The archers were on the back of a dragonfly that was now hovering almost directly above him. Arthur roared in anger and pain, and raised the Fifth Key.
“Burn!” he shrieked, and a beam of intense light shot from the mirror. It hit the dragonfly, setting it on fire as it fell to the ground, the legs and wings still twitching. The Denizens aboard were crushed beneath the burning body of the huge dragonfly, and though they would probably survive, they’d be badly hurt for a long, long time.
Arthur only just managed to stop himself from firing more blasts. Instead he checked his wounds, ready to direct the Fifth Key to heal him. But he didn’t need to do anything. Reinforced by the power of the two Keys in his hands, his own body was already fighting back against the poison. Arthur watched in fascination as the Nothing was expelled back out through the holes in his skin, falling to the ground and dissolving grass and earth as it sank out of sight. Then his bronzed skin closed over, leaving no scar or sign of any hurt.
Arthur scanned the sky, but saw no more dragonflies. Yet he felt something touch him, a sensation like a hand suddenly reaching out and lightly tapping the top of his head. It was Lord Sunday, he knew, using the Seventh Key to see what was happening.
This meant there was even less time than he’d hoped. Arthur started running again. As he leaped up the steps, he tried to remember how many terraces were cut into the hill, and which terrace the clock was on.
But he couldn’t remember, and when he crested the slope to the next terrace, he saw that there was at least one more, and maybe another after that. Arthur increased his speed, crossing the slightly less wide lawn of this terrace at a speed that would have won him an Olympic gold medal in any sprint back home.
He was halfway up the rough stone steps on the other side when he ran into another one of Sunday’s guards. Instead of his feet meeting a step, the step rose up to smash into him. As he fell back down the hill, Arthur saw that he’d been struck by a cunning camouflaged worm or serpent, one that had been disguised as the row of steps that extended up the next fifty feet of hill. The huge rough stones were in fact segments of its body. Now great coils of wormsnake were rolling down towards him, threatening to crush him where he lay.
Arthur flipped himself upright and jumped fifteen feet in the air, over the nearest coil, just as it smashed down where he’d been. The moment he landed, he looked around wildly, looking for the thing’s head. He couldn’t see it, and that alarmed him more than the huge coils of its body. They were relatively slow, but the head might be quick, with fangs roughly the same size as Arthur’s body.
A coil rolled towards him. This time Arthur raised the Fifth Key and once more thought of fiery light. But when the focused light hit the wormsnake, it was reflected in all directions, the white-hot beam breaking into a scattering of rainbows. The creature was barely scathed.
“It’s rock,” Arthur said to himself as he once again had to jump away. “Or crystal!”
Whatever it was made of, the wormsnake was also clever. Though he still couldn’t see its head or tail, the coils were gathering around Arthur, penning him in to a section of the lawn and doubling round so even with his prodigal strength he would not be able to jump past them.
Crystal reflects light, thought Arthur. But it also shatters when frozen!
He raised the Fifth Key and concentrated on it again, imagining incredible, intense cold, projected as a ray of particles that would instantly freeze the wormsnake.
“Freeze!” commanded Arthur, and the Fifth Key obeyed, sending a stream of cold against the wormsnake’s flank. But this too splashed over the creature without doing any apparent harm.
For the first time since Arthur had regained his Keys, he suddenly felt afraid, even as he readied the Sixth Key to use against the creature. Surely that had to work!
The wormsnake is the Architect’s creature, interrupted a voice inside his head – a voice that he instinctively knew must belong to Part Seven of the Will. Even though it was a mental communication, it sounded loud and close. It is one of the first things She made and it is immune to the powers of all but the Seventh Key. But it is slow and stupid, so you—
CHAPTER TWENTY
“This is the plan,” Suzy announced as the elevator began to rise. “So pay attention.”
Twenty-one Piper’s children stopped playing seven very different games involving nine entirely different decks of cards. Four ceased juggling wax-sealed cheeses. Thirty-three looked up from checking their weapons. Five woke up. Three stopped arguing about the relative merits of tea from Earth versus that from other worlds, or the kind formerly made in the Far Reaches out of Nothing.
Leaf stopped scratching Daisy’s pineapple-skin hide for a moment, but quickly resumed. It seemed to calm the huge creature, and in the limited space of the elevator, it was best if the beastwort remained still.
“You listening?” asked Suzy.
Everyone nodded.
“When the elevator goes ping and the doors open, we rush out.”
“Sounds good,” said someone. “Easy to remember.”
Leaf shut her eyes and tried to remain calm.
“There’s more to it than that,” said Suzy. “Idiot.” She looked over to Fred. “You and everyone from Elame will be one lot,” she continued. “When the elevator goes ping, you go right. Leaf…Leaf!”
“Yes!” said Leaf, opening her eyes. “I’m listening.”
“You take charge of everyone from Gowzer to Abidge. You go left.”
“Right,” said Leaf. “I mean OK, we go left. But shouldn’t someone else be in charge?”
“You’re an Admiral, aren’t you?” said Suzy. “And you got Daisy and the special sword.”
Leaf looked down at the sword and grimaced. “Only until I can hand it over to someone better suited to being Lieutenant Keeper.”
“Bren, Shan and Athan, you take the cannon out and set it up wherever looks good. I’ll take everyone else and we’ll go straight ahead. Doc and Giac, you come behind us and the first desks you get at, you start opening up elevators. The sooner they work, the sooner Old Primey can send up reinforcements.”
“That’s it?” asked Leaf. “Do we know exactly what we’re up against? I don’t even know what Saturday’s tower is like!”
“Like I said before, we’re facing Newniths wearing heavy armour and leather wings, and waving around big slow swords. Or if they’re still Saturday’s lot, there’ll be a bunch of mid-level sorcerers. If it’s sorcerers, get in close and go for their umbrellas. If it’s Newniths, keep your distance from those swords. As for the tower, it’s just a tower made up of lots of little office cubes. There’s lots of desks on the floor we’re going to. That’s about it. Oh, except there’s no outside walls, so don’t fall out.”
Suzy stopped talking. There was an expectant silence for a few seconds.
“That’s it,” she concluded. “Carry on.”
The Piper’s children resumed their previous activities. Leaf touched Suzy’s elbow.
“What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why Dame Primus is sending us to capture the elevator controls. I mean, surely it would be better to send soldier Denizens. They’re bigger and stronger and harder to kill—”
“We’re sneakier and a lot smarter,” said Suzy. “But that ain’t the reason. Old Primey reckons we can do it, but if you ask me, she hopes most of us will get finished off as well.”
“What?” gasped Leaf. Daisy, who had been quiescent next to her, rumbled and shifted her tentacles as she felt Leaf’s shock.
“Maybe not you,” said Suzy. “Though I ain’t sure about that, neither, cos you’re Arthur’s friend and Old Primey don’t want Arthur to ’ave any friends. Not ones he listens to. But she doesn’t trust us Piper’s children, cos she ’ates the Piper.”
“I just want to go ’ome – I mean home,” said Leaf. She looked at her sword. “I wonder if I can give this to someone without having to be practically dead first.”
“We might need a little bit of your help,” said Suzy. “But if you want to go after that, I ain’t going to stand in the way.”
“The portals to the Front Door in the Upper House are closed,” said Leaf. “I don’t know how else I could get back.”
“Open ’em up again. Or there’s Seven Dials. It’s around somewhere. Might even have moved to the Upper House by now. Ask the Doc.”
“Maybe I can open the portals from this side. But even then, the Door is full of Nithlings—”
“And there might not be anything to go back to,” said Suzy cheerfully. “Depends where Arthur’s got to, doesn’t it? I mean, if the whole ’ouse falls down, then the Secondary Realms ’ave ’ad it. End of the whole picnic.”
“Picnic?” Leaf shook her head again. “You’re mad, Suzy.”
“Nah,” said Suzy, suddenly serious. “Just…just old, I guess. I mean, we’ve all ’ad a good run. Thousands of years, mucking around, taking nothing too serious—”
“Suzy! I’m not thousands of years old!” Leaf protested. “I’m not even thirteen yet! I don’t want to die, and I don’t want the whole world – the whole Universe – to end either!”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Suzy. She slapped Leaf heartily on the back. If it hadn’t been for the Lieutenant Keeper’s coat, it would have hurt. A lot. “I reckon Arthur’ll save the day. We’ll do our bit as well, of course.”
“I really hope you’re right,” said Leaf quietly. She was about to add something else when Dr Scamandros edged between two juggling Piper’s children and approached Suzy. He doffed his fez and said, “Eight minutes till we arrive, General!”
“Thanks, Doc,” Suzy said. Then she raised her voice and added, “Get yer weapons ready!”
“Dr Scamandros,” Leaf said, before the sorcerer could go back near the elevator door. “Do you know where Seven Dials is now?”
“Hmm, I’m afraid not,” said Scamandros. “I believe it is likely it would move nearer to its controller. Formerly that was Monday, now it is Lord Arthur. So I expect it is somewhere in the Upper House.”
At that moment, the elevator shuddered to a halt.
Dr Scamandros whipped a pocket watch out of his coat and peered at it.
“Six minutes early!”
Many decks of cards, several cheeses and a lot of other inessential equipment hit the floor as the Raiders belatedly readied their weapons. The door began to open and there was a very loud ping.
“Charge!” shouted Suzy. She had her savage-sword out and was already storming for the elevator door, closely followed by her central group.
Around twenty Piper’s children looked at Leaf.
“Uh, come on!” she shouted. She fumbled at her sword and it leaped into her hand, twisting itself to avoid sticking one of her companions. Daisy rumbled up on her assembly of legs and her tentacles brushed against the ceiling, buckling it in several places. Leaf tugged on the beastwort’s lead, tried to keep her sword up and joined the mad rush out of the elevator.
There were Newniths outside on the tower floor, but they were not ready for a surprise attack by Piper’s children. They barely got to turn around before they were thrown to the ground by the rush and trussed up a moment later, the Piper’s children chivalrously not using their weapons unless weapons were used against them first.
This happened some twenty seconds later. A rain of lightning-charged spears flew at the door as Leaf’s group burst out. Without conscious direction, Leaf spun and danced, cutting down four spears with her sword, which essentially dragged her after it. The remaining dozen or so were caught or blocked by Daisy’s tentacles, bouncing back to explode against desks or their unfortunate casters.
“Right!” shouted Leaf. “This way!”
She led a charge between a line of desks, but Daisy simply smashed through them, sending splinters of polished mahogany every where. Her tentacles ranged ahead, sweeping up Newniths and dashing them to the floor.
Leaf paused for a moment as she heard someone shouting her name.
It was Scamandros. “Leaf! Don’t let Daisy break the desks!” Giac was hunched over an intact desk, writing something with a quill pen. Scamandros had evidently been about to do the same thing at one of the desks Daisy had just destroyed, because he was standing over a pile of matchwood.
Leaf tugged on the lead and Daisy swung back towards her, smashing a few more desks on the way.
“Sit!” commanded Leaf. It didn’t look like Daisy would be needed any more anyway. There had only been thirty or so Newniths around the elevators and they had all been captured or slain. Looking out along the lines of desks, there were no more to be seen on the floor, though of course there could be thousands more on the floors above and below them, or even flying out around the tower.
“Keep a lookout for the counterattack!” shouted Suzy. “They’ll be—”
Whatever she said was lost as the tower shook violently, knocking almost everyone to the floor, which was no longer level. Piper’s children, tied-up Newniths and everything that wasn’t bolted down started to slide towards the eastern edge. Then, just as suddenly, the tower leaned back the other way.
Leaf, holding on to Daisy’s leash, was the only person who didn’t go very far, since the beastwort gripped the upright columns of the nearer offices and planted herself very solidly in place.