Lex tore his eyes from the page and looked at the nearest row of books, lined up on a huge wooden shelf that was attached to a branch at shoulder height. They were dusty old things that looked like they might fall apart as soon as you touched them. Most of them were bound in leather but Lex noticed a couple that appeared to be bound in wood. Every single volume seemed to have the word ‘forbidden’ or ‘dangerous’ or ‘secret’ in its title. There were about twenty books on the shelf beside Lex. Similar-sized shelves stretched down the entire length of the long branch, supported by root pillars below. There must have been two hundred books at least along the branch they stood upon. There was probably the same number on each of the other branches on this level. And, above them, the branches stretched up so high into the sky that they couldn’t see the top through the walkways and foliage.
‘There must be thousands of forbidden books here!’ Lex exclaimed in almost a whisper.
A familiar, powerful surge of greed rushed through him and it was all he could do not to open his bag and start stuffing books into it. Lex knew that knowledge was power? especially knowledge he had that no one else did. The Gods didn’t want people reading these books, which only made Lex want to read them all the more. His fingers itched to grab the nearest book, open the cover and start devouring it.
But he had a round to win and pinching books would only slow him down. He couldn’t afford to be slowed down? not this time. Not when it was so important that he win spectacularly in order to teach Jeremiah East a lesson he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Lex would have given up all the forbidden books in the entire world to beat that insufferable snob. Once he found the correct book, returned the page and won the round, then maybe there would be time to steal a book or two on the way back.
In the meantime, wandering about the tree blindly wasn’t going to work. There were simply too many books to hope to just stumble across the right one by chance. Lex was lucky, but even he wasn’t that lucky. And he certainly wasn’t prepared to rely only on luck when winning this round was so important.
‘Let’s get to the main trunk,’ he said, feeling that the best place to start would be the centre.
As he spoke, the other players and their companions came into view. Lex was pleased to see that they both looked miffed already. To make them even more miffed, he pointed at the rope-ladder on the ground and said, ‘You’d better hope there’s another way up!’
They looked up and glared at him.
‘You’d better hope so, too, if you ever want to get down from there!’ Jeremiah snapped.
Lex shrugged? exaggeratedly to make sure he’d see it. ‘What do I care, so long as I win the round?’
Then he turned on his heel and set off down the walkway towards the trunk, leaving Lorella and Jeremiah to find their own way on to the tree. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Jesse to point out any more rope ladders he saw so that they could cut those down, too, but then he decided against it. They would waste too much time that way. Lex was happy with a bit of sneaky sabotage only so long as it was convenient and didn’t take too long.
They went on along the walkway? carefully, as there were no railings to speak of? and soon found themselves at the huge trunk. The walkway went all the way around it, branching off in seven different directions. It was like a giant cart wheel with the trunk being the centre and the branches being spokes. As soon as they reached it, Lex realised that knowing where to look for the correct book wasn’t going to be a problem since a map of the library tree was drawn on the main trunk at intervals. It appeared from this that the tree was about twenty-five levels high. Neat labels on the map spelt out which books were kept where. It seemed that they were grouped according to author. Clearly, if you wrote one forbidden book, you wrote a whole bunch of them. Even so, there were many, many names on the map. The authors didn’t appear to be ordered alphabetically but Lex found Erasmus Grey instantly by looking at the top of the map. The book was bound to be at the top of the tree? the Gods wanted to get their money’s worth after all.
Erasmus Grey’s name was, indeed, at the top. Right at the top, in fact. The tree thinned as it got higher and it seemed that Grey had the whole of the top level all to himself.
There was no time to waste. The others would find a way on to the tree in no time, what with the ladders that were everywhere. Lex and Jesse started to climb, both keeping a sharp eye out as they did so. After all, this was a tree full of forbidden books? it had not been built for people to come in and browse. And yet there were maps and walkways. Someone walked around these books from time to time. And, presumably, they fed the strange birds in the cages, too.
Before long, Lex and Jesse passed quite near one. It was the strangest-looking bird Lex had ever seen? somewhere between a songbird and a vulture? and twice as large as any bird had a right to be. It had a bald, ugly head and its large wings were hunched about it gloomily as it warbled softly to itself. It was a colourful thing, with feathers of blue, orange and green. It looked sad rather than aggressive but Lex kept his distance, anyway. From the size of it, it could probably have his hand off if it wanted to.
Climbing the tree was not particularly difficult because there were ladders and book-lined walkways everywhere. The only thing that became progressively less pleasant was climbing the ladders as they got higher and higher up the tree. Resolutely refusing to look down helped but, the higher they got, the more everything seemed to creak in an unpleasant sort of way. The other difficulty, of course, was the fact that the walkways had no railings. Whilst not too much of a problem on the lower levels, as they got higher this started making Lex and Jesse a little uneasy. Or, rather, it made Jesse uneasy. Lex wasn’t bothered? in fact he quite liked heights. He liked heights and thrills and anything that made him feel truly alive. He loved the sense of adrenaline that coursed through his veins when he knew he could fall to his death at any moment.
‘Hurry up!’ Lex said. ‘What are you slowing down for?’
‘I don’t want to fall off.’
‘But the pathways up here are just as wide as they were down there.’
‘Yeah, I know that. But it’s psychological, ain’t it?’
‘Wow? five syllables. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say such a long word before. Stop being such a pansy and keep up with me!’
But even Lex began to slow his pace a little when they got beyond a certain height. They were, after all, running around a gigantic tree with no safety gear whatsoever? no harnesses, no hard hats, no life lines… It was inevitable that they should become more physically tense, especially when climbing the rope-ladders.
They’d been on the tree for about twenty minutes when Lex spotted Lorella down below them. She was climbing a rope-ladder but having some difficulty due to the clothes she was wearing. The grey dress might have enhanced her figure in a very pleasing way but it was not the ideal apparel for climbing, especially as the players all had to drag themselves bodily up on to the wooden platforms when they reached the top, which called for a certain amount of undignified wriggling. In addition, whilst Lorella’s long blue hair might have been striking and beautiful, having it falling loose down her shoulders like that was extremely stupid, for it kept getting in her way. She even jerked her own head back once when she put her hand on the next rung and tried to pull herself up only to find that her fingers were clamped down over her own hair.