The Keys to the Kingdom 7 - Lord Sunday by Garth Nix

Author:Garth Nix
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Published: 2010-01-31T14:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

LEAF LET HER incredibly weary sword-arm fall, the Lieutenant Keeper’s blade dangling from her limp fingers. She had been fighting almost nonstop for what felt like hours, though she had no means of measuring time, so perhaps it was only feverish, adrenaline-fuelled minutes. Her Nithling opponents lay dead, slowly drifting away from her, propelled by their final actions, or by the cuts and thrusts of the sword that had danced in her hand as if it had a life of its own.

Perhaps it does have a life of its own, thought Leaf with distaste. After dispatching the first wave of Nithlings – a dozen slow-moving things that looked more like human-size turnips than anything else, though they had mouths with needle-sharp fangs – she had tried to drop the sword and run to the exit she knew led to her Earth. But try as she might, she could not lose the sword. If she let go, the gold-braided strap tightened on her wrist so she could not slip it off, and if she slipped the strap off first, her fingers became glued to the hilt.

Before she had been able to experiment further, another Nithling had attacked. It was alone, but far more trouble than the previous lot. It was rather like a bear with the horns of a bull, and it was fast and clever. It had scratched Leaf, and would have taken her head off if she had jumped back any slower. Years of gymnastics when she was younger had finally paid off.

Leaf inspected the scratch. The blue swallow-tailed coat looked like it was made of wool, but was evidently made of much tougher stuff. The Nithling’s horn had not even torn the cloth as it had scraped across, but the very tip had drawn blood from her unprotected throat. Leaf looked at the blood. It was hard to tell, since the only light came from the blue radiance of the sword, but she was relieved to see it still looked red and human.

From what had happened to Arthur, Leaf was well aware of the contamination caused by House sorcery, and its transformative effects.

Which means I have to ditch this sword soon, she thought. And get back home.

There were lots more Nithlings inside the Front Door. Leaf could sense everything in the Door in a general kind of way, including intruders, entrances, and exits, and if she concentrated on any particular aspect, she could work out more. Right now, there was only one group of Nithlings headed in her direction. Leaf decided not to wait for their arrival, but to check out the entrance she’d come in by, the one she knew led to Earth. There was something different about that one – it made a different sensation in her head when she thought about it, but she didn’t know what that meant.

Apart from essentially fighting on its own, the Lieutenant Keeper’s sword was also useful in other ways, Leaf found. When she lifted it and thought of heading towards the exit to Earth, it immediately oriented towards that point and began to pull Leaf along.

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