Lord Sunday

Twenty-one

THE SLIGHT INTERNAL voice of Part Seven of the Will was suddenly cut off, as the wormsnake’s inner coil rolled closer, a ten-foot-high wall of stone-like snakeskin. Arthur jumped up and landed on top of the creature, jarring his knees. He balanced there for a moment, watching another coil as it rose towards him, and directed an anxious thought at Part Seven of the Will.

What am I supposed to do? How do I get away from this thing?

There was no answer.

Arthur jumped again as a length of the snake came crashing down. This time he landed badly and slid along the creature’s back, almost falling into a thirty-foot-deep crevasse between three piled-up coils before he regained his balance.

That gave him a clue. Arthur stood up carefully, keeping his knees bent and his feet apart for better balance. He looked along the wormsnake’s undulating body and across the coils. Then he began to run. He ran around the coil he was on, then jumped across to the next one that was slightly higher up, and ran around that, and jumped not quite as far to another, till only a few minutes later he was at the top of the hill, and he slid down the narrowing end of the wormsnake and onto the welcoming grass of the next higher terrace.

The huge creature continued to coil and writhe down the slope, but not up it, and Arthur was none the wiser about whether he’d just jumped off its tail or its head. He was grateful that in this respect, at least it was more worm and less snake.

Once again, this terrace was much the same as the last, though the flowering shrubs were a strange rusty colour and had almost perfectly round leaves that suggested these plants were not from Earth. Arthur kept away from them, just in case they were not exactly plants.

He was also wary of steps, but he couldn’t see any on the slope ahead. It was just a grassy bank some hundred or so feet tall, steep enough that he would probably need to use his hands to help him climb it.

Arthur was halfway there, sprinting across the lawn, when the ground shook beneath him, and then dropped away. The boy fell and rolled, bouncing around on the grass like a Ping-Pong ball on a table, as the hill continued to shake. When it finally stopped, Arthur was lying flat on his back, and all the round flowers had fallen from the shrubs.

‘What was that?’ he said aloud as he got up and looked around. Everything looked the same at first, till he noticed there was a tall plume of smoke or dust in the far distance, and that the sun had dropped significantly towards what he’d arbitrarily decided was west, making his shadow longer.

The Drasils have withered, said Part Seven of the Will. The Gardens have dropped, and Saturday’s tower has broken through.

Now you talk to me! thought Arthur. Where are you?Do you know if Elephant is all right?

I am in the Elysium, on the hill above you, came the reply. However, I am locked in a cage and my ability to speak with you is constrained and erratic, unless you are very near. Come to me ... no, wait!

The Will’s voice cut off again. Arthur stared at what he’d thought was a plume of smoke and narrowed his eyes against the glare of the lower sun. With the smoke or dust or whatever it was dissipating, he could see a little more clearly. What he’d thought was an insubstantial plume was clearly a solid object, several hundred feet high, overtopping the hedges and dominating the landscape of the Incomparable Gardens. It looked like it was at least the top fifty or so floors of Saturday’s tower, poking through the underside of the Incomparable Gardens like a needle thrust through a cloth.

That’ll give Sunday a headache, thought Arthur with satisfaction. Thousands more of Saturday’s sorcerers swarming into the Gardens.

He turned to start up the slope to the top of the hill, but had only taken one step when he heard the distant buzz of a dragonfly. Instantly he changed direction and ran to the nearest tree. He crouched down under its lower branches and scanned the sky.

The dragonfly was flying straight towards him with lots of Denizens on its back. As it got closer, Arthur lifted the Fifth Key and began to build another blinding blast of intense heat. But just as he was about to unleash it, he felt the force of the Seventh Key emanating from the dragonfly. It was like a giant hand brushing the surface of the terrace, the fingers feeling for something hidden ... unseen fingers searching for him.

Instantly, Arthur stopped trying to focus on a heat blast and instead called on the powers of both Keys he held to hide him from Lord Sunday.

He felt no answer from the Fifth Key, but arthritic pain flashed through the knuckles of his right hand, and without his conscious direction, the Sixth Key suddenly began to sketch something in the air around Arthur, making his hand dart around like a swallow chasing flying insects. It left behind a spiderweb-thin trail of pale green ink that hung in the air and did not dissipate.

Within a few seconds, the Sixth Key had drawn a russet-coloured plant with broad sheltering leaves around the crouched-down Arthur, exactly like all the other ones along the border of the lawn. From inside, it looked to Arthur just like a three-dimensional open sketch that wouldn’t fool anyone for a second, but he hoped that from the outside he was now effectively camouflaged as a plant, and that it would resist at least the long-distance search of Lord Sunday.

The dragonfly flew overhead, and hovered above the crest of the hill. Arthur watched, hardly daring to breathe, as the ladder rolled down and Sunday and his Noon and Dawn descended and disappeared from sight.

Stay hidden! said the Will, suddenly back in his head. Stay-