fire, she had no flame. Her marjal dominance over water and air was less dominance and more being able to ask the occasional small favour. Speed wouldn’t save her. Possibly she could walk the Path, but she felt too weak and the energies she would gain might wreck the room but they would be unlikely to destroy all the spores.
Frustration warred with raw terror. After all this time Joeli was going to win and Nona would die the worst of deaths alone in the dark.
Without hope she began to roll, keeping her legs tight together, depending on the sacks, over-habit and the skirts of her own habit wrapping tight around her ankles. She raised her arms to pin the hood around her face as best she could. The total darkness stopped her from knowing whether there were gaps through which the spores could reach her eyes. She would soon find out if there were.
Five or six rotations were sufficient to get Nona’s internal map of the cave spinning. She tried to roll slowly enough so that the sacks and her habit wouldn’t flap around her, but the air in her lungs couldn’t last forever. Already she wanted to take that breath.
Surprise at the sudden impact of her ankles against something unyielding almost made Nona inhale. A series of crashing sounds followed, Sister Apple’s precious ingredients taking the plunge. Nona buried any guilt under the certainty that an agonizing death waited in her immediate future. Already her ankles were burning. She pushed away images of a survival that left her scorched, her face a ruin, scalp pink and scarred, the shock and revulsion as her friends first saw her … Regol’s features stiffening, the smile falling from his lips.
An adjustment and another set of rolls brought a second collision. Another series of crashes followed. Panic wrapped itself around Nona’s lungs, squeezing tight. She didn’t know where she was, she couldn’t roll to the door. She would have to stand, exposing herself to the spores. And even as she began to rise she knew with cold certainty that before she found the door in the darkness, flailing around as the skin bubbled from her hands, she would have to draw breath, and then her lungs would start to perish. Nona had seen men die from grey mustard, she’d watched it through Kettle’s eyes deep within the Tetragode. She couldn’t end like that. Fear only consumed her air more swiftly but serenity had escaped her.
Gathering her courage, Nona rose and launched herself in the direction she hoped the door lay. With arms folded over her face she crashed into something that was not a door. A whole rack of shelves toppled to the ground with Nona tangled in the structure. Pots and packages rained down and each shelf seemed to break free of the frame as the thing fell.
Nona hit the ground hard and lay face down amid the sharp edges of the clutter. She had to draw breath. The whole of her body clamoured for it. Traitor muscles lifted her chest demanding air. She clamped her jaw, hammering the ground with her fists, refusing defeat. Spots of red light flashed in her vision, the beat of her heart became a drum, a thunder in her ears, the pressure built, beyond pain, beyond resistance. With a sob of despair she released the stale breath she had clung to so long, and hauled in a new one.
The burn hit immediately. Within moments Nona was rolling helplessly, coughing, choking, her eyes beginning to sting. Spluttering, the drool running from her chin, Nona gained all fours and crawled, direction abandoned to panic now. She banged her head against stone and sobbing she followed the wall around with blind hands. At last she found the wood of the door. It gave beneath her push and she tumbled out into the corridor.
Nona sat, wiping snot and slobber from her face. ATISHOO! An almighty sneeze shook her, ringing down the tunnel.
It took another moment to realize that it hadn’t been grey mustard. ‘Pepper!’ ATISHOO!
Apart from the echoes of Nona’s sneeze there was no noise.
‘Shit!’
Somewhere along the tunnel a door opened.
Nona leapt up. A whisper of light from the Shade classroom windows gave her direction and the edges of the corridor. She slapped a hand to the wall where she had carved a channel for the lock catch. A pulse of marjal enchantment and rock started to rain from the area in fragments. She hadn’t time to repair her work