by Paul Stewart
‘You follow her and you'll all be lost,’ said Deadbolt firmly. ‘There's no saving her, believe me, lad.’
The library sledge pulled the rope taut as Rook fell back into line. The others followed, the banderbears moaning softly, Xanth shaking his shaven head.
‘Sky curse it!’ Deadbolt thundered. ‘This is all my fault. I took us too close to the treeline, then took pity on you mudlubbers and allowed you to stop. Well, there'll be no more of it. We march on! Or we die!’
With that he was off, striding back down the column, barking orders left and right. Rook shut his eyes, and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. The plaintive yodels of the banderbears rang out across the white mudflats as, in the distance, the shuffling figure of Molleen disappeared into the Twilight Woods.
They marched on all through that dismal grey morning and on into a rain-sodden afternoon. Few spoke; even the chants of the sky pirates up in front tailed off, and the only sounds were the barks and yelps of the prowlgrins and the relentless slap, slap,slap of mud-shoes on mire mud.
The grey afternoon gave way to the dim half-light of evening, and the wind grew stronger once more, pelting them with heavy rain that stung their faces and soaked them to the skin.
‘That's the Edgeland wind,’ called back the librarian on the library sledge. ‘We must be getting close!’ He cracked the whip and urged the yelping prowlgrins on.
The rope round Rook's middle jerked taut, forcing him to quicken his pace. All round him, the air was filled with curses and moans as the marchers struggled to keep up.
Suddenly, rising above it all, there came the noise of squelching mud, and a curious plaff-plaff sound. Rook looked up. To the left of the column, a cluster of low mud-dunes seemed to be approaching, rising and falling in a slippery rhythm as they did so.
‘MUGLUMPS!’
The cry went up from the back of the column, where the Ghosts of Screetown had obviously spotted the danger.
The rope suddenly tugged Rook violently to the right as the librarian on the library sledge battled to control the panicking prowlgrins. Ahead, the four other sledges were in equal trouble. The low shapes were gathering and, from their path, it was obvious that the closely harnessed packs of prowlgrins were their intended prey.
Felix and his ghosts appeared out of the gloom on all sides. Fenbrus Lodd, Cowlquape beside him, shouted desperately to his son.
‘The library sledges! Felix!’ he screamed. ‘They're after the sledges!’
Rook was running now, with Xanth and the bander-bears dragged behind him, as the library sledge careered across the mud.
‘Cut yourselves loose!’ shouted Felix to Rook and the other librarians. ‘And follow the braziers of the sky pirates!’
With a grunt, Rook tore at the knotted rope round his middle and slid to a halt as it fell free.
‘There!’ shouted Xanth, beside him. He pointed.
Ahead, Deadbolt stood on a mud-dune, waving a flaming purple brazier over his head as if possessed. ‘Rally to me, Undertowners!’ he roared. ‘Rally!’
The huge library sledges slewed and skidded away to the right, the yelping screams of the prowlgrin teams drowning out the cries of their drivers. The mud-dunes seethed and boiled with the low, flapping shapes of the half-hidden muglumps in pursuit.
Panting, Rook reached Deadbolt, who was now surrounded by a huge crowd of mud-spattered and bewildered Undertowners. Xanth and the banderbears came lumbering up behind him.
‘There lie the Edgelands, Sky help us! We'll regroup there!’ shouted Deadbolt above the howling winds, and pointing to a low, grey ridge in the middle distance. ‘Mothers and young'uns first!’
The Undertowners surged forwards across the glistening wind-flattened expanse of mud ahead, all eyes fixed on the distant ridge. Every one of them was driven by a desperate, half-mad frenzy to get out of the clinging mire mud and onto dry land. Rook was jostled and bumped as Undertowner after Undertowner barged past.
‘You heard him!’ Xanth shouted. ‘Come on. We're nearly there, Rook!’
But Rook shook his head. ‘I'm a librarian knight,’ he said in a low voice, his words almost lost in the gusting wind. ‘My place is with the library.’
He turned back towards the library sledges. Xanth and the banderbears hesitated. It was obvious from their eyes that they shared the Undertowners' mire-madness. Every fibre of their beings longed to be rid of the terrible white mud.
‘And our place is with you,’ said Xanth.
They turned and fought their way through the crowd, and back out into the Mire. The library sledges, like huge lumbering beasts, were away to the right, and had halted their mad dash. Now they seemed marooned, their tops bristling with librarians like hairs on a hammelhorn. As they approached, Rook could see why.
Felix and the ghosts were busy cutting the traces that harnessed the prowlgrin teams, while his father waved his hands in the air wildly, from on top of one of the sledges.
‘Stop! Stop!’ he was bellowing, but Felix ignored him as he cut through another tilderleather strap.
The slithering mounds had congregated in a flapping, slurping reef round the sledges, kept at bay for the moment by brazier-wielding ghosts – but inching closer by the second.
Rook stopped. If they went any further, they risked straying into the midst of the muglump pack. He shook his head miserably. There was nothing they could do; they were helpless spectators. He sank to his knees in the cold white mud. How he hated the oozing filth that seemed to cling so, pulling you down, smothering the life out of you, until you were so weary you just didn't care any more …
All at once, the mire mud erupted in front of him. Felix had cut the last harness and given the signal. With piercing screams, the prowlgrins – all two hundred and fifty of them – stampeded out across the mudflats.
The mounds closed in around them. Up out of the mud, the muglumps reared, in plain sight at last. Rook stared, transfixed with horror. The last time he'd seen a muglump was with Felix, in the sewers of old Undertown – but that sewer-dweller seemed tame compared to these monsters. The size of a bull hammel-horn, with six thick-set limbs and a long whiplash tail, each muglump slithered through the soft mire mud
just below the surface, breathing through flapped nostrils.
Now, with a bone-scraping screech, they pounced on the hapless prowlgrins and, in a frenzy, tore them limb from limb with their razor-sharp claws. Soon, the mire mud was drenched in prowlgrin blood as the muglumps feasted.
‘Let's save this library of yours!’
Felix's booming voice pulled Rook away from the horror. He was helping the librarians down from the sledges, organizing them into teams and picking up the traces.
‘We don't have much time,’ said Felix, motioning to the ghosts to join them. ‘They'll be back for us soon.’
‘Come, librarians!’ Cowlquape's voice rang out. ‘We must all pull together!’
Rook, Xanth and the banderbears ran over the mud to join the librarians who, when they saw the huge figures of Wuralo, Weeg and Wumeru, gave a cheer.
‘Thank Sky we've got you,’ said the prowlgrin-driver, greeting them. ‘If you and your friends here could set the pace, we'll try to keep up!’
They picked up the traces and tether-ropes, and each sledge, drawn by a team of ghosts and librarians, resumed its journey across the wastes towards the thin grey ridge in the distance, now twinkling with purple lights. Behind in the gathering dusk, the snarls and grunts of the muglump feast spurred them on.
One step after the other, Rook thought grimly. One step. Then another, and another…
• CHAPTER FOUR •
THE EDGELANDS
It was dark as the exhausted librarians dragged the last library sledge up out of the Mire and onto the flat, rocky pavement of the Edgelands. They were greeted by Undertowners, young and old, who held out flasks of warming oakapple brandy and bowls of broth. There were small braziers ablaze, groups huddled round them for warmth, and clu
sters of muddy-cloaked Under-towners who'd simply lain down and fallen asleep where they'd stopped.
Rook rubbed his eyes and looked about him. To the south were the Twilight Woods, their hypnotic golden glow bright and enticing in the darkness. To the north, the Edge fell abruptly away into the bottomless void. Trapped between the two, the vast multitude of Undertowners, librarians, sky pirates and ghosts prepared to sleep, while all around them miasmic mists writhed and swirled – now thinning to show the full moon glinting on the rocky pavement, now thickening and obliterating everything from view.
Rook accepted a bowl of warm broth from a gnok-goblin matron, and stumbled over to a brazier where the banderbears were being patted on the back by some library scroll-scribes and lectern-tenders. Xanth hung back with that unhappy look in his eyes that Rook noticed whenever his friend was near librarians.
All around them, the night was throbbing with activity as the Undertowners pitched their tents, raised their wind-breaks and got their stock-pots bubbling. Food was bartered; meat for bread, woodale for water. Young'uns were settled down for the night. And while they slept, their elders worked on, preparing themselves for an early start the following morning – and postponing the moment when they too would have to turn in for the night.
It was reassuring working together; safety in numbers, so to speak. They all knew that when asleep, every single one of them would be alone. That was when the Edgelands was at its most dangerous, when the misty phantasms filtered into their dreams and nightmares…
The fires were stoked and restoked, and the brazier-cages were filled to the brim with their supplies of lufwood. Hammelhorns were fed and watered. The mud-clogged runners were removed from the sledges and the wheels returned to their axles. And amidst it all, Rook noticed, a brisk trade in good-luck charms was establishing itself, with the trolls, trogs and goblins vying for business.
‘Amulets! Get your bloodoak amulets here!’ a stocky woodtroll was calling, a bunch of carved red medallions on thongs clasped in his stubby fingers. ‘Guaranteed to repel every dark-spirit and empty-soul!’
‘Leather charms!’ shouted a slaughterer. ‘Bone talismans. Ward off wraiths and spectres. Keep the gloamglozer himself at bay.’
‘Bristleweed and … slurp, slurp … charlock pomanders,’ cried a gabtroll, her long tongue lapping at her swaying eyeballs. ‘Bristleweed … slurp, slurp … and charlock pomanders.’
‘I don't think we'd have made it without your friends here,’ said a sprightly-looking under-librarian by the name of Garulus Lexis, clapping Rook on the back.
Rook smiled and passed on the librarian's thanks.
‘Wug-weeghla, loora-weela-wuh,’ said Wumeru. His words warm my heart, but my stomach remains empty.
‘Well, we'll soon see to that,’ laughed Garulus when Rook had translated, and he bustled off, returning a few moments later with a sack of hyleberries and a large pot of oak-honey. ‘Enjoy!’ he said, as the banderbears tucked delightedly into their feast.
Xanth sat down quietly next to Rook and drew his cloak about him.
‘Does your … er … friend need anything?’ said Garulus, nodding at Xanth, a look of mild contempt on his face.
‘Nothing, thank you,’ said Xanth.
The other librarians round the brazier exchanged glances.
Rook gave Xanth his bowl. ‘Here, finish this, Xanth,’ he said. ‘I've had my fill. Go on, it's good.’
Xanth accepted the bowl with a thin smile and drained its contents. The librarians ignored him.
‘Well, now what are we to do?’ Ambris Loppix, an assistant lectern-tender asked. ‘Without the prowlgrins, the library carts are all but useless.’
‘I don't know about you,’ said Queltus Petrix, an under-librarian, ‘but I just about broke my back pulling the blasted thing through the Mire even with the help of young Rook's friends here.’
They all nodded.
‘We can't take it with us, and we can't leave it behind,’ said Garulus, shaking his head sadly. ‘After all, what are librarians without a library?’
‘There is something you could do,’ said Xanth quietly. The librarians all looked at him. ‘A way to get every barkscroll across the Edgelands and to the Free Glades,’ he went on.
Ambris snorted and Queltus turned away. Garulus pushed his half-moon spectacles back onto the bridge of his long nose. ‘And what, pray, is that?’ he said, contempt dripping from every word.
‘Every Undertowner could carry a scroll. There are thirty thousand scrolls, aren't there?’
‘Yes,’ said Garulus uncertainly.
‘And there are at least thirty thousand of us – Undertowners, ghosts, sky pirates, librarians…’
‘And one Guardian of Night,’ said Garulus, fixing Xanth with an icy stare.
‘No, listen …’ Rook began, jumping to his feet. But before he could speak further, the gaunt figure of Cowlquape, Most High Academe, stepped into the brazier light, flanked by Felix and Fenbrus Lodd, doing the rounds of the librarian camp fires.
‘It is a brilliant idea,’ he said with a gesture of the hand that they should all remain seated. ‘If we entrust one scroll to each one of us, librarian and Undertowner alike, then we all become a living library, and we can cast off these cumbersome carts.’
‘But the lecterns …’ began Fenbrus.
‘We can build more lecterns, my friend,’ said Cowlquape. ‘It is the barkscrolls, and the knowledge they contain, that is precious. Xanth, here, has remembered that, when some of us have been in danger of forgetting it.’
Fenbrus coughed loudly, and his face reddened. Felix beamed and winked slyly at Rook.
‘We shall unload the carts at dawn and distribute the library. Felix, can you and your ghosts supervise?’
Felix nodded.
‘Now,’ said Cowlquape sternly, looking round. ‘Fenbrus has something to say to you. Please listen carefully, and pass it on. It could mean the difference between life and death to us out here in the Edgelands.’
Fenbrus stepped forwards, coughed again and cleared his throat. ‘Tomorrow, we venture through the Edgelands,’ he began, ‘and as your High Librarian, I have consulted the barkscrolls to learn what I can of what lies ahead. Make no mistake,’ he said gravely, looking at each of them in turn, ‘we are about to enter a region of phantasms and apparitions, where your ears and eyes will deceive you. Out there on the barren rocks, the Twilight Woods are on one side and the Edge itself on the other. If the wind blows in from the Edge side, we shall be travelling through heavy cloud and fog. The danger then is of losing our sense of direction and plunging over the Edge and into the void.’
Rook shuddered. All eyes were glued to Fenbrus.
‘On the other hand, if the wind changes and blows in from the Twilight Woods, then the madness of that place will infect the Edgelands and, most likely, will infect us too.’
‘And if that happens?’ asked Garulus.
‘Hopefully,’ said Fenbrus, ‘it will not last long, but our only defence is to rope ourselves together in pairs, and to talk to each other. For the great danger is to sink into a waking dream without even realizing it. If your partner falls silent, you must wake him instantly, or the phantasms will take hold and he will be lost for ever.’ He paused. ‘I intend to partner my son, Felix, here.’
He coughed again, and Felix smiled.
‘And I was hoping,’ said Cowlquape, ‘that you, Garulus, would do me the honour …?’
Garulus nodded. Rook felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Would you, Rook … ?’ Xanth mumbled as the other librarians left to spread the news.
‘I'd be honoured,’ said Rook, smiling.
‘And then, Xanth?’ said Rook. ‘What happened then? We've got to keep talking, remember.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Xanth wearily. ‘But I'm so tired.’ He sighed. ‘And then I became his assistant. Me, assistant to the High Guardian of Night himself, Orbix Xaxis! It all seems like a dream to me now…’
No one h
ad slept well that night on the rocky pavement. The ground beneath them was too hard, and it was cold, with the howling wind slicing through the air like ice-scythes. Long before the sun had even risen, everybody in the vast multitude had already packed up their belongings and tethered themselves together in lines, ready for the daunting journey ahead. Felix and the Ghosts of Screetown had ushered them to the five great library carts and, as they'd walked past, each in turn had been handed a barkscroll, a treatise, a tome; one tiny part of the whole library.
Now, as the sun rose slowly – creamy-white behind the dense, swirling mist – they were marching on, their elon-gated shadows stretched out in front of them. A low babble of voices echoed above the clatter of cartwheels as the pairs of Undertowners indulged in feverish conversations, anxious that none of them should fall prey to the Edgelands' phantasms.
In their midst, the librarians marched, with Rook and Xanth still deep in their own conversation.
‘And that metal muzzle he wore,’ said Rook, chuckling. ‘What was all that about?’
Xanth smiled weakly. ‘Orbix Xaxis was a creature of many superstitions,’ he said. ‘He only bathed by the full moon. He never ate tilder if there was an “r” in the month. And he believed that the air was still full of the “vile contagion” which had brought stone-sickness to the Edge.’
‘He blamed the librarians for stone-sickness, didn't he?’ Rook added. ‘Believed we'd brought it back from the Deepwoods. Is that why he killed so many of us?’
‘He was mad, I realize that now,’ said Xanth, his face drawn and tense. He shuddered. ‘Oh, those accursed Purification Ceremonies of his. I dread to think how many Undertowners and librarians were sacrificed to the rock demons. And for what?’ He shook his head, leaving the question hanging in mid air. ‘Orbix Xaxis was mad all right, Sky curse his wicked soul …’
‘Xanth,’ Rook gasped, looking round uneasily, half expecting to see the spirit of the High Guardian himself emerging from the mists. ‘Careful what you say, here of all places.’
The wind that had been howling continuously since they first stepped on to the rocky pavement had now died down, and a heavy swirling fog had descended like a white blanket.