Garth Nix - Lord Sunday

Arthur went closer. There was a bushy tree or perhaps a hedge growing right next to the window, its foliage so thick that he couldn’t see through it. But there hadn’t been a tree there before, and in fact there should have been nothing but bare earth outside the kitchen because Bob hadn’t got around to doing the landscaping yet.

Arthur went to the kitchen door and opened it. The door opened inward, which was just as well because there was a solid expanse of spiky green hedge outside. It was so thick Arthur couldn’t see through any part of it, or get any idea of how far it extended.

One thing was clear. The area around his home had been transformed, and it added to Arthur’s growing suspicion that this wasn’t really his house at all.

He sat down at the kitchen table and took out A Compleat Atlas of the House . It looked like the real thing and Dame Primus had told him it would probably reappear somewhere near him, that he should check out bookshelves. There was only one way to find out, and to check exactly where he was and what was going on.

Arthur laid the Atlas on the table and said, “I need to know where I am.”

He was about to reach for his Keys to use their power to activate the Atlas, but he didn’t need them. His touch was sorcerous enough. The Atlas flipped open and grew until it was the size of a glossy magazine.

The double-page spread it had opened to was blank at first, then writing began to appear on the left-hand page, much slower than when Arthur had looked at it before. It was as if the invisible hand was being opposed or held back in some way, for the letters were not only slow to appear, they were in an almost illegible scrawl rather than the beautiful copperplate writing the Atlas usually used.

Arthur guessed what the Atlas was going to say before the first word was complete.

Incompa…

“But how can this be the Incomparable Gardens?” asked Arthur as soon as the words were finished, a long minute later. “And why are my house and my mother in it?”

Can’t answer…opposed by the Seventh Key… came the ever-so-slow reply. The last word was almost unreadable, the final letter not much more than a blob of ink with a downstroke.

“Is that really Emily upstairs?” Arthur asked. He focused his mind more strongly upon the Atlas, and slipped his hands into his pouch to hold and draw on the power of both the Fifth and Sixth Keys, the mirror in his left hand and the pen in his right. He could feel something fighting back, some power opposing his attempt to use the Atlas. It was like an unseen presence pressing on his face, trying to push him back from the table and the open book.

Arthur fought against it, though he remembered Dame Primus saying the Seventh Key was paramount, the most powerful of all, and like all the Keys, it was even stronger in its own demesne. But surely, he thought, having two Keys would enable him to have some chance against it?

The Atlas slowly wrote a single, misshapen letter. Arthur couldn’t quite figure it out for a moment, till he turned his head slightly and saw it was a Y that was partly rotated, followed very slowly by two more letters.

“Yes,” read Arthur aloud.

But the Atlas kept writing. Another word appeared, each letter painstakingly spelled out over several seconds.

“And,” read Arthur, and then, “no.”

“Yes and no? How can it be yes and no?” Arthur asked angrily. He felt rage build up inside him. How dare this ineffectual Atlas be so slow and so inexact!

“I must have the answer!” shouted Arthur. He thumped the table with the Keys and thought furiously at the Atlas. What do you mean, “yes and no”?

But the Atlas wrote no more and Arthur felt the power that opposed him grow stronger. It kept pushing at his face and he found himself turning his head, unable to keep looking at the Atlas, no matter how hard he tried. Then, with a crack, his head snapped round past his left shoulder, and with a snap that was almost as loud, the Atlas shut itself and returned to its normal size.

Arthur growled. His vision was washed with red, a red that pulsed with his rapidly beating heart. He lost conscious thought. In one second he was sitting at the table, the rage building inside him. In what felt like the next second he found himself standing above the wreckage of the table, his hands balled into fists, with splinters of wood sticking out from his knuckles.

The Atlas, undamaged, lay on top of the broken pile of wood.

Arthur stared at it and the splintered timber. He was shocked by what he had done, for the table had been old and immensely solid, and could not have been smashed by even the strongest of men without a sledgehammer. He was even more shocked by the fact that he had done it involuntarily, that the rage had been so strong he had lashed out without his conscious mind even being aware of it.

The anger was still there, smouldering away like a fire that needed only the merest breath to make it blaze again. It scared him, because it came out of nowhere and was so powerful. He had never been like this before. He was not an angry person. Or at least, he had not been before he became the Rightful Heir. Once again, as he had thought so often, he wished he had not been chosen by the Will to be the Heir, even though it had told him he would otherwise have died from an asthma attack. That was the only reason he’d been chosen, or so the Will had said. It had wanted a mortal, and one who was about to die.

Arthur shivered and forced himself to take a long, slow breath. He counted to six as he breathed in, and to six as he exhaled. As he did so, he felt the rage diminish. He tried to visualise it being forced back into a small, locked box from which it could not emerge without him consciously releasing it.

After a few minutes, he felt slightly calmer again and was able to think about what was going on.

OK, I’m in some part of the Incomparable Gardens. I need to get out, get back to the Great Maze, and rally the Army of the Architect to invade the Upper House.

Arthur stopped in mid-thought. That was what Part Six of the Will had suggested, but perhaps that wasn’t the best course of action. Dame Primus and Sir Thursday’s Marshals could get the Army organised without him, and whatever might be the outcome of any battle, he would still need to find Part Seven of the Will and release it. Then, with its help, he could force Sunday to give up the Seventh Key. With that in his possession, it wouldn’t matter if Saturday or the Piper conquered the Incomparable Gardens. With all Seven Keys, Arthur could defeat any opposition. And, more important, he could stop the tide of Nothing that was destroying the House.

All I have to do is find the Will, thought Arthur with sudden clarity. I’ve done it before. I can do it here. I’m attuned to the Will. I am in the Incomparable Gardens and it is supposed to be here somewhere. I’ll just focus my mind on it and it will tell me where it is .

While this was the most prominent thought in Arthur’s mind, another small part was not so sure. As he tried to focus his thoughts on where Part Seven of the Will might be, a good portion of his subconscious was also trying to tell him that this might not be a good idea, that it might even alert Lord Sunday to his presence, and that despite the two Keys he held, and the overconfidence they had engendered in him, Lord Sunday and the Seventh Key would probably make very short work of Arthur, especially an Arthur who was without allies of any kind.

But the angry, triumphant Arthur was more powerful. He bent his mind on reaching Part Seven of the Will. He was just thinking he felt some feeble touch from it when the green hedge suddenly shivered and split apart. A boy – a Piper’s child – stepped through the gap and, without a word of warning, lunged at Arthur with a six-foot-long, three-tined gardening fork, each of the tines red-hot, the air around them blurred from the intense heat they radiated.