghost, Jen.”

“So why doesn’t she Appear to me, Sep? Why? She must have seen me often enough. She’s just like my father. They’re both the same. They both keep away. It’s horrible.”

“Oh, Jen,” said Septimus, at a loss for words.

“And now—now all she does is tell me to do something that I can’t do!”

11

DRAGON FYRE

Septimus held a burning rushlight to light the way as he and Jenna walked through the coils of the lapis lazuli Labyrinth. The last time Jenna had been there was five hundred years in the past, and the flickering of the flame lighting up the blue lapis walls brought back terrifying memories of being dragged through it by the murderous ghost of Queen Etheldredda.

At last they reached the arch that led into the Great Chamber of Alchemie. After Septimus’s descriptions of all the soot and sand, Jenna was expecting to see a wreck, but what met her was a bright glittering chamber, full of gold—a testament to Septimus’s cleaning skills.

Jenna’s gaze was at once drawn to the two huge, patterned gold doors set in the wall opposite: the Great Doors of Time that had once been the gateway to the Glass of Time itself. Even though she knew that the Glass had shattered and no one could now pass through them to another Time, they still had a presence that gave her goose bumps. Jenna shivered and looked away to the neat ebony workbenches that lined the walls, clean and polished, with unpacked boxes stacked up neatly.

Jenna loved all the gold gleaming softly in the candlelight—gold catches, handles and hinges, tiny gold drawers below the workbenches, gold brackets that held up the shelves and even the scuffed strips of gold that ran along the bottom of the ebony benches, protecting the precious wood from the boots of Marcellus’s ancient and long-gone junior Apprentices. Jenna and Marcellus shared a fascination for gold.

To Jenna’s right was the furnace—still unlit—with its funnel of a chimney snaking up through the domed ceiling. In the center of the Chamber was a long table on which a line of candles was burning brightly. But something was missing.

“Where’s Marcellus?” asked Jenna.