“You mentioned Lord Arthur,” said Giac. “How many sides are there again? I mean, besides Saturday’s?”
“It’s a bit complicated,” said Suzy quickly. “I’ll explain when you get me down. I can draw a diagram.”
“I like diagrams,” said Giac.
“Good!” said Suzy. “Get me down and I’ll draw one. Quickly!”
“All right,” replied Giac, and something like a small smile flitted across his face. It was the first time Suzy had ever seen a Sorcerous Supernumerary look even remotely happy.
Giac pulled the lever and Suzy dropped to the floor of the veranda. The Denizen strode over and began to undo the knots.
“I’m a rebel,” Giac said happily. “Do you think I’ll get a uniform? Something brightly coloured? I rather fancy a red—”
Before he could say anything further, something large and black streaked in from the open air and struck him in the back of the head, sending him sprawling across Suzy. As Giac hadn’t properly undone any knots, Suzy was still trapped. All she could do was wriggle out from under his unconscious form.
“Suzy Turquoise Blue?” asked the black object, which was reforming itself from a kind of bowling ball made of tiny swirling letters into a raven made up of tiny swirling letters.
“Yes,” said Suzy. “Let me guess – Part Six of the Will, right?”
“At your service,” said the raven. “In a manner of speaking. I’ve come to rescue you, as Lord Arthur instructed.”
Suzy sniffed. “I don’t need no rescuing,” she said. “Had it all organised, didn’t I? ’Cept you’ve just knocked out the Denizen wot was untying me. Where’s Arthur?”
“Mmm…not entirely…mmm…sure,” said the raven as it pulled at a knot with its beak. “There – slither out.”
Suzy slithered out of the loosened bonds and checked Giac. He was unconscious, but the faint smile was still on his face, suggesting that he might be dreaming of a colourful uniform. She looked over at Aranj too, but the other Denizen hadn’t even looked up and was still crouched down, totally rejecting the world around her.
“’Ow do you knock out a Denizen?” asked Suzy. “I tried it myself once or twice, but just hitting them never works.”
“It is not the force of the blow, but the authority with which it is delivered,” quoth the raven.
“Hmmph,” said Suzy. She sidled over to the chess set and looked back at Part Six of the Will over her shoulder. “Now, what’s Arthur up to?”
“After releasing me and securing the Sixth Key, Lord Arthur went into the Improbable Stair, to a destination or destinations unknown,” reported the raven. “Which means that until he returns, it is up to us to secure his position here.”
“So he got the Key,” said Suzy with satisfaction. “I told ’im he would. ’Ow do we go about securing the position then?”
As she talked, she picked up the solid-gold queen from Noon’s chess set and idly slipped it into one of the pockets of her utility belt.
“We must open an elevator shaft to the Great Maze,” said the raven, “make contact with my other parts, and bring in troops to secure this tower and the entry into the Incomparable Gardens.”
“Right,” said Suzy. “That can’t be too difficult. Where do we go to open an elevator shaft?”
“The sorcerers assigned to blocking the elevators are on Levels 6860 to 6879. We merely need to access a desk on one of those levels.”
“What if they’re still full of sorcerers? Or been taken over by the Piper’s lot?”
“The Piper’s forces have not advanced beyond the lower levels,” said the raven. “Or at least they hadn’t when I last looked. There are still a great number of Saturday’s lesser troops down there.”
“Right, then,” said Suzy. She walked back over to Giac, sat him up and lightly slapped him on the cheek. “Come on, Giac! Ups-a-daisy!”
“What are you doing?” asked the raven. “You’ll wake him up.”
“I know,” said Suzy. “He might come in handy and he’s on our side now. Ain’t you, Giac?”
Giac looked at her woozily.
“Yes,” he mumbled. “I think so. Which side was that again? Did you draw me a diagram?”
“I’ll draw you up one later,” said Suzy. “Now, where’s an elevator at? Or the Big Chain? Lead on, Giac!”
CHAPTER THREE
The Improbable Stair became real and Arthur sprang on to 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 OK 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 clean-up 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.
A 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 per cent 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 pushed 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.