Should is not the same as definitely, thought Arthur grimly. I wish I understood the time relativities better. I wish I knew more about how to use the Keys. I wish I’d never, ever got involved in all –
Arthur stopped himself.
‘If I wasn’t involved, I’d be dead,’ he said aloud. ‘I just have to get on with it.’
Getting on with it, Arthur thought, included facing up to things. He held his hand up close to his face and looked at the crocodile ring. Even in the weird red light, he could see it clearly. The diamond eyes of the crocodile looked baleful, as dark as dried black blood rather than their usual pink. The ten marked sections of its body, each inscribed with a Roman numeral, recorded the degree of sorcerous contamination in his blood and bone. If more than six sections had turned from silver to gold, Arthur would be permanently tainted with sorcery and irretrievably destined to become a Denizen.
Arthur slowly turned the ring around, to see how far the gold transformation had progressed, counting in his head. One, two, three, four, five . . . he knew it had gone that far already. He turned the ring again, and saw the gold had completely filled the fifth segment, and had flooded over, almost completely across the sixth segment.
I am . . . I am going to be a Denizen.
Arthur took a deep, shuddering breath and looked again, but there was no change in the ring. It was six parts gold. He was sixty per cent immortal.
‘No turning back now,’ said Arthur to the red world around him. ‘Time to get back to work.’
He looked away from the ring and lowered his hand. Bending his head for a moment, he drew out the Fifth Key from his pocket and raised it high. According to Dame Primus, the mirror of Lady Friday could take him to anywhere he had previously seen within the House, if there was a reflective surface there.
Arthur pictured the throne room in the Lower House, the big audience chamber where he had met with Dame Primus and everyone before he was drafted into the Army of the Architect. It was the place he could most easily visualise in Monday’s Dayroom, because it didn’t have much detail and was so over the top in decoration – including floors of reflective marble.
‘Fifth Key, take me to the throne room in Monday’s Dayroom.’
The Fifth Key shivered in Arthur’s hand and a beam of white light sprang from it, banishing the red. The light formed a perfect, upright rectangle, exactly like a door.
Arthur walked into the rectangle of light and disappeared from his own city, from his Earth, perhaps never to return.
THREE
THE THRONE ROOM was empty. Otherwise it looked the same as it had when Arthur had last been there: like one enormous, ritzy, poorly conceived hotel bathroom. It was about as large as a big city theatre, and the walls, floor and ceiling were all lined with gold-veined white marble that was polished to a highly reflective sheen.
The vast, red-iron round table was still in the middle of the chamber, with the hundred tall-backed white chairs around it. On the other side, Arthur’s own high throne of gilded iron sat next to the rainbow chair of Dame Primus.
‘Hello!’ Arthur called out. ‘Anyone here?’
His voice filled the empty space, and the echoes were the only answer. Arthur sighed and strode over to the door, his footsteps setting up another echo behind him, so it sounded like he was being followed by many small, close companions.
The corridor outside was still crowded with thousands of bundles of paper, each tied with a red ribbon and stacked like bricks. Unlike last time, there were no Commissionaire Sergeants standing at attention in the gaps between the piles of paperwork.
‘Hello!’ Arthur shouted again. He ran down the corridor, pausing several times to see if there were doors leading out. Eventually he came to the end of the corridor, where he found a door propped half open and partially covered in bundles of paper. He could only see it because one of the piles had collapsed.
There were still no Denizens. Arthur rushed through the half-open door and along another empty corridor, pushing doors open as he passed them without encountering anyone else.
‘Hello! Anyone here?’ he shouted every few yards, but no answer came.
Finally he came to a pair of tall, arched doors of dark oak. They were barred, but he easily lifted the bar – not even pausing to marvel that he had grown so strong that he could move a piece of timber that must weigh several hundred pounds. Once the bar was up, the door was easily pushed open.
This particular door led outside. Arthur had expected to see the lake and the rim of the crater that surrounded the Dayroom, and the ceiling of the Lower House above. Instead he saw a vast, arching wave of Nothing that rose way above him, a wave that had already eaten up everything but the small villa behind him. He felt like he was on a small hilltop, the last piece of dry land ahead of a tsunami – but the wave was coming, climbing high, and it would soon crash down to destroy even this last refuge.
Arthur turned to run, his heart suddenly hammering in fear, his mouth dry as dust. But after that first panicked step, he stopped and turned back. The wave of Nothing was coming down, and he didn’t have time to run. He doubted the Fifth Key could protect him from such a vast influx of Nothing. At least not unless he actively directed its power.
I have to do something, thought Arthur, and he acted with the speed of that thought.
Even as the wave of Nothing crashed down upon him, he raised the mirror and held it high, pushing it toward the dark, falling sky.
‘Stop!’ he shouted, his voice raw with power, every part of his mind focussed on stopping the tsunami of Nothing. ‘Stop! By the Keys I hold, I order the Nothing to stop! House, you must hold against the Void!’
Blinding light shone from the mirror, hot white beams that set the air on fire as they shot out and up, striking the onrush of Nothing, splashing across the face of the darkness, small marks of brilliance upon the void.
Arthur felt a terrible pain blossom in his heart. The pain spread, racing down his arms and legs. Awful cracking sounds came from his joints, and he had to screw his eyes shut and scream as his teeth rearranged themselves into a more perfect order in his jaw. Then his jaw itself moved and he felt the plates of bone in his skull shift and change.
But still he kept holding the mirror up above his head, even as he fell to his knees. He used the pain, channelling it to fuel his concentration, directing his will against the rush of Nothing.
Finally, it was too much. Arthur could neither bear the pain nor continue the effort. He fell forward on his face, his screams becoming dull sobs. His strength used up, he dropped the Fifth Key on the narrow band of grass that was all that remained of the lawns that had once surrounded the Dayroom villa.
He lay there, partially stunned, awaiting annihilation, knowing that he had failed and that when he died, the rest of the Universe would follow. All he loved would be destroyed, back on Earth, in the House, and in the worlds beyond.
A minute passed, and then another, and the annihilation didn’t happen. As the pain in his bones ebbed, Arthur groaned and rolled over. He would face the Nothing, rather than be snuffed out by it while he lay defeated upon the grass.
The first thing he saw was not incipient destruction but a delicate tracery of glowing golden lines, like a web or a mesh net of light thrown against the sky. It was holding back the great mass of threatening darkness, but Arthur could feel the pressure of the Nothing, could feel the infinite Void pushing against his restraints. He knew that it would soon overcome his net of light and once again advance.
Arthur picked up the mirror and staggered to his feet. The ground felt further away than normal, and he lost his balance for a moment, swaying on the spot. The sensation passed as he shook his head, and he ran back to the open doors. There was a telephone in the library, he knew, and he needed to call and find out where in the House was safe, instead of going somewhere that might have already succumbed to Nothing. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he used the Fifth Key to take him straight into the Void, thou
gh it probably would have the advantage of being quick . . .
Or maybe the Key would protect me for a little while, Arthur thought with sudden nausea. Long enough to feel the Nothing dissolve my flesh . . .
He hurried along the main corridor until he saw a door he recognised. Darting through it, he leapt up the steps four at a time, bouncing off the walls as he tried to take the turns in the staircase too fast.
At the top, he sprinted down another long corridor, this one also narrowed by piles of records, many of them written on papyrus or cured hides instead of paper. Pausing to shift a six-foot-high stone tablet that had fallen and blocked the way, Arthur didn’t bother with the handle of the door at the end but kicked it open and stumbled into the library beyond.
The room was empty, and not just of Denizens. The books were gone from the shelves, as were the comfortable leather armchairs and the carpet. Even the scarlet bell rope that Sneezer had pulled to reveal the heptagonal room that housed the grandfather clocks of the Seven Dials was missing, though the room was presumably still there, behind the bookcase.
The telephone that had stood on a side table was also missing.
Arthur’s shoulders slumped. He could feel the pressure outside, like a sinus pain across his forehead. He knew it was the weight of Nothing striving to break the bonds he had placed upon it. The weight was there in his mind, making him weary, almost too weary to think straight.
‘Telephone,’ mumbled Arthur, holding out his right hand, while he cradled the Fifth Key in his left. ‘I need a telephone, please. Now.’
Without further ado, a telephone appeared in his hand. Arthur set it down on the floor and sat next to it, lifting the earpiece and bending to speak into the receiver. He could hear crackling and buzzing, and in the distance someone was singing something that sounded rather like Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, but the words were ‘Line-drops are lining up tonight.’
‘Hello, it’s Lord Arthur. I need to speak to Dame Primus. Or Sneezer. Or anyone, really.’
The singing abruptly stopped, replaced by a thin, soft voice that sounded like paper rustling.
‘Ah, where are you calling from? This line doesn’t appear to be technically, um, attached to anything.’
‘The Lower House,’ said Arthur. ‘Please, I think I’m about to be engulfed by Nothing and I need to work out where to go.’
‘Easier said than done,’ replied the voice. ‘Have you ever tried connecting a nonexistent line to a switchboard that isn’t there anymore?’
‘No,’ said Arthur. Somewhere outside he heard a twanging sound, like a guitar string snapping. He felt it too, a sudden lurch in his stomach. His net, his defence against the Void, was breaking. ‘Please hurry!’
‘I can get Doctor Scamandros – will he do?’ asked the operator. ‘You wanted him before, it says here—’
‘Where is he?’ gabbled Arthur.
‘The Deep Coal Cellar, which is kind of odd,’ said the operator. ‘Since nothing else in the Lower House is still connected . . . but metaphysical diversion was never my strong suit. Shall I put you through? Hello . . . hello . . . are you there, Lord Arthur?’
Arthur dropped the phone and stood up, not waiting to hear more. He raised the mirror that was the Fifth Key and concentrated upon it, desiring to see out of the reflective surface of a pool of water in the Deep Coal Cellar – if there was such a pool of water, and a source of light.
He was distracted for an instant by the sight of his own face, which was both familiar and strange. Familiar, because it was in essence much the same as it had been at any other time he’d looked in a mirror, and strange because there were numerous small changes. His cheekbones had become a little more pronounced, the shape of his head was a bit different, his ears had got smaller . . .
‘The Deep Coal Cellar!’ snapped Arthur at the mirror, both to distract himself and get on with his urgent task: finding somewhere to escape to before Nothing destroyed Monday’s Dayroom.
His image wavered and was replaced by a badly lit scene that showed an oil lamp perched on a very thick, leather-bound book the size of several house bricks, which was set atop a somewhat collapsed pyramid made from small pieces of coal. The lamplight was dim, but Arthur could perceive someone on the far side of the pyramid who was raising a fishing pole over his head, ready to cast. Arthur saw only the caster’s hands and two mustard-yellow cuffs, which he immediately recognised.
‘Fifth Key,’ Arthur commanded, ‘take me to the Deep Coal Cellar, next to Doctor Scamandros.’
As before, a door of pure white light appeared. As Arthur stepped through it, he felt his defensive net tear asunder behind him and the onrush of the great wave of Nothing.
A scant few seconds after his escape, the last surviving remnants of the Lower House ceased to exist.
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 brighte
r 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.’