Dismayed that he’d blown his top after all, he did his best to calm down.
‘It’s all right,’ Izanuela said awkwardly. ‘I’m rather flustered, that’s all. This has never happened to me before. Emotional turmoil …’ She gave an embarrassed little laugh.
‘All right,’ said Echo, ‘but we must keep a clear head. Time is running out.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Should I ask him as soon as he comes back?’
‘No, we mustn’t jump the gun. Listen, I’ve got a plan …’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I think we should lure him out on to the roof.’
‘The roof? Must we?’ Izanuela shuddered.
‘I’m sure it would have a beneficial effect on him. Ghoolion is completely off his…I mean, he’s under considerable pressure at the moment. We must get him away from this unhealthy environment. All those acrid fumes and intoxicating gases. All that hard work and stress he subjects himself to.’
‘Good idea. He
is
looking rather pale.’
‘The roof has always had a liberating, soothing effect on me. The fresh air. The light. The view. It’s another world up there. You develop a new outlook on things. It helps you to see what really matters. In short, it’s therapeutic. That’s where we should present him with your request.’
‘You think I should ask him to show me the roof?’ asked Izanuela.
‘Better not. It might sound odd - he’d smell a rat. No,
I’ll
do it. I’ll ask him to take me up to the mother of all roofs one last time. Before he … well, you know what I mean. He’s already gathered how much I like it up there. It’ll sound more convincing, coming from me.’
‘All right. What then?’
‘You must come too, that’s all. Once we’re up there, you douse yourself in some more of that perfume.’
‘What,
more
? I must be economical with the precious stuff if I want a long-term relationship with -’
‘Izanuela!’ Echo hissed the name so loudly that she flinched. ‘My life is at stake! Kindly spare a thought for something apart from your flirtation with the Alchemaster!’
‘I’m sorry.’ She blushed. ‘So I put on the perfume -’
‘- and then you ask him. As casually as you can. You don’t beg or implore, you simply ask him the way you’d ask for a kiss.’
The Uggly giggled like a teenager, then froze. Ghoolion’s metallic footsteps were approaching: he was hurrying back with her coffee. He appeared in the doorway a moment later.
‘What a glorious day!’ he exclaimed. ‘The wind is getting up and it’s growing steadily warmer. There could well be a thunderstorm tonight.’
‘How nice,’ said Echo.
‘Breakfast with the two individuals I care about most,’ Ghoolion purred as he refilled the Uggly’s cup. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much this means to me.’
‘Too true,’ thought Echo. ‘I wouldn’t.’
Ghoolion laid the coffee pot aside and drew himself up to his full height.
‘This is a special day from many points of view,’ he said. ‘Let’s start it off in a worthy manner. How would you like me to show you both the best-kept secret in this ancient building?’
The Treasure Chamber
E
cho kept wondering what secret he could mean. The Snow-White Widow? The fat cellar? But they didn’t go down to the cellar, they climbed the stairs to an upper floor.
‘Before a man of honour marries his beloved,’ said Ghoolion, ‘he discloses his financial circumstances.’ He was going on ahead as usual, leading Echo by his chain with Izanuela following obediently behind. ‘Well, in my case that’s quickly done. I’m merely the municipal Alchemaster of a small and impoverished town. I don’t even receive a salary and my meagre inheritance was soon used up. True, I own the biggest property in Malaisea, but who would care to live here apart from me and the Leathermice?’
‘I would!’ Izanuela said softly.
Echo suppressed a sigh.
Ghoolion smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘
you
would, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful to you. But who else? The castle may look impressive from a distance, but any potential purchaser who inspected it more closely would run off screaming, especially if he learned of the building’s gruesome history. Fundamentally, therefore, I’m just a poor devil living in a dilapidated ruin. Right?’
‘What if you are?’ said Izanuela. ‘Money isn’t everything.’
They came to a halt in a room Echo had already visited dozens of times before. It contained nothing special, just some dusty pieces of furniture.
Ghoolion went over to a bare wall of blackened brick and paused in front of it. For a few moments he seemed to be collecting his thoughts or trying to remember something. Then he proceeded to press various bricks like an organist manipulating the stops of his instrument.
‘He’s crazy,’ thought Echo. ‘Even Izanuela should be starting to realise that by now.’
Ghoolion stepped back. There was a sound like an enormous clock beginning to tick. Clickety-clack it went. Metal springs contracted and expanded with a whirring noise. The bricks in the wall started to move in and out and behind one another, grating together as they rearranged themselves to form a steadily widening aperture of triangular shape.
‘An ancient mechanism left behind by the Rusty Gnomes,’ Ghoolion explained. ‘It still works, but I don’t know how.’
So he knew of the existence of the dwarfish race whose skeletons Echo had discovered in the building. Echo made no comment because he was far too fascinated by what was happening now. Light was issuing from the aperture. Only a little at first, but the bigger it got the brighter the light became.
‘What’s that?’ Izanuela enquired nervously.
‘It’s the entrance to my treasure chamber, my blossom,’ Ghoolion replied. ‘Or should I say, to
our
treasure chamber? Your assumption that you were being wooed by a poverty-stricken wretch wasn’t entirely correct, so the fact that you accepted my proposal notwithstanding does you twice as much credit. It has intensified my love for you to an immeasurable extent! I should now like to acquaint you with my true financial circumstances. Kindly follow me, my dears, and feast your eyes on a thing of beauty: the greatest treasure in Malaisea!’
He ducked through the opening, which had now attained the dimensions of a doorway, gently pulling Echo after him. Izanuela hesitantly followed. They were suddenly bathed in a golden glow that seemed to come from all directions at once. The chamber was as spacious and high-ceilinged as several others in the castle, but this one was unique. It consisted entirely of gold. A gold floor. Walls papered with gold leaf. A gold ceiling composed of massive gold panels. A huge, thick carpet woven out of gold thread. A candelabrum of gold with gold candles. A gold fireplace with gold coals in a gold grate. Gold pictures in gold frames on the walls. A gold library comprising thousands of gold books. Cupboards, armchairs, upright chairs and a long refectory table, all of gold. A gold pipe in a gold ashtray. Even the knocked-out ash and the charred match were of gold. Beside them were a half-eaten apple and an open book with a pair of glasses lying on top of it. They, too, were of solid gold.
Echo and Izanuela were dazzled by all this splendour, and even Ghoolion shaded his eyes with his hand. The chamber was invested with its magical refulgence by the dozens of Anguish Candles that were creeping or standing around on tables, shelves and cabinets.
‘Isn’t gold the loveliest of all the elements?’ Ghoolion asked without waiting for an answer. ‘Not the rarest, nor the most useful, nor the most effective, but the loveliest.’
Echo tried to tread on the carpet, but the pile pricked his paws like needles. He swiftly removed them.
‘You gilded the whole room?’ said Izanuela. ‘Why?’
Ghoolion smiled. ‘I didn’t
gild
it. Everything here is made of solid gold. The table, the shelves, the books, every stone in the walls. Go and touch it.’
Izanuela went over to the table and picked up the apple. It was quite an effort.
‘My, that’s heavy!’ she gasped. ‘You’re right, it’s solid gold!’
Ghoolion walked across the chamber with his arms outstretched. ‘Yes indeed!’ he exclaimed. ‘Tons and tons of it. More than a hundred men could carry.’
‘Was it always here?’ Echo asked. ‘Did you discover this chamber?’
‘The chamber and its secret mechanism, yes. I found an old parchment in the cellar and managed to decipher it. It bore the formula required to open the door, the language of the stones. But the walls and furniture, floor and ceiling, carpet and books - they were still composed of the materials such things are usually made of. Stone, wood, iron, wool, leather, paper.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Izanuela. She was admiring her own reflection in a pot-bellied gold vase. ‘How did all these things turn into gold?’
‘Echo,’ Ghoolion commanded, ‘quote me alchemy’s four supreme objectives.’
Echo didn’t have to think for long. ‘To find the Philosopher’s Stone. To construct a perpetual-motion machine. To attain immortality. To transform lead into gold.’
Ghoolion nodded proudly as the last words were uttered.
‘Can you really transform lead into gold?’ asked Izanuela.
‘Not only that!’ Ghoolion said triumphantly. ‘I can transform almost anything into gold. Any relatively solid substance. Any metals, of course, apart from quicksilver. Wood, too. Stone. Dust. Wax, as long as it’s firm. Lead too, naturally.’
‘You told me once it was impossible,’ said Echo.
‘I had to keep it a secret, of course. You have a nimble tongue, my friend, not to mention a command of every language in existence. Imagine what would happen if it became known that I can manufacture gold - any amount of it! This castle would be under siege! Every mercenary in Zamonia would be at the gates. Every criminal would be after me, hoping to torture me into revealing the secret. Every royal megalomaniac would send his myrmidons to get me.’
Ghoolion gave a mirthless laugh.
‘That’s why I confined my gold-making activities to this secret chamber. At first I transmuted small objects into gold: a book, a plate, a stone in the wall. Then bigger and bigger articles - chairs, benches, tables - until everything in here was solid gold. I still bring things here and transmute them from time to time, but it became boring in the long run.’ ‘Why are you telling us all this now?’ Echo asked.
Ghoolion smiled. ‘Where my future wife is concerned, I consider it my duty.’ He gave the chain a gentle tug. ‘As for you, my dearest Echo, you’re past being able to betray my secret. You’ll soon be taking it to the grave with you.’
‘Many thanks for reminding me,’ thought Echo. The sight of all this splendour had almost made him forget how quickly time was speeding by.
‘I only came upon the formula by chance,’ Ghoolion went on. ‘It probably won’t surprise you, Echo, to learn that I discovered the solution to one of alchemy’s greatest secrets in the smallest of objects: a dried leaf from the Miniforest, it was the size of a grain of dust. I had only to interchange a few molecules, but one has to know which ones. Moreover, interchanging molecules is an art in itself.’
‘So you’re a very wealthy man, Master,’ said Echo. ‘You never cease to surprise me.’
‘I have acquired a certain degree of financial independence, it’s true.’ Ghoolion smirked. ‘But take it from me, the two of you: all this gold means nothing to me in comparison with what I hope to achieve tonight. If I could exchange it all, together with my gold-making formula, for the certainty that I shall be successful, I would do so on the spot. For what is wealth compared to immortality? What good is all this loot if I’m doomed to die? And that brings me to the reason for your presence here, Echo.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Echo.
‘I’ve filled your little head with all my alchemistic knowledge, but I’ve left this last piece of information, the formula for making gold, until last. Your brain must, of course, have absorbed it by the time I render you down.’
Ghoolion produced a sheet of parchment from his cloak and held it under Echo’s nose. It was covered with alchemistic symbols.
‘Would you be kind enough to memorise this?’ he asked.
‘Hm …’ said Echo, scanning the document. It dealt with cohesive and adhesive forces, chlorophyll atoms, graveyard gas, lime, Leathermouse blood, fivefold distillation processes.
He didn’t understand the first thing about the formula he was memorising, but by the time he’d finished he knew how to make gold.
‘All done,’ he said. His head was buzzing.
Ghoolion took the parchment and tore it into tiny little pieces.
‘He must feel pretty sure I’m going to die if he entrusts me with such a secret and then destroys the formula,’ Echo reflected.
The moment had come at last.
Echo cleared his throat. ‘But now, Master,
I’ve
got a request for
you
.’
Ghoolion stiffened. ‘What is it?’ he demanded sternly.