Her cousin, however, is grateful for Noble’s assistance. Lord Harrowmage doesn’t object when he’s heaved like a wrapped bundle toward half a dozen outstretched hands. And when Noble finally joins the others, panting and sweating after his struggle to reach the top, Lord Harrowmage is the one who leans down and pulls him into a sea of crumpled paper.
“Oh,” says Noble, once he’s got his breath back. He’s enormously pleased to find that he’s not up to his neck in broken glass or battleground sweepings, but merely knee-deep in clean, densely compacted paper. “This is all right. I thought it would be worse than this.”
“It’s a bit scratchy,” Yestin complains.
“You could bleed to death from the paper cuts, couldn’t you?” says Rufus. Then he yells, for Jeezy’s benefit, “We’re all on board! You can start the strike now!”
Someone immediately thumps on the side of the truck. A grinding noise is followed by a shudder. Yestin picks up a sheet of paper. “This is an e-mail from Rufus, addressed to Mikey. There’s an IP address and everything,” he says. Before Noble can ask what an e-mail is, Yestin begins to read aloud. “ ‘To Mikey Braindead Loser—so you think you can ban me from the game? Think again, snitch. We might go back a long way, but you are so going to regret what you’ve done—’ ”
A sudden roar drowns his voice. Then the entire truckload of litter begins to slide out from beneath them, as if it’s emptying down a plughole.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek!” Brandi screams. She lunges for the rim of the tailgate, which she can’t quite reach.
Noble falls on his back and starts rolling; he can feel the pages collapsing under his weight.
“It’s okay!” Rufus cries. “It’s the dump! Just go with it!” A moment later, he’s swallowed up, disappearing into a crinkly white avalanche. The last thing that Noble sees, before he’s swept away like Rufus, is Yestin’s pale, pinched, frightened face.
Whoosh! The drop takes about two seconds. Noble wonders fleetingly if he’s going to suffocate as he barrels down an unseen tube, almost smothered by a torrent of crackling paper. Then he plows into more paper—and next thing he knows, he’s bumping along a gentle incline onto an extremely narrow, moving platform.
At first, he’s too dazed to do anything much, except stare. Great tides of paper are still pouring from an overhead duct and pooling on the platform directly behind him, though loose sheets keep fluttering to the floor. The floor is gray and polished. So is the surface on which he’s landed. A red light is flashing on and off nearby, to the accompaniment of a loud wailing noise.
Rufus is crawling along the platform up ahead, away from Noble.
“What’s going on?” Noble demands. “Rufus?”
“It’s an alarm!” answers Rufus. He has to pitch his voice high above the deafening racket. “This mail shouldn’t be coming back in!”
“What mail?” Noble looks around for a suit of chain mail, but he can’t see any. All he can see are pipes and beams and countless moving platforms in a room that’s almost as big as Thanehaven. Colored boxes are slowly chugging along on raised belts. There’s paper everywhere, and all of it’s being organized somehow—it’s either being spat out of machines or stuffed into bins or whizzed past wheels on long, rubbery ribbons.
“This is the e-mail program!” Rufus loudly explains, as he climbs down from the platform. “It’s where all the messages get sorted when they reach Mikey’s address!”
This still doesn’t mean much to Noble—and he’s not interested, anyway. He’s far more concerned about the flashing light and the shrieking alarm. “How many guards are stationed here?” he wants to know. Then something strikes him in the small of his back. “Ooof!” he grunts.
Yestin has just tumbled down the papery slope and collided with him.
“Get off that conveyor belt!” Rufus instructs, beckoning urgently. At the same instant, Noble sees Brandi shoot out of the overhead duct and land on the pile of e-mail messages that Yestin just rolled off. Part of the pile promptly collapses, sending sheets of paper whirling into the air like windblown petals. Noble scrambles to safety, pulling Yestin along with him.
The floor is covered in more pieces of paper. They slip and slide treacherously beneath Noble’s bare feet.
“This is a program malfunction!” Rufus bellows. “We’ve gotta clear out before the repair team arrives!” As Lulu joins Brandi, he adds, “That AV’s bound to be on his way, too! Did you hear me? Noble?”
“I heard you!” Noble helps Brandi down to the floor, then wraps his arms around the squealing unicorn. “But we have to wait for the others!”
Rufus screws up his nose, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. “We don’t want to waste any time!” he counters at the top of his voice. “Why don’t I go find the nearest exit? It might take a while in a place this big!”
Yestin looks aghast. “Oh, but—”
“You can come with me!” Rufus cuts him off. “Noble doesn’t need you!”
Putting his hands over his ears, Yestin turns to look at Noble—who’s just dumped Lulu on the floor.
“Yes, go!” Noble orders, as a big, dark shape pops out of the overhead chute. It’s Lord Harrowmage. A few stray e-mails drift down on top of him, but the flood of paper seems to have dried to a trickle.
“Where’s Princess Lorellina?” Noble asks.
“I—I don’t know.” Lord Harrowmage is barely audible. He seems dazed by all the noise and confusion. So Noble seizes his arm and drags him off the motionless conveyor belt.
It’s like trying to shift a loose collection of sandbags.
“Go! Quick! Follow the others!” Noble says. He points at Rufus, who’s trotting away with Yestin, Brandi and Lulu at his heels. Yestin keeps glancing back at Noble.
“But my cousin …,” Lord Harrowmage feebly protests.
“I’ll get her! Don’t worry! Just go!” Noble roars. He gives the wizard a push, then leaps up onto the conveyor belt. “Princess? Are you stuck? Can you hear me?”
If there’s a reply, it’s drowned out by the blaring alarm. So Noble picks his way unsteadily through several reams of loose paper until he’s right underneath the mouth of the overhead duct. “Princess?” he yells again, directing his voice straight up a short metal shaft toward a little square of pale-gray sky. “Are you there?”
After about three seconds, a black silhouette appears at the top of the shaft.
“Noble? Is that you?” It’s Lorellina’s voice.
Noble heaves a sigh of relief. “Yes!” he bawls. “It’s me!”
“Are you all right? What’s that noise?”
“It’s nothing!” Noble wrenches his gaze from her distant form and scans the machinery around him. There’s a lot of movement, but none of it looks threatening. “Come down!” he begs. “We’re all safe here!”
“Are you sure?” Lorellina is hoarse with the strain of shouting. “Would you rather come back up? Because I can always find a rope.…”
“No! Come down! It’s not a trap!” Noble realizes suddenly that he can’t see Rufus anymore. “Hurry, please, or we’ll lose the others!”
A clanging sound makes him glance up again. Lorellina is already climbing into the shaft—and she’s not dawdling, either. He barely has time to brace himself before she slams into his chest.
The force of the impact knocks him down.
“Ow!” She grimaces. “Sorry!”
Noble tries to reassure her, but ends up coughing instead.
“What a terrible noise!” she cries. “What is this place?”
“The e-mail program …”
“The what?”
Noble shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter!” he says as they untangle themselves. They’re both struggling to their feet, lurching like newborn calves on the surface of the paper pile, when Noble looks up to check on Yestin’s progress.
At that instant, he spots something very, very bad.
“Oh, no,” he groans.
Lorellina frowns at him. “Wha
t?” she says.
Noble doesn’t answer immediately. He’s looking at a distant flicker of white that’s plotting a course across the gigantic room, behind a complicated grid of pipes and belts and shelves and cables. The thing keeps appearing and disappearing, like a white wolf padding through a forest. Noble can’t hear it—not with the alarm going—but then again, he doesn’t really need to.
He knows that van. He’s seen it before.
“We’ve got to get out of here! Now!” he barks. Then he grabs Lorellina and starts to run.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Noble runs blindly. He can’t see Rufus. All he can see are bins and shelves and chutes and paper and machines.
Then he spots a giant conveyor belt plunging through the floor like a circular staircase. “There!” he cries. “Down there!”
The princess doesn’t argue because she’s too busy dodging sharp corners and overhead pipes. She loses a shoe as Noble drags her toward the hole in the floor.
“Wait!” she pleads. “My shoe …”
But Noble’s not about to stop for anything. “We can’t wait!” he warns her. Winding an arm around her waist, he lifts her onto the conveyor belt. “Just slide!” he urges. “Push yourself!” And he joins her on the moving platform, trying to use its raised metal sides as a kind of shield by keeping as low as possible.
Ahead of him, Lorellina is squirming down the spiral belt. Its base is almost lost in shadow, though Noble can just make out that they’re heading toward a large bin parked on a hard gray floor. Upon reaching the bin, Lorellina hops out quite nimbly for someone wearing long skirts.
Noble doesn’t manage nearly as well.
“Where are we?” Lorellina whispers. She’s peering around a murky space that’s like a cellar with low ceilings and multiple exits. Its walls are lined with gray metal cabinets full of drawers. “Where is Rufus?”
“I don’t know. Through there, perhaps.” Noble heads for the nearest doorway, which opens into another long, low, dingy room stuffed with metal cabinets. There are hundreds of cabinets, all lined up in rows like soldiers at attention. And beyond the cabinets is another doorway, leading to another, identical room.
The air is still. No one else is in sight.
“Rufus?” Noble calls softly. But Rufus doesn’t answer.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” asks the princess. “Maybe Rufus didn’t come down here.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have to keep moving. We have to get out.”
“Why?” Lorellina digs in her heels. “What are we running away from?”
“The man in the white coat.” Hearing Lorellina’s gasp of horror, Noble adds, “I saw him upstairs. I saw his van.”
“Did he see us?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should kill him!” Lorellina exclaims. “We should set up an ambush!”
Noble shakes his head. He’s beginning to realize that killing isn’t the answer—not in a world full of clones. For every white-coated minion who’s slaughtered, a dozen more probably will pop up in his place.
“Come,” orders Noble. “There has to be another way out.” And he sets off to find it, with one ear cocked for the sound of approaching footsteps.
The princess follows grudgingly. Having removed her other shoe, she now pads along barefoot, her passage marked only by the swish of her trailing skirts. In the silence, even that small noise seems very loud.
Together, they hurry from room to room, through doorway after doorway. But every doorway leads to yet another shadowy room furnished with cabinets. There are no chairs, no beds, no hearths, no tables, no windows—just gray metal cabinets under dim ceiling lights. And the procession of rooms appears to be endless.
“Maybe there is no way out,” Lorellina murmurs at last.
“There has to be.” Noble’s attention is suddenly caught by a faint clanging noise. Laying a finger on his lips, he gestures at the princess, indicating she should stay where she is. The princess, however, has other ideas. As Noble edges toward the nearest threshold, she stays close behind him—so close that he can feel her breath on his back. Her breathing is quick and shallow.
He has to take a few deep breaths of his own before peering around a doorjamb to see who’s banging drawers in the next room. And because he’s expecting the worst (a troll, perhaps, or another white-coated man), the sight of a tall, thin, elderly woman comes as a pleasant surprise. She doesn’t look dangerous. In fact, her knitted cardigan, gray hair, and stooped shoulders are so reassuring that Noble clears his throat.
“Ahem,” he says. “Excuse me?”
The woman turns to study him. Standing between a four-drawer cabinet and a yellow bin on wheels, she’s been slowly and methodically transferring sheets of paper from the bin to the top drawer. But now she stops, blinking owlishly through a pair of gold-rimmed glass circles that are perched on her nose.
“May I help you?” she asks.
“Um … yes,” Noble replies. “Have you seen our friend Rufus? He’s quite young and skinny, with long hair that looks like sheep’s wool, only it’s a golden-brown color.”
There’s a brief pause. At last, the old woman says, “No.”
Noble grunts. The news is disappointing, though not entirely unexpected.
“Have you seen anyone come through here?” he continues. “A little boy, or a pink unicorn, or a bearded mage?”
“No.” The old woman’s tone somehow manages to convey that visitors simply aren’t a feature of her existence.
So Noble tries another tack. “Do you know if there’s a way out of here?” is his next question.
“Out of this cellar,” Lorellina cuts in. “Not out of this room. We can easily find our way out of this room.”
The old woman sniffs. She says flatly, “This isn’t a cellar. This is the Archive. You can’t possibly belong here if you don’t know that.”
“You’re right. We don’t belong here,” Noble confirms. “That’s why we want to leave.”
“Do you have a reference number?” asks the old woman.
“No.” Lorellina is becoming impatient. “Of course not.”
“I can’t file you without a reference number.”
Noble winces. Filing is what he does to his own weapons and fingernails; he can’t imagine a more lingering or painful torture. “Good,” he growls. “We don’t want to be filed.”
“We just want you to show us the way out,” Lorellina tells the old woman. “If there is one.”
The old woman frowns slightly. When she speaks, she sounds puzzled. “The way out is the way you came in. You did come in, didn’t you?”
“Yes, we did,” Noble admits. “But we don’t want to go back the way we came. Isn’t there another portal of some kind? A door or a window or a staircase?”
The old woman stares at him. It’s as if she can’t quite process what she’s hearing. “Another portal?” she echoes.
“Yes.” Noble addresses her politely, ignoring the princess (who’s rolling her eyes). “We’re looking for an exit that will take us from your Archive to another place. A different place.”
“Like the trapdoor, you mean?”
It’s Noble’s turn to frown. “The trapdoor?” he says.
“What trapdoor?” Lorellina pounces on this bit of information eagerly. “Where? Show us!”
If the old woman dislikes being ordered around, she doesn’t say so. Instead, she shuts the top drawer of the cabinet and sets off, clumping along in thick-soled shoes that look too heavy for her thin ankles. “It’s in here,” she explains, as she disappears into the next room. “I don’t know what it’s for. It appeared one day, out of nowhere. Here it is—see?”
She’s referring to a small hatch that’s set low in one dim corner. It’s just a hole in the wall, with rough-hewn edges and no latch. The panel wedged into it isn’t even hinged.
“I wonder if it’s supposed to be here?” says Noble.
“It is here,” the old woman points out
.
“Yes, but—” Noble begins, then stops and sighs. He doesn’t believe that she’s going to understand, even if he explains himself more fully.
Lorellina, meanwhile, has joined him. “Where does it go?” she asks.
The old woman says, “I have no idea.”
“It doesn’t matter where it goes. Just as long as it doesn’t lead back where we came from.” Noble begins to tug at one of the cabinets, dragging it away from the wall so that he can squeeze past it.
The old woman goggles at him, appalled. “What are you doing? Don’t do that! You mustn’t move the filing cabinets!”
“You can push it back when we’re gone,” Noble retorts. “Or, no—I’ll pull it back. So you won’t hurt yourself. How does that sound?”
“But you don’t have permission! This is all wrong. This is against the rules.”
Noble decides to ignore her. “I’m afraid you’ll have to go first,” he sheepishly informs the princess. “These cabinets are too heavy for you to move.”
Lorellina seems to accept this. Her only concern is the width of the hole. “Are you actually going to fit through there?” she asks, while the old woman wrings her knobbly hands in distress. “It looks very small.”
With a shrug, Noble says, “We’ll soon find out.” Then he addresses the old woman. “You can return to work, if you want.”
“The cabinet—”
“I told you. I’ll shift it back.”
By now, Lorellina has edged past him. She hunkers down in front of the hatchway, her gown a puffy green puddle, her gleaming ringlets cascading over her narrow shoulders. When she inserts the tips of her fingers between the edge of the hatch and the wall, Noble tries to stop her. “Wait,” he warns. “I’ll do that.”
But she’s already lifting the rough-cut panel clear of its matching hole. “Oooooh,” she murmurs. “Look! A tunnel!”
“What’s in there?” Noble ducks down to inspect the tunnel just as Lorellina thrusts her head into it. “Princess! Be careful!”
By this time, however, he’s talking to her backside. “I can see the end of it!” she reports, her voice muffled. “I can see a light!”
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