by Garth Nix
Arthur lay there, stunned and wheezing.
I have to get up. I have to get up and get away. I have to – Before he could get up, Grim Tuesday stood above him. This time he raised his left hand and made a claw.
Arthur covered his eyes with his arm and cried out.
I hope it’s quick. I hope Dad and Mum will be okay and they keep the house and everything. I hope Michaeli gets to university. The plague had better not come back. Suzy should run right now, she might make it. If Nothing bursts out, everyone will die anyway. The Will should do what it’s supposed to do. I tried my best. I tried to do the right thing and sometimes evil does win anyway no matter what you do . . .
‘Before I extract your heart and gild it for my . . . depleted store of treasures,’ Grim Tuesday said, ‘I want you to give me the Atlas. Take it from your pocket and hand it to me.’
Arthur moved his arm and opened his eyes. His mind was racing furiously again, but his thoughts were more concentrated.
‘No,’ he said.
The Atlas must be like the Key. Grim Tuesday can’t take it, even from my dead body. It has to be given freely.
‘Give it to me,’ Grim Tuesday ordered, without inflection. He might not have even heard Arthur. He clawed the air with his hand, and Arthur felt his heart stabbed all around by a thousand needles.
‘No, I won’t.’ Arthur raised his voice and half-shouted and half-sobbed out, ‘Will! I call upon you as the Bearer of the Atlas and the Rightful Heir to do your . . . do your job. Just do . . . do what you’re supposed to do . . .’ he finished in a whisper.
‘Give me the Atlas!’ roared Grim Tuesday. ‘Why am I thwarted at every turn?!’
‘Cos you’re a rotten bastard,’ said Suzy as she popped out from the hedge and swung a large paving stone at the back of his head. But she would have done better not to speak. Grim Tuesday spun like a top, a blur of motion, and smashed the stone to powder with his fist. Suzy was also caught by the blow, flying through the air to smack into a palm tree. She struck with enough force to snap its trunk, and fell down with it.
‘Now, Penhaligon, the Atlas!’
‘No,’ whispered Arthur. ‘You give me the Key.’
‘You shall know pain,’ threatened the Grim. ‘Unspeakable pain, until you give me the Atlas.’
‘Ahem!’
Grim Tuesday looked surprised by the interruption. He glanced around at normal head height, but it wasn’t until the second ‘ahem!’ that he saw the Will near his feet. His eyes narrowed and he clenched his fists.
‘What?!’ Grim Tuesday raged. ‘You, here! I shall soon fix that!’
‘I think not,’ said the Will, and for once Arthur was glad to hear its stuffy, self-satisfied tone. ‘You tricked me once, but not again. And I have taken the precaution of enlisting assistance.’
The bushes parted and Tom strode out, his harpoon in his hand. He nodded curtly at Grim Tuesday and reached down to help Arthur up.
‘You are bound to me, Captain,’ snarled Grim Tuesday, raising both his hands. ‘By the power of the Second Key –’
‘Which I now officially place in dispute,’ announced the Will. ‘I revoke your status of Trustee, pending further inquiry.’
Grim Tuesday shook his head. ‘You cannot. I will not allow it! I do not allow anyone to take things away from me!What is mine is mine forever.’
‘Your sooty old eyebrow proved that one wrong when it ate up a bunch of stuff,’ said Suzy, staggering over. Her nose was bleeding but otherwise she seemed to be all right. Grim Tuesday took a step towards her and raised his hand, but did not persist when Tom made a slight motion with his harpoon.
‘Your wishes are immaterial, Lord Tuesday,’ declared the Will. ‘I have spoken. While I am not ready to pronounce on the matter of a Rightful Heir, it is clear that you cannot continue to wield the power of the Second Key.’
‘You must allow it,’ said Grim Tuesday with cold satisfaction. He pointed at the bursting rockets up in the smoggy regions. ‘Those are distress signals from the depths of my Pit. The bells confirm it, as will the screams of my former workers. Nothing is breaking out. Only I can stem it, and I must have the power of the Key to do so. But I know when to cut my losses. You may all leave my domain. I shall not prevent you.’
‘The outbreak of Nothing is not my concern,’ continued the Will. ‘I shall establish an inquiry into the Rightful Heir, and once I have examined all the relevant documents and heard from material witnesses, whoever is granted the Second Key, whether it is returned to your trust or not, shall deal with the Nothing. We must not be too hasty. Prudence is a virtue, as I always say.’
This speech was somewhat lost as everyone else was staring up at the distress rockets and the gobbets of Nothing that were already beginning to fall down upon the pyramid, despite the cleansing winds.
‘There’s no time for an inquiry,’ said Tom. ‘Declare Arthur the heir. He must go down and repel the Nothing. Grim Tuesday’s day is done.’
The sun bear sighed and seemed about to launch into another speech when a particularly large gobbet plummeted onto the glass a few hundred feet above. It ran down the side and joined several other gobbets, which writhed and coiled together until they became a Nithling. A large Nithling, with a sort of human head and torso upon a cricket’s body, all of it covered in stiff, rodlike red hair. It fiddled its back legs together, then set about punching holes in the glass with the spikes on its elbows.
‘One here, a thousand down below,’ said Grim Tuesday. ‘And raw Nothing everywhere, eating away at the foundations of this House. Confirm me in my power, Most Excellent Testament, and I shall secure those foundations as I have always done.’
‘You dug into them for your own greedy purposes, using Denizens as slaves!’ Arthur pointed out with indignation. He took a deep breath, the deepest he’d ever managed, and looked down at theWill. ‘I don’t want to be the Heir,’ he continued. ‘I don’t want the Second Key. I really don’t want to go and deal with the Nothing. But I have to, because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Dame Primus picked me, I had to do the right thing – and I have to try to keep on doing it. You don’t want to confirm me as the Heir, but I think you have to do the right thing too, so I can at least attempt to put things right.’
‘I don’t want to make a mistake,’ said the Will softly. ‘Better not to make a decision than to make a mistake.’
‘The whole House is going to fall down if you don’t make a decision!’ Arthur argued. ‘Everything the Architect made will return to Nothing. You have to choose me . . . or Grim Tuesday, and Grim Tuesday has already gone against the Architect’sWill.’
The Nithling above stopped making holes and started punching the side of the pyramid. The glass didn’t shatter, but cracks began to appear.
TheWill stood up on its hind legs. The sun blaze upon its chest grew brighter and brighter, and its fur became less furlike and more full of words. It grew larger, the words spreading out, weaving a larger body. It changed shape, continuing to grow, though it still remained a bear.
‘I will be strong,’ it said. The blaze on its chest turned black and the words that made it up darkened and became furlike once more. It now stood almost as tall as Grim Tuesday, and was twice his bulk. No longer a sun bear, but an imperial grizzly of forbidding aspect. ‘I will stand by my decision with tooth and claw. I am the Second Part of the Will of the Architect, and I say the Second Key must be –’
Just then, a huge square of glass exploded, and the half-insect Nithling leaped down with a chittering scream.
TWENTY
HUGE SHARDS OF GLASS came falling down, shining in the artificial sunlight from the panels in the ceiling high above. The Nithling fell between the shards, screaming its strange insectoid scream.
For an instant, everyone stood still, staring up. Then Arthur dived under the stone bench just as Suzy dived from the opposite direction. TheWill grabbed a palm tree and uprooted it, holding it over its head like an umbrella.
Grim Tuesday stood his ground, raised his hands, and shouted . . . but nothing happened. His mouth gaped in surprise, for he had forgotten that theWill had revoked his power over the Second Key.
Tom spun his harpoon above his head and shouted a word in the strange rasping language he used for his magic. Arthur and Suzy clapped their hands over their ears, but it was no good. The pain struck them, eating into their jawbones as the harpoon shone with its arctic glow. The light caught the falling glass, and suddenly it wasn’t glass anymore, but a great wave of freezing seawater.
The wave crashed down, sweeping Arthur and Suzy out from under the bench. It carried them about ten yards away, depositing them all tossed together against a stand of trees.
Both Grim Tuesday and Tom had managed to stand against the wave. Now they faced the Nithling, which jumped at Tuesday, gripping his jerkin with its spiky insectoid legs as it raised its elbows to spike into his head.
Tom raised his harpoon, but could not strike without spearing Grim Tuesday as well. But his intervention was not needed. Even without the power of the Second Key, Grim Tuesday was a mighty Denizen. He gripped the Nithling’s arms and with a sound like a lobster being cracked open, he split the thing completely in half. He threw the remains into an ornamental pool, where the thing’s Nothing-rich blood bubbled away.
Grim Tuesday snorted, bent down, and wiped his gauntlets clean on the grass. Arthur and Suzy straightened themselves out, and theWill thrust its tree umbrella back into the ground.
‘As I was saying,’ it boomed, ‘the Second Key will go to the winner of an appropriate contest, the two contestants being Arthur Penhaligon and Grim Tuesday.’
‘What?!’ exclaimed Arthur. He looked up at the mass of gobbets floating around above the pyramid and the distant flare of the distress rockets coming out of the Pit. ‘We haven’t got time –’
‘I am ready for any competition,’ declared Grim Tuesday, clapping his gloves together. They sounded like crashing cymbals and didn’t do anything for Arthur’s confidence. ‘What is it to be? Mortal combat?’
‘Naturally not,’ said the Will. ‘In keeping with the powers of the Second Key, it shall be a contest of making. In light of the urgency of the Nothing situation, it shall be an expedited competition. Each of you shall be allowed three minutes with the Second Key to create a work of art. The creator of the greater work will win the competition and be declared either the Trustee or the Rightful Heir to the SecondKey and shall assume theMastery of the FarReaches.’
‘But I’ve never even used the Second Key!’ protested Arthur.
‘Wot a swizzle!’ said Suzy. ‘I’ve played fairer games of Uncle Jack.’
‘I have made my decision!’ roared the Will. Arthur opened his mouth to protest again, but didn’t. As a huge grizzly, the Will was considerably harder to take lightly. ‘All that remains is to appoint a judge. Naturally it must be someone of appropriate rank –’
He was interrupted by another fall of Nithlings. Three things that looked like a cross between a lizard and a monkey came sliding down the pyramid and fell through the gaping hole.
Tom’s harpoon leaped into the air with its crackling noise and impaled all three Nithlings, transforming them into harmless puffs of dark vapour. Arthur and Suzy clenched their teeth, but the effect of the harpoon wasn’t so severe when it struck at a distance.
‘The appropriate rank and power,’ continued theWill crossly. ‘One of the other Days would be suitable if it were not for the fact –’
‘They’re a bunch of traitors,’ whispered Suzy.
‘Hurry up!’ Arthur and Grim Tuesday implored together. They glared at each other as they spoke. Arthur did not drop his eyes, though it took all his willpower to meet Grim Tuesday’s angry stare.
‘Quiet!’ bellowed theWill. ‘To cut straight to the heart of the matter, the contest will be judged by the Mariner. Who wants to go first?’
‘I will go first,’ declared Grim Tuesday. ‘But only if you will restore my right to the Key’s powers.’
‘For three minutes,’ the Will conceded. ‘No more. Captain, stand ready for any trickery.’
Arthur was not even mildly surprised to see the grizzly bear pull a large pocket watch out of its nonexistent waistcoat. The Will fiddled with one of the several knobs on the watch, then raised one hairy paw and waved at Grim Tuesday.
‘Begin!’
Grim Tuesday smiled and raised his hands. Arthur and Suzy flinched, but Tom did not seem perturbed.
The Trustee muttered something under his breath. Arthur tried to hear what he said, in case it was some secret to using the Key. Which, he now guessed, must be one of the strange silvered metal gloves that Tuesday wore. Or maybe both gloves, in the same way that the First Key had been a minute hand and hour hand, which united together as a sword.
A gobbet of Nothing came hurtling down through the hole in the pyramid, summoned down by Grim Tuesday. He caught it easily and held it in both hands, in front of his face. He directed his gaze upon it, and the Nothing lost its darkness and began to shine. Grim Tuesday started to shuffle his hands around the shining ball, still muttering.
It shone brighter and brighter as the Grim moved his hands in short, sharp gestures. He kept talking under his breath, but Arthur couldn’t hear him. Even with his star-hood still on, he couldn’t look directly at whatever Tuesday was doing to the gobbet.
TheWill’s watch chimed, three falling notes.
‘Time!’ called the grizzly.
Grim Tuesday grasped the dazzling object he’d made and lowered it to the park bench. The light slowly faded to reveal a fourteen-inch-high tree made of precious metals. Its trunk and branches were platinum shot with gold, and its thousand leaves were beaten gold, veined with silver. The leaves caught the breeze coming down through the hole in the pyramid and made a sound like a windswept xylophone.
It was the most beautiful object Arthur had ever seen. But only a fleeting smile of satisfaction passed over Grim Tuesday’s face.
‘Arthur can do better than that standing on ’is head,’ said Suzy, but her heart wasn’t in it.
‘Give Arthur the Second Key,’ instructed theWill.
Grim Tuesday scowled and slowly stripped off the silver gauntlets. When they were off, he held them for several seconds before reluctantly handing them to Arthur.
As Arthur took the gauntlets, two yellow envelopes materialised in the air above them. Grim Tuesday snatched them out of the air. He grunted as he read the address on the first one and threw it at Arthur’s feet. The second one he ripped open and read quickly. Then he turned to theWill.
‘Yan warns that the whole eastern buttress of the lower Pit is leaking Nothing,’ Grim Tuesday reported. ‘It will fail within the hour if I am not there to repair it! End this ridiculous contest now and return the Key to me!’
Arthur put the surprisingly light gauntlets under his arm and picked up the other telegram, which was addressed to him asMaster of the Lower House. He opened it and read:
ARTHUR SHOW WILL ATLAS HELP
COMING HOLD ON BE BRAVE DAME
PRIMUS
‘The competition has begun and it must finish,’ the Will was saying as Arthur read the telegram. ‘Arthur, you must begin immediately.’
Arthur handed the telegram to Suzy and put on the gauntlets. While they appeared to be made out of flexible silver metal bound with gold, they didn’t feel cold or metallic. In fact, they were soft and warm and felt very comfortable. Arthur found himself standing straighter once they were on, and he felt more confident.
I bet the Second Key works just like the First Key or the Atlas, he thought. I just have to think what I want them to do and say it aloud. That’s why Grim Tuesday was muttering –
‘Begin!’
‘Get me a gobbet of Nothing!’ called out Arthur as he raised his hands and looked up to the broken pane of the pyramid.
‘A small gobbet!’ he hastily added as he saw several huge gobbets head towards him.
Th
ey swerved aside, and a football-sized gobbet of Nothing came sailing down through the hole. Arthur raised his hands to catch it, fighting down his apprehension and all thoughts of what might happen if he fumbled and it landed on his unprotected face.
He didn’t fumble the catch. Once he had the gobbet firmly in his grasp, he went to work. He’d already thought of what he would make, ironically inspired by the sound of Grim Tuesday’s precious-metal tree.
Arthur knew he had no hope of matching Grim Tuesday’s artistry with a sculpture or a painting or anything like that. But what he intended to do might not work either. It all depended on what criteria Tom was judging the results on.
‘My xylophone,’ he muttered to himself, as he pictured it in his head. ‘The one Dad and Mum gave me for my sixth birthday, that Dad borrowed all the time. With wooden bars on a metal frame, and two mallets.’
He tried to stretch and shape the gobbet with his gauntlets as he focused his mind on remembering the xylophone. It was hard to tell if it was working, but the gobbet was shining, though not as much as it had for Grim Tuesday. Or perhaps it was, Arthur saw, as he took a swift look at everyone else shielding their eyes.
But I can only spend a minute getting this xylophone, Arthur thought desperately. How do I know when it’s ready?
His fingers twitched without Arthur meaning them to.
Was that a sign from the Key?
Arthur’s fingers twitched again. Taking the second twitch as a definite sign, Arthur gently put the glowing former gobbet onto the ground and stepped back. The glow faded, and there on the grass was Arthur’s xylophone, with its two mallets.
‘Is that it?’ asked Suzy.
In answer, Arthur clumsily knelt down and picked up the mallets. He took a deep breath, something he wasn’t able to do the last time he played, and immediately started the tune that he’d spent two years composing, from when he was eight to almost ten. It was his thank-you song, composed for Bob and Emily, to express his gratitude for them adopting him. It started off sad and slow and quiet, and got happy and loud.
