Read Online Superior Saturday by Garth Nix - Free Book Online

well. They were seeing what Marson had seen. The Denizen was looking out through the door of his elevator, his finger ready to press one of the bronze buttons that would take it up. Beyond the door, there was a rubble-strewn plain, lit here and there by an oil lamp hanging from an iron post. Some fifty yards away, a group of Denizens had gathered at the base of a great wall, a vast expanse of light grey concrete that had rods of shimmering iron protruding from it at regular intervals.
    ‘Hey, that’s the part I fixed up!’ exclaimed Arthur. ‘With Immaterial-reinforced concrete.’
    The Denizens were looking at something. All of a sudden they backed away, and one of them turned to call to someone out of sight.
    ‘Sir! There’s some sort of curious drill here! It’s boring a hole all by itself! It’s—’
    Her words were cut off by a sudden, silent spray of Nothing that jetted out of the base of the wall. All the Denizens were cut down by it, instantly dissolved. Then more Nothing spewed out, and there was a terrible rumbling sound. Cracks suddenly ran from the ground up through the wall, cracks that began to bubble with dark Nothing.
    A bell began to clang insistently and a steam whistle sounded a frantic scream.
    Marson’s finger jabbed a button. The doors began to close, even as a rolling wave of Nothing came straight at the elevator. His voice came through, loud and strange, heard through his own ears.
    ‘No, no, no!’
    He kept jabbing buttons. The doors shut and the elevator rocketed upward. Marson’s fingers fumbled in his coat pocket, withdrawing a key that he used to quickly open a small hatch under the button panel. Inside was a
    red handle marked emergency rise. Marson pulled it, a silk thread and wax seal snapping. The elevator gained speed, and he fell to his knees, but even the emergency rise was not fast enough. The floor of the elevator suddenly became as holed as a piece of Swiss cheese, blots of darkness eating it away. Marson leaped up and grabbed the chandelier in the ceiling, hauling himself up even as the lower half of the elevator disappeared. He was screaming and shrieking now, looking down at himself, where his legs had just ceased to exist –
    ‘Stop!’ said Arthur. ‘We’ve seen enough.’
    Scamandros snapped his fingers. The light from Marson’s eyes faded. As the sorcerer bent down and removed the matchsticks, the disembodied head spoke.
    ‘That weren’t so bad.’
    ‘Thank you, Marson,’ said Arthur. He looked at Dame Primus. ‘I am sure you will be well looked after.’
    ‘As you see, Lord Arthur,’ said Dame Primus, ‘some kind of sabotage device of considerable power was used to breach the dam wall. It is likely that many other devices were employed at the same time, because almost the entire length of the dam wall fell. This allowed entry to a titanic surge of Nothing, which annihilated the Far Reaches in four or five minutes.
    ‘Fortunately, the bulwark between the Far Reaches and the Lower House held for several hours, allowing enough time for the evacuation of important records and items, and a fair number of Denizens. Complete destruction of the Lower House followed, with the final remnants succumbing an hour ago. Nothing now presses directly against the lower bulwark of the Middle House.
    ‘In a possibly unrelated complication, when the Piper’s army withdrew, he covered his retreat with an explosion of Nothing that has weakened the barrier mountains here in the Great Maze, and, as always, there is Nothing leeching into the Border Sea. That is why we are both needed. We must use the power of the Keys to delay the destruction of the House.’
    ‘ Delay the destruction?’ asked Arthur. ‘Can’t we stop it?’
    ‘I doubt it. But we must hold off the Void long enough for you to claim the last two Keys. Then matters can be arranged in an orderly fashion.’
    ‘You mean that no matter what we do, the House—and the whole Universe beyond—is doomed?’