Lord Sunday
“What do you mean, rescuers?” the Supernumerary with the manual asked. “And why would they chuck me off the tower?”
“I’m a Piper’s child, right?” asked Suzy. “Who’s attacking the tower?”
“The Piper,” said the Supernumerary. “Oh…I see. But he’ll never get this far.”
“Dunno about that,” said Suzy. “I mean, Saturday’s nicked off with all the best fighters, ain’t she? I mean, she’s all right, she’ll be living it up in the Incomparable Gardens, with her Artful Loungers and Internal Auditors and all. It’s you poor blokes I feel sorry for.”
“We always get the worst jobs,” admitted the Sorcerous Supernumerary. “You know what the higher-ups call us? Maggots, that’s what. At least that’s what one called me once…”
“Wot’s your actual name then?” asked Suzy. “I’m Suzy Turquoise Blue.”
“Giac,” replied the Supernumerary. He looked over the edge and sighed. “I was enjoying being up this high till you said I might get chucked off.”
“Course, you might not get thrown off,” Suzy said thoughtfully.
“I bet I would,” said Giac. “Bound to be. Just my luck.”
“They might just cut your head off,” said Suzy. “The Newniths, I mean. The Piper’s soldiers. Big, ugly brutes they are, with charged battle-axes and the like. I’m glad I’m on the same side as them, is all I can say.”
“They’ll never get this far,” repeated Giac uneasily.
“Might as well ’ave a bit of fun before whatever happens happens,” said Suzy. “Tell you what – why don’t you bring me in, we’ll play draughts, and then when the Newniths show up, I’ll get them to just take you prisoner. Instead of cutting your head off.”
“I have to do what the manual says,” replied Giac gloomily. “Besides, one of the Internal Auditors might come back. They’d do worse than cut my head off.”
“Worse?” asked Suzy. “Like what?”
“Encystment,” said Giac with a shudder. He turned a page in the manual and stared at it, then sighed and shut the book.
“It’s so nice up here,” he said. “Particularly without the rain. I really do think ten thousand years of rain is a bit much. My socks might even dry if it stays fine.”
“Be even better with a game of draughts,” said Suzy. “You don’t have to untie me. Just swing me in and I’ll call out the moves. Then, if one of your lot shows up, you can swing me out again and they’ll be none the wiser.”
“I suppose I could…” Giac put the book down and peered at the workings of the crane. “I wonder if it’s this wheel…or perhaps this lever?”
“No! Not the lever!” shouted Suzy.
Giac withdrew his hand, which had been just about to pull the lever that would release the hook and send Suzy plummeting down to certain death.
“Must be the wheel, then,” he said. He started to turn it and the crane responded, rotating on its pivot until Suzy was brought back to dangle above the floor of the veranda.
“Good work,” said Suzy. “I s’pose you still don’t want to touch Noon’s set?”
Giac nodded.
“Well, get a piece of paper and draw us up a draughtboard.”
As Giac got some paper and a quill pen out of the closer desk, Suzy spun herself slightly away from the Denizen so that he couldn’t see her as she wriggled two fingers under the rope around her waist, feeling inside one of the pockets of her utility belt. She could only reach one pocket and she knew there was nothing as useful as a knife in there. Still, ever optimistic, she thought there might be something. It was an effort, but she did manage to get a grip on a cake of best-quality waterless soap. Slowly she drew it up into her hand.
Bloomin’ soap, she thought. What am I going to do with that?
“This will serve,” said Giac. He set out a sheet of thick paper on the floor near Suzy’s feet and quickly drew up the board. “I’ll rip up some more paper to make the draughts. Do you want to be blue or white?”
“Blue,” said Suzy. As she rotated around again she manoeuvred her hand so that she could push the soap between two strands of rope. Being waterless soap, it was quite slippery and she thought she might be able to make it shoot out, if she could just get a good grip and snap her fingers in the right way. “What’s your friend doing?”
“Hmmm? Aranj?” asked Giac. He looked around at the other Sorcerous Supernumerary, who had stopped pacing by the door and was now sitting down with her legs pulled up and her face on her knees, appearing rather like a crushed black spider. “She’s gone into a slough of despond. It couldn’t have helped to have you talking about our heads getting cut off.”
“What’s a sluff of despond?” asked Suzy.
“Acute misery,” replied Giac as he tore up a blue sheet of paper, “resulting in withdrawal from the world. Happens to a lot of us Sorcerous Supernumeraries. Had a bout of it myself a thousand years ago. Not too serious, mind – it only lasted twenty or thirty years. I suppose I should be suffering now, but you were right about the draughts. I’m looking forward to our—”
At that moment, Suzy forced her fingers together with a snap and the soap shot out. It struck Giac in the side of the head, but with very little force.
“Ow!” he said. He looked around wildly, but Suzy was still all tied up and slowly spinning in place. “Who did that?”
“Dunno,” said Suzy. “It just came out of nowhere.”
Giac picked up the soap and looked at it.
“Grease monkey soap,” he said. “Probably thought it was funny to drop this over the side, somewhere up top. Oh, well. Let’s get started.”
“You can go first,” said Suzy.
Giac nodded and set out the paper draughts on the makeshift board. He’d only just laid them all down when a breeze blew in, picked them up and lofted them over the edge of the veranda to spin and twinkle away.
“We’d better use Noon’s board and the pawns for draughts,” said Suzy. “Tell you what – if you don’t want to touch it, how about you cut me down and I’ll do all the moves? That way you can say you never went near it.”
“I don’t know…” said Giac. He looked longingly at the board. “I would so love to play a game. It’s been such a long time since I played anything.”
“You get me down and we’ll play draughts until someone shows up. If it’s your lot, you just say I escaped a minute ago. If it’s the Piper’s Newniths, you can change sides.”
“Change sides?” asked Giac. “Um, how could I do that?”
“Well, you just stop obeying Superior Saturday and start obeying the Piper…or someone else. Lord Arthur, for example.”
“Just like that?” asked Giac wonderingly. “And it would work?”
“Well, I s’pose it would,” said Suzy. “As long as you didn’t run into Saturday herself. Or one of her superior Denizens, like Noon.”
“But they’ve gone up top,” said Giac, pointing. “Invading the Incomparable Gardens. I could change sides now.”
“First things first,” said Suzy. “It’s one thing to change sides; it’s something else to have the other side accept you.”
The half smile that had begun to form on Giac’s face crumpled. “I knew it couldn’t be easy as that.”
“Course you will get accepted if you let me go,” said Suzy. “That’s the first thing. So it’s still pretty easy.”
“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.
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 entitled “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 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 round,” 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.