Garth Nix - Lord Sunday

First published in the USA by Scholastic Inc 2010

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2010 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk www.garthnix.co.uk

FIRST EDITION

Copyright © Garth Nix 2010

Illustrations by Tim Stevens 2010

Garth Nix asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

Source ISBN: 9780007175130

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2010 ISBN: 9780007367962

Version: 2019-01-10

To all my very patient readers, editors, family and friends; and to two writers of science fiction and fantasy who particularly inspired me to write this series and lit my path ahead. Thank you, Philip José Farmer and Roger Zelazny.

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Also by Garth Nix

About the Publisher

Arthur fell.

The air rushed past him, stinging his eyes and ripping at his hair and clothes. He had already fallen through the hole made by Saturday’s assault ram, past the grasping roots and tendrils of the underside of the Incomparable Gardens. Now he was plummeting through the clouds, and a small part of him knew that if he didn’t do something really soon he was going to smash into Saturday’s tower and in all likelihood be so badly broken that even with his newly reshaped Denizen body he would die – or wish he was dead.

But Arthur didn’t do anything, at least not in those first few, vital seconds. He knew it was an illusion, but it felt like the wind was holding him up, rather than rushing past. In his left hand he held the small mirror that was the Fifth Key, and in his right he clutched the quill pen that was the Sixth Key, which he had wrested from Saturday and taken with him over the edge. Because of this, Arthur felt powerful, triumphant and not at all afraid.

He looked down at the tower below him and laughed – a deep, sarcastic laugh that was not at all like his normal laughter. He was about to laugh again when Part Six of the Will, in its raven form, caught up with him, its claws latching on to his hair and digging into his scalp.

“Wings!” croaked the raven urgently. It hung on to his head for a second, then lost its grip and spun off, calling out, “Fly! Fly!” as it tried desperately to keep up.

Instantly, Arthur lost his sense of euphoric invincibility and came back to his senses. He properly took in the speed of his descent for the first time and saw that he was going to hit the tower very, very soon.

This is all wrong, he thought. Where are my wings?!

He frantically searched his coat, even as he remembered that his grease monkey wings were still in the rain mantle that he’d exchanged for his current disguise as a Sorcerous Supernumerary – the disguise he’d used to infiltrate the assault ram…too successfully perhaps, for he’d gone with the ram when it broke through into the Incomparable Gardens. While he had then got close enough to Superior Saturday to claim the Sixth Key, he’d fallen back through the hole in the ceiling of the Upper House.

Now he was falling a very, very long way down.

Even starting from such a height, Arthur had fallen far faster than he’d thought possible. He was going to miss the actual peak, he saw, and crash into the main part, some fifteen levels below.

No wings, thought Arthur. No wings!

His mind halted in panic and all he could do was stare at the tower, tears streaming from his eyes because the wind was rushing by so fast. He found himself flapping his arms as if somehow that might help, and he was screaming, and then—

He crashed into a flying Internal Auditor, who screamed as well. Together they tumbled through the air, the Denizen’s wings thrashing wildly. Arthur tried to rip the wings from the Auditor, but he didn’t want to let go of the Fifth and Sixth Keys, so he couldn’t get a proper grip. He tried to transfer the Sixth Key so as to hold both Keys in his left hand, but in that vital moment the Denizen kicked free and dived away, his wings folded back.

Arthur fell again, but the collision had checked his speed. He had a few seconds to take action and his brain finally got back to work on problem-solving, instead of gloating over the Sixth Key or cowering in fear. He knew there was no way to avoid colliding with the tower – unless he never actually arrived there…

A hundred feet from impact, Arthur somersaulted into a swan dive. Stretching his arms out below his body, he drew several steps in the air with the Sixth Key. The pen left glowing trails of light, which instantly took on the appearance of solid white marble steps.

Arthur hit hard, immediately tucking himself into a ball to roll down the Improbable Stair. As he bounced and tumbled over each step, he knew he had to get his speed under control. Even when he stuck out his leg, he only tumbled sideways – and kept falling. Climbing up the Improbable Stair was bad enough, with the chance of coming out on some random Landing anywhere in time or space. Falling down it – completely out of control – was even worse.

Arthur remembered the Old One’s caution, the words now echoing inside his head, in between thuds, bangs and the jangling pain of new bruises.

It is possible to end up somewhere you particularly do not wish to be, the Old One had said. It is even likely, for that is part of the Stair’s nature.

He tried again to stop, but since he was still clutching the Keys, he couldn’t even grab on to the edge of a step. It was more like falling down a slide than a staircase, much more so than could be normal or natural. The Stair itself was working against him, accelerating his fall, leading him somewhere he doubted he’d want to be.

Thoughts of really terrible places in history began to flash through Arthur’s mind, thoughts made more awful because he knew that if he focused on any one place for too long, the Stair would take him there.

He tried to turn on his stomach and stop the endless slide with his elbows, but this didn’t work either, though it hurt a lot. Arthur grimaced as his funny bones were repeatedly jarred. Before his transformation from a mortal boy into a Denizen or whatever he had become, he would have been screaming with pain, and his arms would have broken like sticks. But the Keys, and his use of them, had changed his bones, skin and blood beyond anything a doctor would recognise as human.