Beetle stepped into the gloom and a wave of happiness came over him. Suddenly he knew that his father was not dead from a spider bite - as his mother and a well-worn, faded letter of condolence from the Port authorities had always told him. His father was alive. Not only alive but here in this very place, waiting to see him - his son.
Feeling as though he was walking in lead boots beneath a dark and swirling sea, Beetle moved dreamily deeper into the gloom. Everything felt muffled and his breath came slowly. Indistinct shadows of Things - although Beetle did not see them as such - moved and swayed on the edge of his vision, plucking at his clothes, pushing him forward. Feeling that this was the biggest moment in his life, Beetle walked slowly, almost reverentially, knowing that all he had to do was to push open the right door and he would find the person that he always had longed to meet.
Beetle progressed along the seemingly endless corridor, passing rooms piled high with old mattresses, bedsteads and broken furniture - but not one containing Mr. Beetle. As Beetle neared the end, he heard the sound of a sneeze. His heart leaped. This was it. The sneeze belonged to his father - he knew it. What had his mother so often told him? If only your father had not been allergic to just about everything, he would never have swelled up like a balloon when that spider bit him and he would still be alive today. And here, at the end of the corridor, was his father - sneezing just like his mother said he always did. Nervously Beetle approached the room where the sneeze had come from. The door was half open and through it he could see a figure lying on a narrow bed, the blankets pulled up around his ears. As Beetle tiptoed in, the figure shook with another violent sneeze. Beetle stopped. The words he had longed to say, but he had never had anyone to say them to, sat on the tip of his tongue. He took a deep breath and let them go.
"Hello, Dad. It's me, B - "
"Whaa?" The figure in the bed sat up.
"You!" gasped Beetle, shocked. "You. But you're not my . . ."
Merrin Meredith, hair sticking up on end, nose red raw, looked even more shocked. He sneezed violently and blew his nose on the bedsheet.
Beetle came to his senses and realized that he was not ever going to see his father. A great feeling of loss swept over him, which was quickly replaced by fear. His mind cleared and he suddenly knew what he had done - he had walked into a Darke Domaine. Beetle forced himself to stay calm. He looked at Merrin, who was a pathetic sight, hunched up in bed. His long, greasy hair straggled over a fresh crop of pimples, his thin, bony fingers played nervously with the blanket, while his swollen and discolored left thumb sported the heavy Two-Faced Ring that Beetle remembered him wearing in what he now thought of as the old days in the Manuscriptorium.
It's only Merrin Meredith, Beetle told himself. He's a total dingbat. He couldn't do a decent Darke Domaine in a million years.
But Beetle could not quite convince himself of this. The scary thing was, as soon as he had walked into Merrin's room, he had come to his senses. And if Merrin really was Engendering a Darke Domaine, then that was exactly what Beetle would have expected to happen. Merrin would be at the very center of the Domaine - in its eye - where all is calm and free of Darke disturbances. One way to test it was to step outside the room, but Beetle was loath to risk it. He knew that in a Darke Domaine your sense of time and space could change. In what might seem like a few steps you could actually be walking miles - sometimes hundreds of miles. And it had indeed felt like a long, long walk down the corridor. Supposing he was no longer in the Palace attic? He could be anywhere - in the Badlands, in Bleak Creek, in Dungeon Number One - anywhere.
Beetle decided that his only chance was to convince Merrin that his Darke Domaine had failed and get Merrin to walk out with him. That way he'd have a safe passage back. It would be tricky, but it might just work. Taking care not to lie - because lies can fuel anything Darke - Beetle took a deep breath and launched into the attack.
"Merrin Meredith, what are you doing in the Palace?" he demanded.
"Atchoo! I could say the same to you. Someone else fired you, have they? Got nothing better to do than go snooping in people's bedrooms?"
"You'd know all about snooping," Beetle retorted. "And as for being fired - I hear Jillie Djinn's at last seen sense and fired you. What took her so long I don't know."
"Stupid cow," sniffed Merrin.
Beetle did not disagree.
"Anyway, she didn't fire me - not for long, anyway. Jillie haddock-face Djinn does what I say now, because I've got this." Merrin jabbed his left thumb in the air, taunting Beetle with the Two-Faced Ring - a thick gold ring with two evil-looking faces carved from dark green jade.
Beetle looked at the ring disdainfully. "Gothyk Grotto junk," he said scornfully.
"That shows how much you know, beetlebrain," Merrin retorted. "This is the real thing. Those stupid scribes don't dare mess with me anymore. I call the shots at that dump." Merrin was enjoying boasting to Beetle. Surreptitiously, he slipped his hand under his pillow to check - for the twentieth time that day - that The Darke Index was still there. It was. The small but deadly book that Merrin had acquired during his time working for Simon Heap at the Observatory - and which had led him to the Two-Faced Ring - felt crumpled and slightly damp to the touch, but it gave Merrin a sudden burst of confidence. "Soon I'll be calling the shots in the whole Castle. That stupid Septimus Heap and his pathetic dragon had better watch out, cuz anything he can do I can do ten times better!" Merrin waved his arms expansively. "There's no way he could even begin to do this."
"Do what?" said Beetle. "Hide up in the Palace attic and sniff?"
Beetle thought he noticed a flicker of uncertainty pass over Merrin's face.
"Nah. You know what I mean. This. And I can get anyone to come here I want. Yesterday I got the prissy Princess to put her little foot in, and this morning I got the old Heap Wizard to put his stupid head in. They both got scared and ran away but it didn't matter. We got what we needed."
"We?" asked Beetle.
"Yeah. I've got backup. You want to watch out, office boy, because today I got you good and proper." Merrin laughed. "You thought you were coming to see your stupid dad!"
Beetle had forgotten how obnoxious Merrin was. He fought down the urge to punch him. It wasn't - as Jenna would no doubt have told him - worth it.
"I am here," Beetle said, "because Princess Jenna asked me to investigate some noises in the attic. I told her it was probably rats and it turns out I was right. It's one big stupid rat."
"Don't call me stupid," Merrin flared. "I'll show you who's the stupid one here. You. You walked right in."
"Into what - your smelly bedroom?" Beetle said scornfully.
Merrin began to look less confident. "Didn't you notice anything?" he asked.
"A load of old junk and empty rooms," Beetle replied dismissively, careful to still speak the truth.
"That all?"
Beetle sensed he was winning. He avoided a direct answer and snapped, "Merrin, what are you talking about?"