by Garth Nix
‘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’s 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!’
‘Doctor 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 everywhere. 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 anymore, 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.
The tower shuddered again and became still, leaning at a minor angle to the west.
‘What was that?’ Leaf called out.
Suzy was already on the move, checking on her Raiders and heading to the eastern edge. ‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘Everyone else! Keep looking out for the Newniths. Not you, Giac. You keep working on the elevators.’
She jumped over some debris, grabbed hold of the outer column of an office, leaned into space, and looked up. She looked up for quite a while, then across at the distant Drasil tree, a green smudge on the horizon.
After getting a full glimpse, she came back to Leaf. Fred hurried over too.
‘I reckon something’s ’appened to the Drasils,’ said Suzy. ‘The sky is lower than it used to be. Might be the Incomparable Gardens just fell down a bit and hit the tower. Could come in handy later.’
She looked over at Scamandros and Giac. ‘ ’Ow yer going, you sorcerers?’
‘Ah, we have three elevators open,’ called out Scamandros. ‘Without interruption, we may be able to open the requisite number in the time allowed.’
‘Sorry I asked,’ sniffed Suzy. She looked around. Several Raiders were playing cards again, and some had gone to look at the Big Chain.
‘I said keep watching out!’ she bellowed with uncharacteristic anger. Piper’s children dropped their cards, and the errant ones dashed back to their posts.
‘I thought you weren’t worried,’ said Leaf.
‘I wasn’t worried in the elevator. Now I am. You see these Newniths?’
She indicated a group of tied-up Newniths nearby, who smiled. One waved his little finger as well, because his hands were tied.
‘They’re second-raters,’ said Suzy. ‘They don’t want to fight, unless the Piper is right behind them.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ asked Leaf. ‘Makes it easier.’
‘It’s bad. It means the Piper’s forces are already a lot higher up the tower, as well as below us. It means that we’re surrounded, and it means the Piper ’imself is probably up above.’
‘Oh.’
>
‘Could be worse,’ said Suzy, reverting to her usual optimism.
‘How?’ asked Fred.
‘It could be raining.’
‘True. There is a dark cloud over there,’ said Leaf, pointing out at the western sky. ‘Kind of low, though, to rain on us.’
‘I don’t think—’ started Suzy.
‘—that’s a cloud,’ finished Fred. ‘It’s winged Newniths. A lot of winged Newniths.’
‘They might not be coming here,’ said Leaf hopefully.
‘They’ve launched out from up above and circled around,’ said Suzy, dashing that hope. ‘They’ll hit us in minutes.’
‘Newniths at nine o’clock!’ shouted Fred, quickly adding, ‘That’s west!’ as several Raiders got out their watches for the joke, since unlike Denizens, they knew what he was talking about.
‘Get the cannon ready!’ added Suzy. She took a step away, then turned back to Leaf.
‘If you’ve got to go home, go now,’ she said quickly and very quietly. ‘You may not be able to . . . after.’
Then Suzy ran, vaulting over several desks before sprinting to join the cannon crew.
Leaf looked at the approaching horde of winged Newniths for a moment, then shut her eyes and reached out to feel for a portal to the Door. There was one somewhere nearby, though it was at least twenty floors higher up, and blocked. Leaf could sense a kind of tiny crack or flaw in the seal, and she felt sure that the Lieutenant Keeper’s sword could open it up.
But if she ran away, what would happen to Suzy, Fred, Scamandros, and everyone else?
Twenty-one
THE SLIGHT INTERNAL voice of Part Seven of the Will was suddenly cut off, as the wormsnake’s inner coil rolled closer, a ten-foot-high wall of stone-like snakeskin. Arthur jumped up and landed on top of the creature, jarring his knees. He balanced there for a moment, watching another coil as it rose towards him, and directed an anxious thought at Part Seven of the Will.
What am I supposed to do? How do I get away from this thing?
There was no answer.
Arthur jumped again as a length of the snake came crashing down. This time he landed badly and slid along the creature’s back, almost falling into a thirty-foot-deep crevasse between three piled-up coils before he regained his balance.
That gave him a clue. Arthur stood up carefully, keeping his knees bent and his feet apart for better balance. He looked along the wormsnake’s undulating body and across the coils. Then he began to run. He ran around the coil he was on, then jumped across to the next one that was slightly higher up, and ran around that, and jumped not quite as far to another, till only a few minutes later he was at the top of the hill, and he slid down the narrowing end of the wormsnake and onto the welcoming grass of the next higher terrace.
The huge creature continued to coil and writhe down the slope, but not up it, and Arthur was none the wiser about whether he’d just jumped off its tail or its head. He was grateful that in this respect, at least it was more worm and less snake.
Once again, this terrace was much the same as the last, though the flowering shrubs were a strange rusty colour and had almost perfectly round leaves that suggested these plants were not from Earth. Arthur kept away from them, just in case they were not exactly plants.
He was also wary of steps, but he couldn’t see any on the slope ahead. It was just a grassy bank some hundred or so feet tall, steep enough that he would probably need to use his hands to help him climb it.
Arthur was halfway there, sprinting across the lawn, when the ground shook beneath him, and then dropped away. The boy fell and rolled, bouncing around on the grass like a Ping-Pong ball on a table, as the hill continued to shake. When it finally stopped, Arthur was lying flat on his back, and all the round flowers had fallen from the shrubs.
‘What was that?’ he said aloud as he got up and looked around. Everything looked the same at first, till he noticed there was a tall plume of smoke or dust in the far distance, and that the sun had dropped significantly towards what he’d arbitrarily decided was west, making his shadow longer.
The Drasils have withered, said Part Seven of the Will. The Gardens have dropped, and Saturday’s tower has broken through.
Now you talk to me! thought Arthur. Where are you? Do you know if Elephant is all right?
I am in the Elysium, on the hill above you, came the reply. However, I am locked in a cage and my ability to speak with you is constrained and erratic, unless you are very near. Come to me . . . no, wait!
The Will’s voice cut off again. Arthur stared at what he’d thought was a plume of smoke and narrowed his eyes against the glare of the lower sun. With the smoke or dust or whatever it was dissipating, he could see a little more clearly. What he’d thought was an insubstantial plume was clearly a solid object, several hundred feet high, overtopping the hedges and dominating the landscape of the Incomparable Gardens. It looked like it was at least the top fifty or so floors of Saturday’s tower, poking through the underside of the Incomparable Gardens like a needle thrust through a cloth.
That’ll give Sunday a headache, thought Arthur with satisfaction. Thousands more of Saturday’s sorcerers swarming into the Gardens.
He turned to start up the slope to the top of the hill, but had only taken one step when he heard the distant buzz of a dragonfly. Instantly he changed direction and ran to the nearest tree. He crouched down under its lower branches and scanned the sky.
The dragonfly was flying straight towards him with lots of Denizens on its back. As it got closer, Arthur lifted the Fifth Key and began to build another blinding blast of intense heat. But just as he was about to unleash it, he felt the force of the Seventh Key emanating from the dragonfly. It was like a giant hand brushing the surface of the terrace, the fingers feeling for something hidden . . . unseen fingers searching for him.
Instantly, Arthur stopped trying to focus on a heat blast and instead called on the powers of both Keys he held to hide him from Lord Sunday.
He felt no answer from the Fifth Key, but arthritic pain flashed through the knuckles of his right hand, and without his conscious direction, the Sixth Key suddenly began to sketch something in the air around Arthur, making his hand dart around like a swallow chasing flying insects. It left behind a spiderweb-thin trail of pale green ink that hung in the air and did not dissipate.
Within a few seconds, the Sixth Key had drawn a russet-coloured plant with broad sheltering leaves around the crouched-down Arthur, exactly like all the other ones along the border of the lawn. From inside, it looked to Arthur just like a three-dimensional open sketch that wouldn’t fool anyone for a second, but he hoped that from the outside he was now effectively camouflaged as a plant, and that it would resist at least the long-distance search of Lord Sunday.
The dragonfly flew overhead, and hovered above the crest of the hill. Arthur watched, hardly daring to breathe, as the ladder rolled down and Sunday and his Noon and Dawn descended and disappeared from sight.
Stay hidden! said the Will, suddenly back in his head. Stay—
Twenty-two
A THICK CLOUD of Nothing-powder smoke blew across Leaf, making her cough and her eyes smart. A Newnith burst out of the smoke, her two-handed sword raised above her head. Leaf ducked aside and skewered her with the Lieutenant Keeper’s sword, but the blade skittered across the Newnith’s armour as she lumbered past and was gone into the smoke, with more of the enemy charging in behind her.
Leaf backed up against the beastwort, who was emitting high-pitched sonic squeaks of either excitement or anger as her tentacles lashed about, knocking the Newniths away from her mistress. But there were so many of the enemy, and the Piper’s children now so spread out, that Leaf had to fight desperately herself, her wrist, elbow, and shoulder burning with pain as the sword performed incredible manoeuvres that her joints and muscles simply couldn’t cope with.
Not running away was possibly my dumbest move yet, thought Leaf as she was saved at the last instant by a combination
of the sword and one of Daisy’s tentacles, the former deflecting a thrown spear while the latter swept a Newnith off his feet into the remnants of a desk.
Maybe only slightly dumber than going to see Arthur in the hospital in the first place. If I’d stayed away, I might still be at home, and so might Aunt Mango, and I’d know the rest of my family was okay—
Leaf dodged another wild sword swing, fell to the floor, jabbed the attacking Newnith in the leg, and sprang up again – right into the path of a flung spear.
It struck her in the right shoulder and exploded in a shower of white-hot sparks. Leaf was thrown to the ground, her breath and most of her senses knocked out of her. She didn’t even know what had happened, except she couldn’t get up and her left arm either wasn’t working properly – or maybe it wasn’t there at all.
Somehow she managed to raise and turn her head just enough to see that her arm was indeed still there, though she couldn’t feel it. The Lieutenant Keeper’s coat had turned the spear, but there were scorch marks all down the left side. Leaf tried to sit up a bit more, and as she did, she felt something grating inside her shoulder, accompanied by the awful, nausea-inducing sensation of having broken bones.
Leaf lay back, gasping. A Newnith jumped over her, and she flinched, the pain from that movement making her black out for a second, maybe more. She came swimming back to consciousness and looked at her arm again. She could feel her fingers now, but they wouldn’t obey her. There was also something else wrong, something that it took her a long time to process.
I had something in my hand, thought Leaf woozily. I had a hold of something important . . .
There was only a broken piece of leather near Leaf’s hand. She no longer had Daisy’s leash. She no longer controlled the beastwort.
That thought had barely registered when one of Daisy’s tentacles suddenly appeared in Leaf’s vision, heading straight for her. The tentacle hit the floor near her with a crack, slid back, curled around her, and lifted her into the air.