"David Freer - The Forlorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Freer Dave)

Keilin's scraping, bruising fall was stopped by the first bend in the flue. Disoriented, shaking and
frightened, he simply lay still for a few moments. Even surrounded by bricks he could hear the hungry
crackling roar of the flames as they ate at the dry paper of thousands upon thousands of books. And
above the fire sound there was the thin screaming of humans.

If he went down . . . could he hide under the floor? He could wait until it burnt out, until nightfall. They'd
surely think he was dead, and then he could escape. Keilin managed to turn himself the right way up, and
began to descend. He reached the small open area underneath the lowest fireplace and curled there
miserably, beginning to feel the pain of his rough passage. The fire roared above, and it was growing
hotter, harder to breathe. The only relief was the stream of cold, fetid air that poured in on one side of
him.

Panic started to rise in him, as the sweat began to prickle at his grazes and cuts. He couldn't stay here.
He might as well go up. If it wasn't for the cold air streaming in, he'd have cooked already. Cold air . . .
Logic struggled with the fear. It must be coming from somewhere, drawn in to feed the inferno above. If
he could follow it, it might lead him out. The rubble lay in the way. If the truth be told, he'd never tried too
hard to move it. He had always felt, well, crushed, down here in the blackness. But now he had the need,
a dire and desperate need. He put the newfound ring into the thieves' pouch on his ankle, and began
pulling at broken blocks and scraps of concrete, shoving them aside with frantic strength, pushing them
into the small hollow he'd occupied.

Now that he'd got going he found it wasn't so bad. He could wriggle along quite effectively. In fact the
space was growing bigger. Why, he'd almost be able to crawl soon. He followed the airflow. It was cool,
damp, and it stank. The city's ancient sewage system was largely unused now. Most of it had long since
blocked up, and been abandoned. Instead, folk emptied their stinking buckets into the storm drains. The
occasional terrible sea storm would flush these, but it was often a long while between storms. Sometimes
the drains became clogged, and well-bribed heroes had to go down and shovel them clear.

Keilin shuddered. When he'd been just eight years old, his mother had "volunteered" him. They'd wanted
a small one to get through the remaining space. The price had kept her cloudy-headed for a week. The
memory of it gave him nightmares still. Rats he could deal with, but the sea of roaches down in that
enclosed place had terrified him. Determinedly he stifled the recall flood and concentrated on the task
ahead.

He came to the point where the air rushed in from the big concrete pipe. A thin pipe from the roof above
had once joined it here, but corrosion had long ago eaten away the pipe juncture. It was almost certain
that the long-dead builders shouldn't have used that handy storm-drainage pipe for disposing of the
library's waste water, but, well, there it had been, temptingly close to the foundations. Surely a hand
basin's worth of water wasn't going to make that much difference?

The boy felt at the small hole. Stuck. At this point! In frustration he pounded at the edge of it. The
concrete crumbled slightly, and small stones fell to splash into the unpleasant liquids that trickled below.
The concrete was centuries old, and the pipe juncture had been cut through the steel reinforcing once
hidden inside the concrete. Now, exposed to oxygen and often wet, rust had slowly eaten at the steel and
the expanding rust had cracked the concrete along the reinforcing lines.

Pounding with a broken slab of tiling, he broke a larger opening. It was still not very wide, but from
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