The Curse of the Gloamglozer (14 page)

Quint tried to think clearly. He must move fast, but carefully. He knew he could not simply turn the winch handle once the hook and tolley-ropes had been released. It could jam or even sever the chain. No, before he went up, he would have to go down further, to dislodge any frozen blockage around the pulley wheels. With the buoyant-rock ice cold and straining to rise, that would be difficult.

‘You can do it,’ he muttered to himself through clenched teeth as he slipped the knots of the tolley-rope. ‘
We
can do it,’ he added, as he used the rope to lash the professor into his seat – just in case. Linius Pallitax neither struggled nor spoke. ‘That's it,’ said Quint. ‘Now, if I can just untie us and at the same time …’

All at once, the low-sky cage gave a violent lurch as it tried to soar upwards. The professor clung on tightly. Quint spun round and lowered the entire fore-set of levers with a sweep of his arm. It was a brutal way to treat the delicate balancing mechanism – but it worked. Instead of rising, the cage fell sharply as it swung back away from the rock face. A flurry of snow and a clatter of ice tumbled down around them.

Quint wanted to yell for joy, but he fought to remain calm. He
had
to concentrate. With the winding-winch now free, he seized the pulley-wheel and turned it and turned it, as fast as he could. The cage rose. The rock receded. The landing-stage drew closer…

If Quint had been too cold before, now he was too hot. However, he waited until he had untied the professor and secured the low-sky cage to its moorings before wiping the sweat from his eyes.

‘Come on, then, Professor,’ he said, helping Linius from the cage and onto the relatively solid ground of Sanctaphrax. He pushed the traumatized professor's almost rigid arm over his own shoulder and supported his weight, and the pair of them made their way back along the wooden boards of the landing-stage. ‘Not far to go,’ Quint whispered. ‘Soon be there.’

But what could possibly have happened down there in the stonecomb to leave the professor in such a terrible state?

Quint wasn't the only one wondering what was wrong with Linius Pallitax, the Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax. For, as the pair of them stumbled past,
Bagswill once again stepped out of the shadows. ‘The Most High Academe in obvious distress,’ he murmured, and tied a knot in the remembering-rope. ‘Pale. Dazed. Assisted by apprentice…’

He tied another knot, and looked up to see Linius leaning heavily against the young apprentice. A smile spread across his heavy features.

‘Investigate apprentice!’

· CHAPTER SEVEN ·

THE FOUNTAIN
HOUSE

I
n the event, neither Maris nor Welma appeared when Quint and the professor made it back to the Palace of Shadows. Only Tweezel – whose acute hearing woke him up the moment they stepped into the hallway – came down to greet them.

‘Oh, master,’ he trilled when he clapped eyes on Linius. His antennae waved wildly. ‘You look dreadful! What in Sky's name has happened to you this time?’

Quint frowned. ‘You mean this has happened before?’ ‘I've never seen him looking
this
bad,’ said Tweezel. ‘But, yes.’ He nodded his huge, angular head. ‘Yes, he has returned from his night-time jaunts in a sorry state on more than one occasion.’ He tutted. ‘Accursed sky cages,’ he complained. ‘He's going to kill himself one of these nights. I keep telling him to take a low-cage puller with him but he won't listen…’

Quint said nothing. Perhaps it was better if Tweezel
thought that the professor's condition was in some way connected to the sky cage. It spared him all sorts of awkward questions, like why an apprentice had allowed his professor to go into the stonecomb, of all places, on his own – and then stood for hours in the freezing night without going in to look for him.

The spindlebug tutted sympathetically as he inspected the professor's trembling body. ‘Curious,’ he observed, and turned back to Quint. ‘What do you know about this?’

‘Nothing,’ said Quint, truthfully enough. ‘I…’

Linius stirred. ‘Over,’ he murmured. ‘And it's all my fault…’

‘Aye, well,’ said Tweezel, turning to the professor. ‘I'll have to get one of my most efficacious cordials out of the larder. Hyleberry perhaps. Or healwort … And then get him to bed. He looks totally exhausted.’ The spindle-bug's eyes narrowed. ‘As do you, Quint.’

‘I am,’ said Quint. ‘Shattered!’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘What
is
the time?’

‘Approaching five hours,’ said Tweezel.

Quint groaned. ‘And school at six,’ he said wearily.

‘Look, I'll take care of the master now,’ said the spindlebug considerately. ‘You go and grab yourself a bit of shut-eye. After all, one hour's sleep is better than none.’

‘True,’ said Quint wearily. What with the night in the Great Library and the night in the low-sky cage, snatched naps were all the sleep he was getting. He turned to go. As he did so, the spindlebug
reached out and grasped him by the shoulder.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘not a word of this to anyone outside the Palace of Shadows. Is that understood?’

Quint nodded. He'd been in Sanctaphrax long enough by now to know the importance of minding what one said. Rumours, however unfounded, could and often did prove perilous – even fatal. As Welma had so neatly put it,
One loose tongue can still many a beating heart
.

‘My lips shall remain sealed,’ he promised.

Still fully dressed, Quint collapsed onto his bed and fell into a deep yet troubled sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. Time and again, he dreamt he was falling – from the top of the Central Viaduct; from the ladder-ways high up in the vaulted ceiling of the Great Library; off bridges, out of baskets, from the low-sky cage – arms flailing, legs pedalling. Yet not once did he land. Every time, just before the moment of impact, the dream would shift to a new location as if, even in his sleep, Quint knew that once he struck the ground, his heart would stop.

It was during the fall from the West Landing that Quint realized – as dreamers sometimes do – that he was in the middle of a recurring nightmare. He'd been peering into the shadows, convinced that someone was there, when all of a sudden and without any warning a white-collar woodwolf had sprung at him. Its yellow eyes glinted. Its yellow teeth sparkled.

‘No,’ he groaned as he stepped back, lost his footing
and began the long, tumbled fall to the ground far, far below him. ‘It's not happening,’ he gasped. ‘Wake up, Quint. Wake up!’

He opened his eyes.

A grey light was streaming through the unshuttered windows. The bell at the top of the Great Hall was chiming. Quint looked round. It was seven hours, and he was late for school. Wilken Wordspool would be furious.

‘Oh, Maris!’ he exclaimed, as he leapt out of bed. ‘Why didn't you wake me?’

Having quickly splashed his face with water from the wash-bowl and run his fingers through his hair, Quint dashed off. He skidded down the flights of stairs, across the marble hallway and out through the front door. To his surprise, the weather had changed completely. The temperature had risen, and the snowfall had given way to torrential rain.

Collar up and head down, Quint barrelled past the Faculty of Moisture and on towards the school building. And as he rounded the Patriot's Plinth, there it was standing before him: the Fountain House.

Quint gasped in amazement. It was the first time since he'd arrived in Sanctaphrax that he had seen the Fountain House in all its glory. Now, at last, he could see why all the other apprentice-students in his class called it the Holey Bucket, for in the heavy downpour that was exactly what it looked like – a huge bucket full of holes out of which flowed streams of water.

‘It's incredible,’ he murmured.

At the very top of the building was a huge bowl-shaped structure which all but sheltered the entire dome below it. It was in this bowl that the rain collected. If the rainfall was light, the bowl served as a makeshift bird-bath to the white ravens that lived in the Stone Gardens. When the rainfall was heavy, as it was today, the bowl filled and a valve in its base sprang open. Then the collected water would flow down inside the dome itself, along a series of pipes and out through gushing spouts which sent mighty cascades of water thundering down into the ornamental moat, complete with its collection of pink and green birdfish, which surrounded the building. It was truly a magnificent sight.

Quint made a dash for the front entrance and burst in. A portly grey shryke sat at a huge carved stone table. Her long talons drummed on its polished surface with brittle clicks. Her eyes narrowed.

‘Student?’ she demanded.

‘Yes, I…’

‘Name?’ She picked up a pen and smoothed out a yellowing scroll before her.

‘Quint, and I…’

‘Class?’

‘Wilken Wordspool, but…’

The shryke made a note on the register and looked up. ‘You are late, Quint,’ she said. ‘Professor Wordspool does not like students who are late.’

‘I know, but…’

‘You'd better save your excuses for him,’ she said, and
the talons on her feathered hand resumed their rhythmic tapping.

Quint nodded glumly. He turned and made his way across the entrance hall. The vaulted ceiling echoed with the sound of gushing water. It was like being in the middle of a waterfall.

As he passed the dark varnished doors of the Lower School classrooms, Quint heard children's voices coming from inside. They were reciting cloud formations in expressionless sing-song voices – ‘
cursive low, cursive flat, anvil wide, anvil rising
…’

‘Pay attention, Peawilt!’ shouted Professor Lemuella Vandavancx, her strident voice ringing throughout the building.

Quint sighed wearily as he climbed the central circular staircase to the Upper School. The landing there was panelled, and decorated with paintings of ancient professors. Unlike the Portrait Gallery where, for several decades, no paintings of the Most High Academes had been completed, here the tradition had continued unbroken. The oldest, high up in the shadows, were Quint's favourites. They looked impossibly wise with their long wide beards and simple black caps; High Librarians every one.

The most recent paintings were down at eye-level. The individuals they depicted looked an unpleasant bunch: fussy and over-dressed, with sly faces that stared back at Quint mockingly. Sky-scholars! Professor Barnum Trapcott. Professor Spleenewash. And there, smug and prim, was Professor Wilken Wordspool
himself. Quint stopped momentarily beside the portrait. It was a good likeness – the ferret-eyes, the pointed nose tilted up as if sensing a bad smell, the thin sarcastic mouth…

Quint looked back and forth to check that the coast was clear. There was no-one about. He took a piece of black chalk from his pocket, leaned forwards and, meeting the portrait's stare, drew a small arrow pointing into Wordspool's left ear. Then, with a flourish, he wrote OPEN SKY.

He stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Tap, tap, tap, tap
…

Someone was coming! Quint rushed across to the heavy ironwood doors and knocked three times.

‘Enter!’ came a thin, reedy voice.

Quint took a deep breath and pushed the doors open.

The room he entered was as high as it was narrow. Ledges rose up on three sides, on which bored students slumped, their heads lolling, their legs dangling, while around their necks hung trays upon which scrolls, inkpots and pens sat untouched. They looked like sleeping puff-puff birds, roosting in a lullabee grove. The air in the room was stale and stifling.