41. Hunted （for Sport） #2
‘Oh, please don’t tell me this is all about Briar Jones,’ Alistair says scathingly.
‘A freak with a hero complex you haven’t seen for seven fucking years.
Do you think Briar is actually going to want you, knowing everything you’ve done here?
Of course not. But we do. I do. You were nothing when you came here, pathetic - nobody.
Your father’s little dud. Everyone thought I was insane for talking to you.
But I saw your potential. You belong with the people who understand.
We’ve ruled this place with an iron fist, and next .
. . it’s the whole world. Ours. To play with, to break. We can do whatever the fuck we want.’
Briar winces. They need Bastian to know that Alistair’s wrong, that it’s not true - that he’s never been nothing - but it turns out, they don’t need to say anything at all.
‘D’you know what I’ve realised recently?
’ Bastian says, almost conversationally, with an undercurrent of danger in his voice.
He gets to his feet, and the scholars around him jerk back in shock.
Clearly, this is yet another thing that he’s not supposed to be able to do.
‘The Work gives back what you put in - we all know that, they drill it into us from the very first day we arrive. But people like you, Alistair, always think things will work out in their favour. Because . . . well, because I suppose they usually do. But I didn’t think that, when I arrived here.
I was so scared. I thought I was going to die.
So when I took the pledge, I gave it absolutely everything I had.
I recited it all day, every day. I dreamed it.
Because I could so easily imagine how I’d fall through the cracks in a place like this, and I needed something to cling onto. ’
‘Right, right, whatever,’ Alistair says, waving his cigarette hand. ‘You’re a thaumaturgical genius, the rest of us can only bow in supplication to such enormous power. Is there a point to this speech?’
‘If you’d been paying any attention,’ Bastian says, ‘it might have occurred to you that I was so powerful because I was so miserable. That’s when I’m at my strongest. When I’m feeling something.
Because that’s what I fed into the Work, when I was at my lowest. And that maybe .
. . it might be an exceedingly bad idea to piss me off? ’
Alistair frowns back at him, the cigarette burnt to a stub at the end of his fingers.
Bastian raises his arms in the slightest of shrugs. ‘You always have suffered from a terrible lack of imagination.’
The wide sheet of rock above their heads begins to shake.
The scholars who have Bastian encircled stop concentrating on him at all; they’re looking up at the ceiling uneasily, exchanging glances, waiting for Buck’s next instruction.
Instead, Bastian says ‘Go,’ and without hesitation they all run for the exit, sprinting right past Briar and the others without paying them any notice at all.
‘Now, kneel,’ Bastian says, his voice like death, taking a step towards Alistair, who fights with everything he has to stay upright before being forced to the ground by an invisible hand, letting out a wordless shout of pure rage.
The walls are still shaking. There’s water, too, a trickle shaken loose to a pour. Bastian doesn’t even seem to notice. He’s fixated on Alistair, his eyes twin chasms, an expression of malicious awe on his face as he considers his next move.
If this goes on for much longer, that ceiling is coming down.
Briar steps into the cavern and calls Bastian’s name.
He flinches, but he doesn’t look away; Alistair is red-faced, the veins in his throat standing out like cords pulled tight, shaking with strain.
‘Bastian,’ Briar says again. ‘Come on.’
‘I’m not done with him yet,’ Bastian says, his voice sounding very far away. He looks drunk on the fight, captivated by the justice of righteous violence. Briar knows how that feels. A natural, dangerous high.
It’s not worth dying - or killing - for.
‘Bastian,’ Briar says, touching his shoulder as loose rock patters down from the ceiling like deadly confetti. ‘Please.’
The press of Briar’s palm is enough to get him to turn around.
His silvering hair rings his face wildly, like a halo - but the expression in his black eyes is the furthest thing from angelic Briar’s ever seen.
‘Come with me,’ they say. ‘I can’t go without you.’
Bastian blinks, and his pupils contract somewhat, Alistair exhaling sharply on the ground like someone’s just relieved him of a very heavy weight.
‘Okay,’ Bastian says. The shaking of the earth stills. ‘Okay. Yes. Let’s go.’
Alistair watches them from the floor, still unable to get up, furious and disbelieving as they file past him.
‘You’re making an enormous fucking mistake,’ he shouts, spittle frothing in the corners of his mouth, his eyes as wild as Briar’s ever seen them.
Briar almost feels sorry for him. ‘You,’ he says, spotting Orpheus, ‘Pip. If you go with them, you’ll be nothing. Nothing.’
Orpheus stares down at him, and then draws himself up to his full, tiny height. ‘My name,’ he says, ‘is Orpheus.’
‘Poor fellow,’ whispers Westby, as they make for the next tunnel. ‘Name like that, he didn’t stand a chance.’
The library is on fire.
‘What did you do?’ Briar says, as they emerge above ground to see black smoke seeping across the summer sky, blotting out the light in a strange blue eclipse.
‘I don’t know,’ says Bastian. ‘I might have hit something . . . gas.’
‘Gas,’ says Westby. ‘God, I hope they get the books out in time. I can’t do the library of Alexandria all over again. I don’t have it in me.’