Garth Nix - Lord Sunday

“Suzy Turquoise Blue?” asked the black object, which was reforming itself from a kind of bowling ball made of tiny swirling letters into a raven made up of tiny swirling letters.

“Yes,” said Suzy. “Let me guess – Part Six of the Will, right?”

“At your service,” said the raven. “In a manner of speaking. I’ve come to rescue you, as Lord Arthur instructed.”

Suzy sniffed. “I don’t need no rescuing,” she said. “Had it all organised, didn’t I? ’Cept you’ve just knocked out the Denizen wot was untying me. Where’s Arthur?”

“Mmm…not entirely…mmm…sure,” said the raven as it pulled at a knot with its beak. “There – slither out.”

Suzy slithered out of the loosened bonds and checked Giac. He was unconscious, but the faint smile was still on his face, suggesting that he might be dreaming of a colourful uniform. She looked over at Aranj too, but the other Denizen hadn’t even looked up and was still crouched down, totally rejecting the world around her.

“’Ow do you knock out a Denizen?” asked Suzy. “I tried it myself once or twice, but just hitting them never works.”

“It is not the force of the blow, but the authority with which it is delivered,” quoth the raven.

“Hmmph,” said Suzy. She sidled over to the chess set and looked back at Part Six of the Will over her shoulder. “Now, what’s Arthur up to?”

“After releasing me and securing the Sixth Key, Lord Arthur went into the Improbable Stair, to a destination or destinations unknown,” reported the raven. “Which means that until he returns, it is up to us to secure his position here.”

“So he got the Key,” said Suzy with satisfaction. “I told ’im he would. ’Ow do we go about securing the position then?”

As she talked, she picked up the solid-gold queen from Noon’s chess set and idly slipped it into one of the pockets of her utility belt.

“We must open an elevator shaft to the Great Maze,” said the raven, “make contact with my other parts, and bring in troops to secure this tower and the entry into the Incomparable Gardens.”

“Right,” said Suzy. “That can’t be too difficult. Where do we go to open an elevator shaft?”

“The sorcerers assigned to blocking the elevators are on Levels 6860 to 6879. We merely need to access a desk on one of those levels.”

“What if they’re still full of sorcerers? Or been taken over by the Piper’s lot?”

“The Piper’s forces have not advanced beyond the lower levels,” said the raven. “Or at least they hadn’t when I last looked. There are still a great number of Saturday’s lesser troops down there.”

“Right, then,” said Suzy. She walked back over to Giac, sat him up and lightly slapped him on the cheek. “Come on, Giac! Ups-a-daisy!”

“What are you doing?” asked the raven. “You’ll wake him up.”

“I know,” said Suzy. “He might come in handy and he’s on our side now. Ain’t you, Giac?”

Giac looked at her woozily.

“Yes,” he mumbled. “I think so. Which side was that again? Did you draw me a diagram?”

“I’ll draw you up one later,” said Suzy. “Now, where’s an elevator at? Or the Big Chain? Lead on, Giac!”

The Improbable Stair became real and Arthur sprang on to its first step. Even as he left the alien world behind, hundreds of energy beams crisscrossed the air where he’d been – and one of them struck the side of his head. Even Arthur’s magically transformed flesh and bones could not withstand such a forceful strike. He felt it like an ice pick to the brain, an intensely cold and numbing blow that made him black out for a second. He stumbled on the Stair and almost lost his balance, before some primal instinct separate from any intelligence forced him to stagger up the steps.

Golden blood streamed down his cheek and dripped upon the Stair. Arthur wiped it away and inadvertently felt what had to be a gaping hole in the side of his head, above where his ear used to be.

My ear’s gone, thought Arthur, shock beginning to leapfrog through his body. I’m going to die…but I can’t die…

He staggered up another few steps. There was golden blood in his eyes now, and a terrible chill was spreading through the right side of his head and down his right arm and leg. It was becoming harder to move; he had to step up with his left foot and then drag his right leg after him. If it got any worse, he would fall for sure, down the Improbable Stair to some even deadlier place…

I have to get somewhere safe, somewhere I can recover, thought Arthur. He tried to visualise Thursday’s chamber, but he couldn’t. Just as a hurt animal desires only its own den, all he could think of was his own bed, his own room, back on Earth.

But I shouldn’t go there…It will restart time, and the Army is going to nuke the hospital, and I’m in no state to do anything. It’s been so long since I lay on my bed…so long…my bed…

The Improbable Stair vanished and Arthur fell into his very own bed.

He lay there, stunned, for what felt like a very long time. He couldn’t move and after a little while he realised that he could only see out of his left eye. He was also unable to move his head, so he lay there on his side, his one good eye slowly scanning his bedroom.

It was just barely light outside the window, the sky showing the faint glow that precedes the dawn. His desk lamp was on, casting its fairly ineffectual circle of light. The clock on the wall said half past ten, which was clearly wrong, given the light outside. Arthur watched the minute hand for a while and saw that the clock had stopped, perhaps days ago.

Apart from the stopped clock, the room looked exactly as it had always looked, which he supposed was a good sign. Even the stopped clock might be a positive, because time itself might still be frozen, temporarily halted by the power of the Fifth Key. Arthur had done that because the Army, temporarily controlled by Saturday’s minion Pravuil, in the guise of a General, had been about to destroy East Area Hospital with micronukes, supposedly in order to eradicate the Sleepy Plague, Greyspot, and other viruses that were concentrated at the hospital.

Arthur hoped it was still a few minutes before midnight on Friday, and that he’d come back in time to properly stop the nuclear attack.

But when he’d stopped time, there had been a strange red tinge to the light. Arthur couldn’t see that now. And what’s more, Arthur had come back from the Incomparable Gardens, albeit indirectly. Returning from the seventh demesne of the House would mean returning to Earth on a Sunday – and in order for it to be a Sunday, time must have passed since he’d frozen it on Friday.

Which meant it was probably more than a day since the Army had nuked the hospital, and the only reason everything seemed OK was that the house was far enough away not to be destroyed by the blast.

Though it would still be affected by radiation , Arthur thought, and that led him to attempt to get up. If any of his family was at home, he had to help them. He hoped his mother would be there, but in his heart he knew that wasn’t going to happen, since he knew she hadn’t been on Earth since before he defeated Lady Friday, and was probably a prisoner of either Superior Saturday, Lord Sunday or even the Piper.

At least his father was safely far away, on tour with his band, The Ratz. His oldest brother, Erazmuz, was in the Army, in fact with the clean-up operation that would follow the nuclear attack. Staria, Patrick and Suzanne, like Erazmuz, were much older and all lived in other cities.

That left Arthur’s sister Michaeli and his brother Eric, who normally lived at home, or at least theoretically did, since both spent a lot of time with friends. But they could be here, and in danger. He had to get up and see.