Lord Sunday
In this seventh and last book of THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM, the mysteries of the House, the Architect, the Trustees, the Keys and the Will are revealed, and the fate of Arthur, our Earth, and the entire Universe is finally decided.Arthur has wrested the Sixth Key from Superior Saturday, but has fallen from the Incomparable Gardens; fallen not to the Upper House but to somewhere completely unexpected. Alone in enemy territory, as his mind and body are further transformed by the power of the Keys, Arthur must struggle with himself as much as with his many enemies.Meanwhile, Arthur's friend Suzy Blue plots an escape from her prison in Saturday's tower, as battle rages above and below. Saturday's elite force is pressing on into the Incomparable Gardens, while her massed sorcerers fight a desperate rear-guard action against the Piper and his Newnith army.On earth, Leaf has to cope with the aftermath of a nuclear strike. Responsible for all the Sleepers in Friday's private hospital, she needs all the help she can get, particularly as Leaf herself has become a target for intruders from the House.And the tide of Nothing continues to rise, destroying everything in its path . . .
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Lord Sunday
Illustrated by tim Stevens
First published in the USA by Scholastic Inc 2010
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2010 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.ukwww.garthnix.co.uk
FIRST EDITION
Copyright © Garth Nix 2010
Illustrations by Tim Stevens 2010
Garth Nix asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
Source ISBN: 9780007175130
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2010 ISBN: 9780007367962
Version: 2019-01-10
To all my very patient readers, editors, family and friends; and to two writers of science fiction and fantasy who particularly inspired me to write this series and lit my path ahead. Thank you, Philip José Farmer and Roger Zelazny.
Table of Contents
Arthur fell.
The air rushed past him, stinging his eyes and ripping at his hair and clothes. He had already fallen through the hole made by Saturday’s assault ram, past the grasping roots and tendrils of the underside of the Incomparable Gardens. Now he was plummeting through the clouds, and a small part of him knew that if he didn’t do something really soon he was going to smash into Saturday’s tower and in all likelihood be so badly broken that even with his newly reshaped Denizen body he would die – or wish he was dead.
But Arthur didn’t do anything, at least not in those first few, vital seconds. He knew it was an illusion, but it felt like the wind was holding him up, rather than rushing past. In his left hand he held the small mirror that was the Fifth Key, and in his right he clutched the quill pen that was the Sixth Key, which he had wrested from Saturday and taken with him over the edge. Because of this, Arthur felt powerful, triumphant and not at all afraid.
He looked down at the tower below him and laughed – a deep, sarcastic laugh that was not at all like his normal laughter. He was about to laugh again when Part Six of the Will, in its raven form, caught up with him, its claws latching on to his hair and digging into his scalp.
“Wings!” croaked the raven urgently. It hung on to his head for a second, then lost its grip and spun off, calling out, “Fly! Fly!” as it tried desperately to keep up.
Instantly, Arthur lost his sense of euphoric invincibility and came back to his senses. He properly took in the speed of his descent for the first time and saw that he was going to hit the tower very, very soon.
This is all wrong, he thought. Where are my wings?!
He frantically searched his coat, even as he remembered that his grease monkey wings were still in the rain mantle that he’d exchanged for his current disguise as a Sorcerous Supernumerary – the disguise he’d used to infiltrate the assault ram…too successfully perhaps, for he’d gone with the ram when it broke through into the Incomparable Gardens. While he had then got close enough to Superior Saturday to claim the Sixth Key, he’d fallen back through the hole in the ceiling of the Upper House.
Now he was falling a very, very long way down.
Even starting from such a height, Arthur had fallen far faster than he’d thought possible. He was going to miss the actual peak, he saw, and crash into the main part, some fifteen levels below.
No wings, thought Arthur. No wings!
His mind halted in panic and all he could do was stare at the tower, tears streaming from his eyes because the wind was rushing by so fast. He found himself flapping his arms as if somehow that might help, and he was screaming, and then—
He crashed into a flying Internal Auditor, who screamed as well. Together they tumbled through the air, the Denizen’s wings thrashing wildly. Arthur tried to rip the wings from the Auditor, but he didn’t want to let go of the Fifth and Sixth Keys, so he couldn’t get a proper grip. He tried to transfer the Sixth Key so as to hold both Keys in his left hand, but in that vital moment the Denizen kicked free and dived away, his wings folded back.
