Hotep-Ra would like to leave them to their fate, but he knows he must make sure they do not return. As he flies off after the Wizards, Hotep-Ra hears a tremendous crash. He looks down to see the top of the golden pyramid buried point down in the Wizard Tower Courtyard below—the circle of Fyre has cut through it like a wire through butter.
Hotep-Ra tails the Warrior Wizards to Bleak Creek, where he watches them battle for a day and a night—so evenly matched that neither can gain any advantage. Finally, in a frenzy, they circle each other faster and faster, swooping low over the water until they create a deep, dark whirlpool just outside the mouth of the creek. The force of the whirlpool is so great that it drags the Wizards down with it, shrieking with rage as they go.
Hotep-Ra follows. Using the Darke Art of Suspension Under Water (Hotep-Ra is a Master of many Darke arts, although he usually chooses not to use them) he dives in after the Wizards to make an end of them. But at the bottom of the whirlpool he finds that the vortex has broken through the riverbed and entered a cavern in the Darke Halls, which is an ancient refuge for all things evil. Hotep-Ra drags the Wizards from the entrance to the Darke Halls; the Wizards fight him all the way but desperation lends Hotep-Ra strength. With his last remnants of energy he hauls the Wizards up to the surface and, like a cork from a bottle, he emerges from the depths, dragging the Darke Wizards with him.
The Queen’s barge is waiting for him. She has followed him to Bleak Creek, and now the barge’s rowers are circling while the Queen stands at the prow, anxiously staring at the vortex: she knows that Hotep-Ra is somewhere beneath the water. But when he surfaces, the Queen is horrified—all she can see are the two Darke Wizards.
Hotep-Ra is now too weak to sustain his Magyk. First his Illusion and then his Invisibility slip away. Shamandrigger Saarn and Dramindonnor Naarn see each other for the first time in twenty-four hours—and then they see Hotep-Ra floundering beside them. For a few long seconds all three Wizards stare at one another, shocked. Clutching the Flyte Charm, Hotep-Ra rises up from the water. Saarn and Naarn grab on to his robes and a tangle of Wizards lands on the Queen’s barge.
The Queen knows that Hotep-Ra is too weak to win the fight. She takes off the Magykal gold ring he has given her to protect her from her enemies—a ring that may only be destroyed in pure Alchemical Fyre. “Commit them,” she says, handing him the ring. “Quick!”
“It is your ring,” Hotep-Ra whispers, handing the ring back to her. “You must say the Committal. You do remember?”
The Queen nods—of course she remembers. How could she forget something made especially for her? (It is, in fact, the only Magyk that the Queen does remember.)
The Queen begins to chant the Committal. The words roll over the Darke Wizards like the shadow of an eclipse; they struggle but they are too weak to fight back. Hotep-Ra listens anxiously to each word but he does not need to worry—when a Queen wishes to remember something, she remembers it. At last the Queen reaches the Keystone word, “Hathor.” There is a blinding flash of purple light and the Queen throws the ring into it. Darkness falls. The Queen speaks the last seven words of her Incantation and at the last word, “Commit,” Time itself is suspended. For seven long seconds the world stands still.
From within the blackness come two roars of anguish, like the sound of wounded beasts. A great howl of a hurricane descends on them, the screeching of the wind drowning out the screams of the Ring Wizards, and hurls the Queen and Hotep-Ra to the deck. The wind circles three times and then it is gone, leaving the Queen’s barge in tatters, the rowers prostrate with terror, and an unearthly silence, which is broken by a delicate plink. A gold ring with two green faces imprisoned in it tumbles to the deck and rolls into a pool of dirty water.
When Hotep-Ra returns to the Wizard Tower his old Apprentice, Talmar Ray Bell, tells him that the fallen top of the pyramid has shrunk. She does not know why.
But Hotep-Ra knows why. He knows he has narrowly escaped a most dreaded Darke Hex. A Hex that does not kill an opponent right away but reduces his size so that he becomes prey to the most terrifying creatures of all: insects. It is an ancient Darke pastime, to place a victim of such a Hex into a spider’s web and watch the result through an Enlarging Glass. Hotep-Ra shudders. He has a fear of spiders.
The tiny top of the golden pyramid lies on the bottom of a large pyramid-shaped crater—a sparkle of gold on the red Castle earth, still shrinking. An anxious group of Wizards are guarding it. (The reputation of the Wizard Tower has spread and it now houses thirteen Ordinary Wizards.) Talmar Ray Bell clambers down into the crater, picks up the miniature golden pyramid and gives it to Hotep-Ra.
