GARTH NIX
SUPERIOR SATURDAY
To all the patient readers and publishing folk who have been waiting for me to finish this book. And, as always, to Anna, Thomas and Edward, and all my friends and family.
First published in Australia in 2008
Copyright © Garth Nix 2008
Allen & Unwin
ISBN 9781741145908 (pbk.)
(Series : Nix, Garth, 1963– Keys to the kingdom; bk 6)
Printed in Australia by McPherson Printing Group
PROLOGUE
SATURDAY, SELF-STYLED Superior Sorcerer of the House, stood in her private viewing chamber at the very apex of her dominion, atop the tower that she had been building for almost ten thousand years. This clear crystal-walled room was always at the top, the builders lifting it higher and higher as new levels were slotted in below.
Saturday looked down through the rain-washed glass, at the multitude of fuzzy green spots of light below. It looked like the tower, thousands of feet high, had suffered a vast, vertical infestation of green glow-worms, but the spots of light actually came from the green-shaded lamps that sat on every desk in the Upper House, in exactly the same position, just as each desk was set exactly in the middle of an open cube of red wrought iron, with a grille floor and no ceiling.
These cubes – the basic building blocks of Saturday’s tower – ran on vertical and horizontal rails, ascending, descending, or moving sideways according to the merits of the Denizens who worked at the desks.
Each cube was dragged into place by a series of chains that were driven by mighty steam engines, deep below the tower. The actual work of building the rails and fuelling the engines was done by bronze automatons and a small number of luckless Denizens who had failed Saturday in some way. Even lower in status were the grease monkeys, Piper’s children who oiled and maintained the miles and miles of dangerous, fast-moving machinery.
Superior Saturday looked down upon her domain, but the sight of her mighty tower and the tens of thousands of sorcerers within it did not quicken her pulse. Eventually, though she fought against the urge, she stopped looking down and started looking up.
At first she saw only cloud, but then came a glimmer of green light, a darker, more mysterious green than the glow of her lamps. The clouds parted slightly to show the emerald ceiling of the Upper House, which was also the floor of the Incomparable Gardens. Saturday grimaced, an ugly look on her otherwise extraordinarily beautiful face. For ten thousand years she had been building her tower in order to reach and invade the Incomparable Gardens. Yet no matter how high she built, the Gardens moved farther away, and Lord Sunday taunted her by making sure she was the only one to see it. If any of her Denizens looked up, the clouds would close again.
Saturday curled her lip and looked away, but her new view offered no solace. Far off, on the edge of the Upper House, there was a dark vertical shadow that stretched from the ground to the clouds. Close up, it too would shine green, for it was a vast tree, one of the four Drasil trees that supported the Incomparable Gardens above.
The Drasil trees were the reason Saturday could never build her tower high enough, because the trees grew faster than she could build, and lifted the Gardens as they grew.
She had tried to destroy or stunt the Drasils with sorcery, poison and brute force, but none of her schemes had affected the trees in the slightest. She had sent Artful Loungers and Sorcerous Supernumeraries to climb the trunks and infiltrate the domain of Lord Sunday, but they had never made it further than halfway up, defeated by the huge defensive insects that lived in tunnels within the bark of the great trees. Even flying was out of the question. High above the clouds, the Drasils’ branches spread everywhere, and the trees’ limbs were predatory, vicious and very fast.
This had been the situation for millennia, with Saturday building, the Drasils growing, and Sunday remaining aloof and mighty above, secure in the Incomparable Gardens.
But all that had changed with a sneeze on the surface of a distant, dead star. The Architect’s Will had finally been released and had selected a Rightful Heir. Now that Heir was gathering the Keys from the disloyal Trustees. Arthur, his name was – a mortal whose success and speed had surprised not only Saturday.
Not that Arthur’s triumphs mattered too much to Saturday, given that she had been planning for the execution of the Will and the arrival of an Heir almost since the moment the Architect disappeared. She was not just a Trustee, with the power the Architect’s Key gave her; she was also an enormously powerful and learned sorcerer in her own right. Apart from the Old One and the Architect, she was the most ancient entity in the Universe. Therein lay the canker in her heart. She was the first Denizen the Architect had made, and she felt she should have been supreme over all others, including the Architect’s children (an experiment she had decried at the time). It was not Sunday who should dwell in the Incomparable Gardens, but Saturday. Everything she did was directed to remedying this injustice.
A muffled cough behind her recalled Saturday to present events. She turned, her cloak of starshine and moonshade billowing up around her shapely legs. Apart from the cloak, which was an ancient thing of sorcery, Saturday wore a robe of spun gold scattered with tiny sapphires, and high-heeled shoes that were made of steel and had vicious points. Her long electric-blue hair was loose on her shoulders and restrained at the brow by a gold circlet on which sorcerous words looped and writhed, spelt out in shifting diamonds.
‘I beg your pardon, Majesty,’ said a tall, impeccably dressed Denizen. He knelt as she turned around, his swallow-tailed coat falling on his impossibly shiny boot heels.
‘You are the candidate to be my new Dusk,’ said Saturday.
The Denizen bowed his head still lower, indicating agreement.
‘The former Dusk was your brother? Turned out of the same mould?’
‘Yes, Majesty, the elder of us by a moment.’
‘Good,’ said Saturday. ‘He served me well, and was at least partially successful in his last assignment, though he met his end. Has Noon acquainted you with all the matters at hand?’
‘I believe so, Majesty,’ said the new Saturday’s Dusk.
Saturday flicked a finger, and her Dusk stood up. Though he was easily seven feet tall, his mistress was at least a foot taller, even without her steel shoes. In any case, he kept his head bowed, not daring to look her in the eye.
‘Tell me, then,’ she said. ‘Do all my enterprises conjoin for the final victory?’
‘We believe so,’ said Dusk. ‘Though the House does not crumble as swiftly as was hoped at one time, it does fall, and our new offensive should accelerate matters. At present, our reports show that Nothing has impinged greatly into the Far Reaches and across large areas of the Border Sea and, though it is not related to our activities, there has been some considerable damage to the mountain defences of the Great Maze. It is now almost certainly beyond the power of Dame Primus, as the Will calls itself, and its cat’s paw, Arthur, to prevent the destruction.’
‘Good,’ said Saturday. ‘What of the effect upon the trees?’
‘As the Nothing spreads, the deeper roots of the Drasil are severed. This has already slowed their growth by some six per cent. However, they still lift the Gardens faster than we can build. Projections indicate that when the entirety of the Far Reaches and the Lower House have been devoured by the Nothing, we will be able to build faster than the trees can grow, and can reach the target position in days. If more of the House falls, it will be a matter of hours.’