Superior Saturday

FOUR

ARTHUR APPEARED NEXT to a pyramid of coal, stepping out of the air and frightening the life out of a short, bald Denizen in a yellow greatcoat, who dropped his fishing pole, jumped back, and pulled a smoking bronze ball that looked like a medieval hand grenade out of one of his voluminous pockets.

‘Doctor Scamandros!’ exclaimed Arthur. ‘It’s me!’

‘Lord Arthur!’

The tattooed trumpets on Dr Scamandros’s forehead blew apart into clouds of confetti. He tried to pinch out the fuse on the smoking ball, but a flame ran around his fingers and continued on its way. Even more smoke boiled out of the infernal device.

‘Scamand-’ Arthur started to say, but Scamandros interrupted him, lobbing the ball behind a particularly large pyramid of coal some thirty feet distant.

‘One moment, Lord Arthur.’

There was a deafening crack and a fierce rush of air, closely followed by a great gout of smoke and coaldust that spiralled up into the air. Moments later, a hail of coal came down, some fist-sized pieces striking the ground uncomfortably close to the sorcerer and the boy.

‘I do beg your pardon, Lord Arthur,’ said Dr Scamandros. Puffing slightly, he went down on one knee, clouds of disturbed coaldust billowing up almost as high as his shoulders. ‘Welcome.’

‘Please, do get up,’ said Arthur. He leaned forward and helped the Denizen rise. Dr Scamandros was amazingly heavy, or possibly all the things he had in the pockets of his yellow greatcoat were amazingly heavy.

‘What’s going on?’ Arthur asked. ‘I came back to Monday’s Dayroom, but there was this... this huge wave of Nothing! I only just managed to hold it off long enough to escape.’

‘I fear that I lack exact knowledge of what has occurred,’ replied Scamandros. The tattoos on his face became a tribe of confused donkeys that ran in a circle from his chin to the bridge of his nose and back again, and kicked their heels at one another. ‘I have been here since we parted company at Lady Friday’s retreat, a matter of some days. Dame Primus wished me to investigate some unusual phenomena, including the sudden growth of flowers and a powerful aroma of rose oil. It has been quite a restful interlude in some ways, though I have to say that attar of roses is no longer...’

The Denizen noticed Arthur’s frown and got back to the question.

‘Ahem, that is to say, just under an hour ago, I felt a tremor underfoot, followed a moment later by a sudden onslaught of Nothing that annihilated at least a third of the Cellar before its advance slowed. Fortunately it was not the third I happened to be located in at the time. I immediately attempted to telephone Dame Primus at the Citadel, but found all lines severed. Similarly, I was unable to summon an elevator. The few short experiments I have conducted suggest the following.’

He held out three blackened fingers, closing them into his fist one by one.

‘Item One. The defences against the Void in the Far Reaches must have suddenly collapsed, allowing a huge surge of Nothing to smash through.

‘Item Two. If you encountered a wave of Nothing as high as Monday’s Dayroom, then it is likely that the entire Far Reaches and all of the Lower House have been destroyed. But there is a brighter note, which I shall label as Item Three.

‘Item Three. If you got an operator on the line, the bulwark between the Lower and Middle House must have held. Or be holding, though everything below it has been lost.’

‘Everything? But here... where we are right now,’ asked Arthur. ‘This is part of the Lower House, how come it’s not... uh... gone?’

‘The Old One’s prison is very strong,’ said Scamandros. He pointed to his left. Arthur looked and saw in the distance the faint sheen of blue light that he knew came from the clock face where the Old One was chained. ‘The Architect had to make it particularly resistant, to keep the Old One in check. Being of such adamant stuff, it has held against the initial inrush of Nothing. But now it is but a small islet, lost in the Void. We are entirely surrounded, and totally cut off from the rest of the House. It is very interesting, but I have to confess I’m relieved you’re here, Lord Arthur. Without you, I fear that-’

Scamandros paused. The tattooed donkeys hung their heads and slowly became tumbledown stone cairns, memorial markers for the fallen.

‘I fear that I would find the current situation, interesting as it is, likely to be fatal in a relatively short space of time, given that Nothing is eating this small refuge at a rate of approximately a yard an hour.’

‘What? You were just saying this area is adamant and strong and all that!’ protested Arthur. He peered into the darkness, but he couldn’t tell whether he was looking at advancing Nothing or just couldn’t see very far because the only immediate light came from the feeble lantern on the coal pile.

‘Oh, the area immediately adjacent to the clock is doubtless proof against the Void,’ said Scamandros. ‘But before your arrival I was weighing up the relative... er... benefits of being throttled by the Old One as opposed to being dissolved by Nothing.’

‘The Old One wouldn’t throttle you... oh... I guess he might,’ said Arthur. ‘He does hate Denizens...’ Arthur stopped talking and looked over at the blue glow, thoughts of his very first encounter with the Old One going through his mind. He could well remember the feel of the prison chain around his neck. ‘I hope he’ll still talk to me. Since I’m here, I want to ask him some questions.’

Dr Scamandros peered owlishly at Arthur, with his half-moon spectacles glinting on his forehead, helping him focus his invisible third and fourth eyes.

‘It is true that the Old One has a fondness for mortals. But I think you are no longer mortal. What does my... your ring indicate?’

Arthur looked. The gold had washed well into the seventh segment.

‘About seventy-five per cent contaminated,’ he said quietly. ‘I hope the Old One can recognise the quarter part of humanity inside me.’

‘Perhaps it would be best to simply depart,’ said Scamandros nervously. ‘Though I should say that the ring has a margin-’

‘I do need to at least try to get some answers from him,’ said Arthur distractedly. ‘If I keep my distance it should be okay. Then we’d better get up to the Citadel and find out what’s happening from Dame Primus. Oh, and I need to ask you about something I’ve done back on Earth...’

Quickly Arthur described what he’d done with the Key, and the strangely red-lit environment of what appeared to be a town frozen in time.

‘I cannot be entirely sure, Lord Arthur, without proper investigation,’ said Scamandros. ‘But as you suspected, you may have separated your entire world from the general procession of time in the Secondary Realms, or have temporally dislocated just a portion of it, around your town. In either case, the cessation will slowly erode. In due course the march of time will resume its normal beat, and everything that was to happen will occur unless you return and prevent it before the erosion of the cessation, which you should be able to do given the elasticity of time between the House and the Secondary Realms. I’m sure Sneezer could tell you more, using the Seven Dials.’

‘But the Seven Dials must have been destroyed,’ said Arthur. ‘With Monday’s Dayroom.’ He stopped and slapped the side of his head. ‘And all the records stored in the Lower House. They must have been destroyed too! Doesn’t that mean that whatever those records were about in the Secondary Realms will also be destroyed? My record was there!’

Scamandros shook his head.

‘The Seven Dials will have moved to safety of its own accord, hopefully to some part of the House we control. As for the records, only dead observations are held in the Lower House. Admittedly their destruction will create holes in the past, but that is of no great concern. Monday must have been given your record temporarily, I presume by the Will, but it would normally have been held in the Upper House, as an active record.’

‘Sneezer gave it to me after I defeated Monday, but I left it behind,’ said Arthur. ‘So Dame Primus has probably got it.’

‘Unless it has returned to the Upper House. Such documents cannot be long held out of their proper place.’

‘But then Saturday can change my record and that would change me!’ exclaimed Arthur. ‘She could destroy it... me... both!’

Scamandros shook his head again. A tattoo of a red-capped judge with a beaked nose appeared on his left cheek and also shook his head.

‘No – even if Saturday knows where it is, she could not change or destroy it. Not once you had even a single Key.’

‘I feel like my head is going to explode.’ Arthur massaged his temples with his knuckles and sighed. ‘There’s just too much... What are you doing?’

Scamandros paused in the act of removing a very large hand drill from inside his coat and a shining ten-inch-long drill bit from an external pocket.

‘If I bore a hole in your skull just here,’ said Scamandros, tapping the side of his forehead, ‘it will relieve the pressure. I expect it is a side effect of your transformation into a higher Denizen-’

‘I didn’t mean my head was actually going to explode,’ said Arthur. ‘So you can put that drill away. I meant that I have too much to do, too much information to deal with. Too many problems!’

‘Perhaps I can assist in some other fashion?’ asked Scamandros as he stowed his tools away.

‘No,’ sighed Arthur. ‘Wait here. I’m going to talk to the Old One.’

‘Um, Lord Arthur, I trust that I can move a little in that direction?’ Scamandros pointed at a pile of coal a few yards away and added, ‘As I observe that the front half of yonder pyramid has ceased to exist...’

‘Of course you can move!’ snapped Arthur. He felt a peculiar rage rising in him, something he’d never felt before, an irritation at having to deal with lesser Denizens and inferior beings. For a moment he even felt like striking Scamandros, or forcing the Denizen to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness.

Then the feeling was past, replaced by a deep sense of mortification and shame. Arthur liked Scamandros and he did not like the way he had just felt toward the sorcerer, the proud anger that had fizzed up inside him, like a shaken bottle of soda ready to explode. He stopped and took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was just a boy who had a very tough job to do, and that he would need all the help he could get, from willing friends, not fearful servants.

I’m not going to become like one of the Trustees, thought Arthur firmly. At the back of his head, another little thought lay under that. Or like Dame Primus...

‘Sorry, I’m sorry, Doctor Scamandros. I didn’t mean to shout. I just... I’m a bit... um... anyway, do whatever you need to do to keep away from the Nothing. We’ll get out of here soon.’

Dr Scamandros bowed low as Arthur walked away, and another baseball-sized grenade fell out of an inner pocket and immediately began to smoke. The Denizen tut-tutted, pinched the burning fuse out, and slipped it up his sleeve, which did not look like a secure place for it to go. However, it did not immediately fall out.

Arthur walked on, weaving between the pyramids of coal and splashing through the puddles of dirty coaldust-tainted water. He remembered that he had been very cold when he’d last visited the Deep Coal Cellar, but it felt quite pleasant now to him, almost warm. Perhaps a side effect of the Nothing that now surrounded the place, he thought.

There were other changes too. As he drew closer to the blue illumination spread by the clock, Arthur noticed that many of the pyramids now sprouted flowers. Climbing roses twined up through the coal, and, between the puddles, there were clumps of bluebells.

The bluebells spread as the ground climbed a little higher and got drier, the flowers now growing out of stone slates rather than a bed of coaldust, which was equally impossible but did not bother Arthur. He was fairly used to the House. Flowers growing out of coal and stone were far from the strangest things he had seen.

At the last pyramid, he stopped, as he had done all that time ago, when he had first cautiously approached the Old One’s prison. The shimmering blue light was less annoying than it had been then, and he could see more clearly this time, even without calling on the Fifth Key to shed some kinder illumination.

Arthur saw a markedly different landscape from what it had been. Between him and the clock-prison was a solid carpet of bluebells, interspersed with clumps of tall yellow-green stalks that burst out at the top in profuse pale white flowers that were shaped a little like very elongated daffodils, but at the same time looked too alien to have come from the earth he knew.

The raised circular platform of stone, the clock face, was significantly smaller, as if it had been shrunk. It had been at least sixty feet in diameter, the length of the driveway at Arthur’s own home. Now it was half that, and the Roman numerals that had stood upright around the rim were smaller and tarnished, much of their blue glow gone. Some of them were bent over at forty-five degrees or more, and the numbers and most of the rim were wreathed in climbing red and pink roses.

The metal hands had shrunk with the clock face, to remain in proportion. Long, shining blue-steel chains still ran from the ends of the hands back through the central pivot, fastened at the other end to the manacles locked on the wrists of the Old One.

The Old One himself was not as Arthur had last seen him. He still looked like a giant barbarian hero, eight feet tall and heavily muscled, but his formerly old, almost-translucent skin was now sun-dark and supple. His once-stubbled head now sported a fine crop of clean white hair that was tied back behind his neck. He no longer wore just a loincloth, but had on a sleeveless leather jerkin and a pair of scarlet leggings that came down to just below his knees.

Where he once looked like a fallen, fading ancient of eighty or ninety, the Old One now looked like a super-fit sixty-year-old hero who could easily take on and defeat any number of lesser, younger foes.

The giant was sitting on the rim of the clock between the numbers three and four, slowly plucking the petals from a rose. He was half-turned away from Arthur, so the boy couldn’t see the Old One’s eyes – or, if it was soon after they had been torn from their sockets by the puppets within the clock, the empty, oozing sockets.

Thinking that was something he definitely did not want to see, Arthur craned his neck to check the position of the clock hands. The hour hand was at nine, and the minute hand at five, which relieved him on three counts. The Old One’s eyes would have had plenty of time to grow back and his chains would be fairly tight, keeping him close to the clock. Perhaps most important, it also meant the torturer puppets would not be emerging for several hours.

Arthur stepped out and crossed the field of bluebells. Chains rattled as he approached, and the Old One stood to watch him. Arthur stopped thirty or forty feet from the clock. While the face had shrunk, he couldn’t be sure the chains had as well, so he erred on the side of caution.

‘Greetings, Old One!’ he called.

‘Greetings, boy,’ rumbled the Old One. ‘Or perhaps I can call you boy no longer. Arthur is your name, is it not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come sit with me. We will drink wine and talk.’

‘Do you promise you won’t hurt me?’ asked Arthur.

‘You will be safe from all harm for the space of a quarter hour, as measured by this clock,’ replied the Old One. ‘You are mortal enough that I would not slay you like a wandering cockroach – or a Denizen of the House.’

‘Thanks,’ said Arthur. ‘I think.’

He approached cautiously, but the Old One sat down again and, doubling over his chain, swept a space next to him clear of the thorny roses, to make a seat for Arthur.

Arthur perched gingerly next to him.

‘Wine,’ said the Old One, holding out his hand.

A small stoneware jug flew up out of the ground without parting the bluebells. He caught it and tipped it up above his mouth, pouring out a long draught of resin-scented wine. Arthur could smell it very strongly and once again, it made him feel slightly ill.

‘You called the wine with a poem last time,’ Arthur said hesitantly. He was thinking of the questions he wanted to ask, and wasn’t sure how to start.

‘It is the power of my will that shapes Nothing,’ replied the Old One. ‘It is true that many lesser beings need to sharpen their thoughts with speech or song when they deal with Nothing. I do not need to do so, though on occasion it may amuse me to essay some rhyme or poesy.’

‘I wanted to ask you some questions,’ said Arthur. ‘And to tell you something.’

‘Ask away,’ said the Old One. ‘I shall answer if I choose. As for the telling, if I do not like what I hear, it shall not make me stray from my promise. Whatever your speech, you may still have safe passage hence. If you do not overstay your allotted time.’

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and proffered the jug. Arthur quickly shook his head, so the ancient drank again.

‘You probably know more than anyone about the Architect,’ said Arthur. ‘So I wanted to ask you what happened to her? And what is the Will exactly, and what is it... she... going to do? I mean, I’m supposed to be the Rightful Heir and all, and I thought that meant that I was going to end up in charge of everything, whether I wanted to or not. Only now I’m not so sure.’

‘I knew the Architect long ago,’ said the Old One slowly. He drank a series of smaller mouthfuls before speaking again. ‘Yet not so well as I thought, or I would not have suffered here so long. I do not know what happened to her, save that it must have been at least in part of her own choosing. As for the Will, it is an expression of her power, set up to achieve some end. If you are the Rightful Heir, I would suggest the question you need ask is this: what exactly are you to inherit, and from whom?’

Arthur frowned.

‘I don’t want to be the Heir. I just want to get my old life back and make sure everyone is safe,’ he said. ‘But I can’t get everything sorted out without using the Keys, and that’s turning me into a Denizen. Scamandros made me a ring that says I’m six... more than six parts in ten... - sorcerously contaminated, and it’s irreversible. So I will become a Denizen, right?’

‘Your body is assuming an immortal form – that is evident,’ said the Old One. ‘But not everything of immortal flesh is a Denizen. Remember, the Architect did not make the mortals of Earth. She made the stuff of life and sowed it across all creation. You mortals arose from the possibility she made and, though she always liked to think so, are consequently not of her direct design. There is more to you, and all mortals, than the simple flesh you inhabit.’

‘But can I become a normal boy again?’

‘I do not know.’ The Old One drained the last of the wine from the jug, then threw it far past the light of the clock. The sound of its shattering came faint and distant from the darkness, reassurance that there was still solid ground out there – at least for a little while longer. ‘In general, one cannot go back. But in going forward, you may achieve some of what you desired of the past. If you can survive, anything may happen.’ The Old One plucked another rose, careless of its thorns, and held it beneath his nose. ‘Perhaps you will even be given flowers. The clock ticks, Arthur. Your time is almost sped.’

‘I have so many questions,’ said Arthur. ‘Can you give me another ten-’

The Old One put down his rose and looked at the boy with his fierce blue eyes, a gaze that would make the most superior Denizen quail and tremble.

‘Never mind.’ Arthur gulped. ‘I just wanted to tell you that if I do end up in charge of everything, I’ll do my best to set you free. It isn’t right that the puppets should torture you.’

The Old One blinked and took up the rose again.

‘I honour you for that. But look – the puppets are no more. As the House has weakened, I have grown stronger. An hour ago, the clock shivered, and I felt Nothing draw close. The puppets felt it too, and as is their duty, came forth before their time, to prevent a rescue or an attempted escape. I fought with them, broke them, and cast them down.

‘I am still chained, but as the House falls, my strength will grow, and my prison will weaken. In time, I will be free, or so these flowers promise me. I have been stripping the petals to throw upon my enemies. The puppets do not like it, for they know the flowers are a harbinger of change. Go, I grant you the time to look upon them!’

Arthur stood up nervously and looked across the clock face, but he didn’t move. He didn’t really want to go anywhere near the trapdoors on either side of the central pivot of the clock.

‘Hurry,’ urged the Old One.

Arthur walked closer. The trapdoors were smashed in, splintered stubs of timber hanging from the thick iron hinges. Something rustled from inside, and Arthur looked down into a deep narrow chamber that was piled high with rose petals. The puppet woodchopper was there, still with its green cap on, the feather bent in half. But its limbs were broken, and all it could do was wriggle on the rose petals, gnash its teeth, and hiss.

Arthur shuddered and retreated to the rim, almost backing into the Old One.

‘I hope... I hope we will not be enemies,’ said Arthur.

The Old One inclined his head, but did not speak. Arthur jumped down from the clock face and hurried away, his mind churning with fears and facts and suppositions. He had hoped the Old One could help him make sense of his situation, make matters clearer.

But he had only made it worse.