The Keys to the Kingdom 2 - Grim Tuesday by Garth Nix

Author:Garth Nix
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Published: 2003-12-31T14:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

THEY HAD BEEN crawling across the ceiling for several hours when Arthur suddenly slid out of the smog and found himself buffeted by a strong breeze that ruffled the feathers of his wings and upset his sliding rhythm.

The breeze also took off the loose layer of soot onArthur. He suddenly felt lighter and cleaner, even though there was still plenty of soot ingrained into his skin and clothes.

But it was neither the sudden disappearance of the smog nor the fresh breeze that made his mouth hang open and his jaw almost get broken on the ceiling when his wings flapped. Ahead of him, part of the ceiling the size of a football field shone as if there were hidden lights within it, sending down a shaft of clear golden light like late afternoon sunshine.

The light fell squarely on Grim Tuesday’s Treasure Tower. It was a simple round stone tower without visible windows, about fifty storeys high and maybe two hundred feet in diameter. It had a steeply pitched, tiled roof, surmounted, as Suzy had said, by a windvane in the shape of a cockerel.

What Suzy hadn’t mentioned was that the tower and the green lawns that surrounded it were entirely encased within a pyramid of sparkling glass, its apex just above the cockerel windvane and fifty feet below the lit-up ceiling.

‘That’s new,’ said Suzy. ‘Guess old Grimbly didn’t like his tower getting as scummy and sooted-up as the rest of the Far Reaches. Dame Primus definitely didn’t know about this.’

‘Or much else,’ said Arthur wearily. He was severely battered and bruised, and did not welcome another setback. He’d been looking forward to getting his wings off and standing up like a normal person. On the ground. Not to mention washing his hands and face. He knew a full-on bath or shower was an impossible dream.

‘There doesn’t seem to be any heat coming off the lit-up area,’ he added. ‘So we can get closer, I guess. But it’s still a long way down. And how do we get through the glass?’

Suzy looked across at the tower and the pyramid. She had become much better than Arthur at letting her wings push her almost into the ceiling, resisting only to lessen the impact, rather than trying not to hit the ceiling at all.

‘I guess we’ll have to get as close as we can . . . Drat these wings, the sooner they’re paper again, the better . . . Drop the wings, jump to the face of the pyramid, stick with our stickit fingers, then climb down and find another way in.’

‘But even at the closest, the pyramid will be forty or fifty feet below!’

‘We can make that. You did almost as big a jump back in the Atrium, remember?’

‘I had the . . . arrggh . . . rotten . . . Key then!’

Suzy thought for a while, white lines appearing on her forehead where the soot came off as the skin wrinkled up.

‘How about you undo one wing, then jump,’ she suggested.

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