“Hotep-Ra!”
“Princess,” he replied in a surprisingly deep voice—and a very odd accent—and bowed his head. A few snowflakes drifted down and settled on his white hair; Hotep-Ra looked up, as if surprised by the touch of the snow. It was then that he saw the Dragon Boat waiting for him. He caught his breath and then set off across the white marble terrace, his long purple staff clicking as he went.
Jenna, Nicko and Septimus followed at a respectful distance.
“Been waiting long?” Nicko asked Jenna nonchalantly, as though she had been hanging around for the Port barge.
“Five minutes maybe,” said Jenna.
Septimus and Nicko exchanged glances. “See,” said Septimus. “I told you so.”
They stood quietly by, not wishing to disturb the reunion. They saw the dragon turn to look at her old Master and arch her neck down to greet him. They saw Hotep-Ra put his hand on the dragon’s velvety nose and a silver streak ran down from the dragon’s eye. It dropped onto the ground and rolled toward Jenna. She picked it up and held it in the palm of her hand: a dragon tear of pure silver.
There was something that Septimus knew he must do. He took off his Dragon Ring and offered it to Hotep-Ra. “This belongs to you,” he said.
Solemnly, Hotep-Ra took the Dragon Ring. “Thank you,” he said. “But it shall be yours again before very long, I promise you.” Septimus felt strange as he watched Hotep-Ra place the ring on his right index finger and he saw the emerald eye of the ring dragon glow and the ring adjust itself to fit its old Master’s finger.
Hotep-Ra climbed aboard and fussed about—as someone who has not been aboard their boat for a few thousand years will do. He invited Aunt Zelda to sit beside him at the tiller and called to Jenna.
“Princess, I believe we have a Committal to look at.”
Jenna climbed aboard. She took out her tattered copy of The Queen Rules and passed it to Hotep-Ra, open at the page where she had written the Committal.
Hotep-Ra looked shocked. “This book was beautiful once,” he said.
Jenna felt responsible. “I’m really sorry.”
Hotep-Ra got out his Enlarging Glass and peered at Jenna’s handwriting. “The Keystone is missing,” he said. “This can never work.”
Jenna got her best pen out of her pocket. “If you tell me the Keystone, I’ll write it down,” she said.
“Princess,” said Hotep-Ra, “let me explain. I was not one of those lazy Wizards who always used the same Keystone. I had a different one for every one of my twenty-one major Incantations.” He sighed. “Unfortunately it is a long, long time ago and I cannot remember which one I used.”
Jenna was aghast. “Don’t you have it written down?”
“Apprentice, please explain,” Hotep-Ra said to Septimus. “We must go.”
While Hotep-Ra took the Dragon Boat up into the sky, Septimus told Jenna, “You see, Jen, Hotep-Ra inscribed his Incantations into the pyramid on top of the Wizard Tower. He wanted them to last forever and it was a way of making them incorruptible.”
“But Sep, you told me that those hieroglyphs are—what was it? Gobbledygook, you said.”
“They are,” said Septimus. “That is the whole point—they are a blind. To call up the real ones we need to use the Keye.”
“What key?”
“Well . . .”
Jenna sighed. “I suppose we don’t have that, either.”
“Um, not right now, no. The Keye is actually the very tip of the pyramid. When your ancestor was busy shooting those Ring Wizards, they got so mad that they sliced off the top of the pyramid and Shrank it.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Jenna, thinking that sometimes she did not understand Wizard behavior at all.
“Well, actually it was meant to happen to Hotep-Ra but he outwitted them.”
“So where is this top bit key-thingy?”
“Hotep-Ra gave it to the Queen.”
“So, what did she do with it?”
Septimus looked to Hotep-Ra for help.
“She said she would put it somewhere safe,” said Hotep-Ra.
“Oh, no.” Jenna groaned. Whenever Sarah lost anything it was always when she had put it “somewhere safe.”
“Princess,” said Hotep-Ra. “You must go back to the Palace and find the Keye.”
“But I’ve never even seen it.”
“Well, it must be somewhere,” said Hotep-Ra.
Jenna had heard that from Sarah too. It did not inspire confidence.
