The Curse of the Gloamglozer (31 page)

‘Because the great floating rock had grown since the tunnel was first built,’ Linius continued, ‘twisting itself out of shape as it did so, the entrance to the tunnel was no longer aligned with the sky cage drop. It took me more than an hour to swing over towards it – but not once did I consider giving up. Finally, I managed to secure my tolley-rope to a jutting spur of rock.’

Maris nodded. In her mind's eye, she could see Quint doing the selfsame thing.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘once
inside
the tunnel, it benefited me that the rock had changed in shape as it had grown. For although it meant I could not trust the old map I had brought with me, it also meant that when I came to the section that had been blocked off, it was blocked off no longer. The original rock-jam had shifted to create a narrow way through.

‘It was a tight fit, and I snagged my robes several times as I squeezed my way between the jagged rocks – but in the end, I made it. And there in front of me, no more than a dozen strides away, stood the door I had seen depicted countless times already – on paper and parchment, in chalk, charcoal and sepia ink, and of course carved into the sacred blackwood.’ He sighed. ‘And yet seeing it in the flesh, so to speak, was quite different.’ He hesitated,
searching for the right words. ‘It … it was the entrance to the Ancient Laboratory and I – Linius Pallitax, Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax – was the first academic to have clapped eyes on it since it had been abandoned centuries earlier.’

An icy shiver shot up and down Maris's spine. She knew
just
how he must have felt.

‘I walked towards the great sculpted door with my heart in my mouth,’ said Linius, his voice low and reverent. ‘I reached out. I touched the stone. At that moment, it was as if a great electric charge surged through my body. My limbs tingled. My hair stood on end. I knew I was on the brink of a wondrous discovery.’ He paused. ‘But how to open the door? How to get inside?’

‘You mean you needed a key?’ said Maris. ‘Was there nothing about one in the carvings or the scrolls?’

Linius turned to his daughter fondly. ‘You have a good mind, Maris,’ he said. ‘Had you been older when I first started out, I would have involved you in my studies.’

Maris trembled with pleasure at hearing such praise. She had been wrong before. It was her age that had stopped her father confiding in her, not her gender. She smiled happily.

‘I did come across a reference,’ Linius was saying. ‘But it was so cryptic.
The door shall open to golden lightning
, it said. I could make neither head nor tail of it. Only when I was standing in front of the door itself with my lamp raised did the carved stonework finally reveal its secret.’

‘What was it?’ Maris breathed.

‘At the very centre of the stone door was a circular indentation. I recognized it at once,’ he explained. ‘Calibrated compass points with an outer circle of spikes and deep grooves of jagged lightning bolts. It was a concave impression of the Great Seal of High Office itself!’

Could that have been why he quizzed me about the mosaic I made him? Maris wondered. Did he think I was on to something?

‘The Great Seal of High Office,’ Linius repeated. ‘That gold medallion with its zigzag bolts of lightning, which had been passed from Most High Academe to Most High Academe down the centuries, the Great Seal which now graced my own shoulders. I grasped it tightly and eased it into the indentation in the rock. It was a perfect fit –
but the door did not spring open as I'd hoped. I couldn't believe it. It
had
to work. Why else would the concave carving have been made in the first place? I thought that perhaps the mechanism had seized up, or the growing rock had twisted the door frame out of shape…’

He looked up, a grin on his face. ‘Then, as I was trying to remove the medallion, I inadvertently twisted it to the right. The rock moved with it and, with a deep rumbling sound like faraway thunder, the door moved.’

Deep down in the treacherous stonecomb, Quint squinted along the gloomy tunnel. His eyes were as accustomed to the dull glow of the rock as they were going to get but it was still difficult to see where he was going. It was all he could do not to lose himself in the confusing labyrinth of tunnels. Every step he took became a commitment; every turn, a gamble.

‘Maybe I should have gone back to the surface with Maris and Bungus,’ he murmured, and was startled by the sibilant echoes that whispered back at him.
Marisss. Bungusssss
…

Quint sighed. The tunnel sighed with him.

‘Still, I made my choice,’ he said. ‘It's too late for regrets now. I
have
to keep going. Before the glister regains its strength…’

With heavy feet, Quint stumbled on. It was a while since he had seen the last black-chalk arrow pointing the way and, as with every other time this had happened, he was becoming increasingly edgy. His palms sweated. His scalp itched. What if he
never
found it?

Then, suddenly, there it was – on the wall at Quint's side – the very moment after he had abandoned all hope of ever finding his way again. Unless… He stopped and traced his finger round the arrow. A smile plucked at the corners of his mouth. He was still on the right track.

‘The Ancient Laboratory,’ he murmured as he peered ahead into the darkness. He gripped the hooked pikestaff tightly. ‘It can't be far now.’

‘As I removed the Great Seal of High Office from the sunken indentation,’ said Linius, ‘the heavy carved door slid open. Though unused for hundreds of years, it glided smoothly and silently. I stepped forwards and went through the doorway. After so much striving, so much endeavour, I was finally inside the lost laboratory I had read so much about.

‘I raised my lamp high into the air, and gasped. For the vast cavern I found myself in was like no other laboratory I had seen before or have seen since. It was spectacular…’

Maris listened closely as her father continued. She wanted to remember every single detail.

‘I was in an immense, dome-shaped chamber which had been carved out of the solid heartrock. Huge glass pipes, like great twisting roots, protruded into the chamber from all round the walls and across the ceiling, while others, even wider still, sprouted up from the floor. Some of the pipes were capped. Some hung free. Most, however, branched and fanned to form a great, convoluted network.

‘At first, I thought it was like being inside a huge machine. Yet as I stood there, looking round, I was overwhelmed by the sense that this was a place which had once been alive. There was something organic about the configuration of the pipes – they were like veins or arteries, or some vast nervous system. I decided, there and then, that my aim would be to breathe life back into the great dormant chamber.

‘I didn't stay long that first visit. But I was soon back, with tar-dip torches for the walls, and buckets and brooms – as well as all the scrolls and parchments about the laboratory that I'd managed to uncover so far.

‘With the Ancient Laboratory now brightly lit, I cleaned and swept and polished until every inch gleamed like new. Oh, Maris, I can't tell you how exhilarating it all was, returning the place to its former glory …’ He paused for breath. ‘As I peeled away the layers of dirt, I discovered that the system of pipes – which I'd initially taken to be haphazard – had in fact been carefully planned. The pipes divided and sub-divided in a highly complex network through which its air-borne contents could be controlled and directed. And – as the scrolls confirmed – from the widest conduit to the narrowest filament, each and every one had been designed to perform a specific function.

‘Some of the thinner tubes had glass spheres, sparkling like ripe fruit, attached to their ends. Others had glistening, gossamer-fine nets suspended between
them, while in the centre of the laboratory a cluster of thick pipes reared up from the floor like three great wood-pythons; writhing, coiling, mouths gaping. Between them was a great central pipe into which all other pipes flowed, like tributaries into the Edgewater River.

‘At the very centre of the laboratory was a raised platform, reached by a short flight of steps and surrounded by a wide array of levers, wheels and stops. Like everything else in the Ancient Laboratory, this intricate apparatus also had a purpose. All I had to do was discover what it was.’

He turned to his daughter. ‘Oh, Maris, it was all so exciting! The time sped past so fast that I was barely aware when it was day and when it was night. Countless hours I'd spend in the Great Library, checking up on the function of a specific cluster of pipes, then hurry back to the laboratory to experiment for myself – only to discover something I hadn't noticed before that sent me scurrying back to the scrolls again. I was totally engrossed in it all, Maris. Too busy to perform my other academic functions, too excited to eat or drink – even sleep became an inconvenience I thought I could do without.’

Maris nodded, but made no comment. So this was why he had seemed so distracted. She had thought he was ill or, worse, mad. She'd been so worried. Smiling softly, she leaned forwards and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.

‘My first major breakthrough came a couple of months later,’ he continued excitedly. ‘Closely following the instructions laid down in an ancient parchment I had found, I unscrewed the lids of the three capped pipes which emerged from the floor, and connected to them three free-hanging pipes which emerged from the ceiling in a triangle formation, far above my head. Then, with trembling fingers, I seized the levers at the base of the three pipes and pulled them upwards, one after the other. With the first two, nothing happened, but as the third lever clicked into place, a sudden roaring sound came from deep within all three pipes.