The Burning Page

For the moment she settled on getting away from Alberich. He was still shouting at the flames and at the clock, as if sheer volume could somehow compel them to obedience. She scurried along the walkway, the remains of her skirts fluttering in the rising heat. Choosing stairs at random, she ran around the outside of the network of steps, looking for a way out.

The clock was silent now, and so was Alberich. The only noise was the growing roar of the flames, and the ringing of steps on the metal stairs. Smoke sifted through the air in white coils – thin for the moment, but growing.

‘Book-burner!’ The sheer fury and betrayal in Alberich’s voice made Irene cringe in renewed shame. It wasn’t the fact that he was saying it, but rather that it echoed her own thoughts. A part of her – a very stupid, senseless part – even felt that death would be an appropriate punishment for what she’d just done. ‘Ray, you are going to suffer for this!’

As threats went, it wasn’t the most specific or blood-curdling that had ever been thrown at Irene, but the fury and malice behind it gave her even more incentive to run. Unfortunately she’d come to a corner of the structure, and the only options now were up or down. Down put her on ground level and maybe gave her a chance to escape, if she could somehow find a way out through the burning, collapsing bookshelves. It would also give Alberich a clear advantage of height, to call down obstructions and maledictions on her with the Language. Up . . . well, there wasn’t anywhere in particular to go, once she’d headed ‘up’. She’d be trapped. Unless maybe she could form a bridge of books in the way that Alberich had earlier?

And falling from a height is one of the quickest and easiest available ways to die, a cold little thread of despair pointed out. Just for the record.

She was not going to lose hope. She was not going to give up.

‘Smoke, choke that woman!’ Alberich’s voice rang out.

The pale wisps of smoke solidified, massing together as they flooded towards Irene’s face.

‘Air, blow that smoke away from me!’ she gabbled.

The first tendril of smoke touched her face and flickered across her lips, and more gathered behind it, flowing around her and up to her mouth. A quick gust of wind scattered the smoke and let her breathe, but there was no real definition or permanence to the moving air. The tendrils of smog began to gather again, and she fled up the stairway, holding a tattered shred of skirt fabric across her nose and mouth.

She passed another of the caged books. It was charred to ashes now, and a thick column of dark, greasy smoke rose from its corpse. It was getting harder to breathe – not just because of the smoke that Alberich had commanded against her, but because of all the other smoke in the air. It wound through the metal stairs like ribbons, and rose in billowing clouds towards the distant ceiling high above. It was impossible to see Alberich now.

Surely this was any Librarian’s hell, full of burning books and smoke and fire. She would have run onwards, but there was nowhere to run to now.

Irene coughed, her lungs burning and her mouth full of the taste of ashes. She had to take the offensive. ‘Stairs, open beneath that man’s feet,’ she shouted.

The clanging of collapsing metalwork answered her, but there were no human-sounding crashes or screams. Damn. She ran along a long open stretch of walkway, passing more book-cages, then stopped as Alberich’s form loomed through the smoke ahead of her.

He was opening his mouth to speak, when a huge creaking roar came from the outer bookshelves and a shadow fell across the two of them. Both he and Irene turned to look. One of the tallest bookcases had begun to topple and was leaning towards the central arrangement of stairs, almost in slow motion. Books slid from it, sifting out to scatter in all directions, as it teetered down towards them.

There was no time for further reciprocal attacks, and even the Language couldn’t have stopped that colossus mid-fall. Both of them turned and ran in opposite directions.

Then it hit.

The concussion shuddered through the tangled structure of stairs, as the timbers of the bookcase sheared through metal and collapsed the walkways under their weight. Irene was thrown off her feet, and held onto the walkway with the strength of desperation as it shivered and tilted sideways. She crawled along it, coughing in the smoke, until it was more level and she could get back to her feet, then looked behind her.

Even through the haze, she could see that the fallen bookcase had broken the central construct in half. Tangled remains of stairs and walkways still stood – well, leaned – on either side, but the centre, where the clock had been, was a mass of timbers and papers. The ruined shelves were a roaring bonfire that was swelling and burning higher with every passing moment.

‘Ray!’ Alberich’s voice carried over the crackling of the flames. ‘You haven’t won!’

‘It looks to me as if I have,’ she shouted back. It was stupid and pointless to be exchanging taunts at this stage of events, when they were probably both about to die horribly, but it did feel good to get in the last word.

‘If I must wait a thousand years, I’ll find my son.’ For a moment she could see him silhouetted against the flames, his robe billowing in the hot wind. ‘He will avenge me. And you will perish with me.’

‘You can’t have all three,’ Irene said, more to herself than to Alberich. She was swaying from the heat and the smoke, and she had to lean on the railing to hold herself up. Perhaps it would be easiest just to let herself go and fall. She wasn’t going to get out of here. She might as well accept it, and finish things quickly. ‘I don’t think that works . . .’