The obvious way would be to take a few coals off each pyramid and set them down in a pattern. So whenever he came to a pyramid he would know if he’d been that way before.

Arthur sighed and went to the closest pyramid. He had just reached over to lift off a big chunk of coal from the top when someone sprang up from the other side, brandishing a weapon and squealing.

‘Ho! Stop! Unhand my coal, you ruffian!’

Fifteen

THOSE ARE MY COALS, villain!’ continued the man. Then he saw the Key in Arthur’s hand and in midbreath changed his tone, immediately lowering the strange metal implement he was brandishing. ‘Oh, not you, sir, whoever you may be. I am referring to someone else. There he goes!’

Puzzled, Arthur looked where the man pointed. But there was no one there.

‘I’ll just get back to work then, sir,’ added the man. He was dressed in the same basic toga-like robe that the elevator operator had been reduced to, though this one was black as the coal and very tattered. He was also short, a head shorter than Arthur, though he otherwise had the physique of a grown man.

‘Who are you?’ asked Arthur.

‘Coal-Collator Very Ordinary Tenth Grade,’ reported the man. ‘Number 9665785553 in precedence.’

‘I mean what’s your name?’

‘Oh, I haven’t got a name, not anymore. Very few of us down here have names, Your Excellency. Not what you would call names, no, sir. May I go now?’

‘Well, what was your name?’ asked Arthur. ‘And what were you before you were down here?’

‘That’s a cruel question, and no mistake,’ said the man. He wiped a tear from his eye. ‘But there’s the Key in your hand, so I must answer. I was called Pravuil, sir, Tenth Assistant Deputy Clerk of Stars. I counted suns in the Secondary Realms, I did, sir, and kept their records. Till I was asked to amend the paperwork pertaining to a certain sun. I . . . ah . . . refused and was cast from on high.’

‘I don’t want to . . . I don’t want to upset you,’ said Arthur. ‘But what do you do down here?’

‘I collate the coal into piles,’ explained Pravuil. He indicated the pyramids. ‘Then one of the Coal-Chippers comes and cuts the coals to size and puts them in a request basket, which takes them up to whoever ordered coal, probably so long ago they’ve forgotten what a fire is and become used to shivering.’

‘Baskets?’ asked Arthur. ‘What kind of baskets? How do they get taken up?’

‘I see your thinking, sir,’ replied Pravuil. ‘Escape, that’s what you’re thinking. Lax procedures. Someone you’ll want to punish. But it’s not so. The baskets are small and they come with active labels. The labels take them where they’re supposed to go. And if you’re thinking that a label might be detached and used to transport someone, you’d be wrong, as Bareneck would tell you if he can ever find his head down here.’

‘Bareneck?’

‘That’s what we call him. He took a label off a basket and tied it around his neck,’ said Pravuil with a sniff. ‘I told him it was stupid, but he wouldn’t listen. The label went up, but it didn’t take any of Bareneck with it. Cut clean through his neck it did, and the head rolled off somewhere and his body blundered around knocking coal all over the place. I expect he’ll find it eventually. His head, I mean. Or someone else will.’

Arthur shuddered and looked around, half expecting to see a headless man groping around in the darkness, forever searching for his head. Or even worse, the head lying buried somewhere here, with senses intact, but no way to communicate, immured under the coal.

‘I’m not investigating anything,’ said Arthur. ‘I have the Key, but I’m not an official of the House. Or a friend of Mister Monday. I’m a mortal, from outside.’

‘Whatever you say, sir,’ Pravuil said, with unveiled suspicion. Clearly he thought Arthur was trying to trick him into something. ‘I’ll be getting on with my work.’

‘Before you go, can you tell me . . . or show me . . . where the Old One is down here?’

Pravuil shivered and made a gesture with his hand.

‘Don’t go near him!’ he warned. ‘The Old One can finish you off permanent-like. Reduce you to Nothing, less than a Nithling, with no chance of coming back!’

‘I have to,’ said Arthur slowly. At least, he thought he had to. There didn’t seem to be any other way out of here.

‘That way,’ whispered Pravuil. He pointed. ‘The coal will not be ordered there. No one dare sweep around the Old One.’

‘Thank you,’ said Arthur. ‘I hope you are restored to your old position one day.’

Pravuil shrugged and resumed work. The strange implement he held, Arthur finally saw, was a kind of weird broom-and-pan combination that formed swept-up coal dust back into irregular pieces of coal, which Pravuil then stacked.

Arthur started in the direction that Pravuil had indicated. A few seconds after the light from the Key had left the Coal-Collator behind, his voice echoed out of the darkness.

‘Don’t stay past twelve!’

‘What does that mean?’

There was no answer. Arthur stopped to listen, but there was only silence. When he retraced his steps to ask again, there was no sign of Pravuil. There was only the pyramid of coal he’d been working on, with a few new pieces on top.

‘Excellent,’ muttered Arthur to himself. ‘More advice. Don’t go near the Old One. Do go near the Old One. Don’t stay past twelve. Trust the Will. Don’t trust the Will. I wish someone would tell me something straightforward for once.’

He paused as if there might be an answer, but of course there wasn’t. Arthur shook his head and started off again. To make sure that he could find his way back if he needed to, he took off ten pieces of coal from the first pyramid and stacked them in a pattern at the base. At the next pyramid, he took nine pieces, eight from the next, and so on, till he was down to one, when he started again but also used a separate piece of coal to indicate it was the second progression.

By the time he’d repeated this procedure across one hundred and twenty-six pyramids of coal, Arthur was doubting several things. First, that he would ever find the Old One, second, that Pravuil had shown him the right direction, and third, that the pit he was in was only the size it appeared to be from its aboveground opening.

He was also getting very cold, despite the constant walking. He didn’t feel hungry, but he still wished for something to eat, because it would warm him up. At least he thought it would. Certainly it would relieve the boredom of trekking through this freezing, wet, dark dump of a place with nothing but coal everywhere.

Because he was tired, Arthur had been holding the Key lower and lower by his side, so the circle of light it shed around him had grown smaller and smaller, until it was only illuminating the ground around his feet. Beyond that light lay only darkness, until Arthur suddenly caught a glimpse of something that was not illuminated by the Key or a reflection. It was another light. A blue, shimmering light, as if there was a gas fire somewhere ahead.

Arthur raised the Key higher and walked faster. Surely this must be where the Old One lurked. He felt nervous and excited at the same time. Nervous because Dawn and the Commissionaire Sergeants had been genuinely afraid of the Old One, as had Pravuil. Excited, because it was something different from cold puddles and coal. He might be able to get food or, even better, find a way out.

As he got closer to the light, Arthur slowed down and held the Key still higher. He didn’t want to be surprised by anything. Every shadow behind a pyramid of coal promised some sort of ambush, but the pyramids were getting fewer, as were the puddles. He was coming to open ground. Drier, higher ground. There was even less of the muddy coal dust beneath his feet and more patches of dry stone.

At the last pyramid of coals, Arthur crouched down to look at what lay ahead. He had to blink a lot, since it was hard to see in the strange combination of light from the Key and the shimmering blue radiance that bathed the area ahead.

He saw a raised circular platform, rather like a low stage made of stone, about sixty feet in diameter. There were Roman numerals set upright around the edge of the platform, and two long pieces of metal issued out from a central pivot, one piece shorter than the other. As Arthur watched, the longer piece of metal moved a little, progressing along the rim.

It was a minute hand, Arthur suddenly realised. The circular platform was a clock face. A giant clock face laid flat. But that wasn’t the strangest thing. There were chains leading from the ends of the clock hands that ran through some mechanism of gears and pulleys near the central pivot that he couldn’t quite work out. The chains then connected to manacles on the wrists of a man who was sitting near the numeral six. It was the chains that shed the glimmering light. They looked like steel but could not be. No steel shone with such a vivid spectral blue.

Nor was the man precisely a man, Arthur thought, taking in the size of him. He was a giant, easily eight feet tall. He looked like some sort of aged barbarian hero, with overdeveloped muscles along his arms and legs, though his skin was old, wrinkled, and partially translucent so you could see the veins. He wore only a loincloth, and his head was shaved to a stubble. He seemed to be asleep, though his closed eyes looked kind of strange. The eyelids were raw and red, as if he’d been sunburned. Which was impossible down here. Or anywhere in the House, for all Arthur knew.

This, Arthur figured, must be the Old One, and he was chained to the clock’s hands. Arthur gingerly sneaked closer to study the gears and wheels of the chain mechanism. It wasn’t easy to work them out, but after watching for a few minutes, Arthur thought that the chains would be quite loose around half-past six, but would be very tight at twelve. In fact, they must drag the giant back almost to the centre of the clock at noon and midnight.

At the moment, the hands were on twenty-five to seven, so the Old One had enough slack to sit next to the numeral six. Judging from the length of the chains at that moment, Arthur guessed the prisoner would not be able to move past the border of the clock face.

There were two trapdoors on either side of the central pivot. Both were the size of regular doors, with arched peaks. Like the doors of a cuckoo clock. Somehow Arthur suspected it would not be cuckoos that came out of these doors.

‘Beware!’ shouted the Old One suddenly.

Arthur leaped back and tripped over some loose bits of coal. As he scrabbled to get up again, he heard the rattle of chains. Panic rose as he scrabbled on the ground.

But he was too slow. The giant had been holding the chains close against his body, to disguise how much slack he really had, and in an instant the Old One was standing over Arthur. He looked even taller and meaner close up. His open eyes weren’t much better than his closed ones. They were red-rimmed and bloodshot. One pupil was gold and the other black.

‘Have you seen enough, Key-bearer?’ asked the Old One as he casually looped a piece of his chain over Arthur’s head and pulled it tight around Arthur’s neck. Arthur struck at him with the Key, but it didn’t even scratch the giant’s flesh. There was no burst of molten fluid, or electric sparks, or anything. Arthur might as well have hit him with a plastic clock hand.

‘Did your masters not tell you that nothing of the House can harm me?’ growled the giant. ‘And nothing of Nothing, save the creatures of this clock, who nightly gnaw and gouge my eyes? But I give you my thanks for the moment of entertainment you shall give me as I rend you limb from limb and consign your essence to the void!’

Sixteen

I’M NOT FROM the House!’ croaked Arthur. ‘I’m not an enemy!’

The Old One growled and tightened the chain till it hurt. Then he pulled Arthur upright and sniffed the air above his head. After the third sniff he abruptly let out a few links of chain so it wasn’t so tight, though it was still around Arthur’s neck.

‘A mortal in truth,’ he said in a somewhat friendlier tone. ‘From a world I know well. You have robbed me of my amusement, mannikin. So you must provide by other means. How comes a mortal to bear the Lesser Key of the Lower House?’

‘The Will –’ Arthur began, but before he could go on, the Old One suddenly lifted the chain over Arthur’s head and let it hang slack. A few seconds later both the minute and the hour hand of the clock behind him moved closer to twelve. The chain rattled as it tightened and made him step back.

Arthur gulped. If that loop of chain had still been around his neck it would have strangled him, and he now seriously doubted Suzy’s words about the difficulty of dying in the House. Clearly the Old One had the capacity to kill – or easily deliver some sort of final ending that sounded remarkably like death.

‘Speak, mortal!’ commanded the Old One. ‘Tell me your name. Fear not, for I was always a friend to your folk. It is the Architect who is my foe. I bear no ill will to the things She has wrought. Indeed, I too had a hand in your making long ago, though the Architect sought to deny my artistry.’

‘My name is Arthur Penhaligon,’ said Arthur. He spoke slowly at first, then sped up as he worked it out in his head. ‘I’m not really sure why I have the Key. The Will tricked Mister Monday into giving it to me, but now he wants it back and that’s why I was put down here, till I agree to hand it over. Only before that the Will said I have to get the Hour Hand and take over the Lower House, because that’s the only way that I can get home and stop the plague that the Fetchers brought with them . . .’

‘Hold!’ commanded the Old One. ‘This is no simple tale. You will begin at the beginning, go on to the middle, and . . . already I can see there is not yet an end. First we will drink wine and eat honey cakes.’