by Paul Stewart
All round him, the glimmering lights began to sparkle and flash from the rough, pitted wall and Quint could just make out countless tiny glisters which clung to its jutting ridges and jagged protuberances. Occasionally, one would detach itself and fly through the air, flickering in the corner of his eye as it passed.
A cold sweat bathed Quint's face. There were so many of them. With a shudder that racked his entire body, he realized where he must be – inside a glister lair!
The revolting noises grew louder. Quint shivered. He must find Maris before it was too late. Rallying all his dwindling courage, he stepped cautiously forward, towards the sound. The flashing lights bounced off the bumps and boulders strewn across the cavern floor. Quint's footsteps echoed round the cavern. He dropped to his knees and tried to move as silently as he could.
Had the creature heard him? Or smelled his blood? Did it still have Maris in its clutches, or had she managed to give it the slip in this vast cavern? Was she even now crouched down in some corner, scared and alone, waiting for him to rescue her?
Quint edged closer to the awful sound. Then, with a sickening jolt, he saw an indistinct dark shape ahead of him. He paused. The glisters flickered above him and Quint shivered with horror as the hunched figure of a massive creature came briefly into view.
‘What the…?’ he whispered.
The creature flickered with light as if in response to Quint's voice – but did not turn.
It was awesome – a great formless blood-red beast constantly shifting its shape like a sackful of fighting fromps. Now round, now long; now perfectly smooth, now a writhing mass of eyes and tentacles. And all the while, inside its glowing body – no matter what the shape – a chain of dull red lights coursed endlessly along its throbbing veins.
‘It's dis-gust-ing,’ Quint groaned, sickened by the sight of the repulsive, blood-red creature.
He turned away. He wanted to go. But where was Maris? He couldn't leave without her.
Quint looked round desperately, squinting into every crack and crevice for his missing friend. He stumbled forwards. His foot struck a bump on the cavern floor.
As the noise echoed throughout the cavern, the slurping sound stopped and, once more, the light inside the great creature went out. It was listening. A few moments later, the crimson light flickered into life again and the disgusting sounds began with renewed vigour. Rooted to the spot, Quint stared at the creature in horror.
And then he saw it! Sticking out from beneath the enormous formless creature was a foot.
‘MARIS!’ Quint bellowed, and dashed forwards – only to trip and fall heavily to the ground. He sat up nervously. It had felt as if someone had grabbed at his ankle.
All about him the chamber was lit up as the countless tiny glisters flashed and flickered in response to his own terrible fear. Suddenly Quint saw what had tripped him.
It was a corpse – a leathery mummified corpse with shrunken lips and sunken eyes, frozen at a moment of
absolute terror. He had stumbled against its left hand – which had become detached from the rest of the body and now lay in the dust some way off.
Quint gagged emptily. ‘No, no!’ he groaned as he scuttled back, terrified, horrified, yet unable to tear his eyes away from the appalling sight.
The corpse had once been a treasury-guard. Quint recognized the tooled leather breastplate and spiked helmet. But this was one flat-head goblin whose immense strength and fighting prowess had failed to save him. And if he had fallen victim to the monstrous blood-red creature …
‘Maris,’ Quint whispered, bile rising in his throat. ‘MARIS!’
Pikestaff raised high, he staggered forwards – stumbling for a second time. With his arms flailing wildly, he managed not to fall – and looked down to see a second corpse. Like the first, it had been frozen at the point of death with its gruesome gurning head bent backwards at an impossible angle and its arms and legs akimbo.
It was not alone.
All round him, as the glisters flashed and sparked brighter than ever, Quint now saw that the entire floor was littered with dead bodies – woodtrolls, slaughterers and mobgnomes, identifiable only by their amulets and their hair; academics, their gowns wrapped round their bones like funeral shrouds; and curious shrunken individuals, with limbs like driftwood and clothes that Quint had only seen in history books.
Ahead of him the great shapeless beast, now glowing a deep, violent red, rose up from the lifeless body of his friend. No wonder it was so immense, Quint realized shakily. How many centuries had it lurked down here, picking off the unwary, the reckless, the foolish? How many individuals had it drawn into its grisly lair, and sucked dry?
A slobbery wet slurp echoed round the chamber as the formidable creature withdrew long, glinting tentacles from Maris's eyes. Quint felt sick with fear. This was no game: no childish adventure with rules and truces. It was real. And frightening. Possibly Maris was dead already. Probably he would be next. Yet he couldn't turn back. He couldn't abandon her, even if it meant risking the same terrible fate.
With an animal-like scream of rage, Quint hurled himself forwards. The hooked pikestaff hissed through the air. Bones scattered before his feet.
‘Whiii-whiii-whiiiiii!’
The ear-splitting screech echoed menacingly round the death-filled chamber as the furious creature turned to face him. Quint seemed to freeze in mid-air, his head pounding and his body quaking. There was a loud roaring noise and a rush of stale air.
Quint screwed his eyes shut. The pikestaff was knocked from his hand. The next instant, he found himself being tossed down onto his back.
The creature was on him in an instant, swallowing him up in its great, amorphous body. Quint was unable to move so much as a muscle. And as he lay there – immobile, silent, scared – he felt something burning hot probing at his face, trying to prise his eyelids apart.
He couldn't cry out; he could barely breathe. The screeching – within his head, and without – grew louder. His body felt racked and pummelled. Outside, and inside, the terrible light grew more and more and more intense until he felt his head would explode with blood-red light…
Then, nothing.
· CHAPTER THIRTEEN ·
BUNGUS SEPTRILL
As consciousness slowly returned to him, Quint stirred. A dull pain grumbled at the base of his spine. He groaned softly and the sound echoed round the still, dark air. His head felt light, fuzzy, and curiously empty – as if his thoughts had all been stripped away.
Where am I? he wondered. Who am I? For a moment, it was a struggle even to remember his own name.
‘Quint,’ he whispered, the name rising to the surface of his mind like an oozefish in a dark Mire pool. ‘Quint, I must be Quint.’
And yet he couldn't be sure. His mind was as blank and featureless as the Mire itself. Another thought swam upwards. It floated there just below the surface, indistinct yet menacing. He had encountered something in the darkness; something evil and formless – something impossible to grasp hold of, yet as pervasive as a foul Mire mistwraith.
Quint grimaced. It had attacked him. It had pinned him to the floor. Unable to move, he'd felt it probing, prising…
With a mounting sense of unease, Quint became aware that, even now, there was something close by. He could hear it rustling softly. He could smell the faintly acrid smell of rotting leaves. He held his breath, kept his eyes tightly shut and prayed feverishly that it would leave him alone. Then all at once he felt something papery brushing across his smarting eyelids.
‘Aargh!’ he screamed, and lashed out wildly.
There was a sharp crack and a cry of pain as his left fist struck flesh and bone.
Quint gasped. Whatever he'd hit, it was solid enough. His eyes snapped open and he found himself staring at a gangly old individual who was crouched down beside him, tenderly rubbing his jaw with gnarled fingers.
In the dim lantern-light, Quint saw his big, bushy moustache, his twitching beak-like nose and heavy brow
. He was dressed in curious, papery clothes and had a small leather satchel slung over one shoulder. As he returned Quint's gaze, his eyes narrowed.
‘A fine way to treat someone who just saved your life,’ the stranger grumbled in a low voice, as dry as parchment.
‘Saved my life?’ Quint murmured questioningly.
‘You've had a very lucky escape,’ he said. ‘If I hadn't come when I did…’
Quint gasped. ‘There was a blood-red creature!’ he cried as the terrible memory washed over him. ‘It attacked me!’
‘It was a glister,’ said his rescuer.
Quint turned to him. ‘A glister?’ he said. ‘But it can't have been. It was enormous.’
‘I know,’ the stranger replied, ‘but it was a glister, nevertheless. A great rogue glister that haunts the stonecomb. It hunts the weak, the lost…’
‘Maris!’ Quint shouted. He pulled himself up and clutched hold of the stranger's crinkly coat. ‘My friend, Maris,’ he said, and winced as the dull ache in his back became a sharp stab of pain. ‘She … she…’
‘Don't move,’ the old fellow told him, and pressed him gently, but firmly, back down to the ground. As he moved, his clothes rustled. The whiff of damp compost grew more intense.
‘But …’ Quint began.
‘Your friend is alive,’ the stranger said.‘Now, lie back.’
‘She is?’ Quint breathed. ‘Thank Sky…’
‘That's enough of that, my lad,’ came a sharp rebuke. ‘It's Earth, not Sky, you need to thank.’ He leant back on his heels and retrieved an open pot from behind him. ‘Now let me just get some of this salve on your eyelids where that great brute of a glister burned them,’ he said. ‘Close your eyes.’
Quint did as he was told, and this time he did not react as the old, papery fingers rubbed in the soothing salve. His eyelids stopped smarting and were flooded with a wonderful coolness. The pungent smell of decomposing vegetation grew stronger than ever.
More memories came back to Quint: a mere trickle at first, then a stream, and finally a great wave which broke over the ugly blank mire of his mind and set it awash with thoughts. Maris. The Professor. The barkscroll, the mission to the stonecomb, the mysterious chamber… The pungent odour had brought them all back. Suddenly, Quint knew exactly where he had smelled it before – and heard the soft rustling noise.
‘The library!’ he exclaimed. ‘You were the one who caught me when I was falling. You … you saved my life.’
The old fellow snorted. ‘I seem to be making a habit of it,’ he muttered. The fingers stopped rubbing Quint's eyelids. ‘That should do you,’ he said. ‘Now roll over so I can take a look at your back.’
Once again, Quint did as he was told. He craned his neck backwards. ‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘You won't have heard of me,’ came the reply. ‘My name is Bungus Septrill. I am the High Librarian, the custodian of earth-studies.’ He sighed. ‘Not that that means much these days.’ He pressed firmly into the base of Quint's back with his spatula-like thumbs. ‘Does that hurt?’
‘No,’ said Quint.
‘And that?’
‘No.’
‘And …’
‘Aaaiiii!’ Quint yelped. ‘Yes, that really hurt!’ It felt as if a shard of ice had lodged itself in his back.
‘Mmm,’ he heard Bungus musing. ‘A glister-wrench,’ he said, ‘and quite severe.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Quint, alarmed. It sounded serious. Would it prove fatal?
Bungus shuffled round until he was crouched down at Quint's head. ‘It means,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘that we will have to try and make it better. Now, let me see.’
He reached round for the leather satchel and unfastened the clasp. Quint looked up and watched, half in fear, half in fascination, as Bungus removed a second small pot. From this, he extracted eight streaky, waxen-looking leaves, which he put in his mouth and chewed vigorously. Meanwhile, he returned to the bag, removed a large bandage and laid it out on the floor.
‘Am I … am I going to die?’ Quint asked weakly.
Bungus just smiled and, without a word, extracted the green pasty wad from his mouth and began smearing it down Quint's spine. ‘Brindleweed-leaf poultice,’ he said simply. ‘Good for reducing inflammation and numbing deep pain.’
‘It burns,’ said Quint.
Bungus nodded. ‘That's the poultice taking effect,’ he said. He wiped his fingers on his robes, picked up the bandage and pressed it against Quint's back, sealing the poultice into position. The burning sensation turned to a glowing warmth that penetrated down and seemed to melt the terrible ice-spike in his spine. ‘There,’ said Bungus at last. ‘Now stand up, and tell me how it feels.’
Quint picked himself up cautiously, nervous that the sharp pain would make him cry out again. But it was gone, completely gone – and as he stretched his cramped muscles even the remaining dull ache disappeared.
‘Well?’ said Bungus.
‘It feels great,’ he said. ‘As good as new.’
‘Brindleweed was once a common-enough remedy,’ said Bungus. ‘Though I dare say the so-called scholars of the sky, with all their new-fangled nonsense, know nothing of the herb's properties…’
But Quint was not listening. As his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness of the great egg-shaped cavern, he'd seen his friend, sitting with her back propped up against the wall, eyes closed. She looked pale and tense.
‘Maris,’ he murmured, and hurried across to her. He knelt down and took her hands in his own. ‘Maris, are you all right?’
Maris opened her eyes and nodded weakly, but said nothing. Her skin was clammy; her expression was glazed.
‘She needs time,’ said Bungus, coming up behind them. ‘Like you, she's had a narrow escape, and the glister had her for far longer. I've done what I can for her.’
He patted the leather satchel. ‘The study of the medicinal plants of the Deepwoods is one of the oldest of all earth-studies. Mind you,’ he added with a shake of his head, ‘it was touch and go for a while. That rogue glister is a terrible, dangerous creature …’
‘It caught me, Quint,’ said Maris, her voice low and flat; every word an effort. ‘Whatever I did, I couldn't seem to get free…’
‘It tracked you,’ said Quint. ‘It smelled your blood and …’ He noticed Bungus shaking his head slowly, and turned. ‘It's true,’ he said, ‘and it wasn't the first time either. The same one chased me once when I cut myself.’
‘The glister was tracking you, that much is true,’ Bungus said. ‘As I told you, it is a hunter. But it isn't the scent of blood it follows.’
‘It isn't?’ said Quint, confused. ‘Then what?’
‘Your fear,’ said Bungus. ‘It follows the scent of your fear.’
Quint shuddered as he recalled just how frightened he and Maris had been.
‘Of course, fear is not the only emotion that draws a glister's attention,’ Bungus went on. ‘There is also rage, frustration, envy… All glisters, whatever their size, are sensitive to emotions.’
Quint nodded vigorously. ‘We noticed that, didn't we, Maris?’
‘It came after me,’ Maris murmured weakly. ‘I couldn't lose it.’
Quint turned to Bungus. ‘Every time we spoke, the glisters seemed to react differently. Sometimes glowing. Sometimes sparking and flashing.’
‘The stronger the emotion, the brighter the light,’ Bungus said. ‘Though it is fear which causes them to blaze brightest of all.’ He paused. ‘For it is fear which makes them hungry.’
‘Hungry,’ Quint repeated, dread in his voice.
‘They feed on fear,’ said Bungus, and shook his head. ‘Though normally glisters are like … like woodgnats feeding on a hammelhorn. They do no harm. The prickles at the back of a neck or a shiver down a spine are enough to satisfy them. As an earth-scholar I have studied glisters down here in the stonecomb since I was a junior librarian, and believe me when I tell you…’ He glanced round at the mumm
ified corpses littering the cavern. ‘ … the rogue glister is like no other glister that has ever…’
‘It was horrible,’ Maris moaned, more animated now. ‘It chased me. It caught me. I couldn't struggle. I couldn't move. I couldn't stop it prising my eyelids apart and forcing itself inside my head. And it hurt, Quint! It hurt so much.’ She fell silent and turned to Bungus, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. ‘If you hadn't arrived when you did!’
‘But I did arrive,’ said Bungus softly. He stooped down and took hold of her hands. ‘You're safe now.’
Quint frowned uneasily. ‘How did you find us?’ he said. ‘Were you following us, too?’
At the back of his mind lurked the suspicion that the High Librarian was perhaps in on the intrigue against the Most High Academe. If Bungus Septrill noticed the mistrustful tone to Quint's question, he did not show it.
‘No, not you,’ he said in his dry, papery voice. ‘I was tracking the rogue glister itself.’ He sighed. ‘After the Great Library, the stonecomb is a second home to me – a refuge from the sky-scholars up there.’ He gazed up into the blackness and brandished his fist. ‘But for a long time now, I've been hearing rumours; talk of disappearances, of inexplicable noises and strange goings-on down here. You were followed, you say. Well, you weren't the first. It was the treasury-guards who initially reported sightings of a huge, blood-red glister. According to them, it not only fed on fear but, entering through the eyes, devoured every feeling, every memory, every thought – leaving its victims empty, dried out, without the instinct even to breathe. The sky-scholars dismissed the reports as Deepwoods superstition, but I knew better. And now, so do you.’
‘How did you get it off me?’ asked Quint. ‘Did you kill it?’
‘Kill it?’ Bungus shook his head woefully. ‘You clearly know nothing about glisters,’ he said. ‘What do they teach you in that school of yours?’
Quint suddenly found himself back in the Fountain House classroom chanting out cloud formations once again – cursive low, cursive flat, anvil wide, anvil rising … Mechanical. Pointless.