You can do it, you know, came a thought, directly into his head. He knew it was Part Five of the Will and though it was only a mental touch, the Beast still sounded calm and relaxed. You’re Lord Arthur, you know. Wielder of Four Keys, though you might only hold one in your hand. Think of them all as being with you. Combined, they will have more than power enough.
Arthur grimaced and imagined the clock-hand sword of the First Key, heavy at his side. The rough feel of the gauntlets of the Second Key on his hands. The trident of the Third Key at his belt, and the heavy baton of the Fourth Key in his strong right hand.
‘Begone!’ instructed Lord Arthur, and the Nothing was gone, and the mountaintop was all bare, polished stone, save for a rim of debris around the edge, where the Will had swept as much as it could with its tail.
Arthur blinked and looked at his hands. He was actually wearing the gauntlets of the Second Key. The clock-hand First Key was at his side. The Third Key was thrust through his belt.
‘How … how did I do that?’ he whispered.
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Suzy as she landed at his side. ‘But I reckon Dame Primus is going to be pretty miffed.’
‘I think I will understand the circumstance,’ said the Will as it landed on Arthur’s shoulder, parrot-sized once more. ‘Once I can get together with myself. That breach could have destroyed the whole Middle House.’
‘Right,’ said Arthur dazedly. ‘I have to stop saying that, don’t I? Particularly when I mean wrong … Ugham’s dead … The Piper’s children …’
‘Quicksilver and Sable are here,’ said Fred sombrely, who was crouched by the two children. ‘They seem to be just asleep. But the others …
’ He gestured at the shallow, smooth-walled crater that had been carved by the Nothing breach.
‘The Gilded Youths?’ asked Arthur. He couldn’t see them anywhere above.
Fred pointed down. Arthur looked. Way below there was the glint of gold and many small, distant figures.
‘Flying home,’ said the Will. ‘Confused. Best place for them, really. No place like home.’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur bitterly. He looked at the crocodile ring on his finger, watching the progress of the gold with resignation. ‘Not that any of us will be going home.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Fred.
‘We’re going after Lady Friday,’ said Arthur. ‘To get the Fifth Key.’
‘We going to do like the Piper?’ asked Suzy eagerly. ‘No elevators for us, Front Door locked, telephones off …’
‘We will take the Improbable Stair to Monday’s Dayroom,’ said Arthur. ‘Then the Seven Dials to wherever Friday is, out in the Secondary Realms. I’ll use the Atlas to find her.’
‘But you don’t want to use the Keys,’ said Fred.
‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t want to. Ugham didn’t want to die for the Piper either, did he?’
Fred shook his head. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘I suppose you could call it honour,’ said Arthur. ‘Or responsibility, or something like that. Come on. Beast, I presume you can walk the Stair?’
‘If you lead me, Lord Arthur,’ replied Part Five of the Will. ‘Or allow me to ride your shoulder.’
‘We’d better leave wings for Quicksilver and Sable,’ said Arthur. He reached back and twitched his off without thinking, handing them to Fred to lay down next to the sleeping Piper’s children. Suzy shed her wings too, and picked up Ugham’s weapons, though only the hilt remained of his sword and a slim splinter from the spear shaft. She also took the piece of paper, shoving it deep in an inside pocket.
Fred took his damaged wings off, but as only two needed to be left, he folded his up and put them in his pocket.
‘Let’s go, then,’ said Arthur. Using the Fourth Key, he confidently sketched steps out beyond the mountainside, and equally confidently stepped out, apparently into the empty air. Suzy followed at once, holding the back of his belt. Fred hesitated, almost lost his hold on Suzy’s coattails, and jumped badly.
All three, with the Will on Arthur’s shoulder, vanished and were gone from the Middle House.
Twenty-four
LEAF WOKE SLOWLY. For several moments she thought she was in the middle of some not-very-pleasant dream, imagining she was awake. But as her senses came fully together, she knew it was no dream.
Harrison’s anxious face loomed just above her own. He had the silver spoon in his hand, some noxious-looking blue liquid dripping from it.
‘Wake up!’ he urged. ‘Wake up!’
Leaf slowly edged her head up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her arm felt like it had just recovered from a bad case of pins and needles and she almost smacked herself in the lip. She was not surprised to see the smear of the blue medicine on her hand.
‘What?’ she said muzzily. ‘Who—’ ‘It’s Harrison! Wake up! We have to go hide!’
Leaf sat up properly. Her poor, stressed brain was putting everything together.
Harrison – sleepers – Lady Friday – experiencing – Friday’s Noon …
‘What’s happening?’ she asked. She meant to sound incisive but her words came out slurred. Her mouth was still recovering too.
‘Lady Friday’s gone completely mad!’ shrieked Harrison. ‘She’s experiencing everyone! All the sleepers at once! We have to hide!’
‘All the sleepers?’
‘Every mortal in the place! The Denizens are putting everyone in the crater. They’ll be here in a minute!’
Leaf looked around. She was in a room full of sleepers, much like the Yellow Preparation Room, though this room had pink walls.
‘This is the last ward!’ gabbled Harrison. He grabbed Leaf’s arm and pulled her off the bed. ‘Come on!’
‘Why help me?’ Leaf asked groggily as she let herself be led to the door. ‘Why not just save yourself?’
‘I said I’d help, didn’t I?’ Harrison said nervously. He opened the door and looked up and down the corridor. ‘Come on!’
Leaf followed. She was still trying to get a grip on walking as well as thinking. The two came together reasonably well after a few paces, but as her thinking improved, Leaf suddenly stopped.
‘My Aunt Mango!’ she exclaimed. ‘I have to get her!’
‘She’s already in the crater! Everybody is,’ Harrison said as he ducked into a stairwell. ‘They’ll take the sleepers in the Pink Prep Room anytime now. Hurry!’
Leaf followed Harrison down the stairs.
‘We have to stop Lady Friday,’ she said. ‘She can’t—’
‘She can,’ said Harrison. ‘She is. Nothing we can do about it except hide and hope we survive.’
‘Why is she doing this?’ asked Leaf. ‘How long have I been out?’
‘Why? I don’t know! It all happened suddenly. Axilrad got the order. I … I started to help and then I realised ‘every mortal’ meant me as well. Oh, you’ve been under for only six or seven hours. No harm done, I’m sure.’
‘We have to get weapons and head for the crater,’ said Leaf. ‘If we can distract Lady Friday at least—’
‘We’ll be killed!’ said Harrison. ‘Use your head. We’ll be lucky if we can save ourselves. Wait! Where are you going?’
‘The crater,’ said Leaf. ‘There must be something I can do.’
‘You’ll get caught up,’ hissed Harrison. ‘You’ll get experienced. You’re as crazy as Friday!’
‘Thanks for waking me up,’ said Leaf. ‘At least you’ve done one good thing.’
‘And that’s it!’ Harrison turned away from Leaf and clattered down the stairs.
I need a bow or a gun or even a slingshot, thought Leaf. Something to shoot at Friday when she hops on that rock, something to distract her long enough to run out … No, that won’t work … I suppose Harrison is right …
Angry tears welled up at the corner of her eyes. Leaf knuckled them away as she climbed up the steps. She didn’t have a clear idea of what she was going to do, but she knew she
had to do something. Throw a rock from up above, perhaps, though she doubted she could throw anywhere near far enough to reach the middle of the lake.
At the next level, which she noted was circle eight, Leaf pulled out the Mariner’s medallion.
‘This is probably the last time I’ll ask for help,’ she said. ‘If you don’t come soon, it’ll be too late. Lady Friday’s experiencing everybody. Everything’s gone wrong. I need help now!’
The medallion remained a lump of carved bone in her hand. Leaf tucked it in and continued to head up. A vague notion was forming in her mind. If all the Denizens were busy herding sleepers into the crater, then Circle Ten would be empty. There was a reasonable chance she might find something useful in Noon’s office. Some kind of weapon. A replacement telephone. Something.
Or I might find Friday’s Noon again. Leaf shivered and forced herself to take another step, keeping close to the wall and what little shadow there was under the gaslights.
Circle Ten was as quiet as it had been before, which gave a false sense of security. There could be any number of Denizens about to pop out of their rooms. Leaf crept as quietly as she could, counting off the numbers over the doors.
She was just passing the nine o’clock mark when she saw something move right on the curve, at the eleven. If she hadn’t been so nervous, she might have missed it, for it was low and small and moving slowly.
A grey-green tendril, the tip of an ambulatory seedpod. It quested about from side to side, and more of it slid into view, the thicker parts, closer to the body of the plant.
Leaf stopped and slowly began to back down the passage. She had only gone a few paces when she caught sight of another tendril, this time behind her. She was caught between two of the plants, and they were between her and the stairs.
The girl held her breath and very slowly edged over to the nine o’clock door. She gripped the handle and began to turn it, but it only moved a fraction before she met resistance. It was locked.
Leaf looked up at the gaslight above, thinking that perhaps if she could grab the pipe and point it, she could use it like a flamethrower. But there was no visible pipe, just the dragon head of the gas jet, a solid lump of bronze set into the ceiling.
The nearer tendril stopped its questing and suddenly, sickeningly advanced, rippling like a snake as it headed straight for Leaf.
Leaf shut her eyes and remembered Milka’s words.
Count yourself lucky that you mortals die easily.
A terrible crackling noise filled the air and Leaf felt an excruciating pain shoot through every bone in her body, including her teeth and skull. She screamed and fell to the ground.
‘Set the dials, Sneezer,’ said Arthur. He stood outside the circle of clocks, still clad in his paper-patchwork clothes, still bearing all Four Keys. After their arrival via the Improbable Stair – which had gone better than Arthur had expected, with only one strange stop along the way – there’d been no time to change or do anything except have a hasty conference with Dr Scamandros, who now stood behind him, along with Part Five of the Will, Suzy, and Fred. Sneezer, the butler, stood within the circle of the seven grandfather clocks, turning the hands to the setting he and Scamandros had worked out for Lady Friday’s retreat.
‘You’re sure Leaf didn’t mention my mother?’ Arthur asked again.
‘Definitely not, no,’ replied Dr Scamandros. ‘She had very little time. I fear for her.’
‘So do I,’ said Arthur. ‘Any luck with the telephone to Dame Primus?’
Dr Scamandros shook his head. ‘Nor with telegrams. They keep coming back marked Return to Sender.’
‘The dials are set for watching, sir,’ said Sneezer as he retreated back out of the circle. ‘May I suggest you take a few minutes to look before going through?’
‘Only long enough to make sure it’s not opening into Nothing,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t want to waste any time. Anything could be happening to Leaf and my … the other mortals.’
As he spoke, a trail of white fog appeared out of the floor between the clocks and began to slowly spin around, spreading quickly till there was a slowly rotating cloud. Silver luminescence rose through the white, growing brighter as it reached the edges.
Arthur blinked, and in that blink the cloud became a window to another world. Looking through it, he saw a great crowd of people – humans – standing ahead. In front of them was a lake, and in the middle of the lake there was a stone column with a silver chair set atop it. Above the chair, a winged figure was descending … a very tall Denizen with extra-large yellow wings, who held something impossibly bright in her right hand.
‘Sneezer!’ snapped Arthur. ‘We need to go through right now!’
The butler jumped into the circle, so quickly that his long white hair whipped around his face and the tails of his coat leaped up almost to the small of his back. He deftly adjusted the hands of several of the clocks and jumped back out.
‘Go, milord!’
Arthur and his companions moved almost as swiftly as Sneezer had, entering the circle as the clocks began to chime.
Twenty-five
‘GET UP, YOUNG miss.’
Leaf opened one eye. She was lying on the floor. She lifted her head slightly to see if there was a tendril poking through her chest – or some hideous botanical growth implanted in her flesh, to kill her slower than Milka had thought.
There wasn’t. There was no sign of the seedpods at all. There was, instead, a very tall old man with white hair and a white three-day growth on his chin. His piercing blue eyes were fixed on Leaf. He wore a knee-length blue coat, blue breeches, and sea-boots folded over at the knee. In his hard-knuckled right hand he gripped a nine-foot-long harpoon that glittered with a light painful to Leaf’s eyes.
‘Captain!’ sobbed Leaf. ‘Sir!’
The Mariner bent down and hauled her up by her elbow. ‘We’d best move sharp-ish,’ he said. ‘I cracked that dome when my skiff landed and all manner of gardener’s horrors are climbing in. Not to mention we’d best avoid Friday. She’ll not be pleased.’
Leaf tried to take a breath and coughed, the cough turning into a sob. The Mariner clapped her on the back, almost propelling her into the wall.
‘That’s no way for a ship’s boy from the old Mantis to behave,’ he scolded. ‘You’re safe enough now.’
Leaf bit back her sobs and stood at attention.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ she said, unintentionally aping her mentor, Albert. ‘But there are a lot of mortals who need rescuing out in the crater. Including my aunt.’
‘Mortals to be rescued!’ exclaimed the Mariner. ‘I’ve sailed into a storm, I see. Well, let’s be getting the gauge of it. Do you know of a lookout where I can espy the lay of the land?’
‘There’s a big window,’ said Leaf. ‘On Circle Six at about Twenty Past. That’s down and around a bit.’
‘Then let’s get under way,’ rumbled the Mariner. ‘And smartly.’
Leaf nodded and headed for the stairs, with the Captain close behind. They did not speak for some time, but as they reached Circle Six, the Mariner laid one large hand gently on Leaf’s shoulder and stopped her.
‘You still have the medallion?’ asked the Mariner.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Leaf.
‘You had best give it back to Arthur when you can. It was not meant to be passed into other hands.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Leaf. ‘I didn’t know who—’
‘No harm done,’ said the Mariner. ‘But I am not without business of my own. Three times I will answer to the call. I owe young Arthur that. This is the second, and for the third and final time, the call must come from Arthur himself.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Leaf again. The Mariner raised his hand and indicated for her to go on.
The window was where she remembered. It was clear glass or something like glass, about seven feet long and three feet high. It looked directly out on to the lake and the crater floor, a few hundred feet below.
‘There,’ said Leaf. ‘All those people, the sleepers lined up on the shore. Oh! Friday’s already landing on the rock. She’ll use the Fifth Key to suck all the people’s memories out of them. Their experiences!’
The Captain looked out – at Lady Friday alighting on the silver chair upon the rock; at the thousands of sleepers who were lined up all around the crater; at the dozen or more Denizens who circled above Friday.
‘The odds are poor,’ he said. ‘But the position is good.’
With that, he tapped the glass with the point of his harpoon and it flew out in a single piece, shattering on the rock far below. Leaf shuddered as a wave of pain and nausea went through her, but it was soon past. The feeling came from the harpoon, she realised, and she sidled away from the Mariner.
‘Now,’ mused the Mariner. ‘I shall get perhaps two good casts before they are upon us. What, then, shall be my targets?’
Down below, Lady Friday raised her hand and the mirror that was the Fifth Key shone even brighter.
‘Quick!’ shouted Leaf. ‘She’s going to—’ The Key flashed, its stark light banishing darkness from every corner and crevice within the crater. The lake and dome flicked to silver, and from the eyes and mouths of the thousands of sleepers, a mad spaghetti of coloured streamers sprang out towards Lady Friday’s hand. Once again she gathered them up, the mirror in her hand transforming from something of pure white brilliance to a bright rainbow that overflowed down her arm.
Lady Friday raised the mirror and tipped her head back, opening her mouth with its perfect white teeth.
‘Stop her!’ yelled Leaf. ‘Don’t let her drink them all up!’
‘That’s Leaf’s voice,’ said Arthur as he stumbled out onto the rocky surface of the crater, accidentally pushing over several sleepers. For some reason his balance was way off and he stumbled again before he righted himself. He could hear his friend but he couldn’t see her anywhere or make out what she was shouting. All he could see was a sea of sleepers, Friday perched on her rock, and the Denizens who flew above her.