The City of Dreaming Books (53 page)

Another two swipes of the paw, and the airborne books I’d hit disintegrated into a blizzard of fluttering pages. The rest of the squadron went into a steep climb that took them out of range.

Meanwhile, I readdressed myself to the Animatomes’ ground forces. I stamped on another book snake, strode over its remains to one of the bookcases and wrenched at it. The heavy piece of furniture toppled over and crashed to the floor, burying dozens of spiderlike specimens beneath it. A cloud of dust went up as it disintegrated into countless splinters and fragments of wood. Having selected the longest and sharpest of these, I went hunting the Animatomes, which fled in all directions. They crawled up the walls and bookcases, and the flying specimens hovered as near the ceiling as possible. The crawling specimens came off worst, being too slow. I transfixed them with my makeshift spear, one after another. When I’d skewered at least a dozen I brandished the weapon triumphantly, threw back my head and gave a bestial roar like the one I’d uttered in the Rusty Gnomes’ railroad station. All the bookcases shook, together with the Animatomes still on the shelves.

Then absolute silence fell.

The surviving Animatomes had fled to the upper reaches of the library and were keeping as still as mice. I hurled my shish kebab of kicking, writhing books into the dust and surveyed the battlefield, breathing heavily. Isolated pages were floating through the air and the floor was awash with inky, black blood. I had conformed to the barbarous ways of the catacombs.

I had become a Bookhunter.

T
he Animatomes lingered a while in the upper reaches of the library, apparently conferring in whispers. Then I noticed that their numbers were steadily diminishing. I could hear them rustling and scuttling around behind the bookcases, so I overturned each bookcase in turn until I exposed a big hole in the wall, their secret exit and entrance. Squeezing through this, I made my way along the passage beyond it but failed to encounter a single Animatome. After roaming unfamiliar parts of the castle for another few hours, I simply stretched out on the ground and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

I had a wonderful dream in which I could fly. Without any effort on my part, my body rose from the cold floor and floated along the castle’s interminable passages, light as thistledown carried on the breeze. I floated up and down long flights of stairs, through lofty chambers in which big wood fires were burning, and across rooms lit by hundreds of candles.

I awoke at last to find that I really was in a different part of the castle. Had I been sleepwalking? Had Shadowhall’s mysterious mechanisms transported me there, or had someone carried me there in my swoonlike slumbers?

Then I smelt smoke. A fire? A conflagration? Alarmed, I got up and set off in the direction from which the smoke was coming. Before long I could hear the hiss and crackle of burning wood. Ahead of me was a tall, narrow doorway that emitted a flickering glow. Cautiously, I drew nearer and, after a moment’s hesitation, peered in.

And there he was, the Shadow King himself! Believe me, dear readers, I have never seen a lovelier, wilder, more awe-inspiring sight than the monarch of the shadows dancing amid the fires burning round him. Nor had I ever seen a sadder sight, for his dance was an antidote to loneliness. The leaping flames multiplied his shadow many times, projecting it this way and that, so that it looked as if he was in the best of company.

At the same time I felt frightened. He was big and strong, at least twice my height, and he vaulted the flames with a series of prodigious leaps. All that I could see of him, even now, was his dark figure silhouetted against them, but I recognised his beauty, the beauty of a wild, untamed beast. He had to be the most remarkable creature in the catacombs of Bookholm.

And then he laughed. Pausing with his back to me, he lowered his arms and gave a full-throated laugh. Now I really did feel frightened, because his voice had a rustling, rattling quality that made it sound as if it came from another world, a world of darkness and death.

‘Come with me!’ he said.

I flinched at the words, which hit me like a whiplash, just as the Harpyr had flinched at the sound of his sigh. He had spotted me long ago. I now saw that his silhouette looked curiously angular, as if he were wearing a bizarre suit of armour and a many-pointed crown. He threaded his way between the fires and disappeared through a dark doorway. I followed him obediently.

The adjacent chamber was a throne room, the throne room of the loneliest king on earth. It contained only one piece of furniture, the throne itself, a massive winged armchair constructed of fossilised books. He was already seated in it by the time I entered.

I still couldn’t see him clearly because the room was only sparsely lit by a few candles and the Shadow King had withdrawn into the throne’s recesses.

The floor was strewn with books. As I hesitantly approached, many of them rose on their little legs and scuttled off or crawled out of my way. My reputation had evidently preceded me.

‘Are you a Bookhunter?’ asked the Shadow King. His hoarse, unearthly voice pierced me to the marrow. I came to an involuntary halt.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I merely defended myself. My interest in books is of another kind. I’m a writer.’

‘Really?’ said the Shadow King. ‘What books have you written?’

I broke out in a sweat. ‘None as yet,’ I replied. ‘I mean, none that have been published.’

‘So you still can’t write books,’ the Shadow King said, ‘but you can already kill them. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to be a literary critic?’

Unable to think of a witty reply, I said nothing.

‘What is your name?’

‘Optimus Yarnspinner.’

A long silence.

‘You come from Lindworm Castle?’

‘Yes. That’s obvious, I’m afraid.’

‘What are you doing in the catacombs of Bookholm?’

‘I was brought here against my will,’ I replied. ‘A literary scholar and antiquarian named Pfistomel Smyke drugged me with a poisoned book and hauled me off to the catacombs. I’ve been roaming around here ever since.’

An even longer silence.

‘And who are
you
?’ I ventured to ask, if only to relieve the tension a little. ‘If I may make so bold.’

An even longer and more awkward silence ensued.

‘I have many names,’ he murmured at length. ‘Mephistas. Soter. Eevel. Existion. Tetragrammaton. The Demidwarfs in the upper caves call me Keron Kenken. The Dark Folk in the lower labyrinths refer to me as Ningo Spora Doodung Mgo Gyuli Thorchugg - I can hardly remember it all myself.’

‘Are you . . . the Shadow King?’ I asked.

‘That’s the silliest name of all,’ he said. ‘It’s what they call me on the surface, isn’t it? Yes, if you like, I’m the Shadow King too, but the name I like best is the one I was given by my direst foe. He christened me Homuncolossus. It’s the most appropriate name of all.’

‘Was it you that killed Hunk Hoggno?’

‘No. Hoggno killed himself with his own axe. I merely guided his hand,’

I nodded. ‘Then you also laid the trail?’

‘I did.’

‘But why? Why don’t you kill me? Why are you helping me?’

Homuncolossus sighed and sank back even deeper into the throne’s shadowy recesses. ‘I could tell you a story,’ he said. ‘Would you like to hear it?’

‘I like stories,’ I replied.

‘It’s a rather weird story, mark you.’

I shooed away a few Animatomes that had ventured nearer again and sat down on the floor.

‘Weird stories are the best,’ I said.

I
had been hoping that the Shadow King would show me his face at last, but he preferred to conceal his true exterior in the dim recesses of his throne.

‘To some degree,’ he began, ‘this is the story of someone I used to know - an old friend whom I remember sometimes gladly and sometimes far less so, because the recollection saddens me so much. Isn’t it absurd that tears should spring to your eyes far more readily at the memory of good times than bad?’

He didn’t seem to expect an answer to this question, because he went on at once. ‘This friend was a man, a member of the human species, one of the few that still dared to go on living in Zamonia and hadn’t yet emigrated to other continents. He lived with his parents in one of the small human colonies in the Midgard Range, where a few survivors are said to be hiding to this day.

‘This friend was a writer when he came into the world. I don’t mean that he could write at birth - no, he learnt to do so later on, like everyone else - but he was already brimming with ideas and stories when he first saw the light of day. His little head was filled to bursting with them, and they frightened him, especially at night, when it was dark. His one desire was to get rid of these stories, but he didn’t know how. Talking wasn’t his forte and he hadn’t yet learnt to write, so new ideas kept flowing into his brain from all quarters. They weighed it down to such an extent that he spent his entire childhood going around with his head bowed.’