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‘Um, Lord Arthur, I trust that I can move a little in that direction?’ Scamandros pointed at a pile of coal a few yards away and added, ‘As I observe that the front half of yonder pyramid has ceased to exist’

‘Of course you canin hi to deal with lesser Denizens and inferior beings For athe Denizen to prostrate hi was past, replaced by a deep sense of mortification and shame Arthur liked Scamandros and he did not like the way he had just felt toward the sorcerer, the proud anger that had fizzed up inside him, like a shaken bottle of soda ready to explode He stopped and took a deep breath and reh job to do, and that he would need all the help he could get, fro to becoht Arthur firht lay under that Or like Dame Primus

‘Sorry, I’m sorry, Doctor Scamandros I didn’t mean to shout I justI’m a bitumanyway, do whatever you need to do to keep away froet out of here soon’

Dr Scamandros bowed low as Arthur walked away, and another baseball-sized grenade fell out of an inner pocket and ian to s fuse out, and slipped it up his sleeve, which did not look like a secure place for it to go However, it did not i between the pyrah the puddles of dirty coaldust-tainted water He remembered that he had been very cold when he’d last visited the Deep Coal Cellar, but it felt quite pleasant now to hi that now surrounded the place, he thought

There were other changes too As he drew closer to the blue illumination spread by the clock, Arthur noticed thatroses twined up through the coal, and, between the puddles, there were cluround cli out of stone slates rather than a bed of coaldust, which was equally impossible but did not bother Arthur He was fairly used to the House Flowers growing out of coal and stone were far fros he had seen

At the last pyrao, when he had first cautiously approached the Old One’s prison The shi than it had been then, and he could seeon the Fifth Key to shed some kinder illumination

Arthur saw a markedly different landscape from what it had been Between him and the clock-prison was a solid carpet of bluebells, interspersed with clureen stalks that burst out at the top in profuse pale white flowers that were shaped a little like very elongated daffodils, but at the same time looked too alien to have come from the earth he knew

The raised circular platfornificantly smaller, as if it had been shrunk It had been at least sixty feet in diath of the driveway at Arthur’s own home Noas half that, and the Roht around the rione Sorees or more, and the nu red and pink roses

The metal hands had shrunk with the clock face, to re blue-steel chains still ran froh the central pivot, fastened at the other end to the manacles locked on the wrists of the Old One

The Old One himself was not as Arthur had last seen hiht feet tall and heavily muscled, but his formerly old, almost-translucent skin was now sun-dark and supple His once-stubbled head now sported a fine crop of clean white hair that was tied back behind his neck He no longer wore just a loincloth, but had on a sleeveless leather jerkin and a pair of scarlet leggings that came down to just below his knees

Where he once looked like a fallen, fading ancient of eighty or ninety, the Old One now looked like a super-fit sixty-year-old hero who could easily take on and defeat any nu on the rim of the clock between the nu the petals from a rose He was half-turned away from Arthur, so the boy couldn’t see the Old One’s eyes – or, if it was soon after they had been torn from their sockets by the puppets within the clock, the e he definitely did not want to see, Arthur craned his neck to check the position of the clock hands The hour hand was at nine, and the minute hand at five, which relieved him on three counts The Old One’s eyes would have had plenty of ti him close to the clock Perhaps most important, it alsofor several hours

Arthur stepped out and crossed the field of bluebells Chains rattled as he approached, and the Old One stood to watch him Arthur stopped thirty or forty feet from the clock While the face had shrunk, he couldn’t be sure the chains had as well, so he erred on the side of caution

‘Greetings, Old One!’ he called

‘Greetings, boy,’ ruer Arthur is your name, is it not?’

‘Yes’

‘Come sit with me We will drink wine and talk’

‘Do you promise you won’t hurt me?’ asked Arthur

‘You will be safe from all harm for the space of a quarter hour, as measured by this clock,’ replied the Old One ‘You arecockroach – or a Denizen of the House’

‘Thanks,’ said Arthur ‘I think’

He approached cautiously, but the Old One sat down again and, doubling over his chain, swept a space next to him clear of the thorny roses, to erly next to hi out his hand

A s the bluebells He caught it and tipped it up above his ht of resin-scented wine Arthur could shtly ill

‘You called the ith a poe of the questions he wanted to ask, and wasn’t sure how to start

‘It is the power of ,’ replied the Old One ‘It is true that hts with speech or song when they deal with Nothing I do not need to do so, though on occasion it may amuse me to essay some rhyme or poesy’

‘I wanted to ask you so’

‘Ask away,’ said the Old One ‘I shall answer if I choose As for the telling, if I do not like what I hear, it shall not make me stray from my proe hence If you do not overstay your allotted time’

He wiped hisArthur quickly shook his head, so the ancient drank again

‘You probably know more than anyone about the Architect,’ said Arthur ‘So I wanted to ask you what happened to her? And what is the Will exactly, and what is itshegoing to do? I htful Heir and all, and I thought that , whether I wanted to or not Only now I’o,’ said the Old One slowly He drank a series of sain ‘Yet not so well as I thought, or I would not have suffered here so long I do not knohat happened to her, save that itAs for the Will, it is an expression of her power, set up to achieve soest the question you need ask is this: what exactly are you to inherit, and from whom?’