Someone was inside this crystal office, watching the platform and the rocket slowly slide across toward . . . - toward her, Arthur saw.

Superior Saturday. It had to be her. She looked eight feet tall at least, and Arthur couldn’t tell if she had shining blonde hair or was wearing a metallic helmet. She was certainly wearing some kind of armour, a breastplate of red-gold that shone like the setting sun, and leg and arm armour made from plates in different shades of evening sunlight.

The platform was turning so that the door in the lowest level of the rocket was lined up with her office. The door that Arthur was standing next to. The door that Superior Saturday clearly intended to use . . .

‘Make way! Let’s have a path through!’ called the commanding voice. Denizens pushed at Arthur, driving him away from the door, packing him in even tighter against his comrades as a path was cleared from the doorway through to the interior ladder that led up to the next level of the rocket.

A Denizen pushed back right into Arthur’s face, but he didn’t complain. He shifted a little to his right and peered through the two-inch gap between two Sorcerers’ shoulders in front of him.

Superior Saturday touched the wall of her office and the crystal fell away, shattering into motes of light that spun around and wove themselves into a pair of shining wings that fell upon her shoulders and flapped twice as she launched herself across the empty air to the aperture between the bronze bars that served as a door for the rocket. She landed as if she were dancing in a ballet, and strode through the crowd without a sideways glance at the Denizens who bent their heads and tried to bow, despite the cramped space and many painful cranial collisions.

There, in her hand! called the Will. The Key. You could call to it. No, on second thought, best not yet –

Definitely not, thought Arthur. He stood on tiptoe and craned his neck to see what it was that Saturday held in her hand. It wasn’t an umbrella, or even anything as large as a knife, just something slim and short . . .

It’s a pen, thought Arthur. A quill pen.

He lost sight of it, and Saturday as well, as she climbed up the interior ladder. The platform rose up some twenty or thirty feet and drifted across to line up with the middle of the tower. Then, with a flourish of peacock-quill pens, the entire platform settled on top of the tower with the groan and shriek of iron upon iron. A minute later, dozens of automatons climbed up and grease monkeys flew up from below and started to fix the platform to the tower.

Arthur looked across and up. It was hard to estimate, but he thought the clouds were only eight or nine hundred feet above them, and the tendrils that were still snapping down could reach about three hundred feet. So they had a six-hundred-foot safety margin. Presumably the assault ram had to be this close in order to have a chance of breaking through the underside of the Incomparable Gardens.

Someone shouted far below. Arthur looked back down. The grease monkeys and the automatons were disappearing back under the platform.

‘Brace for launch!’ called out the commanding voice inside the rocket.

The Denizens around Arthur grabbed the bars, and the Denizens farther in grabbed one another. Arthur took a firm grip on the closest bar and bent his knees.

‘Light the blue touchpaper!’ called out the voice.

Arthur couldn’t see exactly what happened then, but somewhere over in the middle of the rocket, there was a sudden eruption, a vertical jet of white-hot sparks that reached the wicker floor above but somehow did not set it alight.

‘Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one!’ called the voice. ‘Fire!’

There was a loud fizzling noise, and nothing happened.

‘Fire?’ repeated the voice, somewhat less commandingly.

‘What is going on down there?’ asked a clear, cold female voice that made Arthur shiver. ‘Must I do everything myself?’

‘No, milady,’ called the first voice, which was now beseeching. ‘There is a second touchpaper. I will light it myself.’

A minute later, there was another violent stream of sparks.

‘Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . um . . .’

A violent force struck the rocket, sending every Denizen to his or her knees. Arthur was thrown from side to side, smacking into the sorcerers around him, their umbrella handles smashing into his ribs and thighs.

Huge clouds of smoke billowed up and out, and the rocket stormed up from the platform, accelerating faster than anything Arthur had ever experienced before.

Four seconds later, he heard the terrible crack of a tendril from above, closely followed by several more.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The rocket shook with each impact, and the bronze cage rods rang like bells. The assault ram did not deviate from its course, straight up into the underbelly of the Incomparable Gardens.

‘Brace! Brace for impact!’

The warning was too late for most of the Denizens. Very few were still on their feet, the floor around Arthur resembling a particularly crazy game of Twister.

When the assault ram struck, everyone hit the ceiling and bounced back down. Arthur was bashed by what he thought was every possible combination of elbows, knees, umbrella points and handles, and if he were still human he knew he would have broken every bone in his body and probably had several stab wounds as well.

But he was not human, which was just as well, for a human mind would have had as hard a time as a human body. As the rocket sliced through the underside of the Incomparable Gardens, the interior became suddenly dark. Then, as some of the less-addled Denizens began to make their umbrellas glow with coloured light, they saw rich dark earth spewing through the bars, earth that flowed in like water, threatening to drown and choke them.

‘Ward the sides!’ someone shouted. Umbrellas flicked open, and Denizens began to speak spells, using words that lanced through Arthur’s forehead, though it wasn’t exactly pain that he felt.

The opened umbrellas and the spells stemmed the tide of earth. The rocket began to slow, and the anxious Denizens below heard cheering and shouting above. Then the rocket stopped completely, with nothing but the rich earth to see around them.

‘Top floor’s through!’ called out a Denizen from above. ‘We’ve breached the bed!’

‘Come on!’ shouted someone else. ‘To the ladders and victory!’

Arthur scrambled to his feet, umbrella in hand. He was barely upright before he was knocked down again by a Denizen who screamed as she fell, her hands desperately gripping a huge, toothy-mawed earthworm that had struck through the bars. The earthworm was at least part-Nithling, for its open mouth did not show a fleshy throat, but the darkness of Nothing.

Arthur stabbed the worm with the point of his umbrella.

Die! he thought furiously and at the same time. Glowing ember . . . candle flame . . . whatever, just die!

TWENTY-ONE

A SIX-FOOT-LONG flame of blazing, white-hot intensity struck the worm and ran along its length without touching the Denizen it was trying to eat. She continued to hold its ashy remains for a millisecond, then, as they blew apart in her hands, she clapped and said, ‘Cor!’

‘So you didn’t fail advanced blasting,’ said someone else. ‘Still, something let you down, made you just like us . . . ow! Another one!’

Flames, shooting sparks and bolts of frost shot out of numerous umbrellas as more of the huge, toothy earthworms thrust through the bars. Denizens shouted and screamed and fought, many falling to Nothing-infested earthworm bites and strangulation, as well as one another’s sorcery.

‘Up! Up!’ someone roared. ‘We have to get clear! This is not the battle!’

‘Could have fooled me,’ grunted someone close by Arthur’s ear, as he blasted another striking worm back into the earth it came from.

‘Up!’

Arthur obeyed the command, backing towards the interior ladder. The Denizens behind him and the Sorcerous Supernumeraries at his side had the luxury of turning around, but the worms kept coming in. A shrinking ring of Denizens and constant sorcerous attacks were all that kept them back.

Finally, there was only Arthur and four other Denizens around the base of the ladder, desperately flaming the boiling sea of worms that was writhing and arching towards them.

‘We can’t climb up – as soon as one goes, they’ll get the rest of us!’ said a Denizen. ‘I knew it would end like this—’

‘Shut up!’ yelled Arthur. There were too many worms, and his lances of flame could only kill a few at once.

There’s so much sorcery happening here, he thought. No one could possibly notice me add some more.

Arthur reached into his coat pocket with his left hand while he batted at a worm with his umbrella, temporarily just a lump of metal and fabric. One-handed, he fumbled open the bag that held the Fifth Key, pushing two fingers in until he touched the cold, smooth glass of the mirror.

‘By the power of the Fifth Key,’ he whispered, so low that he could not even hear himself above the hideous frying sounds of burning worms, ‘destroy all the worms about me. Make them as if they had never been!’

There was an intense flash of light, accompanied by a single pure note of the most beautiful music, and the worms were gone. Even the ash and the burned bits of worm-meat were gone as well, as if they had never existed.

‘Right,’ said Arthur. He could hear shouting, explosions and the hissing sound of fire and destruction spells going on up above. ‘Up!’

The other Denizens looked at him, then turned and climbed at a speed that would have won them approval from Alyse.

‘They are more afraid of you than they are of the worms,’ chuckled the Will. It flew out of Arthur’s sleeve as a three-inch-long raven, and grew to full size as it landed on his shoulder. ‘I should wait a moment before going up. She knows you are here now.’

‘What?’ asked Arthur. ‘But I thought, there is so much sorcery . . .’

‘Not of the kind made possible by the Keys,’ said the Will. ‘But it is a good time. She is beset by Sunday’s defenders. We will assail her when they have done their work. Best to wait here till then.’

‘Here?’ asked Arthur. As if in answer to his question, the whole rocket shuddered and the floor suddenly dropped several feet and lurched to one side.

‘Maybe not,’ conceded the raven. ‘Quick! Up!’

Arthur went up the ladder and the next and the one after that so fast, he almost felt like he was a rocket himself. But he had to slow down as he caught up to the line of Denizens. They were climbing quickly too, for the rocket was shaking and shifting. Looking back down, where the floors were still illuminated by the fading light from the umbrellas of dead Denizens, Arthur saw that parts of the assault ram had fallen away . . . or had been torn off.

‘Hurry up!’ shouted the Denizen ahead of Arthur. ‘The ram’s falling apart!’

She looked down and hastily amended, ‘I mean it’s falling back down!’

Arthur looked. The lower floors of the rocket were no longer there. Instead there was a gaping, roughly rocket-sized hole, and at the end of it there were wisps of cloud. A long way below that, he could see a fuzzy green lump that was the top of the tower.

‘Hurry up!’ screamed the Denizen again, and everyone did hurry up, as more and more bits of the rocket fell away below them and went down through the hole to either strike the tower or perhaps make the even longer journey – all twenty-odd thousand feet to the floor of the Upper House.

Arthur burst out on the top floor of the ram like a bubble from the bottom of the bath. The Nothing spike was gone, consumed by its purpose in cutting a way through the bed of the Incomparable Gardens.

Except it hadn’t quite cut all the way through, or rather the rocket hadn’t. Arthur looked around quickly, blinking at the soft, mellow sunlight. The top of the ram was about twenty feet below the rim of the hole made by the spike. Some of the interior ladders from the rocket had been ripped off and propped against the earth. From the shouting and general tumult, Arthur figured that was where everyone had gone.

The floor fell under Arthur’s feet, slipping down several yards. He ran for a ladder and jumped halfway up it. As the floor fell, Arthur sprinted up the rungs, taking four at a time. Three rungs from the top, he hurled himself up with all the energy and concentration of an Olympic high-jumper. The Will helped too, gripping his head and flapping with all its might.

Arthur just made it, landing on the rim of the hole with his legs dangling, his fingers clawing into soft green turf that threatened to give way. Then he was scrabbling forward to safety, as the top floor of the assault ram and a dozen luckless Denizens fell away behind him.

Before Arthur could get his bearings, he was almost cut in two by a pair of giant elongated jaws. Desperately he rolled aside, thrusting his umbrella up at the twelve-foot-long iridescent green beetle that loomed over him.

The beetle grabbed the umbrella and crushed it to bits, which would have been a good tactic against a normal sorcerer. With Arthur, it just gave him time to get the Fifth Key out of the bag. He held it up, focussed his mind upon it, and the beetle inverted to become a mirror image of itself. Then it dwindled like a receding star into a mere pinprick of light.

There were many more beetles, but none were close enough to do harm. Arthur took a few seconds to take stock.

He was standing on a wonderful green lawn of perfect, real turf. It was in the shape of an oval, at least a mile wide, and was surrounded by a low ridge of heather and wildflowers, surmounted by a fringe of majestic red and gold autumnal trees that blocked further sight.

Only a hundred yards away, there was a ring of large silver croquet hoops, and it was here that Saturday and her remaining forces were defending themselves against a tide of long-jawed beetles. A long line of mainly headless Denizen bodies led from the hole behind Arthur to the ring of hoops. There was quite a pile of bodies near Arthur, so he ran over and crouched down behind this makeshift wall. None of the beetles came after him.