Garth Nix - Lord Sunday

Praise for

WOW! Thats all I can say WOW.
Theresa Chance, 14

Mister Monday is a complete and utter masterpiece;
one of the best books Ive ever read. I fully recommend it for
readers of all ages and I cant wait for the next one.
David, 14

... a ripping yarn that can be read by adults and children alike.
Tim Cadman, The Sydney Morning Herald

... an epic journey of the imagination.
Australian Bookseller & Publisher

Exciting, engrossing, humorous and deliciously creepy.
Magpies

... relentlessly thrilling and unstinting in its amazing imagination.
Viewpoint

The action is non-stop, but it is the characterisation
and the quirky invention that make the book.
Sunday Age

Nix keeps his taut and energetic series moving at breakneak pace,
sustaining action and mystery until the last page.
Good Reading

I said once that this series was better than Harry Potter,
and Garth Nix just keeps proving me right.
Lili Wilkinson, CYL newsletter

The Keys to the Kingdom series

Mister Monday
Grim Tuesday
Drowned Wednesday
Sir Thursday
Lady Friday
Superior Saturday
Lord Sunday

Other books by Garth Nix

Shades Children
The Ragwitch
Across the Wall
One Beastly Beast

The Old Kingdom trilogy:

Sabriel
Lirael
Abhorsen

Lord Sunday

Garth Nix

First published in Australia in 2010

Copyright Garth Nix 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander St
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax:(61 2) 9906 2218
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Nix, Garth, 1963.
Lord Sunday
9 781 74114 591 5 (pbk.)
Nix, Garth, 1963 Keys to the kingdom; bk. 7.
Dewey Number: A823.3

Cover design by Sandra Nobes
Cover illustration by Heath McCurdie
Text design and typesetting by Pauline Haas
Printed in Australia by McPherson Printing Group

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

The paper in this book is FSC certified.
FSC promotes environmentally responsible,
socially beneficial and economically viable
management of the worlds forests.

To all my very patient readers, editors, family, and friends;
and to two writers of science fiction and fantasy
who particularly inspired me
to write this series and lit my path ahead.
Thank you Philip Jos Farmer and Roger Zelazny.

Table of Contents

ARTHUR FELL.

The air rushed past him, stinging his eyes and ripping at his hair and clothes. He had already fallen through the hole made by Saturdays assault ram, past the grasping roots and tendrils of the underside of the Incomparable Gardens. Now he was plummeting through the clouds, and a small part of him knew that if he didnt do something really soon he was going to smash into Saturdays tower and in all likelihood be so badly broken that even with his newly reshaped Denizen body he would die or wish he was dead.

But Arthur didnt do anything, at least not in those first few, vital seconds. He knew it was an illusion, but it felt like the wind was holding him up, rather than rushing past. In his left hand he held the small mirror that was the Fifth Key, and in his right he clutched the quill pen that was the Sixth Key, which he had wrested from Saturday and taken with him over the edge. Because of this, Arthur felt powerful, triumphant, and not at all afraid.

He looked down at the tower below him and laughed a deep, sarcastic laugh that was not at all like his normal laughter. He was about to laugh again when Part Six of the Will, in its raven form, caught up with him, its claws latching on to his hair and digging into his scalp.

Wings! croaked the raven urgently. It hung on to his head for a second, then lost its grip and spun off, calling out, Fly! Fly! as it tried desperately to keep up.

Instantly, Arthur lost his sense of euphoric invincibility and came back to his senses. He properly took in the speed of his descent for the first time and saw that he was going to hit the tower very, very soon.

This is all wrong, he thought. Where are my wings?!

He frantically searched his coat, even as he remembered that his grease monkey wings were still in the rain mantle that hed exchanged for his current disguise as a Sorcerous Supernumerary the disguise hed used to infiltrate the assault ram... too successfully, perhaps, for hed gone with the ram when it broke through into the Incomparable Gardens. While he had then got close enough to Superior Saturday to claim the Sixth Key, hed fallen back through the hole in the ceiling of the Upper House.

Now he was falling a very, very long way down.

Even starting from such a height, Arthur had fallen far faster than hed thought possible. He was going to miss the actual peak, he saw, and crash into the main part, some fifteen levels below.

No wings, thought Arthur. No wings!

His mind halted in panic, and all he could do was stare at the tower, tears streaming from his eyes because the wind was rushing by so fast. He found himself flapping his arms as if somehow that might help, and he was screaming, and then He crashed into a flying Internal Auditor, who screamed as well. Together they tumbled through the air, the Denizens wings thrashing wildly. Arthur tried to rip the wings from the Auditor, but he didnt want to let go of the Fifth and Sixth Keys, so he couldnt get a proper grip. He tried to transfer the Sixth Key so as to hold both Keys in his left hand, but in that vital moment, the Denizen kicked free and dove away, his wings folded back.

Arthur fell again, but the collision had checked his speed. He had a few seconds to take action, and his brain finally got back to work on problem-solving, instead of gloating over the Sixth Key or cowering in fear. He knew there was no way to avoid colliding with the tower unless he never actually arrived there...

A hundred feet from impact, Arthur somersaulted into a swan dive. Stretching his arms out below his body, he drew several steps in the air with the Sixth Key. The pen left glowing trails of light, which instantly took on the appearance of solid, white marble steps.

Arthur hit hard, immediately tucking himself into a ball to roll down the Improbable Stair. As he bounced and tumbled over each step, he knew he had to get his speed under control. Even when he stuck out his leg, he only tumbled sideways and kept falling. Climbing up the Improbable Stair was bad enough, with the chance of coming out on some random Landing anywhere in time or space. Falling down it completely out of control was even worse.