The Illusionists (27 page)

They passed into a corridor with a low ceiling that hovered barely a foot above her. The carpet was a bright blue, the exact shade of cornflowers.

‘I'm banging my head, here,' Marches said behind her. ‘What is this crazy place?'

‘The main corridor in my old village school,' said Rue.

Marches was silent.

How long they walked seemed immaterial. There was no time reference. Rue was waning. The effort of concentrating pressed on her, a hot weight. Where was it?

Bring it to me.

Bring me to the opening.

Give it me, damn you. Give it up.

She hesitated in front of a small wooden door. The bottom slats had been eaten away, rotting or gnawed by rats.

‘Through here  …  maybe,' she said. It drew her to it, but she wasn't sure why. The best thing to rely on here was instinct, and they could be wandering around for days. So she opened the door.

Beyond was a throne room.

‘Jesus,' said someone, as the group crowded in behind her.

It was vast, the roof sky-high above them. A fluttering of wings drew her eyes up. Birds peeked from rafters, lit by shafts of sunlight from roof windows. Tapestries lined the walls, stretching on forever, dark and faded. Their end of the room was raised, stone steps leading up to a grim-looking throne made of black wood, with black jewels running in rows up its back and nail-studded armrests. The top of the throne curved over, as if shading the occupant from the glare of the sun or the drumming of rain.

‘Emmon save us,' said Andrew, his face slack with wonder.

‘Don't be invoking the dream god in a place like this,' Hester murmured. ‘This is probably his castle, and all. Maybe that's even his throne.'

Rue felt the beauty of that idea tug at her. It was easy to believe in gods here. Easy to believe that dreams were better than anything the real could give you.

‘There's a
feast
,' someone said, and a few people stepped forward. A long table ran the length of the entire room, longer than anything Rue had ever imagined before, stopping a few feet before the raised throne. Underneath it was a rough-looking black carpet. There were no chairs, which was odd, but that soon left her mind because the table itself was packed with food.

She moved closer.

There were bowls, long trestle dishes, serving platters; their surfaces winking with tiny black mosaic tiles. Each was loaded with fat pastry wraps, round balls in sticky-looking sauce, sliced wedges of terrine, plump fruit, browned meat legs, shredded flower salads.

‘That stuff looks amazing,' said Marches.

‘Don't touch it!'

They all looked around at White, who was still stood near the door. ‘Don't,' he said. Rue saw then that her hand was half outstretched, fingers skirting close to a gleaming bunch of grapes. She hadn't even realised she'd begun to move.

‘Why not?' Lufe replied.

‘He's right,' said Rue, snatching her hand back. ‘It's Castle food. We've no idea what it might do.'

‘I haven't eaten since yesterday,' said a woman called, Rue thought, Mervaine.

‘We need to keep going,' Rue replied. She moved back from the table.

Then two things happened at once. She saw Mervaine reach for a leg of meat, picking the joint bone up in her fingers. Then someone gasped. It was the kind of gasp that froze you – the strangled, horrible grawping noise of pure shock.

‘It's not a carpet,' said White, still by the door, his voice choked.

‘What?'

‘It's not a carpet. Get away from it, now!'

Lea gave a high, breathless scream.

The black carpet under the table was moving, growing. It began to disintegrate before Rue's eyes. For what felt like the longest time as it roiled towards her feet, she couldn't understand what she was seeing. Then it clicked.

Bugs.

Thousands and thousands of them. Some of them as big as her thumb, with shiny, fat carapaces. They scuttled, spilling outwards, their bodies rocking rapidly. Their backs moved, splitting open. A few took flight. Then more. But by that time, Rue was running back to the door.

Shouts and pounding. Someone smacked into her from behind and she almost fell. Everyone was running. Everyone was vanishing. The floor had turned black with curved insect backs. Something buzzed past her ear and she flinched, her hands coming up automatically. There was a doorway. Someone called her name. Something landed on her shoulder. She screamed and knocked it off without even looking around. There was one in her hair; it tugged at her scalp as it landed, tangling itself up. Another tried to land on her mouth, legs buffeting against her bottom lip. She smacked at it. It fell away.

Rue ran through the doorway and then turned. The door had closed behind her. There was no black carpet here, and they hadn't followed. She flipped her head over and shook her hair violently, unable to bear combing through it with her fingers. Eventually, the bug fell out heavily onto the floor. Its back split, about to fly, fly right at her, down her throat.

No. No, I can't. I don't have shoes on.

You have to,
Fernie's voice said in her head. It was the voice she used in emergencies – calm but tight, cracking like a whip.
It's trying to get inside you. Do it now!

So she did.

She brought her heel down on its back and it cracked under her weight. Her throat convulsed and she thought for one moment that she might be sick, right then.

But she wasn't. She lifted her foot. It was definitely dead. She scraped her heel frantically against the floor, rubbing and rubbing.

It wasn't until after all this that she looked up and realised she was completely alone. She hurried back to the door she'd come through, hesitating before opening it.

What if those bugs are still behind it? They'll come arrowing through in a giant swarm and eat you alive.

Don't, Rue, DON'T.

But she had to find the others.

She put her ear to the door. It was quiet. She opened it up a crack.

The throne room had disappeared, and a corridor she'd never seen before stretched away from her. It was deserted.

She was alone.

Rue turned, despairing.

The room she'd run into was a handsomely sized parlour, decorated with elegant caramel-coloured furniture – the kind of room that wouldn't have looked out of place in a well-to-do Angle Tarain house. Except for one small difference.

This room had a giant hole in the floor.

Rue stared. If she had moved back from the doorway just a few more steps, she would have fallen into it. The carpet was torn into tufted strings around the edges, revealing stone slabs underneath that sloped into the murky darkness. The hole itself was bigger than her old bedroom in Red House, and impenetrably black.

The little dresser closest to her was full of pictures on springy little silver stands. Rue moved closer to look.

Every single picture was of Wren.

There were his silver eyes and his lithe body, and in this one he was laughing, and in that one he had a fathomless expression, his gaze far away. There were some more of a boy Rue didn't recognise, a softer-featured boy with sandy hair, whom she supposed must have been Wren before he went to World. And some of him as a chunky child, shorts and knee socks, his baby teeth on display in a grin.

This was it, wasn't it?

She looked around the room. This was the opening that Wren had made in the Castle. She wondered if it was a room from his past, a room he'd grown up in, perhaps. It had him all over it, as if he'd somehow left his life behind, imprinted on the walls.

She'd found it.

Her eyes slid back to the hole as she edged around the room. It was like a giant had punched his fist through the floor. If she jumped into it, where would she go? Would she find herself back in the real, in her own body?

Close it, Rue. Quickly, before anything else finds you.

How?

Your lucid dreaming. Make it closed. Force it closed.

The door she had come through was almost opposite her now. She knelt carefully, her knees inches from the sloping edge of the hole. She put her hands down, running the frayed carpet through her fingers. Maybe if she just imagined it whole?

She closed her eyes, hands on the ground, and pictured the room as it should be in her head. Normal. Quiet. The kind of room only used when company came round. She saw the carpet, unblemished. A rug on top, maybe, and a small table for laying tea and cakes on. People in chairs, talking and rustling. Someone pouring the tea.

But then the rug started to bow in the middle. The table wobbled and fell, plates and cups flying. The hole was sucking everything into it.

Start again. Imagine it without the hole. Normal and perfect and just a room.

She tried three more times. But every time the hole appeared in her mind.

Rue opened her eyes and gave a little shriek of frustration. She wasn't sure she could do this by herself. She had to find the others. But if she left this room, what were the chances she'd get back to it? It would shift on her again, she was sure of it. It seemed like the Castle was playing with them.

As she stood and turned back towards the door she had come through, there came an echoing clicking noise from the hole.

Rue glanced towards it.

Something was inside.

Her heart began to thrum in her chest. There was something inside the hole and it was coming for her. It could
smell
her.

‘Rue!' said a voice.

Rue looked up, startled. A figure had come through the door and slammed it closed behind her.

It was Cho.

Oh gods. White is going to kill me.

‘No. No! Why are you here? How are you here? I didn't mean to pull you here! You're not even supposed to be asleep!'

Cho had a cool, determined set to her mouth. ‘You didn't think I was going to be a coward and stay behind, did you?'

Rue gaped. ‘How  … ?'

‘I took sleeping pills. I waited until everyone else was asleep, and then I took them, too. To be honest, I didn't think it would work without you consciously pulling me here. I guess you're more powerful than you thought –' Cho stopped, staring at the hole. ‘What the jack is that?'

‘Oh gods,' Rue whispered. ‘You complete idiot.'

Cho's feet were so close to the edge. Rue tried to think through the panic that clawed at her, shredding her control to ribbons. She had to keep Cho close – Cho would never, ever get out of here without a Talented. She didn't know how. Which meant that Rue had to protect her from whatever was in that hole, because here, Cho had no weapons.

‘I came to help, actually,' said Cho. She was trying for bold and irritated, but she was afraid. Her voice was thin and strange. ‘I mean, I know I'm not Talented, but I can still help. I've had lucid dreams before, haven't I? Where's White?'

‘Cho,' said Rue, striving to sound calm. ‘Listen to me. You have to leave the room now. I'll be right behind you.'

‘There's a door behind
you
,' said Cho. ‘Let's go out that way.'

Rue clenched her fists by her sides. There was the clicking again. It was louder.

‘Cho, please,' she said. ‘I can't leave this room, but you have to. Don't come in any further.'

‘I'm not going back that way,' she said. ‘Rue, I can't. There was  … ' She swallowed. ‘There was this  … 
thing
in that room back there. I can't. I'll just come round to you.'

‘Stop!' said Rue, holding both her hands up. ‘I'm not joking! Stay where you are!'

But Cho had begun to move.

The clicking was louder. And suddenly, she seemed to hear it. She looked down towards the hole, her hair sliding against her chin.

‘What is that?' she said.

‘Please! I told you to go! I told you not to come in!'

Cho knew what was coming. She could feel it, finally, like Rue could – it weighed down on them, pressing them to the spot.

Run!
Rue's mind screamed at her. She felt her legs twitch in response.

Not without Cho!
she snapped back.

It was scrabbling up the hole. Cho was rooted to the spot, her mouth open.

And then Rue felt the last piece of doubt inside her snap in two, because all at once she knew she'd dreamed this before. Just like the nightmare she'd had about Wren, just like the life bomb attack she'd dreamed back in Angle Tar, she'd seen this already, weeks ago, before she'd ever even met Cho. How had the dream ended? How, how,
think
.

From the thick dark it came, a leg wider than her body, one, then two, as it heaved itself up the sides of the hole. It would eat Cho and then it would break Rue. It would break her and take over her body in the real and it would have a really good time. That was all it wanted. A really good time. Kill and eat. The real was so much better than the Castle. The Castle was a cage; a horrible, boring cage. It wanted out. They all did.

Cho was frozen in place as it clambered out, ten times, fifteen times her size, fat body suspended in the middle of a network of legs.

Rue didn't think, she just did. She threw her hands out and screamed with everything she had.

‘STOP!'

The effect was alarming. The creature reared, then choked back as if it were being strangled from behind. A front leg passed within an inch of Cho's face.

Cho was breathing heavily, her cheeks streaked with panic tears.

‘Cho,' said Rue urgently. She didn't dare lower her arms or take her eyes away from the creature's trembling body. ‘Get over here.'

Cho moaned.

‘Cho!' she snapped. ‘Get your irritating behind over here right now. Move, move, move!'

Slowly, Cho inched along the wall. The creature seemed to follow her progress, but it didn't reach for her. Its legs shivered, bracing it against the sides of the hole. Rue felt her body grow thick and trembling with the effort. This was leeching something out of her. She didn't know what it was, but it was probably important.