Faculty of Fire (52 page)

Chas particularly enjoyed what I told them about Kelnmiir, and when he learned that the vampire had been hiding and living in the same room as Alice ... It still amazes me even now that Alice and I didn’t tear him into tiny pieces for the sordid thoughts that were plainly written on his sneering face.

I told them about my mission and said that without Shins, assuming he was still alive, we didn’t really have a chance. We all said nothing for a while, thinking about what we ought to do now.

Incidentally, Alice and Chas had at least eaten normally. When I saw the food, I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t eaten since the morning shift in the dining hall. I was really hungry ...

“What I suggest is this,” Chas began. “We go down to the twenty-first floor ...”

“Do we have to?” I asked, interrupting my friend. “I’ve just eaten so well, and you suggest we go dangling on curtains again ...”

“Yes, we have to,” Chas said firmly. “In the first place, we might meet someone on one of the floors ...”

“Trolls, for instance,” I suggested.

But Chas was adamant.

“And in the second place, it’s best for us to be close to the floor where the Craftsmen are imprisoned ... and to the first floor too. Who knows what might happen? Besides, we could set up an ambush beside the teleports on the twenty-first floor. Maybe we could rescue Shins?”

“Oh yes,” Alice said admiringly. “Rescue Shins. How do you plan to pull that off?”

“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” Chas said blithely, jumping up off the bench. “Let’s go and tie some curtains together!”

We dutifully followed him, but almost immediately ran into a problem: there weren’t any curtains on this floor! That is, there were, of course, but they were so light that they tore when we began to tie them together.

“Maybe we could tie them in ten layers?” Chas suggested.

“No way!” Alice and I exclaimed.

“Aha! You’re afraid the rope won’t hold you!” Chas roared. “You shouldn’t have eaten so much.”

Alice was struck dumb. Chas was acting just like Naive– and he was the one who had eaten practically all our supper.

“You show me a rope!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “All I see is some flimsy napkins that have been used as curtains!”

We shouted at each other for a while. Not really because we were angry, it was just that the nervous tension had to be released somehow, and now we’d found the way to do it.

“I have an idea,” Alice said after we calmed down a bit. Someone has to climb back up to the next floor and collect the curtains there. They were okay, as I recall.”

“That’s right,” Chas said. “I think I ought to do it. “You’re both walking wounded, and you shouldn’t strain yourselves too much. I’ll tear down all the curtains I can find, bundle them together and lower them down to you.”

“Now you’re talking,” Alice agreed. “Although I could go. Torn lips are no excuse for weakness. But since you really want to do it, off you go.”

I decided to keep quiet. There was no way I was going to climb up. I wasn’t even sure I’d have the strength to go down one more story, and the idea of going up was too frightening!

Chas climbed up to the next floor, and Alice and I waited for him. Just the two of us. Alone.

After we’d sat for a while in total silence, Alice was the first to break: “You know, perhaps I should kiss you,” she said with a slightly guilty smile, “but my lips hurt too much.”

“Well, I don’t insist,” I protested.

“Ah, you don’t insist,” said Alice with mock resentment.

“No, that is, yes ...”

We looked into each other’s eyes and burst into laughter.

“Why does everything we do turn out so stupid?” Alice asked.

“Probably because I don’t know how to behave with beautiful girls,” I suggested.

“Definitely,” Alice said, nodding. “And also because you make beautiful girls very clumsy compliments.”

“But I do make them, at least.”

We sat there on a bench in the corridor, talking all sorts of nonsense. But that nonsense had a certain charm all its own ...

“I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Why did you allow me to overpower you that time in my room? You’re very strong.”

Alice looked at me in surprise.

“You haven’t forgotten ...” She frowned. “You see, that day, after I got into the Academy, certain members of the Day Clan who had been against the whole thing right from the start tried to catch me. They didn’t want a vampire from their clan to study in the Academy. There was brief fight, in which Kelnmiir helped me, and then he drew my relatives off, and I hid in your room.”

“What a fortunate set of coincidences,” I laughed gleefully.

“You should thank Kelnmiir. It was him who told me to jump in the open window ...”

Well, well ... and he hadn’t told me that.

“And after the fight with your relatives you were absolutely exhausted?” I asked.

“Not absolutely ...” the vampiress said slowly. “I could have killed you at any moment, but I didn’t have enough strength left to overpower you without hurting you.”

“Then why didn’t you kill me?” I asked, genuinely surprised. “I don’t suppose it was because you found my lovely eyes irresistible?”

“No, of course not,” said Alice, lowering her own eyes guiltily. “It was just that Kelnmiir had strictly forbidden me to kill anyone ... he said there was no way I could study in the Academy if I was carrying the burden of murder.”

When the bundle of curtains appeared outside the window, we didn’t notice it right away.

“Zach! Alice! How much longer are you going to sit there billing and cooing? Take the material!”

We grabbed the bundle and pulled it into the room, and immediately started tying curtains together, felling slightly guilty about letting Chas slave away while we were taking it easy ... By the time Chas’s shoe appeared outside the window, we had already tied together quite a lot of curtains.

“You’re working well,” Chas remarked. “Maybe we should tie enough for three stories all at once? Why not think big?”

“Er ... no,” Alice disagreed. “You and I are used dangling on curtains over a massive drop, but Zach still hasn’t got the hang of this form of vertical locomotion.”

“Let’s just suppose that you’re underestimating me,” I said, embarrassed. “Have you forgotten how many floors I travelled, sitting on Kelnmiir’s back?”

“That’s not quite the same thing,” Alice objected. “No more, the subject’s closed. We go down one floor first, then see what we think.”

I’d forgotten that Alice wasn’t just an ordinary girl. She knew how to give orders. It was in her blood ...

The hardest thing for me was the first descent. The fear of that immense height cramped my muscles again and filled my head with absolutely idiotic ideas. It got easier for me with every descent that followed. Eventually we reached the twenty-first floor – in only two hours!

“That’s it,” said Chas, tumbling in through the window of the twenty-first floor. “Don’t bother me for the next twenty-four hours! I’m resting. Although ... if somebody brings me something to eat, I could expend the meagre remains of my strength on chewing.”

“Let’s go and check out this floor,” Alice suggested to me. We need to be really careful.”

“Oh, come on, will you,” Chas said airily. “There wasn’t a single soul on the last twenty levels. And there weren’t any trolls. They’re probably all stuck in the Museum, scared to death.” He chuckled: “They won’t try using the teleports again.”

I had to admit there was a certain element of logic in what he said. The trolls were trying not to use the teleports, at least we hadn’t seen them, even from a distance. The question was – exactly what were the invaders doing right now? After all, the isolation field wouldn’t let anyone out.

Unless, of course, the trolls knew about the teleports that led out of the tower. After all, they must have got inside somehow. Nothing was clear. And I was still very much preoccupied with my latest dream. I’d already noticed that some of my dreams were like prophecies. Only I could never tell when these prophecies would come true – it could be a few minutes or an entire month later. If my latest dream could be trusted, we ought to meet up with Kelnmiir soon. He must have managed to get out of the Main Hall somehow.

“Okay, you’re right, Alice. Let’s go and check out this floor, and lazybones here ...” I waved in Chas’s direction, “can carry on lying around.”

“Hey now!” Chas protested. “I’m not just lying around, you know. I’m guarding ... our escape route.”

Alice snorted derisively.

“All you ever want to do is retreat.”

To put a stop to this sparring match, I had to take Alice by the arm and drag her away from Chas.

The twenty-first floor proved to be as empty as all the others had been. Not a soul, all the doors wide open – obviously the independent power supplies of the door locks were exhausted.

“So now what?” Alice asked me. “Do we go further down?”

“To the first floor? We could, of course ... but what’s the point?” I scratched my head. “We need to find a way to rescue Shins. We can’t do anything without him anyway.”

“Do you have any ideas about that?” The vampiress asked me. “We flatten all the trolls, and then what? Even if we really do manage to rescue Shins, he might be wearing the same kind of collar as you were. And what do we do about that? There’s no way in the world I’m going to do that again ... “ Alice touched her lips and frowned. “No ... I won’t do that again ...”

“I won’t allow you to do it again!” I said firmly. “We have to look for some other way.”

“Then look,” Alice supportively. “You’re the brains around here.”

I shrugged in embarrassment.

She was flattering me. I was the brains? Chas was ... used to be ... the brains during our first weeks of study ...

“You know, what I’m wondering is this,” I said slowly as I walked along the corridor beside Alice. “What’s going to happen to the Academy after ... all these events, if we manage to throw the trolls out of the tower?”

“I think it’s very unlikely everything will stay the same as it was. Something’s bound to change ...”

Alice didn’t finish what she was saying. And she suddenly put one finger to her lips to let me know that I should keep quiet too.

She couldn’t have heard anything, surely? What could it be?

I stopped and listened.

Not a thing. Silence.

“Do you hear it?” Alice asked quietly.

I shook my head. I couldn’t hear anything. My hearing must be much worse than hers. Or maybe the vampiress was imagining it ...

Alice gestured for me to follow her and set off quietly towards the teleports. We reached the end of the corridor and peeped out at the array. Nobody there.

Crunch!

Now I could hear the strange sound too. It was coming from the next corridor.

Alice crept to the beginning of the corridor very slowly, without making a sound, and glanced round the corner.

I waited patiently to see what her response would be.

When the vampiress turned round, I almost went running to her. She was so pale that for a moment I thought she was going to faint. But fortunately she didn’t.

She gulped hard and walked slowly back to me.

“Go and take a look,” he said in a hoarse voice.

I hoped I was walking as quietly as she had ... Then, when I looked round the corner ...

It was repulsive, a dragon take it!

There was something incredibly nasty creeping slowly along the corridor. It was sickening red colour. I would have described it as a snake – a long, narrow body ... very long and very narrow. Only the cross section of the long shape wasn’t circular, it was square. Its length was absolutely astounding ... about thirty-five feet! And the creature was no more than about three inches in diameter ....

The monster wasn’t just crawling along. It was making strange crunching sounds and trying to stand up ... on something like legs! Fortunately the rather low ceiling (only about twenty feet high) didn’t allow the monster to rise to its full height.

I ran back to Alice.

“What is that repulsive thing?” I exclaimed, trying not to raise my voice.

“You’re asking me?” asked the vampiress, who had already recovered.

“But ...”

“But it’s time we were leaving,” Alice interrupted. “Did you notice that creature was crawling in our direction? We need to move quickly and get off this floor before IT reaches us.”

There was nothing I could say to that ... Somehow didn’t feel like finding out what the monster’s intentions were. But what if the creature wanted to help us? No thank you ... we didn’t want any help from ... something like that.