Saving Thanehaven (31 page)

Then he hears something strange, and stops in his tracks.

It’s a crunching, crackling, rattling sound. Noble suspects that it might be falling rubble, but he can’t be certain because he can’t see through the walls up ahead. Is it somebody digging? Somebody scavenging? It can’t be the wind. There
is
no wind.

He advances toward the nearest corner, moving slowly and carefully, grateful for the padding of ash
beneath his bare feet. With every step he takes, the noise grows louder and more complex. There are clicks and shuffles, snorts and thumps. Could it be a horse? Two horses? Finally, he reaches a gap that might have been a doorway once, though it’s now just a crumbling hole. Craning his neck, he peers around the edge of the hole … and suddenly understands where all the bones must have gone.

A giant bug is gnawing at the charred stub of a roof beam. With large front claws, multiple legs, a shiny black carapace, and a long, ridged body, this bug looks like a cross between a crab and millipede. Its eyes sit up on stalks, and its mouth is fringed with tentacles. When splinters of wood spill from between its teeth, the surrounding tentacles sweep every fragment back into the bug’s slavering maw. Chunks of stone, however, are always rejected. They fall to earth, sticky with saliva.

Noble ducks for cover again, having seen everything he needs to see. Though the bug has left a trail of destruction in its wake, it hasn’t yet demolished the entire stock of wood in the village. There’s another room, just beyond the roofless space occupied by the bug, which still contains joists and window frames and sticks of furniture. It even contains a closed door. Noble has a good view of this door, thanks to a large hole in the wall that separates the bug’s room from the undamaged one next to it. But he’s well aware that no door, however solid, is going
to last for long. Not with a giant, omnivorous bug in its vicinity.

He has to reach that door before the bug does.

It’s going to be a tricky maneuver. For one thing, the bug might eat people. For another, it’s almost blocking Noble’s path. So he doesn’t just hurl himself wildly into the open. Instead, he prepares very carefully, first removing the Kernel’s key from its hiding place, then casting around for a weapon of some kind. He settles at last on a sharp-edged stone. That should buy him some time, if nothing else.

Finally, he feels ready to make his move. He takes a deep breath, tightens his grip on the key, and charges through the opening next to him—only to discover that the bug, having polished off its last morsel of roof beam, is now heading straight for the hole that happens to be Noble’s destination.

Noble wins the race by a hair. There’s a furious clicking noise as he pounds past the bug, which is slower than he is because it’s so big. It makes a lunge for him and misses. He hears the thud and scrape of a giant claw striking solid rock, then the patter of dislodged mortar hitting the ground. But he doesn’t stop to look back.

The door is just ahead of him. Made of four large planks held together by crossbars, it has black iron hinges and a matching lock. He dives under a carved wooden table that’s barring his way, then slides across the floor, jumps up, and thrusts his key in the lock.
Behind him, he can hear the crash and roar of tumbling masonry. Dust fills the air. As he turns his key, the carved table is tossed at a nearby wall, smashing into a dozen pieces.

Then something grabs Noble’s leg.

Whisked off his feet, he suddenly finds himself dangling upside down, suspended in the grip of a claw as big as he is. With its other claw, the bug is busily wrenching the door from its hinges. Three or four yanks is all it takes. Soon the door is being hefted into the air, still in its frame. And before Noble can do more than observe that his key is where he left it, he’s thrown straight into the bug’s mouth.

Splat!

During the split second it takes him to work out what’s happening, only one thought crosses his mind:
This is it
. He’s not surprised. As Noble the Slayer, he was probably fated to be eaten by a monster. Or skewered by a skeleton. Or zapped by a magician’s spell. He never really thought that he would perish sedately, in bed, with grieving friends all around him.…

He’s lucky, though. The bug is so greedy that it doesn’t bother to chew or swallow before taking another bite. Instead, it shoves the door straight in after him, wedging the entire thing between its upper and lower jaws. For an instant, it can’t close its mouth. And being a slightly stupid creature, it has to pause—and think—before realizing that it needs to bite down firmly.

Noble takes advantage of this three-second lull. When he sees the door right in front of him, he doesn’t waste time thinking. He simply gives it a push. Not that he’s expecting much; it’s simply a reflex action. If anything, he’s vaguely hopeful that he might have just enough time to fling himself through the open doorway before its mouth snaps shut again.

He certainly isn’t planning to stumble across a threshold into a ruined prison cell.

But that’s exactly what he does. The door opens, he steps through it—and suddenly he’s in the Kernel’s lair. He knows the place instantly. He recognizes the smashed prison cell, with its crumpled, steel-bar door lying on the ground. Even more familiar is the scene beyond it; there’s no mistaking the painted brickwork, the metal doors, the tubes of light, the bundled pipes on the ceiling.…

Whirling around, Noble slams the door on his last glimpse of the bug’s slimy gullet. Then he staggers forward, gasping for breath. His head is still spinning from the narrow escape he’s just had. He doesn’t even
try
to figure out how he managed to save himself. He’s too busy wondering how he’s going to save the computer.

Because it’s starting to fall apart. He can tell that from the state of the hallway he’s entered, which is rapidly disintegrating. The lights are mostly off, though one or two still flicker feebly. The floor is partially flooded with some kind of sticky blue substance.
The ceiling is melting. The doors are buckling. One of them even explodes across the hallway in front of Noble, quite suddenly, as if it’s been waiting for him to arrive. It crashes into the opposite wall, bringing down a few bricks—which bounce off the floor like jelly. Then an ogre emerges through the shattered door frame. Pausing for a moment in the passage, the dark, hairy, misshapen creature glares at Noble with ruby-red eyes, its long arms trailing on the ground.

Noble glares right back. Having just fought his way out of a giant bug’s mouth, he’s in no mood to let a stunted-looking ogre walk all over him. And this grim resolve must show in his expression, because the ogre abruptly turns away. It begins to stump down the corridor, through the pool of goo, toward the sound of distant music.

Noble hesitates for a moment before setting off in the same direction.

He can hear screams as well as music, though he can’t tell whether they’re screams of fear or delight. An occasional sharp retort could be either a collision or an explosion. A donkey seems to be braying somewhere. A gravelly mutter comes from the ogre, which grumbles to itself as it trudges along. Noble can’t understand what it’s saying. It seems to be speaking in a foreign language.

At the first corner, a T-junction, the ogre can’t decide which route to take. Its big, lumpy, bristling head keeps turning this way and that. Its horny feet
shuffle forward, then back, then forward, then back. It’s stuck in a kind of mental loop, and Noble has no desire to help it. Why should he? Ogres are treacherous things, and this one shouldn’t even be here. Having forced its way in, it will have to suffer the consequences.

Whatever
they
might be.

Noble sidles past the confused ogre and marches on. He has to dodge all the cracks in the floor, which are often very wide, and which frequently erupt into fountains of color. Some of the fountains are more like waterfalls, and they pool on the ceiling in a way that defies every natural law. Noble finds them deeply unnerving. He’s also disturbed by the doors, which are starting to flap and billow like curtains. Solid steel doors shouldn’t behave like curtains. Apart from anything else, it’s extremely dangerous.

Noble peers around the next corner and sees another, busier corridor where people are passing to and fro. For an instant, they’re framed in full view, before plunging out of sight again. Some look ill. Some are chasing others. One staggers to a halt, props himself against a wall, and begins to vomit. Many appear to be members of the audience from
Guitar Hero
—or was it
Garage Band
? Noble can’t remember. What’s more, he doesn’t care. He’s far more interested in the small, bedraggled, pink creature that’s parked halfway down the connecting passage.

“Lulu?” he exclaims.

The unicorn glances around. She’s keening with distress, and Noble can understand why. A head has been impaled on her long silver horn—the head of a bright yellow pig with a ring through its nose.

“Help me,” the pig rasps, tears welling from its eyes. “Please, please, help me.…”

Noble darts forward and wrenches the head from its spike, trying not to think about what he’s doing. Though he doesn’t exactly drop the thing, he certainly doesn’t cling to it. Instead, he discards it quickly, so he can pick up Lulu. “Come on,” he says, tucking the unicorn under one arm. “We have to find Rufus.”

As he makes for the busy hallway up ahead, he doesn’t look back. He can hear the pig whimpering but can’t bring himself to rescue it. What could he possibly do with a pig’s head, after all? There’s no telling where its body might be. And he already has his hands full with Lulu, who’s wriggling joyfully, trying to lick his face like a dog.

“Stop it,” he warns, “or you’ll hurt yourself.”

He doesn’t bother asking where Lord Harrowmage is, since Lulu can’t talk. He’s not even sure that she understands him—though she does calm down a little, after he tells her to. The fact that she’s much heavier than he anticipated makes him wonder if he should put her down again. But when he reaches the next junction, he sees that the floor to his left has liquefied. People are actually wading along, up to their thighs in melted concrete.

Lulu would
never
survive that.

So he turns right, making for the music. He keeps an eye out for his other missing comrades: Brandi, Lord Harrowmage … even Rufus.
Especially
Rufus. Noble is convinced that Rufus must be somewhere nearby. Rufus will be sticking with the Kernel, and since the Kernel can’t leave his lair, Rufus will have stayed, too.

“Gaaah.”
Up ahead, a woman lurches around the corner, stiff-legged and openmouthed. She’s covered in blood, and her bulging eyes stare strangely. Her missing right arm doesn’t seem to bother her in the least.

She lurches toward Noble, reaching for him with her left arm, as Lulu squeals in terror.

“Gaaah!”

Then someone else careens around the corner, machete in hand. He’s a plump youth in a hooded top and baggy pants, both of which are splattered with blood. “Zombie Squad!” he yells at the top of his voice. Then he swings his machete—and cuts the woman’s head off.

Behind him, a smaller, skinnier boy whoops triumphantly. The two boys slap their raised right hands together in a kind of salute. “Twenty-three and counting!” the larger one crows, before they both dash off again, laughing with excitement.

Meanwhile, the decapitated woman has fallen flat on her stomach. Her head has rolled along the
corridor. For one horrible instant, Noble is afraid that it’s going to talk to him.

But it doesn’t. It seems to be quite dead.

Maybe that’s what happened to the pig
, Noble reflects, advancing cautiously past the woman’s blood-soaked remains. He’s reeling with horror, and deeply grateful that he’s still in one piece. Clearly, an insane gang is running around Mikey’s computer cutting off heads. It’s another reason why Rufus has to be stopped. If people want to be free to cut off other people’s heads, then rules have to be put in place.

“Shhh.”
Noble comforts Lulu, who’s still whinnying with distress. “It’s all right. We’ll be all right.” The music is almost deafening, by now. It’s a real cacophony with no rhythm, no harmony, and no tune. When Noble turns the next corner, he sees why. A knot of musicians is clustered around the Kernel’s glass booth, but they’re not playing together. They’re not a band. The singers are singing different songs. The instrumentalists are also in competition. The only drummer seems to be lashing out in fury at everything in sight: walls, screens, backs, heads.

Noble recognizes two of the musicians. The last time he saw the blond singer and his companion, they were being swamped by their own audience. He also recognizes some of the audience members who are stumbling around the Kernel’s lair, shrieking and falling over and spraying each other with drinks. Two of the girls are wrapped in each other’s arms, alternately
laughing and crying. They don’t seem to be aware that there’s another headless corpse propped against the booth beside them.

It’s a grotesque scene. The air is full of familiar, drifting shapes, some pink, some blue. A gargoyle is spinning in circles, unable to fly. Around it, people point and laugh. A large black vehicle has crashed through one wall, bringing down a load of bricks. Through the hole in the wall, Noble catches a glimpse of lurid, bloodred sky.

There’s so much activity that he can’t find Rufus, at first. He has to push through a dazed crowd of disarmed security guards and squeeze past a very big blob. At last, he spies Rufus standing at one end of the large, low, octagonal room, between a werewolf and a metal man.

The metal man is trying to stuff the Kernel into something that looks a bit like a sea chest.

“Hey! Hey, Noble!” Rufus flaps his hand, grinning widely. “Where have you been?”

He looks just the same. The cuffs of his baggy pants are puddling around his ankles. His woolly hair is falling over his face. He’s still pale and thin and spotty.

Yet he’s immensely powerful. Immensely dangerous. Gazing at him, Noble can hardly believe someone who seems so harmless could be such a threat.