Tom Harper - The Book of Secrets

Nevado gave him one more bullet, just to be sure, then threw the gun into the snow by the keep. Whoever came to investigate could draw their own conclusions. Then he hurried to the stables where his car was parked.

The back wall of the tower was awash with flame, like a stained-glass window leaded black where the shelves had not yet collapsed. It sucked in air and turned the whole chamber into a vast oven. At the far end of the room, Nick had stripped to his T-shirt and was still soaked through with sweat. His shirt was tied around Gillian’s leg, strapping on a makeshift splint made from two lengths of bookshelf. She clung to the shelves as she hobbled along the gallery.

The walkway was metal, a cast-iron lattice so that when you looked down, you could see how far you had to drop. It wouldn’t burn, but it might fry them. Nick could already feel it getting hot through the soles of his shoes. So far, the stone pillars had stopped the flames from spreading to their part of the library, but it couldn’t be long. A blizzard of burning paper scraps swirled in the hall on currents of smoke and scalding air.

Whoever had designed the library hadn’t made it easy: the ladders were placed at alternating ends of each gallery, so that you had to zigzag your way across each level to reach the next. It reminded Nick of a primitive video game, working your way to the top while a gorilla threw bananas and fireballs at you. Only now, the fireballs were all too real.

The ladders were the hardest part. Emily went first, then lay on her stomach and reached back down while Nick supported Gillian, holding her hips to steady her. She tried to help by pulling herself up the rungs, but smoke and pain and loss of blood made her giddy.

Once she slipped, lost her grip and almost plunged backwards over the edge. Nick held on grimly and hauled her back.

‘Leave me.’ She reached out a hand and stroked his cheek. ‘Save yourself.’

If there’d been any prospect of actually saving himself, perhaps he would have been tempted. Instead, he hoisted her onto his shoulders and climbed the ladder. She didn’t resist.

Emily yelled something to Nick, but the roar of the fire drowned her voice. Instead of trying again, she simply pointed down. The fire had leaped around the pillars: eager flames raced up the shelves below them.

Now they were in a deadly race. They took Gillian between them and dragged her, stumbling, to the next ladder. Smoke rose all around them, sieving through the holes in the iron-work like poison gas. Nick’s lungs ached; his skin sizzled with raw heat.

At last they came out on the top balcony. When Nick looked down he had the impression he was standing atop a column of flame. Smoke made it a dull, bloody red: it was so thick up here that he could hardly see.

But Emily had been right: the smoke was moving upwards. Squinting through his tears, Nick saw a dark opening in the ceiling. It was too high to reach, and too far from the wall for the shelves to be any use.

‘Wait here.’

Nick dropped to the floor and crawled along the gantry on hands and knees. The hot metal scalded his hands; he grabbed two books and used them like oven mitts to protect himself. At the end of the row of shelves, tucked in behind a column, an old wooden school desk sat gathering dust – perhaps so that anyone who came up this far didn’t have to carry his book all the way down. Nick grabbed the desk and dragged it back along the gantry, closing his eyes against the smoke. Books fell unheeded from the shelves; once the desk skewed around and jammed against the handrail. A desperate heave brought it free.

He didn’t even realise he’d reached Emily until he felt her hand on his back. She understood at once. She scrambled onto the desk, raised her arms and reached for the skylight. Still she couldn’t quite reach. Nick wrapped his arms around her legs, squeezed and lifted.

She swayed; for an awful moment he thought she’d topple and take both of them over the edge. Then she steadied as her hands gripped the side of the open skylight. Her weight rose away. When she was up, Nick manhandled Gillian through, then followed himself. His head popped out through the hatch and felt cool air. He drew a deep breath, and immediately choked on a lungful of the smoke pouring out around him. He looked around.

They’d arrived in a thaw. The fire was melting the snow from the roof and sending it pouring onto the stone walkway where they stood. He scooped some up to wash his eyes and realised it was warm. The puddles began to steam.

Nick left Gillian with Emily and ran around the tower, wading through slush, peering over the wall for any sign of a ladder or a fire escape, even protruding bricks they could cling on to. There was no way down.

The water on the roof was bubbling now. In horror, he realised it wasn’t just water. The lead itself was beginning to melt, blistering off the roof and running down into the overloaded gutters. It wouldn’t be long before the whole thing went. He rolled Gillian over to the balustrade, trying to keep her from the river of molten metal. He hugged Emily to him but didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say.

He heard a throbbing in his ears, a pounding that swelled until the roar of the burning library was entirely drowned out. A blinding white light appeared in the sky above, sweeping over him like the eye of judgement.

I was close to death. The weight on me was so immense I thought it would split open my skin and burst my heart. My head felt as though all the blood in my body had been squeezed into it, inflated like a bladder. I hung in a balance, as finely calibrated as any goldsmith’s scales. In one pan, the stones; in the other, my life. Even the addition of a single coin would be enough to crush me into oblivion.

‘What is the meaning of the other bestiary we found in your house?’

The questions never stopped. The weight on my chest had long since left me speechless. Yet I had to groan, to gasp and babble wordless nonsense, to convince them I was trying. If I stayed silent they would only add more stones.

‘Who else helped you?’

I said nothing. In all my torment I had never answered that question.

My silence displeased the inquisitor. I heard the familiar, dread command. ‘Alium – another.’ The obedient slap of footsteps. The rasp of stone.

And then a bang; muffled shouts that grew suddenly louder; a rush of air. The clatter of a stone being dropped. Had the board that flattened me broken and spilled its load. It did not feel that way. Had I died?

I tried to hear what was being said. After the inquisitor, any new voice was like a cold stream in the desert.

‘You must stop this at once,’ someone was saying. ‘Remove those stones.’

‘This is the archbishop’s castle.’ You have no authority here, Bishop.’

‘Cardinal,’ the new-but-familiar voice corrected him. ‘I am moving up in the world. And you will be dropping like one of your stones down a very deep well if you do not free my friend this instant.’

‘This man is a heretic.’

‘He is a truer servant of God than you will ever be.’

There followed a pause, filled with a hope more excruciating than any torment I had endured. Then – praise God! – the sound of a stone being taken off me. I tried to breathe and found my chest lifted a hair’s breadth further than before.

‘Faster,’ the cardinal insisted. ‘If he dies now, you will take his place.’

The trickle of rocks became a cascade, crashing onto the floor like a tower being torn down to its foundations. Stone splinters ricocheted against my cheek but I barely felt them.

The board lifted off me like a door opening. Fingers fretted at the cords around my neck, prising loose the knots.

A dazzling light blinded me, like morning sun on the Rhine. It made a halo around the face that peered into mine. Even in that cruel room he managed an impression of his usual smile, though it was heavy with care.