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Arthur gripped her hand evenhe could say

‘Funny how it’s all co back,’ continued Suzy She sniffed a little and produced a not-very-clean handkerchief fro’

‘Must be,’ said Arthur ‘Hang on – there’s so by the side of a road, under a hot sun and clear sky, bordered on the horizon by the slightest of clouds The road was hardly more than a track It wasn’t even cobbled, but si stones had been laid down Short, gnarly trees planted in irregular rows ran along one side of the road The other side, where Arthur and Suzy stood, was a field of short grass, kept down by the goats that were staring at them from the hillside a few hundred yards away

‘Stones!’ said Arthur, pointing to a stack piled up under the trees back along the road ‘We can make steps out of them’

He pulled Suzy across the road and they ran towards the pile of stones They had al the road towards the fast, but with a steady rhyth time The man was thin and sinewy and wore only a loincloth and sandals, the sweat shining on his bare smooth chest

The runner checked for a ain as Suzy absently flapped her wings He stared at her and esture, as if to shield his eyes from the sun and salute at the same time

‘Victory at Marathon!’ he shouted ‘The Persians are defeated! We thank Nike for the victory!’

He didn’t stop, but averted his eyes as he passed, alstone Arthur and Suzy didn’t stop either They kept on to the pile of stones, then Suzy helped Arthur stack theined the Stair and stepped up on the rocking stones and for once it was easy, and they were iht shone all around them

‘I think I knohere that was,’ said Arthur ‘I mean, when that was In our world In history I did a project on where soht you were Nike, the winged goddess of victory’

‘Me!’ snorted Suzy ‘If I could get these stupid wings off there’d be no confusion, I reckon’

‘I wonder if it’s possible not to stop at the Landings,’ mused Arthur ‘I bet the Architect never stopped off all over the place without wanting to Come on!’

They did

Twenty

ARTHUR STARTED TO cli up several steps at a tio faster then there will be fewer Landings! I don’t know! It feels like the right thing to do!’

‘But if it isn’t, we’ll just run into the Landings even faster,’ said Suzy

Arthur didn’t answer He did feel that by going faster, they would get where he wanted to go quicker, and that it s But it was only a feeling He never , from the Atlas, fro up ahead!’ shouted Suzy

Arthur blinked, saw so solid, and then the Key struck it and he and Suzy tuht wooden door and out onto a narrow cobbled street For a brief ht he was back in the Atrium of the House

Then a terrible stench hit his nose and he knew that he wasn’t

There were bodies piled all along the street Lots and lots of corpses that had been quickly covered with li faces and features so that they ht almost be statues or dummies laid out in rows Save for the smell, and the flies that buzzed around in spirals above the bodies, and the rats that skittered around the the far side of the street

There was no sign of anybody living

Arthur held his breath and tried not to throw up as he looked around All the houses were narrow, three-storey buildings that leaned into the street, so it was heavily shadowed despite the bright sun overhead The houses were built of stone up to about six feet, but wood took over from there, with exposed beams and painted panels Most of the houses had thatched roofs, though soht painted doors and shutters In Arthur’s time, they would be very old houses, too old to be found outside England or Europe Here they were, if not new, not that old

This would have been quite a cheerful street, for its tiht Not now

Every house had a ashed cross crudely painted on its front door and walls Arthur knehat that ue,’ he whispered They were probably in England, sometime in the seventeenth century There had been a terrible outbreak of the plague there in the 1660s Or they had coain, Arthur didn’t know enough about the House, the Improbable Stair, or the Secondary Realrip on his hand suddenly loosened Too late, Arthur tightened his own hand For a ers, then she pulled the!’

She didn’t coirl crossed the street and pushed against a pale blue door It scraped open a few inches, then thudded against a body that blocked the doorway She pushed at the door again, then kicked it and started to cry Tears fell down her cheeks anddrab and woebegone upon her back

‘What is it?’ asked Arthur Suzy had always seeo-lucky, even when confronted by dinosaurs or saving barbarians What had happened to her?

‘This wasback to me This here we lived!’

She turned to the closest pile of bodies and would have rolled the toprabbed her wrist and pulled her away

‘You can’t do anything!’ he said urgently ‘And you can’t stay here! We have to find sohter, Suzy, coel of Death,’ mumbled a voice

For a terrible instant both Arthur and Suzy froze, thinking one of the corpses had spoken Then they sahat looked like a bundle of rags rise up from the shadowed doorway of the house next door It was an old woh the day arm She held a wet handkerchief to her face Arthur smelled the cloves and rose oileven with the stench from the dead bodies

‘So you died anyway,’ mumbled the old woman ‘I told your mother it was stupid to take you out of here Death knows no parish boundary, I said Death walks where it will, city or country’

‘Is she dead?’ asked Suzy quietly

‘Everyone’s dead!’ The old wohed ‘Everyone’s dead! I’m dead too, only I don’t know it yet!’

She started to cackle ain This tied her away

‘Come on!’ Arthur insisted There was a wide-open door in the next house, and there had to be a staircase beyond it But even with that so near, he worried that they’d stayed here longer than anywhere else, and Suzy had let go of his hand