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 realised 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.
Twenty-four
THE SNAKES WERE unpleasantly warm, almost hot against Arthur’s bare legs and feet. He flinched as he lowered himself completely into the writhing mass, and they started to coil around his calves. Their scales, or whatever their skin was, was also raspy, like sandpaper, making the experience even worse.
Arthur tried not to think about it and began to wade across the trench to the sunken door. Bibliophages wound around his waist and were all around his legs and under his coat. Some of them started to hang off his arms as well, and one slithered up and around his neck. But even when they were wound quite tightly, they didn’t constrict, and so far they hadn’t bitten. Arthur supposed the Key would do something if they did. Or try to.
By the time he was halfway across, Arthur was simply covered in snakes. They were everywhere, even around his head, hanging down his face, and there had to be dozens of them around his legs. There were so many it was hard to walk, and Arthur stumbled a couple of times, allowing even more snakes the opportunity to climb on board.
‘Avert! Foul snakelings!’ cried out Suzy behind him. Arthur didn’t reply, as he was afraid a bibliophage would get in his mouth. He didn’t turn to look either. He would overbalance for sure, and he didn’t think he would be able to get up if he fell. Even though the bibliophages weren’t biting, the sheer weight of them would keep him down. He concentrated on pushing his way through.
At last he came to the door. A simple wooden door in the side of the trench, half-buried in bibliophages. It had a silver handle. Arthur tried to turn it, but it was locked. Shaking his arm to remove some bibliophages, he touched the handle with the Key and said, ‘Open!’
The door shivered. The handle turned of its own accord, and then the door slowly groaned inwards, letting out a blast of heat and the very unpleasant smell of rotten eggs. The bibliophages that had been piled against the door didn’t fall inside as Arthur expected. They stayed suspended, as if there was some invisible barrier as well as the door that kept them out.
If there was, it didn’t stop Arthur. Holding his nose against the smell, he stepped inside. As he did so, all the bibliophages fell off him like leaves from a tree suddenly struck by a high wind.
The inside of Monday’s lounge was not the interior of a Roman villa. It bore no resemblance to the building outside.
Arthur stood on a platform of old black-brown cast iron, an island in a sea of steam. Through the open diamond weave of the floor, he could see boiling mud about fifteen yards below. Dark yellow mud that bubbled and popped like burning porridge, sending up wafts of stinking steam.
An extremely narrow one-person bridge led out from the platform into the steamy interior. It was iron too and had the monogram MM cast into the diamond weave every few yards. Arthur couldn’t see where it led. There was too much steam, and the bridge was simply smothered in billowing clouds.
‘The stink of the match factory,’ said Suzy slowly. ‘I remember it. Father said it was the stench of the –’ ‘Sulfur dioxide,’ said Arthur quickly. ‘From the hot mud. Like in Yellowstone National Park. There’ll probably be geysers too.’
The words were barely out of Arthur’s mouth when a geyser fountained up nearby, spattering droplets of hot mud everywhere. Suzy folded her wings over her head to protect herself, and Arthur found the Key took the heat out of the mud that hit him.
‘Come on,’ said Arthur. He started along the iron walkway. But Suzy didn’t follow. Arthur didn’t notice at first, but after twenty yards or so, he turned back. Suzy was staring up into the clouds of steam.
‘There’s something up there,’ she said quietly, drawing her knife.
Arthur looked up just as a shadowy figure dipped out of the steaming clouds. Not Mister Monday, but someone shorter. Dressed in pink, with yellow wings that shed feathers as he hovered above them.
‘Pravuil!’
Arthur’s shout of recognition was answered by a crossbow bolt that whistled straight at him. Without conscious effort from its wielder, the Key struck the bolt out of the air, cutting it in two, the separate halves passing to either side of Arthur.
‘Nothing personal, sir!’ called out Pravuil, hidden in the steam above. ‘Simply a commercial priority. Now I must sound the alarm. Fare – arrgh!’
The clouds had parted for a moment, and Suzy had thrown her knife. It hit Pravuil in the left foot and stuck there, quivering. The Denizen dropped his small crossbow and hunched over to try to pull out the knife, his wings labouring.
Before Pravuil could do anything else, Suzy launched herself up at him.
‘Go on, Arthur!’ she yelled as she flew. Like a small bird attacking a larger one, she spun in circles around Pravuil’s head, kicking and scratching. He hit back, forgetting the knife. They flew higher as they fought, disappearing into the clouds completely.
Arthur craned his head and stood on tiptoe, looking up, the Key held ready. But all he could see were clouds of steam and a single pearly-white feather that came spiralling down. Arthur caught it and saw it was stained with blood. Red blood, not the blue blood of a Denizen.
Arthur stared at the feather. Then he opened his hand and let it fall. Suzy was gone. But her sacrifice would not be in vain. Even if she lost the aerial battle . . . or had lost it already . . . she had gained Arthur precious time. He would not waste it.
He held back his fear and ran along the bridge, into the swirling steam, the geysers, and the raining mud. He ran faster than he ever had, his footsteps ringing on the iron, until he pointed down with the Key and said, ‘Silence!’
The bridge went for a very long way, much farther than he expected. There were platforms every hundred yards or so, but apart from that, Arthur saw nothing but steam, boiling mud, and the occasional geyser that was close enough. He heard a lot more geysers than he saw, and boiling mud fell so often it was like rain, coating Arthur completely. The Key stopped it from doing him any harm, but every now and then he had to slow down to wipe it off his face.
As he ran, Arthur repeated the Will’s instructions over and over in his head. Beneath that there was an undercurrent in his head that thought the Will’s plan was all very well, but it was unlikely to work. He had to be prepared for anything.
Finally, the bridge changed. It widened a little and inclined down. Arthur slowed, peering ahead into the steam, the Key clutched hard in his hand, ready for action.
There was another platform ahead. A low, broad platform that must be only a foot or two above the mud. Someone was standing there next to a table. Arthur crouched down and crept closer, his heart hammering in his chest. Was this Mister Monday, awake and waiting for him?
The figure turned and Arthur’s heart seemed to stop in his chest. He took a breath and opened his mouth to start the incantation. But he didn’t speak it, because the steam eddied apart and he saw who it was.
Sneezer. Mister Monday’s butler. He looked exactly the same as he had back in Arthur’s world, with one very noticeable change. His left wrist was chained to a table leg, which Arthur saw was also cast iron. It was an extremely long chain, coiled up under the table. On top of the table was a silver tray, a methylated spirit burner, two bottles of cognac or whisky or something similar, a saucepan, and a large decanter of colourless fluid, probably water.
Sneezer was mumbling to himself and fiddling with his fingerless gloves. As Arthur watched, he turned around, and the boy saw that his coat and shirt were cut into strips on the back. There were ugly red weals on the jaundiced-looking skin beneath. Given that all House Denizens healed quickly, Arthur knew that no ordinary whip could have inflicted those wounds.
Arthur thought about that. He had to get past Sneezer without the butler giving the alarm. Mister Monday probably wasn’t far away. There were steps down from the platform to yet another lower bridge, at the level of the mud. Monday could well be only yards away, concealed by the steam.