The City of Dreaming Books (46 page)

There were many abiding legends about these dwarfs: for instance, that they had installed a flywheel at the centre of the earth to keep our planet rotating and that they possessed diamond teeth capable of masticating iron.

But one thing was proved beyond doubt: they had built the Bookway, a sort of railroad of which ancient vestiges still existed at several places in the catacombs - Regenschein himself had seen stretches of it. The Rusty Gnomes’ greatest achievement, it had originally been intended to connect the entire labyrinth. This vast technological scheme was never completed, however, because the Rusty Gnomes were carried off by a mysterious epidemic allegedly caused by - of all things - iron deficiency. Their shimmermould, on the other hand, had withstood the passage of time.

So the book machine in the Leather Grotto was nothing more nor less than a set of sidings forming part of the Rusty Gnomes’ railroad system. To be honest, though, dear readers, this meant precious little to me at the time. What interested me far more was where my adventurous, breakneck ride was taking me and whether I would survive it. I thought for one moment that it would soon be at an end, because the gradient steadily decreased until I was travelling almost horizontally and had even started to climb.

I took advantage of this deceleration to turn over on my stomach. Not only was this a more comfortable position, but I could at least see where I was going. The track continued to ascend at first, ever more steeply, until it reached the top of the rise. Then it fell away sharply and I resumed my rapid descent.

My cloak fluttered like a flag in a gale. The luminous green cross-ties flashed past beneath me, one after another, as the wheels screeched down the track spewing a long trail of white sparks. One more descending curve, then up I went, higher and higher. I braced myself for another wild plunge but continued on my way at a relatively moderate speed - descending, it was true, but at nothing like the previous rate. Then came a long, steep bend. I didn’t dare speculate on the chasms that yawned beneath the two thin strips of luminous metal along which I was travelling. The track supports were only partly visible - their green glow was swallowed up by the darkness some fifty or sixty feet below me - so I had no idea how big the drop might be.

At length my self-propelled bookshelf came to a long, straight stretch of track. It slowed down and proceeded at a steady tempo. I felt that I could now afford to relax my grip slightly and take a short breather.

One thing was certain: none of the Bookhunters had followed me this far. I was using an ancient system of transportation whose layout and function had been known only to the members of an extinct race of dwarfs, and a Bookling had entrusted me to it.

Reassured by such considerations, I eventually entered even larger caves in which other tracks loomed out of the darkness at various points. They too were coated with shimmermould, but here it glowed pink, blue and orange as well as green. I saw the tracks ascend, descend and describe long, steep curves, many of them beside or beneath my own. It was strangely impressive to see those intricate structures hovering in the gloom like ghostly edifices. By now my conveyance was trundling through this bizarre scenery at a walking pace. And then I saw something that made my blood run cold.

I was travelling parallel to a stretch of track coated with phosphorescent blue rust and gazing in wonderment at the dead straight rails atop their spindly piers, which were reinforced by a spider’s web of wire mesh, when the rails abruptly ended: the piers had collapsed and the wire mesh hung in shreds. Although the track continued on its way after fifty feet or so, a black chasm yawned where the missing section should have been.

The Rusty Gnomes’ Bookway was a ruin - I’d been suppressing that thought all the time. My ‘toboggan’ was traversing a structure hundreds of years old and long deprived of maintenance. It was inevitable that there would be a gap somewhere on my own route and that a chasm would suddenly open up in front of me.

My mobile bookshelf now seemed like a flying carpet that might lose its magical powers at any moment.

I debated whether to get off and proceed on foot. That would have been quite possible, now that I was moving so slowly, but the cross-ties were over a yard apart, and one false step . . . No, I preferred not to think of it. I could only hope that I was travelling along an exceptionally well-preserved section of the Bookway and would soon reach my destination.

Unfortunately, what I now saw was hardly calculated to reinforce my confidence. I kept passing breached stretches of track, snapped rails and buckled piers. The Bookway’s skeleton was being eroded not only by time but by living rust. In another hundred years there would probably be nothing left but gigantic colonies of shimmermould proliferating on the floor of the cave like a luminous sea of every conceivable colour.

So on I went, staring apprehensively in the direction I was going - not that I could see very far in the dim light. I kept fancying that I’d sighted a gap in the rails not far ahead, but they always proved to be intact when I got there.

And then, quite suddenly, a mountain loomed up in front of me. No, mountain would be an exaggeration: a grey, conical monolith some eight or ten feet high, right in the middle of the track and only a stone’s throw ahead. Where had it come from? Perhaps it was a stalactite that had snapped off the roof of the cave. But why, if it was as massive as it looked, hadn’t it smashed the flimsy rails?

I gauged my speed. The bookshelf was now travelling so slowly that it would probably collide with the rock quite gently and come to a stop. There was no need for me to jump off, but I shuddered to think how hard it would be to clear the track. I clung on tight for safety’s sake, so as not to be pitched off by the impact. By now, only a few yards separated me from the obstacle.

Which suddenly stirred.

Puckered up.

Stretched, expanded, changed shape.

Emitted a peculiar gurgling sound.

And finally, only inches from a collision, dived off the track into space.

The bookshelf trundled on. Dumbfounded, I turned to stare after the apparition but could see nothing, hear nothing. I rubbed my eyes and peered into the depths as the scene of this strange encounter steadily receded.

All at once I heard another unpleasant gurgle below me! There followed a fluttering sound like a vast flock of pigeons taking wing. And then the thing came soaring back out of the darkness. It had turned into a birdlike creature, unfurled two huge wings and was vigorously propelling itself upwards.

The head was narrow, almost spindle-shaped, with a beak like a pair of pincers, the skin grey and leathery. The ears were remarkably big and upstanding, the feet and wing joints tipped with sharp talons, but the most salient feature of this life form was that it had no eyes, just two deep, dark cavities that made its head look like a skull. Neither a bird nor a bat, it was a very special creature to be found only in the catacombs of Bookholm. I even knew its name. It was a Harpyr!

C
olophonius Regenschein had written that there is only one kind of creature capable of inflicting a fate worse than death: the Harpyr, whose screams can drive its prey insane.

Resident only in the catacombs of Bookholm, this cross between a harpy and a vampire can utter screams of a frequency that induces dementia in anyone exposed to its frightful song for a certain length of time by disrupting the rhythm of the brainwaves. Not until its prey has been rendered absolutely helpless does the Harpyr pounce on it and drink its blood.

The thing that had dived off the track was one of these legendary creatures. I had roused it from its slumbers and now it was clearly eager to pay me back. Like most eyeless life forms, the Harpyr relies for guidance mainly on its sense of hearing. While soaring upwards on its powerful wings, the creature abruptly turned its head in all directions and swivelled its ears until, with a sudden click, it homed in and pointed the tip of its beak straight at me. It must have detected the faint rattle of the bookshelf’s wheels, or even, perhaps, my heartbeat.

I would have given anything for my conveyance to have picked up speed again, but it continued to trundle along as leisurely as before. I waited for the Harpyr to pounce on me, but for some unaccountable reason it hovered on the spot, uttering more strangled screams. Although piercing and far from pleasant, they did not strike me as loud enough to drive a person insane and were evidently just another aid to orientation. Their echoes reverberated round the cave, filling the air with the sound waves the Harpyr needed to navigate by. Surprisingly, however, the echoes rebounding off the walls grew steadily louder, not fainter. Surely that was a total impossibility?

I had little time to ponder the problem because it resolved itself a moment later. The echoes weren’t echoes at all; they were the cries of other Harpyrs that now came fluttering out of the darkness: one, two, four, seven - a full dozen of them converged from from all sides. The first creature’s screams had been intended to summon others of its kind. Harpyrs hunted in packs, it seemed. Why hadn’t Regenschein mentioned
that
in his book?

The aerial monsters assembled above the track, fluttering and screeching at one another, while my laggardly bookshelf continued to dawdle along at a snail’s pace. Then the heads of the twelve Harpyrs clicked to and fro until all their beaks were pointing in my direction. Having jointly decided on their route through the air, they pricked their ears and emitted a collective screech. The hunt was on: vigorously flapping their wings, they headed straight for me.

Just then my conveyance plunged into space. Or so I thought at first, because the motion was so abrupt and unexpected, I felt convinced that the rails had come to a sudden end. In fact, the track had merely resumed its descent and renewed the bookshelf’s momentum. The Rusty Gnomes had evidently gauged the physics and dynamics of their Bookway with the utmost accuracy.

I was lucky not to fall off the shelf because I wasn’t holding on to anything at that moment, being too preoccupied with the sight of the swiftly approaching Harpyrs. Although I fell over backwards, I just managed to hang on as the downward plunge began. The sparks were flying again at last!

The Harpyrs detected the rattle of the wheels and dived in pursuit, screeching loudly. A self-propelled bookshelf scattering sparks as it sped down a ghostly, glowing green track like a meteor plunging into a pitch-black void, and perched on it a desperate inhabitant of Lindworm Castle, his purple cloak streaming out behind, pursued by a dozen eyeless Harpyrs screeching with bloodlust . . . It was a pity there were no witnesses to be duly awestruck by such a unique spectacle.

Little by little the Harpyrs’ strangled cries changed pitch, giving way to a mixture of screams and croaks, but I felt, even now, that they couldn’t rob me of my sanity. The bookshelf was travelling even faster than before. Swift as an arrow, it rounded precipitous bends, veered left and right, swooped and soared. I slithered and rolled around but hung on doggedly by my claws.