Emory Cribbins was weary to the bone. He'd been walking all day, as well as for the two days before it, and if he'd had a half-crown for every time he'd wished he had a horse, he would have been able to buy not only the horse itself, but a stable to keep it in. When he hadn't been wishing for four-legged transportation, he'd been wishing that he could just click his fingers, or spin around three times and spit over his shoulder, or whatever it was Wizards did to Transport themselves from place to place. But Emory Cribbins had no talent for Magyk, having failed his very first Basic Magyk lesson at age six, so he kept on walking.
Emory had undertaken this trip, his third this month, because his wife Jacinta had a way with herbs that would have made Galen the Physik Woman green with envy had she known about it. As Jacinta felt it unwise to compete directly with someone who was friends with the Wendron Witches, she had instead set up a small business in herbal remedies for cows and sheep, which she brewed and bottled in their kitchen. Emory then went out on foot (more was the pity) and peddled her wares to the people who lived in the Farmlands surrounding the Castle, with a fair amount of success.
This trip, unfortunately, had not been successful at all, and Emory's pack was as heavy with disappointment as it was with unsold merchandise. He was looking forward to getting home and wanted to do so before dark, especially as he had to pass along the edge of the Forest to get there. The Forest had given him the screaming creeps when he was a little boy, and it still did, even with the River running between it and him. He trudged along, trying to keep his eyes on the ramparts of the Castle and the golden tip of the Wizard Tower in the distance, but somehow his gaze kept slipping off to the left, toward that tangled mass of trees.
Emory shuddered. Anything might be in there, and probably was.
Suddenly he realised he had stopped walking and was just standing there on the riverbank, staring across the water at the Forest and the last visible sliver of the sun behind it. He shook himself and walked on, but only a few steps later, he stopped again. The strangest thought had bubbled up in his mind: Why not cross the river and get a better look?
"Oh, right," Emory grumbled to himself. "Why not climb down into a wolverine pit and give them a scratch behind the ears while I'm at it, too?"
He turned to go, but the thought came back more strongly than before: Cross the river, just for a minute. Just to see what the Forest is like up close. You've never gone any nearer than this. Maybe you'll like it.
"I won't," said Emory, starting to feel frantic. "I'll get wet...and I'll be late home...and Jacinta will be angry. I don't want to do it!"
Yes you do.
Emory was not a Wizard, but he wasn't stupid in the least. He knew he was being Lured and Drawn, and he fought against it, but in the end he lost. With his very last ounce of resistance, he took off his pack and laid it down carefully on the riverbank, so all Jacinta's hard work should not go to waste. Then, with his boots still on, he waded into the frigid water of the River and began to swim toward the Forest.
The morning after Emory Cribbins' desperate battle, Jenna Heap, who did not even know Emory existed, was on her way up to the top of the Wizard Tower to visit her brother. As Septimus got deeper into his Apprenticeship, Marcia kept him busier than ever, and even Jenna, as the Princess, was not allowed to interfere with his work. But Jenna had found that if she dropped by at breakfast time, while Marcia was still bleary-eyed and nursing her first cup of coffee, she could get a half-hour of Septimus's company, plus a bacon sandwich if the stove was in a helpful mood. It seemed like a fair trade.
She had just arrived at the twentieth-floor landing when the purple door burst open and Marcia herself-presumably with at least two cups of coffee on board already-came flying out, Septimus close behind her and carrying his rucksack in one hand. At the sight of Jenna, she stopped short and Septimus ran full-tilt into her.
"Oof! Really, Septimus, do look where you're going. Hello, Jenna, I'm sorry you've wasted a trip, but Septimus and I are on our way out." Marcia started to sail on past, but caught a heel in the hem of her cloak and had to grab hold of Jenna to avoid falling headlong down the stairs. As she regained her balance, she muttered something that Jenna couldn't make out, but Septimus, who had dropped the rucksack and reached out to help steady her, clearly could.
"Swear box," Septimus said severely. He pulled a square, somewhat dented tin from the pocket of his Apprentice robes and held it out to Marcia, who scowled, fumbled in her own pocket and dropped a silver coin into a roughly punched hole in the lid. Jenna expected a hollow, empty rattle, but instead she heard the unmistakable chink of the coin falling onto a pile of other coins. Septimus tucked the tin away again, and Marcia stormed on down the spiral staircase, cloak swirling at every turn.
"What was that all about?" Jenna asked, watching her go.
"Well," said Septimus, "Marcia thought she'd been swearing too much, and I said she hardly ever swore at all, which is true-I'd never even heard her say a rude word until a few months ago. But she said it was still too much and it was unprofessional and she needed to stop, so I made her a swear box. Every time she lets something slip, she has to pay. She was doing really well for a while, but this week has been a bit trying for her."
Jenna laughed. "Do you get to keep the money?"
"Yes," said Septimus with a grin. "I've been saving for my own Spying Scope for months now, but at the rate Marcia's going, I'll have enough to buy it by Saturday." He patted his pocket, which gave off a faint jingle.
"What's happening this week that's got her upset?" Jenna asked.
Septimus's face turned serious. "It's something to do with people going missing from the Castle," he said. "Only two or three so far, but they're all people with jobs and families, not the sort you would expect to just vanish. Another one went just yesterday, a sort of travelling salesman who was on his way home to his wife. Marcia's done Remote Searches and all sorts of other things, but she can't find him anywhere."
"Well, she couldn't find me either, that time Simon took me," Jenna said, "so maybe her Search isn't as good as she thinks it is."
Septimus shook his head—he'd never been able to understand the weird tension that had developed between Jenna and Marcia over the last few years, which felt doubly unfair because Marcia actually liked Jenna, at least as much as Marcia ever liked anyone. "Her Search is fine, Jen. I've tried too and haven't found anything either. It's like these people just disappeared off the face of the earth, and if it happened to them, it could happen to you or me or Mum or Dad or anyone."
"That's a creepy thought," Jenna said, grimacing. "So what are you and Marcia going to do about it?"
"Don't know yet," Septimus said, "but I think we're going to the Forest for starters."
"Septimus!" Marcia needed no amplification to be heard all the way through the soaring vault of the Tower. Septimus and Jenna looked over the railing and saw her waiting at the entrance, tapping an impatient foot.
"Oops. Looks like we're going right now," Septimus said. "Come on-unless you'd rather stay here a while?"
"Without you? Not likely," Jenna said. Remembering Marcia's near-disaster, she gathered up her robes for safety's sake, and hopped onto the stairs as the next turn rotated past. Septimus followed her, and they proceeded to the entrance hall, where Marcia was issuing instructions to a terrified-looking sub-wizard whose carroty red hair stuck out in all directions from underneath a moth-eaten grey woolen cap.
"And don't forget to close the newt cages and lock them," Marcia was saying as they arrived. "We don't want a repeat of last time, do we?"
"No, ExtraOrdinary," quavered the sub-wizard.
"Jolly good," said Marcia. She turned her attention to Septimus and Jenna, and behind her back, the sub-wizard shot away, presumably to attend to some chore involving newts. "Well, Septimus, are you ready to go?"
"Ready," said Septimus, heaving up his rucksack and settling it on his back. "Can Jenna walk with us as far as the North Gate?"
"Ye-es," Marcia said, seeming to regret the word even as she was saying it. "But after that, Jenna, you're to go straight back to the Palace and stay there, understand? Something strange is going on, and I don't want you getting caught up in it."
"Okay," said Jenna, privately vowing to take the long route back to the Palace and maybe stroll through the Traders' Market on her way, just to prove that she could. When Marcia glanced away, Jenna rolled her eyes at Septimus, who gave her a stern look in return. He was just as bossy as Marcia sometimes, Jenna thought. As she followed the two of them down the wide, pale front steps of the Wizard Tower, she decided they were even starting to look a bit alike from behind. Septimus wasn't as tall as Marcia yet, but he was getting there: the top of his head came well past Marcia's shoulder, and he was developing the same way of sweeping along rather than just walking like a normal person. The next thing you knew, he'd be wearing spiky purple shoes, Jenna thought. She giggled to herself at that image, and then realised she was falling too far behind and scrambled to catch up.
When they had said goodbye to Jenna at the North Gate, Marcia announced they had walked enough and needed to save their energy for later, so after stepping behind a gatepost so as not to attract attention from the midday crowds, they did a simultaneous Transport to the edge of the Forest. While he waited for the last of the purple haze to fade, Septimus scanned their surroundings with a professional eye-he hadn't been a soldier in a long time, but old habits died hard. Weak early-winter sunlight filtered through the thin covering of clouds; a few birds twittered in the branches of trees standing sentinel at the Forest's outer fringe. Nothing looked threatening, but it got worse as you got further in, as he knew all too well. He hoped Marcia didn't mean for them to go too far.
"As far as we need to go," Marcia said when he posed that question. "I didn't want to say so in front of Jenna, because I don't want your mother to find out and worry more about your brothers than she already does...but all the people who have vanished so far had business on the day of their disappearance that took them here, near the Forest outskirts. Alther and I are both afraid that they may have been Lured further in and harmed, though I don't know by what."
"There are lots of things in the Forest that can kill you," Septimus observed. "Most of them aren't even Darke, just dangerous. We used to lose people all the time during Do-or-Die Missions in the Young Army. Usually it was wolverines, but sometimes they drowned or fell off a cliff, or got attacked by carnivorous trees, or just wandered off and never came back."
Marcia flinched. She wasn't sure which upset her more, Septimus's past in the Young Army, or the way he talked about it so casually. She supposed in a way it made him a better Apprentice than she had been herself: at ten years old, he had already experienced the sort of fear that she had never known until the day she saw the Assassin's bullet strike Alther down. Still, she hated that he'd had to endure it, and at such a tender age. Not that she wasn't about to take him into danger herself-again-but at least they'd be together.
"Well," said Septimus, breaking into her thoughts, "the sooner we start, the sooner we'll finish, as they say."
"Who, the Young Army?"
"No, Aunt Zelda," Septimus said with a straight face.
Caught off guard, Marcia almost laughed despite the situation, but managed to turn it into a cough instead.
"Well, I suppose it's still good advice, wherever it came from," she said. "Come along, then."
Almost as one, they stepped into the Forest.