And then, suddenly, the House of Foryx was there. Stark-black against the snow, a great fortress of granite, it sat in solitary splendor on a pillar of rock encircled by a deep and dark abyss. Its four huge octagonal towers, which surrounded an even larger octagonal core, reared up into the white sky, and above them wheeled a murder of crows, cawing at the morning.

“Oh, dear,” whispered Aunt Zelda.

Nicko slid along the deck and came to sit next to Aunt Zelda. She put her arm around him and wrapped him in her quilt. Nicko, who did not like to be “fussed,” as he called it, did not resist. Together he, Aunt Zelda and Jenna watched the House of Foryx draw closer.

Nicko shivered. What really spooked him was not the building—it was the knowledge that inside the fortress below, where Time did not exist, there were so many people, their lives suspended while they waited to go back out once more to their own Times. Just as he and Snorri had once waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Nicko looked down at the blind windows, covered with a shifting film like oil on water, and wondered which one it was that he and Snorri had spent what had felt like an eternity gazing out from. Suddenly he got up and made his way up the sloping deck to Septimus.

“Sep. Don’t go back in there. Please.”

“Hey, Nik, it’s okay,” said Septimus. He pulled the Questing Stone out of his pocket and turned it upside down to show Hotep-Ra’s hieroglyph underneath it, gold against the black. “See, this is my pass. It means I can come and go as I please. I can always return to my Time. It really is okay this time.”

Nicko shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

“Nik, even if you don’t believe the pass will work, it is still okay. You and Jenna are here. Aunt Zelda is here. In our Time. If I don’t come out, you can ring the bell and ask for me, and then I can walk back out into our Time. You know that.”

Nicko shook his head again. “You can’t trust them.”

Septimus knew there was nothing he could say to win Nicko over. He renewed his grip on the tiller and began to guide the Dragon Boat low across the House of Foryx, toward a glass dome in the very center, invisible from below. Unlike the dead windows in the rest of the House of Foryx, a soft yellow light spread up from the dome and glowed in the gray morning air.

Hotep-Ra had become a creature of habit. In a place where Time did not exist, the ancient Wizard had created his own rhythm of time. Every day, to the second, he did the same thing, and often he even thought the same thoughts. The last time his routine had changed had been when a young Apprentice named Septimus Heap had come to see him at the end of his Queste. How long ago that had been, Hotep-Ra had no idea. It could have been the previous day. It could have been hundreds of years in the past. In the House of Foryx it made no difference.

That morning, Hotep-Ra’s routine and thoughts traveled their usual tracks: he lit a candle, lay back in his chair beneath the dome, gazed up into the white-snow sky and thought about his Dragon Boat. So when Hotep-Ra actually saw the brilliant gold and green of the Dragon Boat fly overhead, he was not at first surprised. It was only after her second pass that Hotep-Ra realized that his Dragon Boat actually was outside. In what Time she was, he did not know. But she had come for him, as he had known one day she would.

Hotep-Ra got out of his chair and said to his Apprentice, Talmar Ray Bell, “I am just going outside. I may be some time.”

Talmar looked horrified. “Don’t say that!”

Hotep-Ra smiled at his Apprentice. “Why ever not?”

“It’s bad luck,” she said. “Someone said it once and never came back.”

“I’ll be back,” said Hotep-Ra.

“Someone said that once too.”

The Dragon Boat was coming in to land. She knew where she was heading, but her crew did not. Septimus felt the tiller move beneath his hand as the Dragon Boat tipped forward in a steep dive. With her wings outstretched and her tail down like a brake, she dropped down toward the wide, flat marble terrace at the front of the House of Foryx.

“Sep, she can’t land there!” Jenna yelled.

All, except for Aunt Zelda, closed their eyes. And so it was only Aunt Zelda who saw a ripple pass across the surface of the marble like wind over silk, and the marble become a lake of milk-white water. The Dragon Boat glided in with practiced ease—for she had landed there many times before. Then she folded her wings and settled down in front of the House of Foryx like a bird on its nest.

Septimus peered over the side—the marble looked solid once more. “It’s Thixotropic,” he said.