The Burning Page

The entire room shook, and the distant clock’s ticking jarred for a moment like a stuck record. Books went tumbling from the shelves in a cascade of crashes. A spike of pain twisted in Irene’s head, the premonition of what was clearly going to be an appalling headache, assuming she survived the next few minutes. A trickle of blood ran from her nose – but the shadow had stopped in its tracks. Pulling herself together, she threw herself into a jump across the ring of darkness. Her heel came down on its far edge, and wood crumbled into mouldy dust under her foot.

Irene slipped and fell to her hands and knees, but scrabbled to her feet again as she felt the floor tremble under her fingers. She might have held the shadow back for a moment, but there was no way that could last. Zayanna had made the leap more elegantly than Irene, and was already through the nearest door. Irene ran after her.

‘Which way?’ Zayanna demanded, her eyes wide with panic. The room was like the one they’d just left, except that the books were bound in purple leather. There was a door at each compass point, and a curving stairway running up and down. ‘This is all your fault!’

Irene couldn’t really argue with that statement. She’d been wondering how long it would be before Zayanna brought it up. She decided to focus on the first question, even if she didn’t really have an answer. ‘Try going up,’ she suggested, taking the lead and heading up the staircase. Her feet hammered loudly on the wooden stairs: neither of them was willing to sacrifice speed for stealth.

On the floor above, the room followed exactly the same pattern, but green-bound books filled the shelves. The covers seemed to mock the two of them with their unhealthy shade, the glistening emerald of a fly’s body. Zayanna looked around and cursed. ‘You should just have put the lights out,’ she accused Irene. ‘He couldn’t have a shadow in darkness . . .’

‘And then we’d be trying to find our way round here in pitch blackness,’ Irene snapped back. ‘It’s bad enough trying to find our way in here with the lights on.’

‘Darling, he’s going to kill me.’ Zayanna was apparently calm now, but Irene had the impression of a lid hastily nailed down over a seething cauldron of panic. ‘And you too, but frankly I’m more worried about me. Do something!’

It didn’t take a great detective to see that Zayanna was having multiple second thoughts about the whole expedition. ‘We keep moving,’ Irene said, sounding calmer than she felt. ‘If he’s got to find us first, then let’s make him work to keep up.’ She pointed further up the staircase.

‘And then?’

That was the question. How could she fight Alberich in a library where he controlled the environment? This whole place was a perversion of the true Library, with books that contained only nonsense, rooms that were indistinguishable from each other, without even an index . . .

Alberich’s voice rose from the depths towards them as they ran up the stairs. ‘I’m impressed,’ he murmured.

‘Is he really?’ Zayanna asked.

‘No,’ Irene said.

‘Why shouldn’t I be impressed? You found your way here. You persuaded your companion to help you. I’d thought you were competent, but I didn’t know you were that competent.’

Irene was only half-listening to the words. Either they were merely one more attempt by Alberich to persuade her to join him, or he was simply playing with the two of them and something horrible would happen the moment they let their guard down. Neither option was useful. Then, as she and Zayanna stumbled out into the next room, she caught sight of Zayanna’s face. An unpleasant thought brought Irene up straight, as though someone had yanked her hair. Which of the two of us is he trying to convince? And what if Zayanna listens to him?

She needed to find the centre of this place fast. She needed a map. But all she had was books of nonsense . . . which, come to think of it, were an essential part of this place. She could use that.

Zayanna screamed and pointed. The shadow was levering itself up the staircase. Long twig-like fingers splayed across the floor, reaching for them. They ran.

Irene grabbed a book off the shelf in the next room as they stumbled inside. It seemed to throb in her hands, its dull orange leather binding the shade of rotten autumn leaves. She flipped it open, but the contents were just as much nonsense as the ones she’d looked at earlier.

‘Is this the time for reading?’ Zayanna snapped.

‘Depends on the book.’ Irene took a firm grip on it. ‘Book which I am holding, lead me towards the centre of this library!’

The book in her hands shivered as if it was trying to squirm free, then tugged unmistakeably towards the doorway on their left. But at the same moment the shadow was in the room with them, stretching from floor to halfway across the ceiling. It reached for Irene.

‘Lights off!’ Irene screamed at the top of her voice. Every light in the room, and in all the adjacent ones where her voice could reach, shut down. Total darkness enshrouded her. She reached out for Zayanna’s hand, and felt it warm and trembling in hers.

And then something touched her shoulder. ‘Really, Ray,’ Alberich’s voice breathed just behind her. ‘Did you think that would stop me?’

Irene bolted in the direction of the doorway, led by the book she was clutching. Her voice had carried well: she and Zayanna stumbled blindly through two darkened rooms before they came to one with lights on. The book tugged her towards the stairway and down. Behind her, she heard Zayanna gasp in shock, and turned to see what had happened.