by Paul Stewart
With a cry of horror, he twisted round. He let go of the broken arm and, pinning himself back against the wall, peered down at the falling piece of carved stone as it turned over and over in the thick air. There was a splintering crash as it landed and, as the mist cleared for a second, Rook saw the shattered arm lying amongst the broken pieces of the other statues he'd dislodged.
He breathed deeply and steadied himself, then looked up at the stretch still to go - and the statues he needed to climb to get there.
‘They're not dead leaguesmen, they're statues,’ he told himself, continuing the climb. ‘That's all. Just lumps of stone.’
The mist swirled round his head, a noxious sulphurous brew that made his eyes water and his throat sting. At last, he reached a statue so near to the top that, once he had scaled it, he was able to climb across to the roof itself. Pulling himself up over the carved balustrade, he landed on the safety of the vast flat roof of the Leagues’ Chamber itself.
He peered down through the windows of the glass dome. He saw the wooden scaffolding; he saw the circular platform with the spherical baby resting in the narrow cradle. But where was Speegspeel?
He hurried round the dome to where the panes of glass had been smashed. Looking down into the chamber, he saw a shattered circular table with a great stone head at its centre. His blood ran cold as the dead stone eyes met his. He was looking into the carved stone face of Vox Verlix himself.
Just then he heard the butler's rasping voice ring out. ‘Time for baby to fly the nest. Old Speegspeel knows. He won't let the master down, oh no. Now's the time. The tenth hour …’
Rook peered down to see the butler approach the cradle and insert a funnel into the spherical case. The goblin reached for the water-bottle at his side, unplugged it and prepared to pour its contents into the funnel…
Rook bit his lip. One drop of water, that was all it would take - and baby would be launched into the sky.
‘NO!’ Rook bellowed, and jumped through the glass roof's jagged opening. He fell down through the air, legs pedalling wildly, and landed heavily on the shattered table.
Speegspeel swung round with a snarl, water-bottle in one hand, a knife in the other. ‘What's old Speegspeel got to deal with now?’ he growled. ‘The kitchen slave, isn't it?’ His red eyes narrowed.
Rook crouched and grasped the stone head at his feet. ‘Drop the water-bottle, Speegspeel,’ he commanded.
Speegspeel hesitated, then moved towards the funnel. Rook swung his arm in an arc and let go, grunting with effort. Vox's stone head flew through the air and smashed into the hapless goblin with a sickening crunch. Speegspeel crumpled to the floor with a whimper, the contents of the water-bottle emptying by his side.
The statues got old Speegspeel, he rasped. They got old Speegspeel in the end.’
His eyes fixed on those of the stone head for a moment, then glazed over to return their lifeless stare. Rook picked himself up and stumbled over to the cradle. He laid a hand on the smooth metal side of Vox's baby and looked down at the funnel jutting out from the casing. The hot, humid air was stifling. A drop of sweat fell from the tip of his nose and pattered on the inside of the funnel.
Rook stumbled back. ‘What have I done?’ he gasped.
As he spoke, there came an ominous rumble and a series of urgent clicks and creaks as the whole scaffolding seemed to shift about. Rook looked up anxiously. The next moment, there was a loud crack, and the horizontal beams which had kept the spring-mechanism closed, shot upwards with incredible force - and the baby was hurled from its cradle into the air, through the glass dome in a shower of falling glass, and on up into the night sky above.
For a moment, the air quivered with intense silence. Then…
A flash of blinding light and …
BANG!!¡
The shock waves that followed the light struck with a battering rush of roaring wind. Roofs were torn away, buildings fell, statues plunged - and Rook was picked up and tossed back across the chamber …
As the dust finally settled, Rook scrambled to his feet. Dazed and frightened, he looked back at the sky through the hole in the glass dome. The light in the sky had shrunk in size, yet curiously seemed to be sucking everything inside itself as it grew smaller and more intense. Finally - as bright and tiny as a dazzling star - it disappeared completely, to be replaced with a spot of blackness as intense as the light it had followed.
Like a blot of ink, the dark spot grew and grew, spreading out across the sky. It turned the clouds black and cast the land below into absolute darkness. Huge fat raindrops began to fall. They landed heavily - all over Undertown, in the courtyard of the Palace of Statues, through the broken panes of glass in the dome …
The next moment it was as though the sky had turned to a mighty river. The rain became torrential, cascading from above. It was, Rook thought as he scurried for cover, like being beneath a great waterfall.
Down below him, he saw that the courtyard was already awash with water, like a great lake lapping at the fallen statues. And if it was this bad here, what must it be like for the library fleet on the Edgewater? Would any of them make it to the safety of the Mire Road?
‘Earth and Sky protect you, he murmured softly. He turned towards the door and waded across the flooded chamber. ‘Earth and Sky protect us all!’
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN •
BLOODBATH ON THE BLACKWOOD BRIDGE
The High Guardian gripped the balustrade of the upper L gantry and craned his bony neck upwards. From inside his metal muzzle came the sound of sniffing.
‘It is time, he murmured. It is time.’
Even now, as he stood surveying the boiling cauldron of the sky, the rock demons would be infesting the sewer-tunnels in search of librarian flesh. The sewers would be cleansed, and the Great Storm would come to heal the sacred rock.
‘It is time, Every muscle in Orbix's body tensed.
Below, the jutting gantries were crowded with silent Guardians gazing up at the heaving sky. Above them, the great swirling cloud banks that had circled Undertown for months had merged into one monstrous formation like a vast and mighty anvil. The air was so thick and heavy that even breathing had become difficult.
Suddenly a low moan rippled through the crowded gantries. Orbix looked down. A great fireball was slicing through the thick air, arcing up over Undertown and heading for the centre of the mighty anvil.
From inside the metal muzzle, there came a gasp. ‘Sky be praised, he breathed.
The fireball disappeared into the midst of the swirling cloud and, for a moment, there was an unearthly silence. The air burnt the High Guardian's lungs as he took a rasping breath.
Suddenly, from the very heart of the anvil, a cataclysmic explosion ripped across the sky - first dazzling white, then black as pitch. Deafened by the tumultuous percussion of the mighty thunderclap, Orbix raised his arms up high.
‘Hail, the Great Storm!’ he screeched.
‘Hail, the Great Storm¡ Hail, the Great Storm!’ The chorus of voices echoed round the Tower of Night. ‘Hail, the Great Storm!’
All round, the black cloud fizzed and crackled with tendrils of lightning which zig-zagged off in all directions, a network of fiery veins, dazzling and jagged. As each individual lightning-bolt faded, so the deafening thunder rumbled across the sky, like a mighty hammelhorn stampede.
‘Midnight's Spike!’ Orbix Xaxis bellowed above the barrage of noise. He looked up from the upper lookout-platform at the figure of Mollus Leddix, poised on the spike-ledge, waiting for the command. ‘Raise the spike!’
Leddix raised his hand in assent, and crouched down next to the winch-mechanism. Observing him from below, Orbix was struck in the face by a huge raindrop. As he wiped it away with his sleeve, another clanged against his muzzle - followed by another, and another.
Within moments, the rain had become torrential and the anvil had flattened out into a huge swirling disc above the Tower of Night, like the wheel of some huge wagon. Tendrils of lightning
flickered and crackled round its rim.
‘Hail, the Great Storm!’ shouted the Guardians excitedly. ‘Hail, the Great Storm!’
There was no time to lose. The healing power of the lightning had to be harnessed. Orbix brought a fist down heavily on the balustrade.
‘Faster, Leddix!’ he bellowed. ‘Faster!’
Leddix cursed beneath his breath as he worked the winch-mechanism. This should have been that pasty-faced whelp Xanth's job, not his¡ The spike rose slowly from its oiled sheath and up into the boiling air. Leddix fought to catch his breath.
‘Nearly there,’ he gasped. ‘Nearly …’
Clang¡
The spike was fully extended, the winch-mechanism straining beneath his hands. Leddix reached out for the deadbolt, hanging from a hook beside him. His hand grasped at thin air.
‘What's this?’ he yelped, straining to keep the winch handle from spinning back with his other hand while he felt around beneath the hook. ‘It can't be …’
The deadbolt - long, pointed at one end and decorated with the gleaming head of a gloamglozer at the other - was gone. Leddix threw his head back, the rain splashing against his snarling face.
‘Sky curse you, Xanth Filatine!’ he roared.
Unable to hold the heavy mechanism for more than a moment without the deadbolt, Leddix's arms gave out. The winch-handle slipped from his sweating hands and rattled noisily back. Above him, the spike slid slowly down into the sheath.
Clang¡
The sky crackled and flashed. The muzzled figure of the High Guardian appeared on the spike-ledge, his arms flailing in a demonic fury.
‘I said, raise the spike¡ Leddix!’ he screamed above the deafening thunderclaps. He grasped the cowering cage-master with claw-like hands and thrust his muzzle into his white face.
‘C … c … can't, Leddix whimpered. The … the … deadbolt… G … g … gone!’
Then so are you!’ the High Guardian's voice rasped through his muzzle. The claw-like hands tightened their grip as the High Guardian raised the struggling Leddix high above his head, and threw him from the Spike-Ledge. The cage-master's scream was drowned out by another huge clap of thunder.
‘Hail, the Great Storm¡ Hail, the Great Storm!’ Below, the Guardians’ cries were reaching fever-pitch.
Above the great tower, the clouds were swirling like a vast cauldron of inky stew stirred by a great ladle. The lightning bolts converged, twisting together into a knot of fizzing light.
‘Hail, the Great Storm
There was no time to winch the spike up from its sheath, Orbix realized, but he could not let the storm simply pass by. With a howl of rage and desperation, he leaped onto the top of the winching-mechanism and stood up, arms outstretched.
At that moment, the storm exploded with a sudden blinding flash. A single lightning-bolt - coiled and charged - hurtled down from the raging maelstrom above. It sliced through the black air like a mighty spear.
‘Hail, the Great Storm!’ Orbix cried out. ‘Hail…’
The lightning struck - and with such violence that the Tower of Night shook from top to bottom, sending walls crashing and gantries falling. Guardians toppled, screaming, from their perches through the blue, flashing air. And as the mighty power of the lightning held everything momentarily in its deadly embrace, the wooden tower smouldered, the diseased rock it stood upon crackled and oozed - and from high above, Orbix Xaxis, High Guardian of the Tower of Night, let out a terrible unearthly scream …
‘Do you think we've lost them?’ Magda whispered.
Xanth knelt beside her in the small sewer pipe above the Southern Transverse. I'm not sure, he said. ‘I …’ He hesitated. ‘I think so.’
He was drenched in sweat. There had been times, with the rock demons scuttling after them, when he'd thought they wouldn't make it. But Magda, Sky bless her, had been as diligent about her sewer studies as everything else. She'd sought refuge in the narrowest, most awkward pipes in the system whilst their bigger pursuers had shrieked their frustration in the larger pipes behind. And now they'd emerged, just as Magda had promised they would, above the Southern Transverse, just in sight of the Central Tunnel and the entrance to the Great Library itself.
‘What's that?’ whispered Xanth.
Magda frowned. She'd noticed it too. From up ahead, there came a low, regular, pounding noise, overlaid with a strange jangling, like the clatter of metal. They both listened. Xanth turned to Magda, his face ashen grey.
‘What is it?’ he whispered.
Magda shook her head nervously. They couldn't go back - not with the rock demons behind them. She seized Xanth's hand and together the pair of them advanced towards the end of the transverse tunnel. Water trickled past beneath their feet.
At the junction with the Central Tunnel, they stopped again and peered out. Pouring from the mouth of a steeply sloping pipe ahead, into the Central Tunnel itself, were goblins - flatheads, tufteds, longhairs and, massing at the east doors of the Great Storm Chamber Library itself, the metal-clad ranks of the hammerhead guard.
‘A goblin army?’ Magda gasped, her hand shooting up to her mouth in horror. ‘At the door to the Great Library?’
‘Goblins to the front, rock demons behind, Xanth whispered. ‘We're trapped!’
Magda crumpled to her knees, her head in her hands. Silent sobs convulsed her body. ‘It's over, Xanth.’ Magda's voice was thick with tears. ‘I can't go on.’
‘But you must,’ came a frail voice behind them. Xanth spun round, his fist raised - but Magda grasped his arm as an elderly librarian stepped out of the shadows.
‘Alquix? Is that you?’ Magda rushed to the professor and embraced him, her sobs returning.
‘There, there,’ said Alquix kindly, stroking her head. ‘I feared we had lost you, just like Rook, but now I find you have returned - just as he did.’
Magda's sobs ceased, and she drew back. ‘You mean Rook is alive?’
‘Yes, my dear young librarian,’ said Alquix. ‘And not only is he alive, but thanks to him, our Great Library has been saved from these barbaric hordes.’
‘I … I don't understand,’ Magda began, but Alquix silenced her with a raised finger.
‘There'll be time enough for explanations when you join the librarians at the Mire Gates,’ he told her. ‘But you must hurry. Already the sewers are beginning to flood.’
Xanth looked down at his feet. It was true. In just the short time they'd been standing in the narrow tunnel, the trickle of water at their feet had turned to a steady stream. Alquix stepped up to the pipe's entrance and peered out.
‘You there, lad,’ he said, addressing Xanth directly for the first time. ‘Do you think you and Magda here can make it across the Central Tunnel to that small culvert over there? It will take you to a little sewer grate up in East Undertown.’
Xanth looked. ‘But the goblins!’ he said. ‘We'll be in plain view of the library entrance …’
‘You leave the goblins to me, lad,’ Alquix told him. ‘Just make sure you both make it to the Mire Gates. The library has need of brave young librarians if it is to make it to the Free Glades.’
‘Alquix, no!’ Magda embraced the old professor again. ‘We can't leave you here.’
Alquix pushed her gently away. ‘I am old, he said, smiling sadly. Tve spent the best part of my life there in the Storm Chamber Library. Why, I helped build the Blackwood Bridge with my own hands before you were born. I cannot leave it, even now, Tears were streaming down the librarian's face. ‘Now, go!’
With that, he pushed past them and strode down the Central Tunnel towards the library entrance, raising his staff as he did so and bringing it clanging down against the walls.
‘Long live the Great Storm Chamber Library!’ he roared at the massed ranks of goblins before him.
Behind him, unnoticed, two figures - one hunched and supported by the other - slipped across the Central Tunnel and into a small culvert on the other side.
‘Seize him!’ General Ty
tugg's command rang out from the doors to the Great Library, which were being pounded by a huge battering-ram.
A phalanx of tufted goblins surrounded the old librarian, their razor-sharp spears at his throat. A thickset hammerhead guard barged his way through the crowds still pouring into the Central Tunnel and seized Alquix, lifting him bodily above his head and carrying him back towards the library doors. Tytugg smiled as Alquix was dumped roughly at his feet.
‘Our first librarian,’ he sneered, turning to the ranks of sweating hammerheads, the huge battering ram poised to strike the library doors raised high above their heads.
The rest of his kind are cowering behind these puny doors. We shall reunite him with them¡ He shall be our battle banner!’
He clicked his fingers and two flathead standard-bearers leaped forwards and grabbed Alquix roughly, strapping the frail figure to a long carved pole with a hover worm crest.
‘Attack!’ roared the general as the old librarian was hoisted high above the seething mass of goblins.
The hammerheads surged forwards, swinging the battering ram with incredible force
against the library doors, which splintered like matchwood.
‘Victory to the goblins!’ Tytugg roared.
‘Victory to the goblins!’ the great army roared back as it poured into the Storm Chamber Library. ‘Victory to the goblins!’
In front, the hammerhead guard marched forward, their shields interlocking in a solid wall, Alquix held high on the hover worm standard in their midst. They thundered across the Blackwood Bridge as, above and below them, the tufteds and longhairs swarmed onto the gantries and over the Lufwood Bridge, their ranks bristling with spears and crossbows.
Tytugg and his captains stepped through the shattered gates and surveyed the scene.
‘I don't understand it, the general muttered. He looked up at Alquix. ‘Where are the librarians?’