A
s Arthur whipped the Key out of the pocket in his sleeve, Suzy closed in on him, and they put their backs against the stony side of the volcano.
Monday’s Noon spread his wings wider and dropped to the ground. As he landed, crates were pushed aside farther back, starting a landslide all the way along the makeshift passage. Dozens of metal Commissionaires and Commissionaire Sergeants bulled their way through the piled-up mess of crates and broken bits of plywood, to form a wedge behind Noon.
Noon raised his hand and a flaming sword appeared in his fist. It crackled and spat, and the flames lengthened. He smiled his bright smile and held out his left hand. “The Key,” he said. “Or I shall burn the Ink-Filler.”
“It is a trap! What do we do now?” whispered Arthur, ducking his chin down to talk to the Will.
“All three of you need to step forward a little,” replied a voice that was not the Will’s. Arthur looked over his shoulder and was surprised to see that a doorway had formed in the lava wall. A dark, shadowed doorway. He could just make out the face of Dusk within it.
Arthur and Suzy stepped forward a pace.
“And be more trusting,” added Dusk as he stepped out of the doorway, followed by several of his Midnight Visitors. “Go through the doorway, Arthur. You too, Miss Blue.”
Noon’s smile had slipped as Dusk appeared and moved in front of Arthur. Now it became a frown as Dusk drew a sword of his own out of the air. Dusk’s sword had a blade of darkest night, sprinkled with stars.
“What is this, Dusk?” Noon stormed. “I am to have the Key!”
“No, brother,” answered Dusk gently. “We will let them go on their way.”
“Traitor!” hissed Noon. “Step aside!”
“No,” replied Dusk. “I am loyal to the Architect and Her Will.”
Noon screamed and threw his flaming sword straight at Suzy. Arthur saw it and tried to raise the Key to intercept it, but he was too slow. The Key was only halfway up and the sword’s point was a few inches from Suzy’s throat when Dusk’s dark blade batted it away. The sword ricocheted off the volcano and returned to Noon’s hand, setting several tea chests alight from its flaming passage.
“Charge!” roared Noon, and he ran forward, once again cutting at Suzy. Dusk parried this attack, and he and Noon exchanged a series of blows almost too fast to follow. A thin line of Midnight Visitors rushed to meet the charge of the Commissionaires. Whips flashed with sonic booms as batons and swords crackled with lightning. Tea chests exploded into matchsticks and burst into flame. Smoke began to spread.
“We have to help them,” shouted Arthur, brandishing the Key. Noon and Dusk were evenly matched, but there were far fewer Midnight Visitors than Commissionaires.
“No,” boomed the Will. “We must go through the weirdway. There’s no time!”
Arthur hesitated. At that moment, Dusk ducked under a cut and gripped his brother’s arm. Before Noon could break free, he was spun into a somersault and hurled up into the air.
“Go!” shouted Dusk as his black wings burst out of his back and he launched himself up into the sky. “We will hold Noon as long as we can!”
Still Arthur hesitated. He saw Noon streak up like a rocket, then turn and plunge to meet Dusk’s ascent. Fire and night met with a terrible shriek as the two tumbled down, trading lightning-fast blows and parries as they fell.
The Will shouted, “Get in the—”
Noon and Dusk struck the ground like a shooting star, right in the middle of the melee. The force of the impact rocked the entire veranda. Arthur and Suzy were hurled into each other, and it knocked down most of the Commissionaires and the Midnight Visitors—and all of the remaining tea chests.
As Arthur struggled to his feet, he saw Noon burst out of the debris, rage distorting his handsome face. He turned towards Arthur and leaped forward, only to fall as Dusk grabbed his ankle. Then both were on their feet and fighting again.
“Slay the girl!” screamed Noon to his minions as they began to clamber out of the splintered piles of wood and burning wreckage. “Close the weirdway!”
Four Commissionaire Sergeants smashed their way through the thin line of Midnight Visitors and rushed towards Arthur and Suzy.
This time, Arthur didn’t wait. He turned and plunged into the dark doorway, once again dragging Suzy by the hand.
The red glow of fire streamed in behind Arthur, followed by the rattling boom of a Visitor’s whip. Then the doorway snapped shut, and everything was suddenly quiet and dark save for the glow of the Key in Arthur’s hand, which revealed the sides and roof of an upwards-sloping tunnel that was not made of lava. Arthur let go of Suzy and led the way at a swift walk, though he didn’t like the feel of the ground underfoot. It rippled and moved, like walking on a trampoline, and the walls of the tunnel were soft as well.
Suzy saw him slide his finger along the wall for the third time and whispered, “Weirdways are all like this. This is a big one, though. Often you have to crawl. And if they close down, you get squelched, cause they’re made with Nothing. Or through Nothing.”
“Weirdways exploit the interstices of Nothing in the structure of the House,” said the Will. “There is little danger provided a weirdway is well made. Now, Arthur. When we come out you must get as close to Mister Monday as possible and then, holding your own Key, recite this incantation: ‘Minute by minute, hour by hour, two hands as one, together the power.’ Quite simple, really. The Hour Hand will fly to you. You must catch it and then immediately prick your right thumb with the Hour Hand and prick your left thumb with the Minute Hand and smear a drop of blood from your left hand on the Hour Hand and from your right thumb on the Minute Hand. Then hold both Keys together and recite another very simple incantation: ‘I, Arthur, anointed Heir to the Kingdom, claim this Key and with it the Mastery of the Lower House. I claim it by blood and bone and contest, out of truth, in testament, and against all trouble.’ Got that?”
“No,” said Arthur, shaking his head. “Which thumb for which hand? And what if Mister Monday is holding on to the Hour Hand?”
“Oh, he won’t be,” said the Will breezily. “He’ll be asleep, or in a steam bath. The Dayroom is full of steaming pools. Let me go over what you need to do—”
“Hang on!” said Arthur. “What if Mister Monday isn’t asleep or in a steam bath? What do I do?”
“We shall improvise,” said the Will. “I shall instruct you as required.”
Silence greeted this remark. Even the Will seemed to recognize “we shall improvise” wasn’t a big help to Arthur.
“I reckon you can take on Mister Monday,” said Suzy, punching Arthur on the arm quite hard, obviously in an effort to bolster his confidence. “He’ll probably be flat out snoring anyway.”
“There’s no choice,” said Arthur. He was thinking once more of the plague. Of the cure. Of his parents. “I have to go through with it.”
I will improvise,
he thought grimly.
I will do whatever it takes. I will keep on fighting and thinking and trying, no matter what.
“Excellent!” said the Will and it went over what it had said before. Arthur repeated the instructions. After four repetitions, he was reasonably sure that he could remember what to do. But he couldn’t help thinking about everything that might go wrong. Starting with Mister Monday ready and waiting at the other end of the weirdway. Surely Noon would have warned him? Or had Dusk stopped him in time?
“Are you ready?” the Will asked. “The weirdway is narrowing. We are about to emerge into Monday’s Dayroom.”
“Can we lose the hair first?” asked Suzy.
“If you must,” sighed the Will. It waited as they all recited the spell and various heads of hair and beards fell to the floor. “Are you ready
now
?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, and Suzy nodded in agreement.
“We’re ready.”
The weirdway was indeed getting much narrower. Arthur had to duck his head and then get down on all fours and crawl the last few yards. He couldn’t see an exit as such, but there was a circular patch of darkness
ahead that was not lit up by the Key’s glow. When Arthur touched it, his hand disappeared. It was similar to Monday’s Postern in the wall around the House, as manifested in Arthur’s world.
“That is the door,” said the Will. “Go through, but not too quickly. The ledge is narrow on the other side.”
Arthur crawled through carefully and stopped so suddenly that Suzy ran into his feet.
It was a very narrow ledge he’d come out on. It was not much wider than he was and only extended for about ten feet to either side. Worse than that, it was quite a long way up the crater wall. Arthur looked down and, through billowing clouds of steam, saw a bubbling lake, lit deep within by red and yellow plumes of molten magma. The whole crater was a steaming lake, and Arthur could see nowhere to go and no way to get down off this ledge unless they flew, and Suzy was the only one with wings.
Nevertheless, he knew that first appearances in the House could be misleading. So he crawled to the side and let Suzy emerge. They both huddled on the ledge, staring down into the turbulent waters, watching the great billows of steam that rose up as lava poured out deep below.
Above them, the golden net that prevented flying visitors gleamed, picking up and reflecting the light from the elevators that surrounded the volcano. For the first time, Arthur wondered where those elevators went to. He had always thought Monday’s Dayroom must be at the top of the House. But of course, this was only the Lower House, and there were the regions governed by the Morrow Days above. Or so he presumed.
Arthur shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about stuff like that. He had to concentrate on the immediate problem. It was hard to think because it was much, much hotter than it had been and he was sweating furiously under his heavy coat.
“There’s something in the middle,” said Suzy, who had continued to stare down. “Look, there!”
She pointed as the steam clouds momentarily parted. There, right in the middle of the bubbling lake, was an island and a sprawling building. A low, spread-out, L-shaped house complex with red-tiled roofs that looked kind of familiar to Arthur. He was sure he’d seen it before somewhere. In a book. A Roman villa.
“Monday’s Dayroom,” said the Will. “There is a fine bridge to it from the other side. But we will have to cross by the spiderwire. It may be a little difficult to see at first. Look by your left foot, Arthur.”
Arthur looked down. At first he couldn’t see a thing, then he caught the faintest shine of some gossamer thread. He reached down and touched it. It was a taut wire, about as thick as his finger, but almost completely translucent. Arthur plucked it and it emitted a soft harmonic note.
“Uh, how do we use this?”
“It will stick to the soles of your feet,” said the Will. “You simply walk down it to Monday’s Dayroom.”
“I think I’ll fly,” said Suzy.
“No, you—” snapped the Will. “No. Close to the island, fliers attract targeted bursts of steam that will strip the flesh from your bones. The only way down is by spiderwire, and there is no time to procrastinate. Arthur, step on.”
“What happens if I lose my balance?” asked Arthur. “I mean, my soles might stick, but I’ll be hanging upside down.”
“Then you will have to walk the whole way upside down,” said the Will. “Hurry! It is easier than it sounds.”
“What would you know? You’re a frog,” muttered Suzy. “You haven’t even got soles.”
“Shhh,” said Arthur. He stood up, carefully stowed the Key in his sleeve pocket, and tied a handkerchief around the sleeve so it couldn’t fall out. Then he spread his arms out for balance, took a deep breath of the humid air, and slid one foot out along the spiderwire.
I
t was easier than it looked. Arthur slid one foot after the other along the spiderwire. It felt rock-solid under his feet, and he had no trouble with balance. At least he had no trouble with balance as long as he didn’t look down. As soon as he glanced towards his feet, he started to shake and quiver, and that became a general wavering that threatened to send him upside down. But if he looked up and ahead, it stopped again.
Suzy came next, moving quickly. She had no trouble at all and didn’t even need to extend her arms, because her wings spread out and easily kept her upright.
Soon she was right behind Arthur and he was all too conscious of his own slow progress.
“Is this perhaps the time to mention that the spiderwire is impermanent?” asked the Will after Arthur had slowly shuffled along another twenty yards.
“No,” said Arthur. He made himself go faster and tried not to look down. “What do you mean impermanent?”
“It will disappear in a few minutes.”
Arthur started a peculiar running motion. It was very odd to not be able to pick up his feet. It also made balancing more difficult and, though Arthur was making faster progress, he also picked up a wobble that got worse and worse.
“Faster,” said the Will when they were halfway down the wire, moving through thick clouds of cooling steam. It wasn’t anywhere near as hot as Arthur had feared. It was just like the steam in the bathroom after a shower. “Much faster!”
Arthur tried to comply. The wobble got even worse and Arthur realized he was expending as much energy throwing himself from side to side to try to regain his balance as he was running along the wire.
“Faster! The spiderwire unravels!” called out the Will just as Arthur spotted the island up ahead. It was about two hundred yards away. The bubbling waters were only ten or twenty yards below, the steam was much hotter, and the red glow of deeply submerged lava brighter. Arthur was unpleasantly reminded of Suzy telling him the few ways it was possible to be killed in the House.
Fire, if it’s hot enough.
Superheated water probably fell into the same category.
Arthur stopped that train of thought and focused all his energy into a sprint, but it was very difficult to pick up speed. He simply couldn’t go any faster without lifting his feet.
Fifty yards…forty yards…thirty…twenty…ten…five…
“We’re going to make it!” shouted Arthur as his feet finally left the spiderwire and he threw himself onto the cool green grass of the lawn that surrounded Monday’s Roman villa.
But when he turned around, Arthur nearly had a heart attack. Suzy had not only fallen back, she was hanging upside down!
Arthur sprang up and ran to the spiderwire. But when he put his right foot on it and tried to slide along, he slid off and almost fell off the island into the water.
“One-way wire,” said the Will. “Leave her. We must get on.”
“Stop!” shouted Arthur. “What’s wrong with you anyway? She’s my friend!”
“Even friends must be sacrificed for the goal—” the Will began.
But Arthur wasn’t listening. He undid the handkerchief around his sleeve and pulled out the Key.
“Hurry!” he shouted to Suzy and then said to the Will, “How long before the spiderwire unravels?”
“It is already withdrawing from the far anchor,” said the Will. Arthur looked down and saw the little frog staring across the lake into the clouds of steam. “At the current rate of unraveling and the speed of Suzy Blue, she will fall into the water in ten seconds.”
Arthur touched the Key to the spiderwire and commanded it fiercely.
“Stop! Do not unravel!”
The Key glowed a little brighter for a second, but Arthur couldn’t see any difference.
“That was foolish,” complained the Will. “Using the Key may alert Mister Monday—”
“I said to stop!” snapped Arthur. Then, contradicting himself, he added, “Did it work? Will it stay up?”
The Will didn’t answer for a second. Then it said mulishly, “It has slowed. The spiderwire was made with the Greater Key and is governed by the schedule laid upon it then. But it has slowed.”
Arthur stood back and waved frantically at Suzy, willing her on. She was flapping her wings furiously and was almost upright again.
“Faster!” he screamed. “Go faster!”
Suzy hurled herself forward, her wings beating up a storm. She got closer and closer and Arthur could see the tension and fear in her face. He found himself gripping the Key so tightly that it almost cut him again and left a livid line down his palm.
Closer, closer…
Twenty feet from the island, the wire snapped out from under Suzy’s feet. She screamed and flapped with all her might. At the same time, a huge bubble formed in the lake beneath her and Arthur remembered the other danger. Gouts of steam specifically designed to hit free-fliers.
The bubble expanded as Suzy flew. Arthur held his breath. Three seconds. The bubble hadn’t burst; Suzy was almost at the island. He suddenly remembered the Key in his hand and pointed it at the bubble—
It burst, sending a great jet of steam straight up like a geyser. Arthur staggered back.
Too slow! Too slow!
he thought.
Suzy’s been blown to pieces
—
Then she crashed into him and they both rolled across the lawn.
“That was close,” said Suzy as they extricated themselves and stood up. “I reckon my shoulders ’ave been pulled up to my ears.”
“What were you doing?” yelled Arthur.
“Sorry. I got tired of waiting for you to get out of the way. So I thought I could run along upside down. Only I couldn’t get my wings to work properly the wrong way around—”
“Forget it,” said Arthur.
Concentrate on what has to be done.
“Sorry I yelled.”
He looked across at the villa. Its windows were shuttered, but he could see a door. An unassuming back door of unfinished wood. “I guess we go in there.”
“Indeed,” said the Will. “Before we enter, I should alert you that it may be a little confusing inside. I believe Monday has had the entire interior converted to steam rooms and bathing pools, and it is much larger in than it is out. Obviously, Arthur, you must find Monday and speak the incantation. I…ahem…
we
shall assist as best we can.”
“Let’s do it,” said Arthur. He hefted the Key in his hand, ran over the incantations and procedure for joining the Keys, and headed for the door.
Ten paces away, he stopped. There was a deep ditch in front of the door. A dry moat really, about six feet deep and six feet wide. Not much of an obstacle. Except that it was knee-deep in writhing, undulating, coiling, hissing snakes. And not just ordinary-looking snakes. These were patterned in yellow-and-red flames that flowed from their flat heads to their pointy tails, and their eyes were shiny and blue, as bright as sapphires.
“Bibliophages!” exclaimed the Will, its voice alive with panic. “Step back! Step back!”
Arthur needed no encouragement. He stepped back as the snakes flung themselves at the side of the ditch and tried to get out. He was relieved to see that they couldn’t.
“What’s a bibliophage?” asked Arthur nervously.
“They are creatures of Nothing,” said the Will slowly. “Book eaters. A type of Nithling. They spit a poison that dissolves any writing or type into Nothing. They should not be here. Monday has gone beyond the limits of…of anything!”
“Will they spit on us if we don’t have any writing or type?” asked Arthur.
“No,” said the Will. “But I am entirely composed of type! I cannot cross!”
“Which is what Monday had in mind, I reckon,” said Suzy. “How’s the plan looking now?”
“It remains as discussed,” said the Will, rallying quickly. “Arthur, you must cross without me. But first you must be sure you have no writing or type of any kind upon you. Labels in clothing. Notes. The bibliophages will detect even a single letter and will spit. Their poison will dissolve you if they do, and all will be lost.”
“And we’ll be dead,” added Suzy.
Five minutes later, they were ready. Arthur had to tear labels off all his own clothing. There were some handwritten laundry letters marked in Suzy’s clothes, but she just discarded them and was still left wearing three shirts, breeches, two pairs of stockings, and her boots.
It wasn’t so easy for Arthur. Every item of his regular clothing had multiple labels or printing on the cloth. He even had to tear the waistband out of his underwear, but he was past embarrassment. He was glad he didn’t have a tattoo or the habit of writing on his hands with ink.
“You are certain you have no words upon you, no writing?” asked the Will. It had jumped down to sit on top of the discarded clothing. “Not even a single letter? What is that upon your wrist?”
Arthur looked at his watch and gulped as he realized the brand name on the face was type and would attract bibliophage spit.
“Nothing else?” asked the Will again, and they all checked their pockets. Then Arthur glanced down at his jeans and said, “Uh-oh. There are letters on my zip.”
Now he was embarrassed as he worked to break off the zipper tag. But then he saw that there was writing down the inside of the zipper as well.
“This isn’t going to work,” he said slowly. “Uh, I’m going to have to get rid of all my own clothes and just wear the stuff from the Antechamber.”
Arthur turned his back, quickly stripped off, then put on the long shirt the Lieutenant Keeper of the Front Door had given him, which was long enough to be like a nightshirt, then his coat. Still, it felt pretty weird and exposed, even with everything buttoned up. He hoped there weren’t any Marilyn Monroe-style wind gusts around.
“May you be successful,” said the Will. “Let the Will be done.”
Arthur nodded. The frog stood on his hind legs and bowed. Suzy gave a rough curtsy back. Arthur nodded, then felt that wasn’t enough and gave a kind of salute.
Then he led the way to the ditch and stared down at the bibliophages. There were thousands of them. Snakes. Every one at least four feet long. Arthur felt his mouth drying up as he watched them writhe and coil around one another. He and Suzy would have to literally wade through this mass of snakes. He hadn’t even asked if they bit as well as spat.
And he didn’t have any underwear on.
For some reason that brought a faint, almost hysterical chuckle to his mouth. He couldn’t believe he was in this situation. He was supposed to be some sort of hero, going up against Mister Monday, and here he was without any pants on, worrying about being bitten somewhere very unpleasant by Nithling snakes. Surely no real hero would end up in this predicament.
“No time like the present,” he said, and lowered himself over the side.