Superior Saturday(16)

‘Move aside,’ Scamandros instructed several officers. ‘The vision will form where you’re standing. I trust you feel no pain, Marson?’

‘Not a thing,’ Marson reported. ‘’Cept an itch in the foot I don’t have anymore.’

‘Excellent,’ said Dr Scamandros. ‘Open your eyes a little wider, a touch more . . . very good . . . hold them open there . . . Let me get these matchsticks in place, and we will commence.’

The sorcerer stood back and spoke a word. Arthur could almost see the letters of it, see the way the air rippled away from Scamandros’s mouth as he spoke. He felt the power of the spell as a tingle in his joints, and some small part of him knew that once, long ago, he would have felt pain. Now, his body was accustomed to sorcery and used to power.

Two tiny pinpricks of light grew in Marson’s eyes, and then two fierce beams shot forth, splaying out and gaining colour, dancing around madly as if a crazed and manic artist were painting with streams of light.

An image formed in the air by the table, an image projected from Marson’s propped-open eyes. A broad, cinematic view some twelve feet wide and eight feet high, it showed a part of the floor of the Pit in the Far Reaches, the great, deep hole that Grim Tuesday had dug in order to mine more and more Nothing, no matter how dangerous it was, and no matter how much it weakened the very foundations of the House.

Arthur leaned forward, intent on the scene. Even though what he was to see had already happened, he felt very tense, as if he were actually there . . .





SIX





‘THE MEMORY IS blurred,’ said Dame Primus. ‘We should have had Skerrikim do it.’

‘Merely a matter of focus, milady,’ said Scamandros. He bent down and adjusted Marson’s eyelids, the shadows of his fingers walking across the lit scene like tall, dark walking trees. ‘There we are.’

The picture became sharp, and sound came in as 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.