‘Many thanks,’ said Echo. He was once more sitting on the floor beside the alchemical furnace. The Alchemaster had removed him from it and put him there, but without unchaining him.
‘That wasn’t intended as a compliment,’ Ghoolion said, shooting an angry glance at his prisoner. ‘I simply meant that the fun’s over as far as you’re concerned. I’ve never been as close to death as I was just now.’
He took a pair of bellows and pumped fresh oxygen into the flames, which blazed up brightly.
‘What was that deal you made with the Snow-White Widow?’ Echo asked. ‘How did you manage to gain control of such a powerful creature?’
‘I found her down below the castle,’ said Ghoolion, adding some more logs to the flames. ‘In the catacombs beneath the cellars. She was very ill, terminally ill, but I knew of a remedy for her condition. In return she had to sign a contract that made her my prisoner for ten years. She was weak at first, but when she gradually regained her strength I took the precaution of putting her under a spell while she was asleep. I also built her an escape-proof prison.’
‘You like doing deals,’ Echo remarked. ‘Even with the most dangerous creatures.’
‘One never knows when a Snow-White Widow will come in handy,’ Ghoolion said with a laugh. ‘It paid off, too. You benefited from the deal yourself and for that you should be duly grateful to me. What I have in mind for you will be a picnic compared to what those demons would have done to you.’
He turned away from the cauldron, took a scalpel from the table and advanced on Echo.
‘We’ve wasted enough time,’ he said.
Echo’s instinctive reaction was to run for it, but the chain brought him up short. He tugged at it desperately but only succeeded in choking himself. It was useless.
‘Make it quick,’ he said.
‘That I promise you,’ said Ghoolion.
All of a sudden, music could be heard - the strangest music. Loud, intrusive and disconcerting, it came drifting in through the windows from one moment to the next.
Ghoolion stopped in his tracks and listened.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
Echo knew the music. It was familiar to him, but not played at this tempo. There had been something tranquil about it - something almost danceable - the first time he heard it. What had Izanuela called it?
Of course:
Twitchstik
, the Song of the Ugglian Oaks …
It now had a rather menacing ring, like the music with which armies impress their grim determination on the enemy. Campaigns were conducted to the strains of such music. It was music for marching to - for killing to.
‘I know what it is,’ Echo said.
‘You do?’
‘You need only look out of the window.’ Echo’s heart was beating wildly again. He fervently hoped he had drawn the right conclusion from the music; his life might well depend on it. He listened closely. There was something in addition to determination in that music. It was the saddest sound he had ever heard: a funeral march.
Ghoolion had dashed to the window and was looking out.
‘Damnation!’ he exclaimed, clutching his chest. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘It’s Izanuela’s house, isn’t it?’ said Echo. ‘It’s Izanuela’s house from Uggly Lane. Its music is unmistakable.’
‘It’s
all
the houses from Uggly Lane!’ Ghoolion yelled. ‘There must be over a hundred of them. They’re all round the castle.’
All of them? Echo was surprised. Still, why not? Izanuela had mentioned that all the houses in the street were alive, but she hadn’t said anything about their being so alive they could move from the spot. They must have come to avenge her.
‘All the houses, of course,’ Echo amended. ‘I know. I simply meant Izanuela’s house would be there too. It’s their leader, isn’t it?’
Once again, he could only hazard a guess and hope he was right. He cursed his confounded chain.
As if unable to believe his eyes, Ghoolion snatched up a telescope.
‘How should I know?’ he said. ‘They all look alike.’
‘Izanuela’s house is bigger than the others.’
‘What?’ Ghoolion squinted through the telescope again. ‘Yes, one of them is bigger than the rest. What sort of creatures are they? Are they plants? I’ve seen plants that can move, but none as big as these.’
‘They’re Ugglian Oaks,’ Echo said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘The oldest plants in Zamonia.’
How desperately he yearned to look out of the window at that moment! What did the oaks look like when they were in motion? Did their roots act as legs and their branches as arms? Were they rolling those mournful eyes in their knotholes? No matter, he must take advantage of Ghoolion’s discomfiture.
‘So the Uggly fulfilled our agreement,’ he said coolly.
‘What agreement?’ Ghoolion asked without averting his gaze from the astonishing scene.
‘Izanuela was also fond of striking bargains with natural phenomena,’ Echo said slowly, ‘with animals and plants.’ He had to choose his words carefully. ‘But not with a view to skinning them and extracting their fat.’
‘What are you getting at?’ Ghoolion demanded. He put the telescope down on the windowsill and gave Echo a piercing stare,
‘What you can see down there is Izanuela’s curse!’ Echo cried. ‘Your duel with her isn’t over, Alchemaster, it has only just begun. Her power extends beyond the grave. That’s something
you’ll
never achieve!’
‘What are you blathering about?’ Ghoolion snapped. ‘What curse?’
‘His hands are trembling,’ thought Echo. ‘I’ve unsettled him, but I mustn’t rush things.’
‘Those trees down there have come to fetch me,’ he lied boldly. ‘Izanuela told them what to do if something happened to her. That was what we agreed. The houses in Uggly Lane heard her scream as she fell. That was the signal. They’ve come to fulfil her last wish.’
Ghoolion didn’t answer. He stared out of the window, listening to the mournful music, then turned back to Echo.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Ugglian Oaks, singing plants. I dealt with far worse things today. Let them sing! They’re too big to get past the door and they’re welcome to besiege the building, I don’t intend to leave it. I’ve enough stores in here to last till doomsday. Besides, if I want to leave the castle I know of other ways out than the front door. Let’s get on.’
Ghoolion went over to the cauldron and inspected the contents. Judging by the contented way he clicked his tongue, he seemed pleased with what he saw. He took a big spoon and gave the brew a leisurely stir, even though the music was growing steadily louder. Then he laid the spoon aside and picked up the scalpel.
‘The soup is ready,’ he called. ‘So are you.’
The music continued to swell as he crossed the room, becoming so loud and piercing that every glass vessel in the laboratory began to rattle.
‘That’s right, sing!’ he shouted. ‘Sing away! Yours is just the music to skin a Crat by.’
Boom! The whole building shuddered. Plaster trickled from the ceiling and the laboratory floor gave a lurch. Taken aback, Ghoolion stopped short. It was all he could do to keep his feet.
‘Hey!’ he cried.
Echo was also thrown off balance. What was this, an earthquake?
Boom! Another impact! A glass retort wobbled, fell to the floor and smashed.
Boom! And another! Books toppled off shelves, dust went swirling into the air.
Boom! A lunar globe fell from the ceiling and went rolling across the laboratory.
‘Hell’s bells!’ Ghoolion bellowed. ‘What’s going on?’
The floor and walls shuddered again and again. Timbers creaked and cracks appeared in the masonry. Ghoolion reeled around like a drunk.
Boom! The fireplace belched a dense cloud of soot.
Boom! The alchemical furnace rocked precariously.
Ghoolion spun round and tossed the scalpel on to a workbench. He ran to a window and leant out as far as he could.
‘It’s those infernal great trees!’ he fumed. ‘They’re pounding the castle walls with their huge wooden fists and using uprooted tree trunks as battering rams!’ He took a closer look through the telescope. ‘They’re wrenching rocks out of the ground and hurling them! They’re going berserk!’ His voice broke with fury.
Echo was also feeling uneasy now. No one was safe in this crumbling old pile. He simply had to get rid of this confounded chain.
‘You must show me to them!’ he shouted above the din. ‘That’s all they’re after. That’ll calm them down.’
Ghoolion didn’t react. He stood silently at the window, clinging to the sill and staring out.
Boom! A whole bookcase toppled over, spilling hundreds of ancient volumes across the floor.
Boom! The Ghoolionic Preserver clinked and rattled. Gas came hissing out of a fractured valve.
Boom! Fist-sized stones fell out of the walls and landed on alchemical vessels, shattering them.
Ghoolion tore himself away from the window at last. Having lurched across the laboratory to Echo, he bent down and removed his collar.
‘But I warn you!’ he growled. ‘One false move and I’ll throttle you!’
He gripped Echo by the scruff of the neck and carried him over to the window, where he held him up and shouted, ‘Here he is! Here’s what you’re after! Now stop that!’
Echo got his first sight of the Ugglian Oaks clustered around the castle. What a spectacle they presented! Izanuela had told him they never lost their temper. They had certainly lost it now! Some were stomping around on their big black roots, massive trunks swaying to and fro as they pummelled the ancient building with their gnarled wooden fists. Others were prising huge boulders out of the ground and hurling them at the castle like trebuchets. The old eyes in their knotholes were blazing with anger. Their mournful music was almost drowned by the ear-splitting creaks and groans they made in their frenzy. They were so engrossed in their display of brute force that none of them paid any attention to Ghoolion or what he had shouted.
‘Pure pandemonium,’ Echo whispered to himself. He didn’t know whether to be delighted or horrified. The giant trees hadn’t come to liberate him; they were bent on sheer destruction.
‘They aren’t calming down!’ Ghoolion exclaimed. ‘They’re getting wilder and wilder!’ He tightened his grip on Echo.
Instead of replying, Echo twisted his head round and bit Ghoolion’s hand - bit it harder than he’d ever bitten anything or anyone before. The skin split open like paper and his teeth sank in up to the bone. Even the Alchemaster couldn’t ignore pain of such intensity. He uttered a yell and relaxed his grip. Echo promptly took advantage of this to squirm and struggle, hiss and scratch. He raked Ghoolion’s face with his claws and inflicted four deep scratches on his cheek. One claw on his other paw caught the Alchemaster’s long nose and laid it open from bridge to tip. And still Echo raged on, biting and lashing out in a fury. Ghoolion suddenly found himself holding a wildcat armed with a hundred teeth and a thousand claws. He dropped Echo, who landed on the windowsill, and retreated a few steps.
‘Never touch me again!’ hissed Echo. He arched his back in a way that made him look twice as big. His eyes gleamed belligerently. ‘Never again, you hear?’
There was a massive jolt and a long crack appeared in the laboratory floor. Ghoolion went staggering backwards, caught his foot in it and fell headlong.
‘You little devil!’ he yelled as he scrambled to his feet. ‘You said they’d stop this if you showed yourself.’
‘I lied!’ Echo shouted back above the din. ‘I learnt that from you! You should have listened to the Snow-White Widow! Never put your faith in someone else’s honesty!’
This remark seemed to hurt the Alchemaster more than all the bites and scratches he’d sustained. The anger in his face gave way to a look of bewilderment.
‘You mean they haven’t come to set you free?’ he said. ‘Why, then?’
‘To avenge Izanuela!’ Echo shouted. ‘And to send you to perdition. She’s too powerful for you. She’s defeating you after her death.’
Another violent jolt brought down a beam that grazed the Alchemaster’s head. He swayed and clutched his bleeding ear but stayed on his feet. A second beam came crashing down on the Ghoolionic Preserver, smashing numerous glass vessels and spattering the room with chemical fluids. The stone lintel above the door became dislodged and fell with another crash. Within moments, a heap of collapsing rubble had precluded any chance of escape.
‘Then you’ll go to perdition with me!’ Ghoolion yelled, pointing to the blocked exit. ‘Those Ugglian Oaks don’t seem too eager to save your life.’
Echo was prepared to fight if the Alchemaster went for him again, but Ghoolion displayed no sign of aggression. Bereft of all his authority, he simply stood there, swaying under the impact of the blows his castle was receiving. It was as if he himself were being struck.
Yet another violent jolt upset the cauldron. The alchemical soup flowed out across the floor and disappeared down the cracks.