‘I haven’t got all day,’ said Feverfew. He had already removed his wings, and put them aside as he knelt down. His illusory self was winding back his long black hair to bare his neck. In reality, he had almost no hair and was just going through the motions.
Arthur stepped close to him, his mind racing.
Strike fast, throw the earth on the stump, lay the flat of the
blade there, to be sure.
‘Oh, hurry up!’
Arthur raised his sword. It felt much heavier than it had before. He lifted it as high as he could, then brought it down with all the strength of his shoulder and the weight of his upper body.
I must keep looking,
Arthur thought.
Don’t be distracted.
Throw the earth and lay the flat of the blade.
It felt surprisingly like hitting a home run in baseball. There was a sudden shock through his arm, then the sword was free again.
Arthur had kept his eye on the target. He threw the earth and laid the blade firmly against the neck-stump, which was dry and bloodless. Feverfew’s head rolled on the dirt for only a moment, then with frightening speed, it hurtled into the air. At the same time, his body jerked back and stood up. Arthur had to jump too, to keep the flat of the blade on the neck.
The head dropped like a hawk, landing true where Arthur’s blade lay on the neck-stump. But neither earth nor blade inconvenienced it at all. Arthur watched in horror as the flesh spread up from the body’s part of the neck, and down from the head’s share, meeting in the middle.
Feverfew reached up and pulled Arthur’s sword free of his almost totally healed neck. The point of the blade came out with a pop as the boy staggered back.
‘My turn, I think,’ said Feverfew with a smile that was as horrible in both his true and illusory forms.
Arthur had failed.
‘JUST KNEEL DOWN where you are,’ said Feverfew. He ran his thumb down the black blade of his cutlass, and flicked away a single drop of blood that was so tainted with Nothing it sizzled as it hit the earth. ‘I’m hoping you haven’t the trick of reattachment. Many centuries it took me to learn the way of it. And twice as many to do it with complications. Young Leaf tells me you’ve had no such time. Kneel, I said!’
Arthur found himself kneeling, his body moving independently of his mind, which was furiously trying to think of some way out of his predicament.
We agreed to exchange blows … exchange blows … I
went first …
‘You won’t feel a thing,’ said Feverfew. ‘Which is a pity. I shall enjoy sinking your companions in the Hot Lake.’
I only agreed to exchange blows … I didn’t say I wouldn’t
dodge or duck … I didn’t even say I’d be still …
Arthur tried to move, but found his muscles would not obey him. The yellow wind was winding round his wrists and ankles, holding him in place. He turned his head, and saw Feverfew raising the black cutlass.
Carp! Carp! Help me move! Help me!
Have faith in yourself.
Blinding anger filled Arthur. He couldn’t believe the Carp couldn’t do anything except carry on about faith!
Fury coursed through his blood and muscle, and the yellow wind flinched before it. Arthur sprang back, just as the black cutlass swept down — into the dirt.
‘What!’ roared Feverfew. He twisted around, his cutlass sweeping at Arthur’s knees.
Arthur sprang over the black blade, cutting back with his own two-handed stroke, his sword once again severing the pirate’s neck. This time, as the pirate’s head bounced on the ground, Arthur tried to kick Feverfew in the chest, only to find his foot suddenly wrapped in paper and deflected towards a tree.
Arthur hit the tree and staggered back, badly off balance made worse because his crab armour was trying to keep his leg straight.
The boy teetered backwards as Feverfew’s head shrieked into the air and then plummeted once again towards the stump of his neck.
It never got there. Suzy suddenly leapt across and smashed Feverfew’s head to the ground with a broken branch. As it started to rise again, Leaf darted out of the ranks of pirates and, in true soccer striker-style, kicked the head as hard as she could out towards the bubbling, Nothing-laden waters of the Hot Lake.
Everyone, including the pirates, watched as Feverfew’s head splashed down. Ripples spread around its impact point, but still everyone kept watching to see if it would rise again.
Arthur was staring too, when he was suddenly gripped from behind by two paper-shrouded, slithery hands that began to tighten around his neck. He just managed to get three of his fingers under those grasping hands, but he couldn’t get them off, or stop them from slowly strangling him to death.
To make things even worse, Feverfew’s head rose back out of the boiling mud. All the flesh, illusory and real, had been stripped from it, and it was now just a yellow-tinged skull, its teeth chattering, a sorcerous tongue of blue smoke flickering as Feverfew shouted his last words before tumbling back down into the muddy depths, to be totally destroyed by Nothing.
‘Let Nothing remain!’
The hands around Arthur’s neck suddenly fell away. The boy staggered forward, his crab-armoured leg failing to bend at the knee, and was caught by Jebenezer, who twirled him into a sudden and unwelcome dance.
‘You did it! You slew Feverfew! And I saw it happen!’
‘Stop! The pirates!’
Jebenezer paused in mid-twirl, sending Arthur cannoning into Suzy and Leaf, who were shaking hands. They caught Arthur and turned him so that he could see Feverfew’s pirates running into the trees, throwing away their weapons as they ran.
‘You don’t have to worry about the pirates,’ said Leaf. ‘They’re a gutless bunch. Feverfew could make them brave, but without him, they’re hopeless.’
‘I just about had heart failure when I saw you with them,’ said Arthur. ‘What were you doing?’
‘How about “thanks for the great kick”?’ said Leaf crossly. ‘I was staying alive, what do you think? Feverfew said he only enslaved Denizens. Or Piper’s children at a pinch, because they’re as hardy as Denizens and a sight cleverer. First off he was going to throw me over the side, till I told him he could get a ransom for me.’
‘From who?’
‘From you, of course,’ said Leaf. ‘When he heard that, he got all interested.’
‘And you told him whatever he wanted to know!’
‘Duh! I didn’t have any choice! He could read my mind for starters.’
‘Sorry! Sorry!’ said Arthur. ‘Let’s start again. Thank you for that wonderful kick. Thank you, Suzy, for an equally fantastic smash with the stick.’
‘That’s better,’ said Leaf. ‘You can make the thanks official by getting me out of here and back home where I now fully realise I belong!’
‘Good idea,’ said Suzy. She pointed up at the sky. ‘If we can get out.’
Arthur looked up. The sun was wobbling in the sky and there were strange, streaky black clouds spreading out from it.
‘Uh-oh. They’re cracks!’
‘This worldlet is collapsing,’ said the Carp, once more being carried by Jebenezer. ‘But we must believe in a way out, for then we shall find one.’
‘The augury puzzle,’ snapped Arthur. He turned around to look for Feverfew’s body. ‘It must be on Feverfew somewhere. We grab that, find someone who can use it among the slaves, take a ship —’ He stopped talking. Where Feverfew’s body had been there was just a big dark stain on the ground and long, thin, useless strips of curling paper.
The ground rumbled under Arthur’s feet. Branches dropped from the trees and the Hot Lake bubbled more ominously. Mud began to spread beyond its shores, oozing oilily across the yellow earth.
‘How long have we got?’ Arthur asked the Carp. ‘And can you do anything to stop it or slow it down?’
‘I have no power over such structures as this. I estimate the worldlet will last between six and twelve hours. Perhaps a little less, perhaps a little more. It depends on the nature of the eventual demise. Slow dissolution by intruding Nothing, or cataclysmic rupture into the Void.’
‘How were you going to get out, Arthur?’ asked Leaf.
‘By submersible,’ said Arthur. ‘One run by the Raised Rats. But it can only fit half a dozen Denizens, and —’
As he spoke, he got out the box and opened it to check the bottle. But the bottle was gone, in its place a pile of green glass dust and a tiny fragment of cork.
‘— they’re not going to be picking anyone up anyway. They’ve already left. Or been destroyed.’
‘So we’re stuck here, which means we’re dead,’ said Leaf.
‘How about the Improbable Stair?’ asked Suzy. ‘We did it before, Arthur. It ain’t so bad. You lead the way and we all troop along behind.’
‘I can’t get onto the Stair without a Key,’ said Arthur. ‘But maybe the Will can —’ ‘Not in this form,’ said the Carp.
‘At least we destroyed Feverfew,’ said Suzy philosophically. ‘Even if it’s one of those whatchamacallit victories where you win and croak before you get all the loot and everything.’
‘A pyrrhic victory,’ said Leaf. ‘Great. There has to be some other way out of here. We need to try and think outside the square. Or laterally. Or with different hats. Beyond the normal . . . only I guess that
is
normal here. . .’
‘There might be a way out,’ said Arthur slowly. ‘We have to get everyone to the harbour. Onto the
Moth
.’
‘But it’s an old tub,’ protested Leaf. ‘If you think you can get a ship out, we should take the
Mantis
!’
Arthur shook his head.
‘We can’t get a ship out. The Rats were sure Feverfew’s Gore-Draken augury puzzle was the only way to find a gate in or out, and I bet that’s true. But there might be a way out using the
Moth
, because part of the
Moth’
s insides are actually somewhere else, inside the House.’
‘What?’ asked Leaf and Suzy at the same time.
‘I’ll explain when we get there,’ said Arthur. ‘Jebenezer, you’d better send someone back to the cavern and order the Followers to the harbour before they start spreading out everywhere. Oh, and did anyone stick those two Denizen’s heads back . . . oh, good . . . will they be all right?’
‘They will survive,’ said the Carp. ‘But they will suffer for many months, and they will not be able to drink for a year.’
‘Good,’ said Arthur absently. ‘Let’s go! Carp, I presume you can free the slaves held down at the town?’
‘Now that Feverfew is gone, I can loose their shackles even from here,’ said the Carp. It swelled up like a blowfish, flared as bright as the sun for an instant, then flashed around its jar in its usual shape at immense speed for several seconds. ‘There, it is done!’
By the time they reached the town, it was a shambles. The suddenly freed slaves had turned on any pirates still left. The most recent slaves, the crews of the
Moth
and the
Flying Mantis
, had re-formed under their officers and mates and were busy restocking their ships with supplies and the choicest pieces of salvage from the vast selection in Feverfew’s warehouses. The slaves who had been there longer mainly sat around, waiting to be told what to do by somebody.
When Arthur arrived he first had a brief but very welcome reunion with Sunscorch, who was overseeing the resupply of the
Moth
. But long explanations had to wait, so after a little back-slapping that left his shoulders sore, Arthur had the Carp use its ability to make its voice heard everywhere around the harbour, to tell the former slaves that the worldlet was doomed and that if they wanted to live and return to the House, they must gather aboard the
Moth
, bringing only one small item of salvage each.
Naturally this caused a panic, only quelled by the Carp using its voice more forcefully, and Jebenezer, Sunscorch, Pannikin, and various others using their voices and belaying pins to bring order to the mass of Denizens that was trying to get on any of the four small boats that could take them from the harbour wall to the
Moth
.
Leaf also had an important role to play, convincing Captain Swell that he must abandon the
Flying Mantis,
and that even such a practised Navigator-Sorcerer as he would not be able to find a way to sail it out. As he had already tried every augury puzzle he could find, the logic of it was clear, but it was still very hard for him to leave a ship he had commanded for nigh on ten thousand years.
Captain Catapillow presented a different problem, for he did not want to let anyone into his quarters, for fear that they would destroy his stamp collection. But when Arthur lost his temper and spoke sharply to him, he caved in and withdrew to his bed, Ichabod calmly drawing the curtains after him.
Arthur had been worried about how many Denizens would fit in the strange chamber within the
Moth,
particularly since he had promised the Followers of the Carp that he would try to save them, and as they would be last to arrive, they would be the most likely to be left behind. But the chamber was even larger than he remembered, and Ichabod moved the display cases around to create even more space, while telling him that his coat needed to be cleaned, his boots washed, and that the creation of vastly more space within a room was merely a matter of correctly arranging the furniture.
At last, five hours after they’d begun, the room was entirely packed with at least three thousand Denizens, Arthur, Suzy, and Leaf. There was no room to move at all for most of the Denizens, with everyone pressed together like standing sardines.
As far as anyone could tell, no one had been left behind.
Outside, the cracks in the sky almost stretched from the sun to the ground, and the Carp now predicted a catastrophic implosion, with the worldlet suddenly collapsing and being sucked into the Void of Nothing.
‘Then, if this worldlet has been properly constructed, the breach in the Void will seal over and cause no more trouble,’ the Carp pronounced. ‘Or if shoddily made, it will spread Nothing everywhere around it and cause many more problems to the locality.’
‘You mean Wednesday’s stomach,’ said Arthur.
‘Yes,’ said the Carp. ‘Now, as to the matter of our survival — I do not think this room would survive such a catastrophe, as it is linked to the ship that will be sucked into the maelstrom of Nothing.’