Lord Sunday

Eleven

THE DRAGONFLY SWOOPED down to the third terrace that was cut into the hill, about halfway up, and Arthur was dragged over rough green turf for twenty feet before the flying creature came to a stop and went into a steady hover. The rope ladder tumbled down, and the two tall green Denizens descended. They unhooked Arthur’s chains from the dragonfly’s tow rope and, as he had feared, dragged him over to the clock.

Lord Sunday followed close behind, directing the power of the Seventh Key against Arthur while Arthur’s own Keys struggled to break out of the silver net. The force of Sunday’s power pushed Arthur’s head down and made him feel weak and unable to resist the two Denizens. One of them held him while the other fastened the chains to the tips of the clock hands. Arthur felt the chains grow shorter, like elastic returning to its normal length, and they dragged him across the clock face till he had to sit on the central pivot, next to the trapdoor.

Arthur craned his neck to check the position of the hands. The hour hand was on the twelve, and the minute hand just past it. Then he looked at the trapdoor. It was shut, but he could hear a faint whirring noise behind it, and something like a low, unpleasant chuckle.

‘This is like the Old One’s clock prison,’ Arthur said to Lord Sunday, who stood by the number six, gazing down at his captive. He still held the Seventh Key close in his right hand and the silver net in his left. ‘Are there puppets within that will take out my eyes?’

‘There are,’ confirmed Lord Sunday. ‘But you have almost twelve hours before they will emerge, and you will have a chance to be spared from their ministrations.’

‘How?’ asked Arthur.

‘You may surrender your Keys to me,’ said Lord Sunday. ‘And The Compleat Atlas of the House. If they are freely given, I will return you to your Earth.’

‘And my mother?’

‘Yes, she shall go with you.’

‘And you’ll leave us alone? I mean, leave the Earth alone? And you’ll stop the Nothing from destroying the House and the Secondary Realms?’

‘I do not interfere unnecessarily beyond these Gardens,’ said Lord Sunday. ‘It is unfortunate that events have so transpired that I must take a hand, to impose order where others have failed to do so.’

‘So you won’t promise to leave us alone,’ said Arthur. ‘Or anything else.’

‘You have heard my offer,’ Lord Sunday replied coldly. ‘You and your mother will return to your world, if you give me the Keys and the Atlas.’

Arthur slowly shook his head. ‘No. I don’t trust you.’

‘Very well,’ said Lord Sunday. ‘Consider that allowing the puppets to take your eyes is only one of many things I can do to make you reconsider. While I will not stoop to menace mere mortals, I do hold your mother prisoner. Your friend Leaf has also been taken. If you wish to see either of them again, then you will give me the Keys and the Atlas.’

Arthur shut his eyes for a moment. He was tempted by Lord Sunday’s offer, but not because he was afraid for his mother or Leaf, or of the puppets that would tear out his eyes, but simply because it would mean he could lay down the impossible burden he had been given. Everything would just go back to the way it was before.

Except it’s too late for that, Arthur thought as he opened his eyes. I can’t trust Sunday to do the right thing, for the House or the Universe ... or for me. I don’t even know what his plans really are, or why he has let Saturday destroy the House. There’s no way he could leave me alone, not now. I have come too far, and I have changed too much to go back. I have to see this through. I’ll use the medal to call the Mariner, and hope he gets here before the clock strikes twelve ...

Arthur’s hand fell to the pouch at his waist as he thought this, and he saw Lord Sunday’s eyes follow the movement. Instantly, Arthur lifted his hand to scratch his nose, the chain clanking as he moved. But it was too late. Sunday’s attention was on the pouch. The Trustee lifted his hand slightly, and Arthur’s belt broke apart, the pouches sailing across the intervening space to land at Sunday’s feet. Waterless soap, a cleaning cloth and brush, several nuts and bolts, and the all-important silver bag fell out.

Sunday gestured again, and the silver bag spewed out it contents: The Compleat Atlas of the House, the yellow elephant toy, and the Mariner’s medal. The Atlas disappeared as it touched the grass. Arthur jumped as it reappeared a moment later inside the front of his coveralls.

‘Like the Keys, the Atlas must be given freely,’ said Sunday. ‘I hope you will do so before too much time passes. As for your sentimental possessions, I do not care to give you the comfort of them. Noon, take these things and throw them from the hill.’

Arthur could only watch as the slightly taller of the two green Denizens scooped up the elephant and the medal and threw them away. The items separated as they flew through the air, the elephant on a high arc that ended suddenly as it landed in the high branches of a tree, the medal going lower and farther, travelling several hundred yards before it disappeared below the level of the terrace.

Arthur watched every moment of the medal’s fall, and with it the loss of his only hope of escape.

‘I have a garden to tend,’ said Lord Sunday. ‘I will return in a few hours, when I trust you will have thought further about my offer.’

He stepped off the horizontal clock face and walked away, but not to the dragonfly’s rope ladder. Instead, Arthur watched him cross to the rear of the terrace, where a line of steps wound up the hill. The two Denizens followed. All three were on the steps when a bright blue-and-red bird shot past Arthur and flew in front of Lord Sunday, hovering in place, its wings beating so fast they were a blur. Sunday held out a finger, the bird hopped onto it and was carried to his shoulder, where it spoke into his ear in a high-pitched voice that Arthur could almost hear, but not well enough to make out more than a few key words.

‘Saturday ... not ... Drasils wilting ... more ...’

The bird finished talking. Sunday nodded once, and it flew away, back down the hill. Sunday turned around and looked at Arthur.

‘It seems you are not the only recalcitrant who cannot acknowledge the realities of their position,’ said Lord Sunday. ‘As always, it is left to me to personally take charge of matters.’

With that, he handed the silver net to Sunday’s Noon, who held it with both hands. It obviously took a lot of effort to keep it relatively still as the Keys jumped around inside, straining to reach Arthur.

‘Distance will make them less restive,’ said Sunday. He placed his hand just above his breastbone, touching the Key that hung from a chain around his neck, hidden inside his shirt, and closed his eyes for a moment in concentration. ‘They will be completely quiescent when they are locked away. I have opened the cage, but it will soon close, so attend to that at once. Dawn, come with me.’

Sunday retraced his steps back down to the clock terrace, with Sunday’s Dawn following, and climbed back up the ladder to the dragonfly. But Arthur didn’t watch Sunday climb, and only saw the dragonfly depart from the corner of his eye. He was intent upon Sunday’s Noon, and watched him as he carefully carried the silver net and the Keys away, up the steps that led to the next terrace and out of Arthur’s sight.

A few minutes later, the dragonfly was away, turning to climb up and over the hill. Arthur was alone, chained to the clock. He could see only as far as the nearest hundred-foot-high hedge below the hill, and the slope of the terrace behind him.

The clock ticked – a sound like the sharp stroke of an axe on very hard wood. The minute hand swept forward, and the chain on Arthur’s left wrist rattled as it too moved.

Arthur bit his lip and tried to think. The medal was gone, but there had to be something else he could do. There was the chance that Dame Primus or Dr Scamandros might be able to rescue him, but even as he thought that, he dismissed it. His only real chance would be if he could do something himself. He had to regain the Keys, or free Part Seven of the Will, or somehow retrieve the Mariner’s medal.

The clock ticked again, the hand moved, and the chain rattled. Arthur stood up and looked around him. He couldn’t see where the medal had landed. The only thing he could see was his yellow elephant, stuck in the upper branches of a tall tree that reached up from the next terrace farther down the hill. The elephant looked like a strange fruit, the bright yellow a stark contrast against the tree’s pale green leaves.

I wish you could help me, thought Arthur. Elephant, you were always there to help me out when I was little, even if it was only in my imagination ...

Arthur looked away from Elephant, down at the clock face, and then at the green grass of the terrace.

The Old One conjured stuff out of Nothing when I first met him, Arthur thought. He said I’d need a Key to do it, but that was ages ago, before my transformation. I might be able to make things from Nothing here.

He laid his hand on the clock. He couldn’t feel any interstices of Nothing lurking somewhere underneath, as was usual in other parts of the House, and it was likely the Incomparable Gardens was completely armoured against the Void, but it was worth a try. Anything was worth a try.

‘A telephone, connected to the Citadel in the Great Maze,’ said Arthur firmly. At the same time he visualised the telephone Dame Primus had given him long ago, in the red box. He tried to picture it in his head as solidly as possible, but he felt none of the symptoms of House sorcery. Though these aches and pains were always unpleasant and sometimes extraordinarily intense, he would have welcomed them if it meant his attempts to make a telephone from Nothing were successful.

‘A telephone, connected to other parts of the House!’ he said again, snapping his words as if he spoke to some recalcitrant servant. But still he felt no sorcery, and no telephone appeared.

Arthur tried to call up the rage he’d felt in his house, when he’d smashed the table, hoping that energy might somehow fuel his attempt to draw something out of Nothing. But he didn’t feel angry, and he couldn’t recapture the emotion. He just felt drained and defeated and small. All of his triumphant, powerful feelings were completely gone, lost the moment he was chained by Lord Sunday and his servants.

‘Maybe a telephone is too tricky,’ Arthur said to himself. ‘Or the connections are difficult ... but what else could help now?’

He thought about bolt cutters, or a hacksaw, but they would be useless against the sorcerous metal of the manacles. In fact, apart from the Mariner’s harpoon or the Keys, Arthur couldn’t think of anything that would have any effect upon his bonds.

What I really need is some way to get the medal back. It’s only down the slope. I need a retriever dog, or something ... a smart animal who will do what it’s told. I wish Elephant was real, just like I thought he was when I was four ...

Arthur smiled to himself, remembering how real Elephant had been, and the conversations he’d had with Emily, recounting what Elephant had done that day, sometimes adopting Elephant’s voice and manipulating his trunk to make him talk.

A sudden jab of pain ran through Arthur’s joints from ankle to shoulder, and something touched his arm. He yelped and sprang to his feet, thinking of a puppet woodcutter and his axe, or, even worse, the old woman puppet with her corkscrew. But the trapdoor was shut, and the touch, when it came again to his knee, was light, a gentle tap that came from the trunk of a small yellow elephant whose twinkling, jet-black eyes looked up at Arthur with wisdom and affection.

Arthur crouched down and cradled his lifelong friend, biting his lip to hold back the sobs that were so near to breaking out. Elephant waited patiently, till Arthur had composed himself enough to sit back. The boy looked up at the tree, where the toy had lodged. It was gone, and the elephant next to him was definitely a living, breathing version of his childhood companion.

I’ve made a Nithling, thought Arthur, and he supposed he should be afraid of what he’d done. But he wasn’t. He was happy. He was no longer alone, and, even better than that, now he had an ally.

‘I’m so glad to see you, Elephant,’ he said. ‘I need your help really badly. There’s a silver medal, about this big, somewhere down the slope of the hill in that direction. I need you to go and get it, please, and bring it back to me. But be careful. Even the plants can be dangerous – we have many enemies here.’

Elephant nodded sagely and raised his trunk to blow a soft trumpet blast of affirmation. Then he jumped down from the clock face and strode off through the grass, towards the edge of the terrace.