Fighting with fire

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The first thing that alerted them to the fact that something was happening was the groaning creak of metal hinges. The sound seemed to be coming from all over the tree. A few minutes later, Lex began to have a horrible suspicion as to what exactly that sound might have been when he caught, out of the corner of his eye, a flurry of feathers.

‘They’ve stopped singing,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The birds,’ Lex replied. ‘They’re not singing anymore. When did they stop?’ They looked at each other. ‘I think they’ve been let out of their cages,’ Lex said.

It was impossible to know exactly how many birds were on the tree, but Lex had counted seven already and they had only explored a small proportion. They were big things and no doubt had sharp claws and beaks. If a few of them ganged up together, they would probably be able to peck a person to death if they wanted to.

Lex strained his eyes in the half-light. The little lanterns dotted about the tree were hung on long chains from the platforms above. They gave out enough light to illuminate the walkways but not enough to pierce the darkness beyond. But sometimes there was the occasional draught of air? like something large had just swooped by somewhere close. Or there was a rustle of feathers or a blur of movement detectable only out of the corner of the eye.

‘Let’s just keep moving,’ Lex said.

They made it to the next level? about three quarters of the way up the tree? before one of the vulture birds flew through the branches and landed with an inelegant thump on the walkway right in front of them. Lex and Jesse stopped and stared as it picked itself up, shook itself and gave a dismal squawk before turning its baleful gaze on them. It really was an ugly beast. Its green, blue and orange feathers were rumpled and its wrinkly head was bald but for a few wisps of white hair that stuck out at angles. Its beak curved down, giving it an almost comically morose expression, and its eyes were a bloodshot grey.

‘That’s gotta be the ugliest darn bird I ever saw,’ Jesse said softly.

Lex had to agree with him. But it did not seem particularly aggressive. It was just sitting there in a hunched up sort of way on the path ahead.

‘I suppose it’ll probably tear our throats out as soon as we try to walk past it,’ Lex remarked.

‘Ain’t got the right kind of beak for that,’ Jesse said.

‘Well, get your pistol out, anyway. You can’t be too careful.’

Lex tried shooing the bird away but that didn’t work. It just sat there blinking at him miserably.

‘Blasted thing!’ Lex said irritably. ‘I suppose we could try walking around it.’

This was not an attractive prospect for two reasons. Firstly, they were by now extremely high up in the tree and so creeping along at the edge of the walkway was not something either of them felt like doing. Secondly, if the bird were to attack them whilst they were trying to walk past it, it wouldn’t even need to tear their throats out, for it would almost certainly knock them off the walkway to plunge to their deaths. But they had to get past the bird somehow.

‘Just shoot at it,’ Lex said to Jesse.

‘But it’s not tried to attack us!’ the cowboy protested.

‘I don’t care. If it’s too stupid to move then we’ll just have to move it ourselves.’

‘Why don’t you try shoving it first?’ Jesse suggested. ‘Before getting all trigger happy.’

‘ Shove it?’ Lex repeated, horrified. ‘I’m not shoving it! It’ll probably take my eyes out!’

Jesse sighed. ‘Here,’ he said, passing Lex the pistol. ‘I’ll try. Me and the animals almost always get along.’

‘Yeah, until one of them rips your face off!’ Lex said.

But Jesse wasn’t listening. He was walking slowly closer to the bird. Finally, he stopped, reached out an arm and gave it a hearty shove. Lex stood back, aiming the pistol and fully expecting the bird to whip around and take Jesse’s hand off. But instead it just sat there. Jesse pushed it again, a little harder this time. But it just hunched there refusing to be budged.

‘I reckon we can just walk past it,’ Jesse said. ‘It ain’t gonna attack us.’

Lex had to admit it looked like the cowboy was right. He walked over slowly and had just reached Jesse’s side when the bird let out a sudden hacking cough that made them both jump. It followed this up with a dry retching sound before throwing up two books along with a couple of pellets that had little bones sticking out of them. Then, and only then, did it fly away.

Lex and Jesse stared at the two books on the ground. They were not wet or slimy or covered in stomach juices, as you might expect them to be when they’d just been thrown up by a large bird. In fact, they were dry and pristine and looked brand new. Both had landed face up and both had extremely startling titles. One was called, The Life and Death of Lex Trent. The other was called, The Life and Death of Jesse Layton.

They stared in amazement. Lex’s book was bound in blue leather, Jesse’s in green. Lex’s book was noticeably the larger of the two. Jesse reached a hand out towards his book but Lex grabbed his wrist.

‘Don’t touch it!’ he said sharply.

‘Why not?’

‘I have a bad feeling about those books. You’ve heard about the Library of Souls, haven’t you?’

‘That’s just a myth,’ Jesse replied, but he didn’t sound at all sure.

There was a legend that told of a library belonging to the Gods where every person’s entire life was recorded in a book. The books wrote themselves, long before the person was born. And, when the time came for a new baby to arrive, the Gods would pick the person whose turn it was to live by choosing souls from the books. If the two books lying before them really were from the Library of Souls, then Lex’s book would contain within its pages everything he had done and would ever do. It would detail his achievements and his failures. It would state how he would die and when.

Lex shuddered. ‘Even if they are real, I don’t want to know what’s in my future. Life wouldn’t be fun anymore then.’

‘I reckon you’re right about that,’ Jesse replied. ‘Let’s just leave ’em be.’

They edged past the books like they were mines that might go off. Lex was glad to leave them behind. People were not supposed to ever see their own books. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. And Lex had the strong feeling that they shouldn’t even so much as touch the front cover with their fingertips.

‘One thing I don’t get, though,’ Jesse said. ‘If they really were our life books then how come mine was so much shorter than yours?’

‘Because your life is more boring, probably. After all, the typical entry is probably something like, “Jesse Layton woke up, ate some beans, chewed some tobacco, drank some beer, went to sleep.” It doesn’t take up much space to write.’

‘Maybe it’s that,’ the cowboy agreed mildly. ‘Or maybe it’s because I’m going to kick the old bucket at a younger age than you.’

Lex stopped suddenly on the walkway. It was true that Jesse’s book had been shorter than Lex’s, but it had still been a large book in its own right. Perhaps the reason for the difference in length had been because Lex was going to have more life, not that Jesse was going to have less. After all, wasn’t that what he was after when he went to Dry Gulch? Wasn’t that why he’d enlisted Jesse’s help in learning how to be a cowboy: to find the legendary Sword of Life? That book must have been confirmation that he was going to succeed!

For a dangerous moment, Lex felt the almost irresistible urge to go straight back to the book and read about where his future self would find the sword. If he could find out the hiding place in advance, it would save him a lot of time and trouble once he reached Dry Gulch. But then he shook himself. He couldn’t afford to go back. Not now. Not when they were almost at the top of the tree and winning the final round was within his grasp. Besides which, he still had the strong instinctive feeling that reading from the book would not be a good idea.

So they carried on. They were at a height of about one hundred and fifty feet, and getting near the top. The trunk had thinned as they got higher so that the area they could walk in seemed to be getting smaller and there was less room for books.

Lex had been keeping an eye on Lorella, who had stayed behind them due to the fact that she couldn’t climb quickly. She was on a platform directly below them when one of the vulture birds thumped down in front of her and noisily threw up two books at her feet. One was a large blue one called, The Life and Death of Lorella; the other was a tiny silver one Lex assumed must belong to the sprite, but it was too far away for him to read the title. The bird flapped off with a squawk. Lorella peered at the book for a moment before snatching it from the ground. Lex stilled as the enchantress flipped open the front cover and flicked through to the last page. No sooner had she started to read than a vicious wind seemed to pour from the open pages of the book, whipping about her, tugging at her dress and hair. She barely had time to get a horrified expression on to her face before she was sucked? entirely? into the book, leaving behind not so much as a single blue hair. The book fell to the walkway with a thump. Lex saw the sprite fluttering about it agitatedly for a moment before she dropped to the floor and heaved at the front cover with both arms to lift it. Then she rifled manically through all the pages, as if expecting to find the enchantress pressed between them like a flower. But there was nothing. Lorella was gone.

‘Well, I guess that explains what happens if you try to read from your own book,’ Lex said. ‘I told you it wouldn’t be pretty. I wonder if Jeremiah fell for it.’

His question was answered almost at once when he spotted Jeremiah across the tree on a distant branch. They were on about the same level, which rather upset Lex as he’d hoped he was still ahead. Tess was nowhere in sight. Either she’d got sucked into her book, too, or Jeremiah had left her at the base of the tree. Lex suspected the latter since, if Tess wasn’t around to slow him down, that would explain how the nobleman had managed to climb the tree so fast.

They were almost at the top now. And the height was horrible even before the walkways started to shrink. Lex assumed it was the Librarians’ doing, as they’d failed to capture all the players with the books the vulture birds threw up. The wooden planks groaned and creaked as they shrank beneath the players’ feet. With no railings to hold on to, Lex and Jesse were forced to steady themselves against the bookshelves attached to the branches. Jeremiah had noticed them now, too, and the three of them raced desperately to the top level. The rope-ladders had turned into mere ropes by this time but that didn’t hinder Lex too badly for he had become adept at climbing up and down ropes as a result of his cat-burglar exploits as the Shadowman and the Wizard. He left Jesse on the level below and started to climb. He was much lighter than Jeremiah and so had less weight to pull. Although the two of them grabbed ropes at the same time, Lex reached the top platform first.

It was shrinking fast, which was unfortunate seeing as he was now at the very top of the tree? high enough that he would have been able to see the ocean all around them had it not been dark. There were three large bookcases up there, filled with books that had all been written by Erasmus Grey. Lex ran his eyes over the spines in frantic search of the right book, very aware that Jeremiah could be only moments behind him and that the platform on which he stood was shrinking.

To complicate matters even further, he could smell the distinctive scent of burning wood. When the walkways began to shrink, some of the lanterns that had been hung from them had fallen off, smashing on the branches and setting the wood alight instantly. The Librarians had not been bluffing when they’d said they would burn the tree to the ground. The Gods were supposed to keep the island lost but, should someone ever find their way on to it somehow and get too close to the forbidden books, the vulture-birds were the only means the Librarians had of protecting it. If intruders were not sucked into the book then the only thing left to do was to destroy the tree, hence the fact that lanterns were hung everywhere and? although the players didn’t know it yet? the library tree’s bark was the most flammable in the world. Just one little spark and it would burst into flames.

Before Lex could find the correct book, Jeremiah appeared on the platform beside him. Lex could have ignored him and carried on looking for the book but that would be to leave winning up to chance? a simple matter of whichever of them happened to spot the book first. And Lex never left winning up to chance. He spun on his heel, put a horrified expression on to his face and shouted, ‘Watch out for that flying tree-snake!’

Jeremiah glared at him. ‘You really think I’m dumb enough to fall for that? There aren’t any flying tree-snakes here!’

‘None except for the one in my pocket,’ Lex replied.

Jeremiah opened his mouth but, before he could say anything, Lex reached into his pocket, drew out the plastic toy rattlesnake he’d put there just for that purpose and threw it at Jeremiah’s head. Perhaps if it had been anything other than a snake the plan wouldn’t have worked. But as Jeremiah had that unfortunate phobia he instinctively jerked back, arms raised over his head to protect himself? and fell right off the edge of the platform.

Thank you, Mr and Mrs East, Lex thought smugly when he peered over the edge and saw Jeremiah gripping a loop of rope that was caught between two branches. His knuckles were white already for he was dangling over an immense height. In addition, the fire had spread further up the tree and was practically licking at Jeremiah’s boots.

‘Sitting duck,’ Lex grinned.

He turned back round to the bookcases and, almost instantly, his eye fell on the correct book. He dragged it out by the spine, pulled the page from his pocket and was just about to insert it into the book and win the round when he hesitated. He’d as good as won the round already for Lorella had been sucked inside a book and Jeremiah was hanging helplessly from a length of rope. There was therefore no rush? other than the fact that the tree was now on fire and the walkways were disappearing. If he was going to win, he might as well win in style. He would rescue Jeremiah first, thereby earning himself some extra hero points as well as bolstering his image as a noble, self-sacrificing, all-round splendid sort of person.

Lex thrust the book into his bag then leaned over the edge of the platform and called down cheerfully, ‘Don’t worry, Jeremiah! I’ll save you!’

The nobleman glared up at him. ‘Don’t! Don’t save me! I don’t need saving; I’m fine!’

‘You don’t look fine, old chum,’ Lex shouted back. ‘Hang in there. I’ll be right down.’

The platform was barely big enough for Lex to stand on now and he was just reaching out for the rope when one of the books on the shelf caught his attention. It was one word that leapt out at him: Desareth. When he turned his head to look at it properly he saw that the book was called, The Wishing Creatures of Desareth. This one, like all the others around it, had been written by Erasmus Grey. Lex stared at the book for a split second before reaching out and snatching it from the shelf. He was just stuffing it into his bag when the platform beneath him suddenly vanished altogether and Lex was freefalling for a moment before he managed to grab on to the nearby rope. He received quite a nasty burn as he was only able to use one hand since the other was holding his bag. But, finally, he managed to bring himself to a stop.

The walkways had now disappeared entirely. All that remained were the ropes. The tree crackled and spat in the heat from the flames; books blackened, shrivelled and burned; vulture birds squawked as they flapped away from the blaze; clouds of grey ash billowed in the air around them. Lex looked down and saw that he was not far off a broad branch, so he let the rope go. He fell on to the branch with a thump and? with a bit of frantic scrabbling? managed to cling on to it and then haul himself to his feet.

‘Hey!’ Jesse shouted from further along the same branch. ‘Hey, we need to get outta here! The whole darn tree’s going up!’

‘Yeah, in a minute!’ Lex called back. ‘I have to rescue Jeremiah first.’

He thrust the Desareth book into his bag, pulled out the other one and then ran along the branch to pass both the book and the missing page to Jesse.

‘The second I pull Jeremiah up, put the page back into the book, OK?’ Lex said.

He couldn’t risk taking the book and page with him knowing that Jeremiah might snatch them from him as soon as he was safe, or else find a way to make Lex drop them. If Jesse had them then he could win the round as soon as Lex had saved Jeremiah.

‘After all that grief you gave me about the octopus?’ Jesse said incredulously. ‘D’you really think this is the time for heroics?’

‘It’s not heroics,’ Lex replied. ‘I just want the extra points.’ Then he turned around and ran back along the branch to the end where Jeremiah still dangled helplessly from the rope.

He had been trying to pull himself up but it wasn’t working because he had nothing to grab on to. It was all he could do to cling to the rope. Lex bet his arms must be killing him by now. And surely he must be able to feel the heat from the flames below. They were making Lex uncomfortable and he was aware of ash settling in his hair and flecking his skin as thousands of books burned all around them.

He crouched down low on the branch, leaned over and shouted, ‘Give me your hand!’

‘Will I ever!’ Jeremiah snarled. ‘Go ahead and win the round, Trent! I’m not giving you the satisfaction of being awarded hero points for saving me from a situation that you put me in yourself!’

‘Now, now, what kind of talk is that?’ Lex replied. ‘Don’t be a quitter. You don’t want to die here, do you? Give me your hand!’

‘I will not!’

‘You won’t, eh? We’ll just see about that!’

Lex looked around for a conveniently placed rope but there weren’t any nearby so he swung his bag off his shoulders and rifled through it until he found the elongating cord and the safety harness. He always packed these things with him, just in case an opportunity to turn into the Wizard should arise.

The cord was extremely long but was currently all wound up within itself. All Lex had to do was press a button on the hand piece and the cord would unravel. It was extremely strong and durable and had aided him many times before. Lex released enough cord to make a loop and secure it around the branch before pulling on a thick pair of gloves with grips on their surface specially designed for just this purpose. He looked at the safety harness but then thrust it back into his bag. There simply wasn’t time to fiddle about with all those buckles and straps. The heat from the blazing tree was fast becoming unbearable and the smog of smoke and ash was making them splutter and cough.

‘Just piss off!’ Jeremiah snapped from below. ‘I’ll get myself out of this; I don’t need your help!’

‘Ha! If by “get yourself out of this” you mean cook yourself like a barbecued steak on a skewer then, yeah, you’re doing great. Personally, I don’t think you can hold on to that rope for much longer. Your knuckles are white and your arms are trembling. You can’t save yourself. I know it and you know it. I’m going to swing down on this cord in a minute and I strongly, strongly, suggest that you let go of that rope when I grab you.’

Jeremiah glared up at him savagely. But the truth of it was that he really didn’t have much choice. He, too, was covered in ash and was now starting to choke on the smoke. Being stuck at the top of an extraordinarily high tree isn’t much fun, even when that tree doesn’t happen to be on fire. His arms were killing him and the smoke was making it almost impossible to breathe. Lex was right: Jeremiah couldn’t save himself, and he knew it.

Lex silently counted to three and then leapt off the opposite side of the branch as far out as the cord would allow, with the effect that he then swung in a descending arc towards Jeremiah. When Lex smashed into him, it was with such force that the nobleman would not have been able to remain clinging to the rope even if he’d wanted to. He had no choice but to grab at the thief’s shoulders instead.

Gritting his teeth and trying to ignore the unbelievable weight that was Jeremiah, Lex pressed the button to release more cord and their momentum caused them to carry on swinging. This branch was a particularly long one and overhung the water below? which currently seemed to be an absurd distance away. It was like jumping off the edge of a cliff.

As they began to fall, the cord unravelled itself at lightening speed and Lex only prayed that it was long enough, since he had never had to test it at such a great height before. If he had just been carrying himself then he might have stood a chance of keeping hold of the cord when it finally snapped taut but, with Jeremiah as well, Lex knew that the second they ran out of cord his hands would be wrenched away and they would freefall the rest of the drop.

It must have taken them a mere five seconds to fall all the way down the tree but it seemed like much longer. They were both yelling as they fell? although Lex yelled with excitement as well as fear. He found the fall fun at the same time as he found it terrifying. Or perhaps he found it fun because it was terrifying.

The only part of it Lex didn’t like was that the fire became more ferocious as they got lower. And, although they were clear of most of the branches, they could still feel the suffocating heat; they still got smoke in their eyes and ash in their mouths.

Finally, the cord ran out with a snap so abrupt that Lex and Jeremiah actually flew up a couple of feet when the handle was torn from Lex’s hand before falling the rest of the way. Fortunately for both of them, the cord ran out only about a metre above the sea. They fell in with a splash.

The water was relatively shallow there? only about waist high? and Jeremiah was back on his feet with impressive speed, splashing noisily towards Lex who was still coughing up water. When he reached him, Jeremiah grabbed Lex’s collar, hauled him to his feet and said, ‘If you don’t give me that book right now I’m going to take it from you by force!’

‘Good luck,’ Lex replied. ‘It’s not on me. Jesse’s got it. He’ll have won the round by now.’

Indeed, in another moment, Lex and Jeremiah both found themselves plucked from the water and put back on the shore of the beach where they’d started. The three Gods were all there, as were Jesse, Tess and the sprite.

‘I won!’ Lex exclaimed, speaking directly to Lady Luck. ‘I won, didn’t I?’

Something would have had to have gone very wrong in those last few minutes for Lex not to have won. After all, he had left Jesse standing there with the book in his hand. And, now that he looked, he saw that Lady Luck was holding it. But he still needed her to say it.

‘Yes, darling,’ the Goddess replied, smiling widely. ‘You won. And you carried out a magnificent rescue!’

‘ Magnificent rescue?’ Jeremiah repeated, his face turning positively scarlet with anger. ‘That was not a magnificent rescue! It was a-’

But he was interrupted at that moment by the explosion. It lit up the sky and seemed to shake the very ground on which they stood. The humans instinctively threw themselves to the ground, arms over their heads. When they finally dared to look up again, the library tree was gone. All that remained of it was the dark ash settling on the surface of the ocean, along with a few loose pages.

‘I suppose Herman put gunpowder in the centre of the tree,’ Lady Luck tutted. ‘Oh well, it’s about time. I don’t know why he didn’t just destroy those books long ago, if he didn’t want anyone to read them. More like the God of Silliness than the God of Knowledge, if you ask me. But what wonderful timing on your part, Lex!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why, everyone might have been blown to bits if you hadn’t won right when you did!’

‘I suppose you could say that I saved everyone,’ Lex replied, looking as smug as possible.

‘Well, everyone except poor Lorella,’ Lady Luck said, looking at Thaddeus with rather a self-satisfied expression on her face. ‘In your own round, too. Why, it’s almost embarrassing!’

‘I still have the companion,’ Thaddeus muttered, looking extremely hacked off.

Lady Luck laughed. ‘A sprite! Oh dear. I really don’t think a sprite is going to be much good for the final round I have in mind.’

‘Why don’t you just worry about your own player?’ Thaddeus snapped. ‘And let me worry about mine!’

‘As you wish.’

And with that, Thaddeus disappeared, taking the unhappy-looking sprite with him.

‘Look,’ Jeremiah said to Kala. ‘I really don’t see why Trent should be awarded hero points. I was only hanging from that branch because of him! It was his fault I was there in the first place! Besides, I didn’t ask him to save me!’

‘But he did,’ Kala said coldly. ‘So he gets hero points. That’s the way this works. You should never have allowed yourself to be put in that position in the first place. He only threw a toy snake at you, after all.’

Jeremiah went pink with embarrassment. ‘I thought it was real for a moment,’ he muttered. ‘Snakes make me… uncomfortable.’

‘Wasn’t that an unfortunate coincidence for us?’ Kala snapped.

Jeremiah clenched his jaw and said nothing. Lex felt smug. Receiving a dressing-down from your Goddess right in front of everybody couldn’t be a very pleasant experience. On the rare occasions when Lady Luck was unhappy with Lex, at least she expressed her displeasure in private.

Tess had been sitting on the sand behind Jeremiah looking bored, but at that point she looked up and caught Jesse’s eye. He waved. She gave him a shy smile and waved back. And then she and Jeremiah were both gone, taken away by their sulky Goddess.

‘Well,’ Lady Luck said. ‘That’s that. A most satisfactory conclusion to the second round.’

‘I’m ahead of Jeremiah in points now, right?’ Lex asked.

‘Yes, dear. He has winning points from the first round but you have winning points and hero points. An inspired idea, on your part. Now you’ll get to start first in the third round.’

‘How about giving me a clue as to what it’s about?’ Lex prompted.

He’d tried to get a hint as to what Lady Luck’s round would entail before but he’d been unsuccessful every time and he was again now. She just smiled and said, ‘You’ll see. One thing I can tell you, Lex, and that’s that it will be glorious!’