Superior Saturday

TWENTY

THE SORCEROUS SUPERNUMERARIES were on the lowest level of the rocket, immediately above the solid brass case. In between the holes in the wicker floor, Arthur could see the metal. He didn’t want to think about what might be packed inside the lower half of the rocket. Some kind of propellant, he assumed. It was clear that the assault ram was going to be fired at the underside of the Incomparable Gardens, and the most likely place for that to happen was from the top of the tower.

Arthur was lucky to be one of the last aboard, because that meant his position was right up against the bars. The Denizens were packed in shoulder to shoulder, but he could turn around and see outside.

There was no talk among the sorcerers around Arthur. He looked out through the bars at the sorcerers in one of the corner cupolas on the platform below him. They were slotting their gold and silver umbrellas into holes in the ironwork. When the umbrellas were set, they turned the handles sideways to make them into something like music stands, and all together they placed open books upon the handles and, without any visible or audible signal, began to write with peacock-feather pens.

Arthur felt power in whatever they were writing. It made him feel slightly ill and itchy all over. As they wrote, the platform silently rose off the floor and began to climb up the side of the tower.

As it climbed, the Sorcerous Supernumeraries began to whisper to one another.

‘We’re all going to die.’

‘I bet I die first.’

‘We’ll all die together.’

‘We might not. We might just be horribly injured and demoted again.’

‘You always look on the bright side, Athelbert.’

‘No, I don’t. I do expect to get killed.’

‘Surprised they put us down here. Thought we’d be first to the slaughter.’

‘Nah, waste of time putting us up front. Those big beetle-things’d cut the likes of us up in a trice.’

‘What beetle-things?’

‘Quiet!’ roared an authoritative voice from somewhere farther inside the packed Denizen ranks.

Arthur shivered as he felt a new surge of sorcery from the writing Denizens in the cupolas, and the platform rose faster. He was on the far side of the rocket from the tower, so he couldn’t see exactly how far they’d already risen, but looking down, he guessed they’d already gone up about two or three hundred levels.

‘How come you’ve got a bit shorter, Woxroth?’ asked a Denizen behind Arthur’s back.

‘Extra demotion,’ grunted Arthur.

Awed silence greeted this answer, followed by a muttered, ‘And I thought I had it bad. Demoted and then killed by a beetle, all in one day.’

Optimistic lot, aren’t they? said the Will into Arthur’s mind.

They might be realistic, thought Arthur. Do you have any suggestions about what I can do?

Bide your time and look for any opportunity. Then take it.

That’s really helpful.

‘Sorcerers with a clear view to the exterior, stand ready!’ ordered a voice from inside, the command echoed on the floors above.

The Denizens on either side of Arthur shuffled and pushed to get their folded umbrellas pointing out through the bars. Arthur copied them, though he didn’t know why they were doing it.

‘We’re approaching 61600, top-out’s at 61850. Be prepared for a counterattack. If it’s green and iridescent, shoot it!’

‘Woxroth,’ whispered the Denizen to Arthur’s left. ‘For the radiant eradication of matter, do we start by visualising a glowing ember or the tip of the flame on a candle? I can’t recall exactly...’

‘Uh, dunno,’ Arthur mumbled. He was trying to make his voice low and miserable, like the real Woxroth.

‘An ember, of course,’ said the Sorcerous Supernumerary to Arthur’s right. ‘Did you fail everything?’

‘Almost everything,’ replied the left-hand Supernumerary. ‘Hoo! What’s that? Glowing ember, glowing ember...’

‘Hold on,’ said the right-hand Denizen. ‘They’re our lot. On this side, anyway.’

Arthur stared out through the bars. The platform was lifting the rocket up at a faster rate than he’d thought, at least as fast as the moving chain he’d ridden. So it was hard to see, with the air rushing through the bars, the slight rocking motion of the rocket and the constant mild jostling of all the Denizens.

Several hundred feet above them, and closing rapidly, the sky was crisscrossed with smoky trails and sudden, sparking lights that blossomed like silent fireworks in brilliant colours, lasting only a few seconds. All Arthur could hear was the breathing of the Denizens around him, and the low hum of the moving platform.

The sparks were being fired up and out by thousands of flying Denizens who formed a circular perimeter several hundred yards out from the tower, surrounding it. At first Arthur couldn’t make out what they were casting their silent, sparking spells at, there was so much smoke and light in the sky. Then he saw a green tendril that had to be at least four hundred feet long and ten feet thick suddenly lash out of the cloud and strike a flier who had dared to climb too high. The tendril cracked like a whip, and Arthur and all the Denizens flinched at the sudden noise and the sight of the tendril smashing the Denizen’s wings. The lash must have terribly injured the sorcerer as well, for he or she fell like a lump, straight down.

‘Lashed to bits by a weed, that’d be right,’ said one of Arthur’s neighbours.

‘Nah,’ said someone else. ‘That’s a good fifteen hundred feet up. They’re going to fire this thing from the top, a bit short of weed range, and we’ll slice through those tendrils like a hot knife through a butter cake. ’Course, after that, we’ll be easy pickings for the beetles.’

‘I’ve never even seen a butter cake.’

Arthur only half-listened to the complaints behind and around him. He watched the tendril strike again, still flinching at the whip crack even though he knew it was coming. But the Denizen who’d said they wouldn’t get close was right. The platform had slowed down a lot and was now manoeuvring sideways. Arthur could feel less sorcerous energy being expended by the Denizens in the driving cupolas.

The platform was also rotating, Arthur saw as his view changed. The corner of the tower came into sight and then the entire side. They were level with the top now, the ground out of sight at least seventeen thousand feet below.

Here at its peak, the tower was much, much narrower than the levels Arthur had visited. The last fifteen levels were the narrowest, composed of only five offices a side. At the very top, right in the middle, there was a single, much larger office that was the size of four of the usual cubes. Though its frame was iron, it had clear crystal walls and a roof made of the same material.

Someone was inside this crystal office, watching the platform and the rocket slowly slide across toward... - toward her, Arthur saw.

Superior Saturday. It had to be her. She looked eight feet tall at least, and Arthur couldn’t tell if she had shining blonde hair or was wearing a metallic helmet. She was certainly wearing some kind of armour, a breastplate of red-gold that shone like the setting sun, and leg and arm armour made from plates in different shades of evening sunlight.

The platform was turning so that the door in the lowest level of the rocket was lined up with her office. The door that Arthur was standing next to. The door that Superior Saturday clearly intended to use...

‘Make way! Let’s have a path through!’ called the commanding voice. Denizens pushed at Arthur, driving him away from the door, packing him in even tighter against his comrades as a path was cleared from the doorway through to the interior ladder that led up to the next level of the rocket.

A Denizen pushed back right into Arthur’s face, but he didn’t complain. He shifted a little to his right and peered through the two-inch gap between two Sorcerers’ shoulders in front of him.

Superior Saturday touched the wall of her office and the crystal fell away, shattering into motes of light that spun around and wove themselves into a pair of shining wings that fell upon her shoulders and flapped twice as she launched herself across the empty air to the aperture between the bronze bars that served as a door for the rocket. She landed as if she were dancing in a ballet, and strode through the crowd without a sideways glance at the Denizens who bent their heads and tried to bow, despite the cramped space and many painful cranial collisions.

There, in her hand! called the Will. The Key. You could call to it. No, on second thought, best not yet –

Definitely not, thought Arthur. He stood on tiptoe and craned his neck to see what it was that Saturday held in her hand. It wasn’t an umbrella, or even anything as large as a knife, just something slim and short...

It’s a pen, thought Arthur. A quill pen.

He lost sight of it, and Saturday as well, as she climbed up the interior ladder. The platform rose up some twenty or thirty feet and drifted across to line up with the middle of the tower. Then, with a flourish of peacock-quill pens, the entire platform settled on top of the tower with the groan and shriek of iron upon iron. A minute later, dozens of automatons climbed up and grease monkeys flew up from below and started to fix the platform to the tower.

Arthur looked across and up. It was hard to estimate, but he thought the clouds were only eight or nine hundred feet above them, and the tendrils that were still snapping down could reach about three hundred feet. So they had a six-hundred-foot safety margin. Presumably the assault ram had to be this close in order to have a chance of breaking through the underside of the Incomparable Gardens.

Someone shouted far below. Arthur looked back down. The grease monkeys and the automatons were disappearing back under the platform.

‘Brace for launch!’ called out the commanding voice inside the rocket.

The Denizens around Arthur grabbed the bars, and the Denizens farther in grabbed one another. Arthur took a firm grip on the closest bar and bent his knees.

‘Light the blue touchpaper!’ called out the voice.

Arthur couldn’t see exactly what happened then, but somewhere over in the middle of the rocket, there was a sudden eruption, a vertical jet of white-hot sparks that reached the wicker floor above but somehow did not set it alight.

‘Five... four... three... two... one!’ called the voice. ‘Fire!’

There was a loud fizzling noise, and nothing happened.

‘Fire?’ repeated the voice, somewhat less commandingly.

‘What is going on down there?’ asked a clear, cold female voice that made Arthur shiver. ‘Must I do everything myself?’

‘No, milady,’ called the first voice, which was now beseeching. ‘There is a second touchpaper. I will light it myself.’

A minute later, there was another violent stream of sparks.

‘Five... four... three... two... one... um...’

A violent force struck the rocket, sending every Denizen to his or her knees. Arthur was thrown from side to side, smacking into the sorcerers around him, their umbrella handles smashing into his ribs and thighs.

Huge clouds of smoke billowed up and out, and the rocket stormed up from the platform, accelerating faster than anything Arthur had ever experienced before.

Four seconds later, he heard the terrible crack of a tendril from above, closely followed by several more.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The rocket shook with each impact, and the bronze cage rods rang like bells. The assault ram did not deviate from its course, straight up into the underbelly of the Incomparable Gardens.

‘Brace! Brace for impact!’

The warning was too late for most of the Denizens. Very few were still on their feet, the floor around Arthur resembling a particularly crazy game of Twister.

When the assault ram struck, everyone hit the ceiling and bounced back down. Arthur was bashed by what he thought was every possible combination of elbows, knees, umbrella points and handles, and if he were still human he knew he would have broken every bone in his body and probably had several stab wounds as well.

But he was not human, which was just as well, for a human mind would have had as hard a time as a human body. As the rocket sliced through the underside of the Incomparable Gardens, the interior became suddenly dark. Then, as some of the less-addled Denizens began to make their umbrellas glow with coloured light, they saw rich dark earth spewing through the bars, earth that flowed in like water, threatening to drown and choke them.

‘Ward the sides!’ someone shouted. Umbrellas flicked open, and Denizens began to speak spells, using words that lanced through Arthur’s forehead, though it wasn’t exactly pain that he felt.

The opened umbrellas and the spells stemmed the tide of earth. The rocket began to slow, and the anxious Denizens below heard cheering and shouting above. Then the rocket stopped completely, with nothing but the rich earth to see around them.

‘Top floor’s through!’ called out a Denizen from above. ‘We’ve breached the bed!’

‘Come on!’ shouted someone else. ‘To the ladders and victory!’

Arthur scrambled to his feet, umbrella in hand. He was barely upright before he was knocked down again by a Denizen who screamed as she fell, her hands desperately gripping a huge, toothy-mawed earthworm that had struck through the bars. The earthworm was at least part-Nithling, for its open mouth did not show a fleshy throat, but the darkness of Nothing.

Arthur stabbed the worm with the point of his umbrella.

Die! he thought furiously and at the same time. Glowing ember... candle flame... whatever, just die!