The Curse of the Gloamglozer (40 page)

‘Welma!’ Maris cried out, and dashed up the stairs towards her. ‘Digit!’

Welma and Maris fell into one another's arms and hugged each other tightly while the wood-lemkin –
caught up in their excitement – chattered loudly and jumped about on their shoulders.

Behind her, Maris became aware of shouting. The line of bucket-bearers had seen something. She pulled away from her nurse and looked back into the doorway. And there was Tweezel the spindlebug, the great gangly old retainer of the Palace of Shadows, emerging backwards from the smoky hall so as not to knock the load he was carrying so carefully in his front legs. Outside, he turned slowly round.

‘It's him!’ someone shouted.

‘Old glass-legs has saved him!’

Maris could hardly believe her eyes. ‘Father!’ she cried out and ran towards him.

Linius turned his head. Maris flinched. His skin was blistered, his hair singed. His lifeless eyes stared unblinking into mid-air.

Maris turned to Tweezel. ‘Will he be all right?’ she asked.

‘I shall take him to his former chambers in the School of Mist,’ Tweezel said stiffly. ‘Welma will dress his wounds. We will put him to bed. And then all we can do
is wait. But what about you, young mistress? Are
you
all right?’

‘Yes … no,’ said Maris. She frowned. ‘Where's Quint?’

The spindlebug's antennae trembled. ‘The Most High Academe's young apprentice?’ he said. ‘I'm sure I wouldn't know.’

‘But didn't you see him?’ she said. ‘He was up there on the roof with my father. He…’

‘I found your father in his bed-chamber, not on the roof,’ said the spindlebug. ‘Curled up in the corner, he was, while all around him the terrible fire raged…’

‘But you
can't
have,’ Maris murmured.

The spindlebug tilted its head and looked round at the Palace of Shadows. ‘Oh, that it should ever have come to this!’ he wailed and trilled with despair. ‘I blame myself. I should have been more vigilant. I should have taken more care.’ He hung his head. ‘Now it is all gone. Everything. Centuries of tradition and learning wiped out …’ He clicked his claws. ‘Just like that.’

But Maris had not heard him. If my father never left his bed-chamber, she was wondering, then who had she seen on the roof? Who had Quint risked his life to rescue?

Her face fell as the terrible truth suddenly struck her.

‘You,’ Quint groaned. ‘It was you all the time.’

Before his eyes, the professor transformed into a creature with loathsome mutilated skin and long, coiling ridged horns. It hovered in front of him.

‘Very astute,
Master
Quint,’ the gloamglozer hissed

scornfully, and raised the Great Seal with a scaly hand. ‘It was this that gave away my little secret, wasn't it? The Most High Academe's seal of office.’ It threw back its head and cackled with laughter. ‘It won't do him much good now.’

Quint glanced round him. There seemed to be no escape.

‘I see you are beginning to understand,’ said the gloamglozer, jangling the chain in Quint's face. ‘This little trinket is of no use to him, for Linius Pallitax is dead. Roasted to a crisp,’ it shrieked, and cackled all the louder. ‘You thought you were saving him, didn't you? But all the time, he was downstairs in his bed-chamber, the surrounding flames coming closer, growing higher, hotter…’

‘N … no.’ Quint trembled.

‘You failed!’ the gloamglozer roared. Its eyes flashed gleefully as it tasted the air with its quivering tongue and smacked its cracked lips. It moved closer to him and fear rose like a stone in Quint's throat.

‘Can you imagine how he must have suffered,’ the creature continued, and its eyes narrowed. ‘Ah, but I see you can imagine it
exactly
,’ it purred. ‘How his skin must have blistered and his hair caught fire? The terrible heat. The appalling stench of burning flesh. Oh, and the cries he must have let out as the flames consumed him – louder and louder…’

‘Stop it!’ Quint begged. ‘Haven't you done enough?’

The creature hesitated for a moment. Then it turned and fixed Quint with its yellow eyes. ‘Enough?’ it
shrieked. ‘I haven't even started. Just you wait and see.’

Despite the blistering heat, Quint gave an involuntary shudder. The gloamglozer pressed its hideous face into his own.

‘I shall spread mayhem and chaos,’ it said. ‘I shall lure. I shall cheat. I shall lie. I shall tempt and deceive. And feed off the pain and despair I create.’ As icy shivers ran up and down Quint's spine, the creature trembled with pleasure and licked its lips. ‘And off the fear,’ it whispered.

Quint backed away nervously – only to be beaten forwards again by the terrible encroaching inferno.

‘That fool Linius,’ the gloamglozer continued, ‘never had an inkling of what he was unleashing. He summoned
me
from the emptiness and then actually believed that he would be able to control what he had created, that I should be grateful to him, that I should obey him – vain and pitiful creature that he was!’

As it spoke, a massive flaming beam tumbled down from the blazing turret. It missed Quint by inches, struck the stone floor and exploded in a great shower of white and yellow sparks. He looked round him desperately. If he could just get back to the rope … But which way
was
it? With the flames high and the blinding smoke being driven this way and that by the rising wind, he was becoming disorientated.

‘He summoned me up, only to imprison me in that underground laboratory,’ the gloamglozer went on, ‘too frightened of his creation to realize what I could become, if only he would let me. But I fed on his fear and I liked
the taste. And I grew, and I studied, and I schemed – and at last …’ It raised its arms in triumph and flapped its tattered robes. ‘Here I am!’ it roared.

Quint shuddered. If retreat was not possible, then he had no choice but to attack. His hand closed round the handle of his knife. The gloamglozer's nostrils quivered as it breathed in deeply.

‘It is even better outside than I ever dared imagine,’ it continued softly. ‘I sense such confusion all round me – such fear, such pain and distress. It strengthens me. It empowers me. I exalt in its boundless misery.’ It looked down at Quint. ‘And I owe it all to you!
You
were the one who released me from my prison.
You
unleashed me on to an unsuspecting world.’

‘And I shall also be the one to rid it of you!’ Quint bellowed.

In a blind rage, he lunged forwards and stabbed at the hovering creature again and again. But the gloamglozer merely sneered as it dodged the blade and darted back out of reach.

‘You can't destroy me!’

it roared above the sound of the howling wind, and cackled with bloodchilling laughter. ‘So long as the strong pick on the weak, so long as fear is valued above tenderness, so long as hatred, envy and mistrust divide the various creatures of the Edge, then I am indestructible!’

As its ranting continued, the gloamglozer had edged towards Quint. With its final defiant words, it lashed out. The dagger Quint was holding was knocked from his hand and sent scudding across the floor where it disappeared into the smoke and flames. Quint's heart hammered in his chest. The gloamglozer smacked its lips.

‘The fear of the vulnerable is so much sweeter than the strong,’ it purred. ‘But the sweetest taste of all,’ it went on, its voice growing rougher, more menacing, ‘is surely at
the moment of death
.’

Quint quaked in his boots. His legs had turned to jelly.

‘And that moment,’ the gloamglozer roared, ‘is now!’ It swooped in close to the youth, driving him back into the advancing wall of fire. Quint darted to the left. Immediately, the gloamglozer was there before him, blocking his escape. It bared its teeth grimly.

‘Back you go,’ it chided. ‘Into the fire.’

Quint groaned with horror. He could feel the flames lapping at his back, burning his neck, singeing his hair. In a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, he raised the collar and wrapped the cape protectively around him. It rustled, paper dry, as the flames licked at its hem.

His hand brushed against something hard in one of
the pockets. His fingers investigated. It was a small leather pouch tied up with a drawstring.

Of course! He was wearing Bungus's cape, not his own. Bungus had wrapped it round Maris, who had dropped it in the narrow tunnel and he, Quint, had put it on. This meant that the pouch must belong to Bungus!

‘Oh, Bungus,’ he murmured fearfully, as he remembered the old librarian's twisted body lying dead in the stonecomb. When the blood-red glister had attacked, he must have reached for the pouch himself, only to find that it was not there. ‘I'm so sorry,’ he whispered.

The gloamglozer's tongue flicked out into the air. ‘It is time, Quint!’ it announced, its yellow eyes flickering malevolently. ‘Time for you to die in the fire!’

Quint returned the creature's evil gaze. His hand fumbled desperately with the pouch. With a jerk, his fingers prised it open and he felt the grains flow into his palm like soft sand. His hand closed into a fist round them.

‘Time to die!’ smiled the gloamglozer.

‘Die!’ echoed Quint, pulling his hand from the cloak pocket and flinging the precious chine into the creature's leering face.