The Alchemaster's Apprentice (21 page)

‘Everything has a shadow of its own,’ Ghoolion whispered. ‘A shadow is the dark being that dwells within everything and everyone. As long as it’s chained to us it’s our slave, but once it detaches itself from its owner it displays its true nature, becoming evil, wild and dangerous. Well, there’s the entertainment you wanted - enough of it to render my continued presence here superfluous. Goodnight.’

Before Echo could reply, the Alchemaster had hurried out of the chamber and locked the door behind him.

Echo was taken aback. What was this meant to be, a test of some kind? If so, he didn’t know which of his talents was in question. An ability to get out of this room unaided? If that was it, he’d already failed: no Crat could open a door, let alone a locked door. No, this wasn’t a test or a practical joke; it was a form of punishment.

He peeped out from under the chair and took stock of the situation. The black eagle was still perched on the mantelpiece, the rat scurrying back and forth along the skirting board, the gigantic serpent swaying to and fro like a metronome, the Nurn tottering around on its long, stiltlike legs.

Echo was calm enough now to think things over. The door presented no escape route as long as Ghoolion failed to return and there wasn’t any other hole in the wall or floor he could squeeze through. Wait a minute, though, what about the chimney? If the smoke flap was open, he ought to be able to climb up the flue provided its sides were rough enough to offer a pawhold. Once on the roof, he need only make his way back into the castle through the Leathermousoleum.

However, taking this route would be strenuous and not without its dangers. He might get stuck in the chimney and suffocate, or fall down it and break all his bones. A flue could taper towards the top and end by becoming too narrow. Climbing up was always easier than climbing down, which would be a risky proposition.

The more comfortable alternative was simply to go on lying beneath the chair and wait for Ghoolion to return. If he succeeded in getting used to the presence of these shadowy creatures, he might even be able to take a nap. He curled up in a ball and tried to ignore their snarls and hisses.

At that moment the eagle uttered a hoarse scream, flapped its wings and rose into the air. As it left the mantelpiece, something happened which Echo found far more astonishing than anything else that had occurred in the course of this astonishing evening. From one moment to the next, the bird ceased to look like a two-dimensional shadow and became a solid body. Transfixed with fear, Echo didn’t move until the eagle uttered another scream, swooped down, landed on the seat of the chair and slashed at him with its big beak. He shrank back and hit his head on a chair leg. The pain brought tears to his eyes and prompted him to leave his uncertain shelter.

Reaching for the painful spot on the back of his head with a forepaw, he felt something moist and sticky. Genuine blood! Had he broken the skin himself, or had the bird nicked him with its beak? Had these shadowy creatures suddenly become capable of causing pain and physical injury?

There was a rustling sound overhead like wind blowing through a forest. Echo looked up. The Nurn was quivering in a frenzy and stalking around the room on its long legs. It, too, had ceased to be merely a shadow and become a three-dimensional being, a pitch-black sculpture suddenly endowed with life. Echo wondered if the scent of his blood had aroused its killer instincts. The Nurn raised one leg, flexed it and pointed its foot straight at him. He managed to leap aside just as the tip embedded itself in the floor.

Long tentacles came snaking down from the creature’s body. With a menacing crack like that of a bullwhip, they lashed the air in search of their prey. Echo zigzagged around the chamber, narrowly avoiding the Nurn’s elastic tentacles and trampling feet.

He was just about to escape by leaping into the fireplace when the rat, which had also become massively three-dimensional, barred his path. Echo glanced over his shoulder in dismay. To make matters even worse, the huge snake was also wriggling towards him. He could neither advance nor retreat.

Help came from an unexpected quarter: one of the Nurn’s tentacles smacked into the rat like a sodden rope. The huge creature’s bloodlust was such that it drew no distinction between a rat and a Crat. A dozen more tentacles wrapped themselves round the rodent and yanked it into the air. Squeaking with terror, it vanished into the Nurn’s gaping, rustling maw.

Now that his route lay open, Echo leapt boldly into the fireplace. Ash swirled around him in a dense grey cloud, concealing him from view for a few moments and enabling him to catch his breath. For some seconds he was as invisible to the shadowy creatures as they were to him.

Then the ash began to settle and he saw to his utter horror that the chimney was not built of stone. The flue was an iron tube whose sides were far too smooth to climb.

Through the steadily thinning cloud of ash he saw the snake’s huge black head loom up in front of the fireplace. It opened its jaws and almost lazily retracted its head as though to increase the momentum with which it planned to strike its prey.

Something rustled above him. The Nurn? Impossible, it was far too big to fit into the chimney. No, it wasn’t a rustle, it was the whirring of wings. In the general confusion, when the pall of ash was at its thickest, the eagle must have managed to fly up the chimney. Now it was fluttering above him, ready to pounce at any moment.

Sure enough, powerful talons gripped him painfully by the neck and hauled him upwards. He bit and scratched, but his teeth and claws met thin air. The eagle had him securely in its grasp and it wasn’t hard to guess the bird’s intentions: it would haul him out of the chimney, high into the sky, then let him fall. He would drop like a stone and leave his shattered body on the flagstones of Malaisea.

Echo’s fur suddenly fluttered in a cool breeze and he found himself looking down at the lights of the town far below. He was back outside.

The talons let go of his neck, but he didn’t go plummeting to his death; he fell a few feet and landed safely on the mother of all roofs. Theodore T. Theodore touched down beside him a moment later.

‘Theodore?’ said Echo, rubbing his eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What does it look like?’ the Tuwituwu demanded, shaking the soot from his wings. ‘I naved your seck, my young friend. Leripous adventures with happy endings may be pytical of Zamonian light fiction, but who wants everything to nulmicate in a tacastrophe?’

Escape

E
cho slunk back to his basket and lay awake brooding half the night. Why had Ghoolion placed him in such a dire predicament for a mere trifle? Sheer spite? Calculation? Plain insanity? There were really only two plausible possibilities. One was that the shadows could never have harmed him because they were merely projections of his own fears. Alchemistic hocus-pocus, as innocuous as a Cooked Ghost. Hallucinations generated by fumes given off by the black paste Ghoolion had rubbed into his hands. The other possibility: the Alchemaster was simply off his rocker and even more unpredictable than he’d feared.

He didn’t fall asleep until dawn. When he awoke a few hours later, his mind was made up: he would try to escape that very day.

Echo stole up to the roof to fill his belly with one last drink from the pool of milk. A drink so big that it would be several days before he had to wonder where his next meal was coming from. Then he made his ponderous way downstairs through the Leathermousoleum and laboratory. He was relieved not to bump into Ghoolion. He neither detected the Alchemaster’s scent nor heard his clattering footsteps.

Having reached the castle gate, he paused to analyse his feelings. Was he scared? Scared of freedom? Scared of his own temerity? Of course he was. He would be leaving Malaisea, his home town, and going out into the wide world for the first time in his existence. He was an urban creature. Until now he had spent his entire life in Malaisea without ever questioning that fact. He was used to paved streets and footpaths, sheltering walls and roofs, stoves and warm milk, street lights and crowds of people. Leaving the town was like throwing himself into a raging torrent without being able to swim. A cosseted, domesticated Crat completely dependent on himself, he proposed to exchange civilisation for the unpredictable wilds of Zamonia. A wilderness teeming with dangers of the most diverse kinds, with vicious life forms and animals, poisonous plants and malignant natural phenomena. All those hazards were reputed to lie in wait outside - he had only to venture beyond the town walls to come face to face with them. The wild dogs that prowled the fields were far more brutal and dangerous than the dogs of the town - he had often heard them howling. Snakes, scorpions, rabid foxes, Woodwolves, Lunawraiths - these were no mythical beasts but real-life denizens of the Zamonian outback.

He would first have to traverse the municipal rubbish dumps, which were probably alive with rats. Then would come grain fields patrolled by Corn Demons, which stuffed all the living creatures they caught into black sacks and drowned them in ponds. Next he would have to wade through the Strangleroot-infested mangrove swamps and make his way across the Murderous Marsh, in which a Golden Goblin was said to lurk. Only then would he come to the mountains, with their vultures and predators, ravines and crevasses, Mistwitches and Gulch Ghouls.

And after that, the unknown. Echo hadn’t even the faintest idea what awaited him beyond the mountains - if he ever got that far. A waterless desert, perhaps, or a boundless sea, or a bottomless abyss.

Was he scared?

Of course he was.

Did that deter him?

No. All at once, in obedience to a sudden, reckless impulse, he darted out of the castle gate, down the winding lane and into the heart of the town.

Malaisea … How long was it since he’d been there? He hadn’t missed them overmuch, the town’s unwholesome atmosphere and chronically diseased inhabitants, the germ-laden air, the incessant hawking and spitting, the bloodstained handkerchiefs and pus-sodden wads of cotton wool in the gutters.

Ah, Apothecary Avenue, the town’s main shopping street! In this throbbing thoroughfare could be found all that the typical inhabitant of Malaisea could desire: one pharmacy after another, window after window filled with bottles of cough syrup and cold cures, vitamin tablets and throat pastilles, thermometers and catheters, eardrops and laxatives, poultices and ointments for treating Leathermouse bites. The townsfolk pressed their noses to the windows or emerged carrying baskets laden with medicines, showed each other their latest abscesses or surgical scars, and discussed new remedies between coughs and sneezes. Pedlars dispensed hot lemonade or camomile tea, Druidwarfs sold bunches of medicinal herbs, and itinerant physicians loudly offered to take people’s temperature or listen to their heartbeat at minimal expense, on-the-spot diagnoses included. These quacks were obviously in league with the chemists, judging by the suspicious frequency with which their patients, after being briefly examined, made a panic-stricken dash for the nearest pharmacy to stock up on expensive medicines.

Echo slalomed between the shoppers’ shuffling, limping legs. He soon realised how shockingly out of shape he was and began to regret having filled his belly so full. People kept treading on his tail or catching him with their heels or toes. It would never have happened in the old days. On the contrary, Echo had become extremely skilful at threading his way through the townsfolk of Malaisea. Now, however, he was kicked and trodden on like a punctured rubber ball. He was too slow and he could no longer squeeze through the narrow openings available to a Crat amid the milling throngs of pedestrians on Apothecary Avenue. A boot clouted him on the head, a horse trampled on his tail and a fat woman kicked him full in the stomach. He went sprawling and three people marched right over him as if he were a doormat.

He let out a yowl, rolled over sideways into the lee of a wall and lay there with his heart pounding like a steam hammer. ‘I’m planning to trek across deserts and forests, and I can’t even get down Apothecary Avenue,’ he thought. ‘I’ll have to look for a quieter route via the outskirts of town.’

But he knew only too well what that meant: dogs. Roaming the outer districts were the packs of wild mongrels not tolerated in the city centre, and he’d had many a brush with them in the past. In his present condition he wouldn’t stand a chance of giving them the slip. The emaciated tykes were fast on their feet and he was incapable of climbing a drainpipe.

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