‘I’ll draw you up one later,’ said Suzy. ‘Now, where’s an elevator at? Or the Big Chain? Lead on, Giac!’
Three
THE IMPROBABLE STAIR became real, and Arthur sprang onto its first step. Even as he left the alien world behind, hundreds of energy beams crisscrossed the air where he’d been – and one of them struck the side of his head. Even Arthur’s magically transformed flesh and bones could not withstand such a forceful strike. He felt it like an ice pick to the brain, an intensely cold and numbing blow that made him black out for a second. He stumbled on the Stair and almost lost his balance, before some primal instinct separate from any intelligence forced him to stagger up the steps.
Golden blood streamed down his cheek and dripped upon the Stair. Arthur wiped it away, and inadvertently felt what had to be a gaping hole in the side of his head, above where his ear used to be.
My ear’s gone, thought Arthur, shock beginning to leapfrog through his body. I’m going to die . . . but I can’t die . . .
He staggered up another few steps. There was golden blood in his eyes now, and a terrible chill was spreading through the right side of his head and down his right arm and leg. It was becoming harder to move; he had to step up with his left foot and then drag his right leg after him. If it got any worse, he would fall for sure, down the Improbable Stair to some even deadlier place . . .
I have to get somewhere safe, somewhere I can recover, thought Arthur. He tried to visualise Thursday’s chamber, but he couldn’t. Just as a hurt animal desires only its own den, all he could think of was his own bed, his own room, back on Earth.
But I shouldn’t go there . . . It will restart time, and the Army is going to nuke the hospital, and I’m in no state to do anything. It’s been so long since I lay on my bed . . . so long . . . my bed . . .
The Improbable Stair vanished, and Arthur fell into his very own bed.
He lay there, stunned, for what felt like a very long time. He couldn’t move, and after a little while, he realised that he could only see out of his left eye. He was also unable to move his head, so he lay there on his side, his one good eye slowly scanning his bedroom.
It was just barely light outside the window, the sky showing the faint glow that precedes the dawn. His desk lamp was on, casting its fairly ineffectual circle of light. The clock on the wall said half past ten, which was clearly wrong, given the light outside. Arthur watched the minute hand for a while and saw that the clock had stopped, perhaps days ago.
Apart from the stopped clock, the room looked exactly as it had always looked, which he supposed was a good sign. Even the stopped clock might be a positive, because time itself might still be frozen, temporarily halted by the power of the Fifth Key. Arthur had done that because the Army, temporarily controlled by Saturday’s minion Pravuil in the guise of a General, had been about to destroy East Area Hospital with micronukes, supposedly in order to eradicate the Sleepy Plague, Greyspot, and other viruses that were concentrated at the hospital.
Arthur hoped it was still a few minutes before midnight on Friday, and that he’d come back in time to properly stop the nuclear attack.
But when he’d stopped time, there had been a strange red tinge to the light. Arthur couldn’t see that now. And what’s more, Arthur had come back from the Incomparable Gardens, albeit indirectly. Returning from the seventh demesne of the House would mean returning to Earth on a Sunday – and in order for it to be a Sunday, time must have passed since he’d frozen it on Friday.
Which meant it was probably more than a day since the Army had nuked the hospital, and the only reason everything seemed okay was that the house was far enough away not to be destroyed by the blast.
Though it would still be affected by radiation, Arthur thought, and that led him to attempt to get up. If any of his family was at home, he had to help them. He hoped his mother would be there, but in his heart he knew that wasn’t going to happen, since he knew she hadn’t been on Earth since before he defeated Lady Friday, and was probably a prisoner of either Superior Saturday, Lord Sunday, or even the Piper.
At least his father was safely far away, on tour with his band, The Ratz. His oldest brother, Erazmuz, was in the Army, in fact with the cleanup operation that would follow the nuclear attack. Staria, Patrick, and Suzanne, like Erazmuz, were much older and all lived in other cities. That left Arthur’s sister Michaeli and his brother Eric, who normally lived at home, or at least theoretically did, since both spent a lot of time with friends. But they could be here, and in danger. He had to get up and see.
But when he tried to move, he felt the pain in his head increase, and the cold paralysis that affected his entire right side grew stronger.
Arthur shut his good eye. Slowly, with a hand that felt ridiculously weak, he felt into the pouch and closed his bloodied fingers on the Fifth Key. Using sorcery here on Earth was bad, since it would affect the world in a negative way, but he didn’t really have a choice, other than to use only one of the two Keys, to limit the side effects on the world around him. He couldn’t wait for his body to heal itself, though he knew it probably would in time. He had to use sorcery to accelerate his healing.
He tried not to think of the hole he’d felt in his head, and how in this case ‘healing’ probably meant regrowing part of his brain.
Arthur gripped the mirror harder, concentrated his mind on what he wanted to happen, and muttered fiercely, ‘Fifth Key! Heal me, make me good as new, as quickly as you can!’
A terrible, explosive pain shot up Arthur’s fingers. He cried out, and then began to sob as his body was twisted from side to side and the bones in his spine cracked and screeched. He felt his skull knitting back together and the skin stretching across, all of it accompanied by almost unbearable agony.
Then it was over. Arthur felt limp and tired, but otherwise all right. Gingerly he opened his right eye. He could see perfectly well through it, but just to test it out he read the titles on the spines of the books in the shelf above his desk, pleased to note that even in the dim light from the lamp, he could read the smallest type.
Arthur was just about to look away when he saw the small book on the far end of the shelf, a book that shed a soft and rippling blue light. He opened both eyes to make sure of what he was seeing. Certain, he jumped up and snatched it off the shelf, sitting back down with the slim, green bound notebook held fast in his right hand.
The Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs was back in Arthur’s possession.
Arthur patted the cover, then put the Atlas carefully away in the silver pouch. As he straightened up from doing that, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the back of the door, the mirror that his mother had insisted on putting there so he would remember to comb his hair before he came down in the morning.
Arthur looked at the reflection for a few seconds, then moved closer to the mirror to study what he had become. He had been healed, true enough. But he had also been changed again. His hair had become spun gold, all perfectly arranged and shining. His skin had become a deep red-bronze, smooth and poreless. There was no white in his eyes, just a soft golden glow around an utterly black pupil and iris.
I look like some kind of android, thought Arthur bitterly. Or a statue that’s stepped off its stand.
He stared for a moment longer, before looking down at the crocodile ring on his finger. It was now entirely gold. Not even a glimmer of silver remained, to show that some last vestige of humanity remained in his blood and bones. His body was one hundred percent Denizen. Or perhaps even something more, as the gold shimmered with its own soft light, and its colour varied from a rose gold to the butter yellow of the pure metal.
Arthur shut his eyes for a moment and shook his head, trying to cast away the feelings of self-pity that were rising inside him.
‘I don’t . . . I don’t care,’ he said softly to his reflection. ‘I have a job to do. It doesn’t matter what I have become. It doesn’t matter what I look like.’
He pus
hed open the door and softly trod downstairs.
I hope no one is home, he couldn’t help thinking. I hope they’re safe somewhere else. And that they don’t have to see me this way. The house was very quiet. Arthur slipped quietly down the stairs, pausing to listen every four or five steps. He had learned to be cautious. He was also wondering what he should do. He couldn’t stay – that was for sure. He had to get back to the House as soon as he could. But before he did that, he might need to stop time again. Or perhaps try to clean up whatever had happened . . .
At the landing just before the living room, Arthur stopped and took a deep, unfettered breath. He still found it amazing that he could take such a breath, one that went to the very bottom of his lungs, and that he could breathe out again without wheezing or difficulty. His asthma, like his old body and even his old face, was apparently gone forever.
After taking that breath, Arthur walked into the living room – and stopped as if he’d hit a wall. There was his mother, who was sitting on the sofa and reading a medical journal, as if she had never disappeared, as if the world outside was normal, as if all the things that had happened to Arthur, his family, and the city had never occurred.
Arthur took a step forward, ready to hurl himself upon her and hug her as tightly as he could, to recapture that sense of safety that he had always felt in her embrace.
But after that first step, Arthur hesitated. He had changed so much, he was so different to look at, Emily might not even recognise him. Or she might be afraid of what he had become.
Either situation was too awful to contemplate. Arthur’s hesitation turned into a terrible fear, and he began to back away. As he did so, Emily put the journal down and turned her head, so that she was looking directly at him. Arthur’s eyes met Emily’s, but he saw neither recognition nor fear in her gaze. In fact, she looked right through him.
‘Mum,’ Arthur said, his voice weak and uncertain.
Emily didn’t respond. She yawned, looked away from Arthur, and picked up the journal again, touching the screen to bring up a different article.
‘Mum?’ Arthur walked right up to her and stood behind her chair. ‘Mum!’
Emily didn’t respond. Arthur reached out to touch her shoulder, but stopped an inch away. He could feel a strange electric tingle in his fingers, and his knuckles pulsed with the ache of sorcery. Slowly he pulled his hand back. He didn’t want to accidentally set off a spell that might hurt – or even kill – her. Instead he held his hand out to cover the screen of her journal. But she kept reading, as if his hand was simply not there.
The article was about the Sleepy Plague, Arthur saw. It was titled ‘First Analysis and Exploration of Somnovirus F/201/Z, “Sleepy Plague”, and was written by Dr Emily Penhaligon. The Sleepy Plague had been the first of the viruses that had been spawned by the presence of the First Key and other intrusions from the House. Though it had been swept away by the Nightsweeper that Arthur had brought back from the Lower House, other viruses had been created by powers of the House that should not have been on Earth. Emily was a pre-eminent medical researcher, but even she could have had no idea of the real reason the new viruses had suddenly appeared.
Arthur took his hand away and went to sit on the other chair in the room. He had felt so relieved to see his mother, because he’d thought she had somehow returned safely to their home. Now that relief was gone. He couldn’t be sure it even was Emily sitting opposite him, or that this was, in fact, his home.
‘I’d better have a look around,’ said Arthur. He spoke loudly, but Emily didn’t react. He watched her for a few seconds more, then got up and went downstairs to the kitchen.
The screen on the refrigerator, which Arthur had hoped would be active so he could check the time, date, and any news, was blank.
Arthur turned away to head over to his father’s studio and the computer there, but first he noticed something unusual through the kitchen window. He should have been able to see the dawn light coming through, but it was blocked by something green that was pressed right up against the glass.
Arthur went closer. There was a bushy tree or perhaps a hedge growing right next to the window, its foliage so thick that he couldn’t see through it. But there hadn’t been a tree there before, and in fact there should have been nothing but bare earth outside the kitchen, because Bob hadn’t got around to doing the landscaping yet.
Arthur went to the kitchen door and opened it. The door opened inward, which was just as well, because there was a solid expanse of spiky green hedge outside. It was so thick Arthur couldn’t see through any part of it, or get any idea of how far it extended.
One thing was clear. The area around his home had been transformed, and it added to Arthur’s growing suspicion that this wasn’t really his house at all.
He sat down at the kitchen table and took out The Compleat Atlas of the House. It looked like the real thing, and Dame Primus had told him it would probably reappear somewhere near him, that he should check out bookshelves. There was only one way to find out, and to check exactly where he was and what was going on.
Arthur laid the Atlas on the table and said, ‘I need to know where I am.’
He was about to reach for his Keys to use their power to activate the Atlas, but he didn’t need them. His touch was sorcerous enough. The Atlas flipped open and grew until it was the size of a glossy magazine.
The double-page spread it had opened to was blank at first, then writing began to appear on the left-hand page, much slower than when Arthur had looked at it before. It was as if the invisible hand was being opposed, or held back in some way, for the letters were not only slow to appear, they were in an almost illegible scrawl rather than the beautiful copperplate writing the Atlas usually used.
Arthur guessed what the Atlas was going to say before the first word was complete.
Incompa . . .
‘But how can this be the Incomparable Gardens?’ asked Arthur as soon as the words were finished, a long minute later. ‘And why are my house and my mother in it?’
Can’t answer . . . opposed by the Seventh Key . . . came the ever-so-slow reply. The last word was almost unreadable, the final letter not much more than a blob of ink with a downstroke.
‘Is that really Emily upstairs?’ Arthur asked. He focused his mind more strongly upon the Atlas, and slipped his hands into his pouch to hold and draw on the power of both the Fifth and Sixth Keys, the mirror in his left hand and the pen in his right. He could feel something fighting back, some power opposing his attempt to use the Atlas. It was like an unseen presence pressing on his face, trying to push him back from the table and the open book.
Arthur fought against it, though he remembered Dame Primus saying the Seventh Key was paramount, the most powerful of all, and like all the Keys, it was even stronger in its own demesne. But surely, he thought, having two Keys would enable him to have some chance against it?
The Atlas slowly wrote a single, misshapen letter. Arthur couldn’t quite figure it out for a moment, till he turned his head slightly and saw it was a Y that was partly rotated, followed very slowly by two more letters.
‘Yes,’ read Arthur aloud.
But the Atlas kept writing. Another word appeared, each letter painstakingly spelled out over several seconds.
‘And,’ read Arthur, and then, ‘no.’
‘Yes and no? How can it be yes and no?’ Arthur asked angrily. He felt rage build up inside him. How dare this ineffectual Atlas be so slow and so inexact!
‘I must have the answer!’ shouted Arthur. He thumped the table with the Keys and thought furiously at the Atlas. What do you mean, ‘yes and no’?
But the Atlas wrote no more, and Arthur felt the power that opposed him grow stronger. It kept pushing at his face, and he found himself turning his head, unable to keep looking at the Atlas, no matter how hard he tried.
Then, with a crack, his head snapped around past his left shoulder, and with a snap that was almost as loud, the Atlas shut itself and returned to it
s normal size.
Arthur growled. His vision was washed with red, a red that pulsed with his rapidly beating heart. He lost conscious thought. In one second he was sitting at the table, the rage building inside him. In what felt like the next second, he found himself standing above the wreckage of the table, his hands balled into fists, with splinters of wood sticking out from his knuckles.
The Atlas, undamaged, lay on top of the broken pile of wood.
Arthur stared at it and the splintered timber. He was shocked by what he had done, for the table had been old and immensely solid, and could not have been smashed by even the strongest of men without a sledgehammer. He was even more shocked by the fact that he had done it involuntarily, that the rage had been so strong he had lashed out without his conscious mind even being aware of it.
The anger was still there, smouldering away like a fire that needed only the merest breath to make it blaze again. It scared him, because it came out of nowhere and was so powerful. He had never been like this before. He was not an angry person. Or, at least, he had not been before he became the Rightful Heir. Once again, as he had thought so often, he wished he had not been chosen by the Will to be the Heir, even though it had told him he would otherwise have died from an asthma attack. That was the only reason he’d been chosen, or so the Will had said. It had wanted a mortal, and one who was about to die.
Arthur shivered and forced himself to take a long, slow breath. He counted to six as he breathed in, and to six as he exhaled. As he did so, he felt the rage diminish. He tried to visualise it being forced back into a small, locked box, from which it could not emerge without him consciously releasing it.
After a few minutes, he felt slightly calmer again, and was able to think about what was going on.
Okay, I’m in some part of the Incomparable Gardens. I need to get out, get back to the Great Maze, and rally the Army of the Architect to invade the Upper House.
Arthur stopped in mid-thought. That was what Part Six of the Will had suggested, but perhaps that wasn’t the best course of action. Dame Primus and Sir Thursday’s Marshals could get the Army organised without him, and whatever might be the outcome of any battle, he would still need to find Part Seven of the Will and release it. Then, with its help, he could force Sunday to give up the Seventh Key. With that in his possession, it wouldn’t matter if Saturday or the Piper conquered the Incomparable Gardens. With all Seven Keys, Arthur could defeat any opposition. And, more important, he could stop the tide of Nothing that was destroying the House.