‘I didn’t mean my head was actually going to explode,’ said Arthur. ‘So you can put that drill away. I meant that I have too much to do, too much information to deal with. Too many problems!’
‘Perhaps I can assist in some other fashion?’ asked Scamandros as he stowed his tools away.
‘No,’ sighed Arthur. ‘Wait here. I’m going to talk to the Old One.’
‘Um, Lord Arthur, I trust that I can move a little in that direction?’ Scamandros pointed at a pile of coal a few yards away and added, ‘As I observe that the front half of yonder pyramid has ceased to exist...’
‘Of course you can move!’ snapped Arthur. He felt a peculiar rage rising in him, something he’d never felt before, an irritation at having to deal with lesser Denizens and inferior beings. For a moment he even felt like striking Scamandros, or forcing the Denizen to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness.
Then the feeling was past, replaced by a deep sense of mortification and shame. Arthur liked Scamandros and he did not like the way he had just felt toward the sorcerer, the proud anger that had fizzed up inside him, like a shaken bottle of soda ready to explode. He stopped and took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was just a boy who had a very tough job to do, and that he would need all the help he could get, from willing friends, not fearful servants.
I’m not going to become like one of the Trustees, thought Arthur firmly. At the back of his head, another little thought lay under that. Or like Dame Primus...
‘Sorry, I’m sorry, Doctor Scamandros. I didn’t mean to shout. I just... I’m a bit... um... anyway, do whatever you need to do to keep away from the Nothing. We’ll get out of here soon.’
Dr Scamandros bowed low as Arthur walked away, and another baseball-sized grenade fell out of an inner pocket and immediately began to smoke. The Denizen tut-tutted, pinched the burning fuse out, and slipped it up his sleeve, which did not look like a secure place for it to go. However, it did not immediately fall out.
Arthur walked on, weaving between the pyramids of coal and splashing through the puddles of dirty coaldust-tainted water. He remembered that he had been very cold when he’d last visited the Deep Coal Cellar, but it felt quite pleasant now to him, almost warm. Perhaps a side effect of the Nothing that now surrounded the place, he thought.
There were other changes too. As he drew closer to the blue illumination spread by the clock, Arthur noticed that many of the pyramids now sprouted flowers. Climbing roses twined up through the coal, and, between the puddles, there were clumps of bluebells.
The bluebells spread as the ground climbed a little higher and got drier, the flowers now growing out of stone slates rather than a bed of coaldust, which was equally impossible but did not bother Arthur. He was fairly used to the House. Flowers growing out of coal and stone were far from the strangest things he had seen.
At the last pyramid, he stopped, as he had done all that time ago, when he had first cautiously approached the Old One’s prison. The shimmering blue light was less annoying than it had been then, and he could see more clearly this time, even without calling on the Fifth Key to shed some kinder illumination.
Arthur saw a markedly different landscape from what it had been. Between him and the clock-prison was a solid carpet of bluebells, interspersed with clumps of tall yellow-green stalks that burst out at the top in profuse pale white flowers that were shaped a little like very elongated daffodils, but at the same time looked too alien to have come from the earth he knew.
The raised circular platform of stone, the clock face, was significantly smaller, as if it had been shrunk. It had been at least sixty feet in diameter, the length of the driveway at Arthur’s own home. Now it was half that, and the Roman numerals that had stood upright around the rim were smaller and tarnished, much of their blue glow gone. Some of them were bent over at forty-five degrees or more, and the numbers and most of the rim were wreathed in climbing red and pink roses.
The metal hands had shrunk with the clock face, to remain in proportion. Long, shining blue-steel chains still ran from the ends of the hands back through the central pivot, fastened at the other end to the manacles locked on the wrists of the Old One.
The Old One himself was not as Arthur had last seen him. He still looked like a giant barbarian hero, eight feet tall and heavily muscled, but his formerly old, almost-translucent skin was now sun-dark and supple. His once-stubbled head now sported a fine crop of clean white hair that was tied back behind his neck. He no longer wore just a loincloth, but had on a sleeveless leather jerkin and a pair of scarlet leggings that came down to just below his knees.
Where he once looked like a fallen, fading ancient of eighty or ninety, the Old One now looked like a super-fit sixty-year-old hero who could easily take on and defeat any number of lesser, younger foes.
The giant was sitting on the rim of the clock between the numbers three and four, slowly plucking the petals from a rose. He was half-turned away from Arthur, so the boy couldn’t see the Old One’s eyes – or, if it was soon after they had been torn from their sockets by the puppets within the clock, the empty, oozing sockets.
Thinking that was something he definitely did not want to see, Arthur craned his neck to check the position of the clock hands. The hour hand was at nine, and the minute hand at five, which relieved him on three counts. The Old One’s eyes would have had plenty of time to grow back and his chains would be fairly tight, keeping him close to the clock. Perhaps most important, it also meant the torturer puppets would not be emerging for several hours.
Arthur stepped out and crossed the field of bluebells. Chains rattled as he approached, and the Old One stood to watch him. Arthur stopped thirty or forty feet from the clock. While the face had shrunk, he couldn’t be sure the chains had as well, so he erred on the side of caution.
‘Greetings, Old One!’ he called.
‘Greetings, boy,’ rumbled the Old One. ‘Or perhaps I can call you boy no longer. Arthur is your name, is it not?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come sit with me. We will drink wine and talk.’
‘Do you promise you won’t hurt me?’ asked Arthur.
‘You will be safe from all harm for the space of a quarter hour, as measured by this clock,’ replied the Old One. ‘You are mortal enough that I would not slay you like a wandering cockroach – or a Denizen of the House.’
‘Thanks,’ said Arthur. ‘I think.’
He approached cautiously, but the Old One sat down again and, doubling over his chain, swept a space next to him clear of the thorny roses, to make a seat for Arthur.
Arthur perched gingerly next to him.
‘Wine,’ said the Old One, holding out his hand.
A small stoneware jug flew up out of the ground without parting the bluebells. He caught it and tipped it up above his mouth, pouring out a long draught of resin-scented wine. Arthur could smell it very strongly and once again, it made him feel slightly ill.
‘You called the wine with a poem last time,’ Arthur said hesitantly. He was thinking of the questions he wanted to ask, and wasn’t sure how to start.
‘It is the power of my will that shapes Nothing,’ replied the Old One. ‘It is true that many lesser beings need to sharpen their thoughts with speech or song when they deal with Nothing. I do not need to do so, though on occasion it may amuse me to essay some rhyme or poesy.’
‘I wanted to ask you some questions,’ said Arthur. ‘And to tell you something.’
‘Ask away,’ said the Old One. ‘I shall answer if I choose. As for the telling, if I do not like what I hear, it shall not make me stray from my promise. Whatever your speech, you may still have safe passage hence. If you do not overstay your allotted time.’
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and proffered the jug. Arthur quickly shook his head, so the ancient drank again.