Faculty of Fire (53 page)

Alice and I beat a rapid retreat back to Chas.

When we got back, Chas was chewing enthusiastically on something. That was strange, especially considering that we’d run out of food four levels ago.

“He’s got hold of food from somewhere,” I exclaimed in amazement.

“So what?” Chas asked with a shrug. “While you were strolling around the floor, I took a quick look through the nearest rooms.”

“As it happens, we had more than just an idle stroll,” Alice remarked and deftly grabbed an apple out of Chas’s hands. “It’s time for us to beat it. And quick.”

“Why?” Chas asked in amazement. “We were planning on staying on the twenty-first floor. Now we can think about how to rescue Shins ... or how to get into the Main Hall ...”

Alice and I glanced at each other.

“It you don’t get your backside up off the floor right now, we’ll leave you here. And then you can talk to the weird monster we just met in the next corridor.”

Chas jumped up off the floor.

“You’re joking, right?” he asked in relief when he saw there wasn’t any monster chasing after us.

“No, we’re not,” Alice snapped. “And if you hang about here for a while, you’ll see that we’re not. Do what you want, but we’re climbing up.”

Alice walked across to the window and grabbed hold of the rope of curtains.

“See you,” she said, waving her hand, and disappeared through the window.

“So you’re serious?” Chas asked, turning to me.

“And then some,” I replied and reached for the curtains.

“Then I’ll go first,” Chas said hastily and darted past right in front of my nose.

“But ... okay,” I agreed, because I had no choice, and I picked the last apple up off the floor. If he wanted to push in front of me, let him. Meanwhile I could eat an apple.

Chas disappeared out the window. I hastily finished chewing my apple and followed him.

I grabbed hold of the curtains, pushed off from the windowsill and started climbing. But I’d only gone about two feet when something stopped me. I thought my livery must have snagged on something.

“Zach, what are you doing down there?” Alice shouted, leaning out of the window above me.

“I’m hooked on something,” I answered, and looked down ... “Aagh!”

A long, thin hand with talons had grabbed hold of my livery.

I jerked my leg hard, but the material of the livery wouldn’t tear that easily, and that hand had a very firm grip on me.

“Alice, it’s holding me!” I shouted.

“Try to break free!” Alice shouted and started climbing quickly out of the window. “I’ll come down to you right away!”

I started jerking my legs with all my might, and got so carried away that I relaxed my grip on the curtains slightly ... And then the monster pulled me off ...

“Zach!”

Alice had already covered more than half of the distance towards me, so she had a close-up view of my fall.

For one moment I tried to clutch at the curtains again, but I couldn’t get a grip. I would have gone hurtling downwards, if not for the monster. It kept a grip on my livery. A very firm grip.

As a result I ended up hanging head downwards but, in defiance of the law of gravity, my heart sank into my boots.

And there below me was a massive drop through empty space.

“Zach!” Alice cried out too late.

“Zach,” the thing that was holding me by the livery hissed quietly. “If you don’t grab hold of the rope right now, I won’t be able to hold you. My muscles are still too thin ...”

That voice ... it was familiar ... Kelnmiir!”

“You!” I was so surprised that for a moment I even forgot that I was hanging head downwards on the twenty-first floor. “What happened to you?”

“Nothing ... that I can’t control,” Kelnmiir hissed. “I’m sorry, I can’t make small talk, my vocal cords haven’t formed completely yet.”

Trying to control my trembling, I grabbed hold of the curtains, and at that point Alice arrived.

“Let go of him, you foul beast!” she cried and jumped into the window.

“Wait, Alice, it’s Kelnmiir,” I shouted, but it was too late.

I heard the sounds of a fight from inside the window, and Kelnmiir’s hand suddenly released its grip on me. It was a good thing I’d already grabbed hold of the curtains, or I would definitely have fallen this time ...

Scrambling onto the windowsill with an effort, I saw an amusing sight. Alice was dangling up in the air, while Kelnmiir – although, to be quite honest, I still couldn’t recognise this super-elongated monster as the vampire – pressed her against the ceiling with one long, skinny hand.

“Alice, it’s Kelnmiir,” I explained to the vampiress again and tumbled to the floor.

“That’s right, Alice,” the monster said. “It’s me, Kelnmiir, and there’s no need to attack me or tear me into little pieces. And by the way, I’m still very vulnerable, because I haven’t got my body back into shape yet.”

That was true, his body looked even worse now than when Alice and I had seen it first. It looked like a huge square snake then, but now it had shortened in length, and Kelnmiir had acquired limbs – long, thin arms and legs – and his face was strangely flattened.

“All right, all right,” Alice agreed. “You can put me down on the ground now.”

“Who did you say this monster is?” asked Chas, jumping in the window. “I always thought vampires looked a bit more ... attractive than that.”

Kelnmiir put Alice down and burst into laughter.

“I’d like to see what you’d look like if you did what I’ve just done.”

Alice ran up and put her arms round me.

“Are you all right?” she whispered in my ear.

“I am now,” I answered, hugging her round the waist ... kind of accidentally. I could always blame it on my state of shock.

“And what did you do?” the vampiress asked, taking absolutely no notice of my hand on her waist

Chas sat on the windowsill and prepared to listen.

Crunch!

“Take no notice,” said Kelnmiir, shuddering all over. “That’s the bones gradually moving back into place. That’s really delightful, I can tell you. So why all this? Well, there really was a way from the main hall to the twenty-first floor, you were right, Zach – the Academy does have a system of drains.”

“But why didn’t the Craftsmen tell us about it?” I asked in surprise.

“Do you think the Craftsmen could possibly suspect that I can crawl through a pipe only three inches across? Actually, I didn’t even suspect it myself, until I tried ...”

“Alice, can you do that too?” I asked in a whisper.

“I think I already told you I have practically nothing in common with real vampires,” Alice hissed with unexpected malevolence, and then added in a gentler voice. “Besides, by no means can every vampire do tricks like that.”

“Did you say a pipe?” Chas asked. “I beg your pardon. But then why is your face square? I thought pipes were round ...”

Crunch!

“So they are, so they are,” Kelnmiir said with a nod. “But these pipes end in square openings ...”

“It’s a good thing they don’t end in grilles,” Chas laughed.

Crunch!

“You know what, lad?” Kelnmiir said in a surprisingly jolly voice. “I like you ...”

“What way do you mean?” asked Chas, pretending to be frightened.

“
That
way,” Kelnmiir hissed ominously. “Pardon me for not saying anything for a while, I have to reshape my brainpan.”

Alice and I exchanged glances.

“How horrible,” said the vampiress, expressing my own thoughts. “That must be painful ...”

“Better not think about it,” I said, trying to distract Alice. “Let’s use the time to come up with a new plan – bearing in mind that we have Kelnmiir with us now.”

“That’s right,” Chas put in. “Maybe we won’t have to fight anybody now ...”

“As if you were planning to fight anybody anyway,” Alice snorted.

“And why not?” my redheaded friend asked indignantly. “I’d soon show those trolls ...”

I didn’t hear how the conversation went after that. I was completely absorbed in my own thoughts.

So I had interpreted my dream correctly then? Kelnmiir had shown up, as prophesied! But where were the sword and the broom?

“E ... er, Kelnmiir, could you answer just one question for me? You didn’t happen to bring the sword and the broom, did you?

Crunch!

“At first, I did want to take the sword and the broom. But it just wasn’t possible to drag then through the drains.”

“So you didn’t take them,” I sighed.

Now I couldn’t say for certain if I’d prophesied his appearance or not, could I? Not if the sword and the broom weren’t here?

“Actually, I did take them,” Kelnmiir said rather uncertainly. “Only they’ve ... changed a little bit ...”

“Meaning what?”

“I had to trim the broom down and take it off the stick, so it lost some of its power, and I made a kind of dagger out of the sword. But the Craftsmen transferred some energy from the broom into the sword, so now we have a proper weapon.”

“And where is this weapon now?” Chas asked. “I don’t see it anywhere ...”

Crunch!

“It’s back there, where I crawled out. In that state it wasn’t very convenient to carry anything ...

“I’ll get it!” Chas volunteered. “Only tell me exactly where it is.”

While Kelnmiir explained to Chas where he’d left the weapons, Alice and I found a comfortable spot ...

We walked through into the auditorium and I told Kelnmiir what had happened to me as briefly as possible.

“Now I understand why Alice has those marks on her face,” Kelnmiir remarked. “By the way, if there’s anything like that on the Craftsmen we’re looking for, I can remove it without ...” – he glanced at Alice – “... any side effects.

“On the matter of side effects,” I said, remembering. “Are the remnants of the broom that you brought with you really functional?”

“The Craftsmen promised that the whole thing would work. Of course, the power of the weapon has been reduced by an entire order of magnitude ... but it ought to work.”

“By the way, Chas has been gone a long time,” Alice said casually. “I hope nothing’s happened ...”

Just at that moment there was an almighty crash in the corridor.

“Has something happened?”

“I doubt it,” I said and shrugged. “Most likely Chas has tried out the broom that he heard about from me. He’s a curious guy ...”

This time I really was prophetic. In a couple of minutes, Chas came running into the auditorium, holding my broom in his hands. He’d even managed to get hold of a stick from somewhere and set the stump of my all-purpose battle broom on it.

“I knocked a couple of doors off their hinges ... to test the weapon,” he informed us. “But as for the so-called sword ...” – he held out a piece of the sword’s blade, wrapped in a rag to Kelnmiir-- “... there was nothing to test it on ... or rather, no one.”

“Hand over the broom too,” I said to Chas. “You can’t you go appropriating other people’s weapons.”

Strangely enough, he didn’t argue, although he was obviously reluctant to let me have the broom.

“What are our plans from here?” asked Chas, moving on. “We have a good chance of rescuing Shins now. We just have to find him ...”

“All right,” Kelnmiir sighed. “I’ll give you a hint. “Which teleport did the trolls drag you and this Craftsman into on the twentieth floor?”

“The third from the left,” I replied automatically.

“And where does it lead to?”

“Three floors lower,” Alice answered for me.

Of course! Why hadn’t I guessed for myself? We’d only made one transit, and we’d ended up on the floor where the invaders had set up their base.

“Let’s go down to the eighteenth floor and send someone to scout it out,” I suggested. “It’s not a good idea to go straight down to the seventeenth floor. Who knows how many stoneheads there are there?”

“Excellent,” Alice agreed. “Strange that we didn’t think of that before.”

I maintained an embarrassed silence. If anyone ought to have thought of it, it was me.

“More climbing down curtains,” Chas groaned.

Scene 8

Half an hour later, when Kelnmiir had completely restored his body to its normal form, we went down to the eighteenth floor.

“Who’s going to scout the place out?” asked Chas after we all stretched out on the floor in the corridor.