The Alchemaster's Apprentice

The Engagement Party


‘You can always tell a good chef by his puddings,’ said Ghoolion.

‘Isn’t that what people say? All the time they’re ploughing their way through a menu, isn’t it the sweet they’re really waiting for?’

Echo and Izanuela nodded eagerly. This had been their invariable response to everything he’d said in the last few minutes. No sooner had the Uggly regained consciousness than he plied them both with flattering compliments and conducted them to the castle kitchen, where he laid the table and proceeded to heat the oven.

‘That’, he went on, ‘is why I should like to celebrate this day by creating a menu composed entirely of puddings. A symphony of rousing finales. One sweet sin of self-indulgence after another. Nothing but the best from first to last. Do you agree, my blossom? Do you agree, Echo, my honoured guest?’

Izanuela was sitting stiffly at the end of the table while Echo occupied his usual place on top of it. They both watched, fascinated, as the Alchemaster busied himself at the stove.

Ghoolion seemed a different person. He was behaving for all the world like a husband of many years’ standing, but one who was still as enamoured of his wife as he had been on their wedding day. He missed no opportunity to pay Izanuela compliments and fire off ardent glances in her direction.

‘I thought you ate nothing but cheese,’ Echo whispered to her when Ghoolion had hurried out of the kitchen to fetch some additional ingredients from his storeroom.

‘For his sake I’d eat a plate complete with cutlery,’ she whispered back. ‘And the tablecloth into the bargain. Stop needling me!’

‘There’s no need to abandon your principles just because he’s besotted with you. Keep him on a tight rein. We want him eating out of your hands, not the other way round.’

‘Isn’t it fantastic, though?’ she demanded, clapping her hands. ‘The potion is working far better than I thought it would.’

‘But please remember our ultimate objective,’ Echo reminded her. ‘We haven’t got there yet.’

Ghoolion returned carrying two baskets filled with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, chocolate, dried fruit and vanilla pods.

‘I want to prepare everything freshly, my dearest,’ he called, ‘that’s why I must ask you to be patient. Permit me to pass the time by telling you a charming story while I toil away at the stove. It’s about the finest pastry cook in Zamonia.’

Echo and Izanuela nodded eagerly again.

‘Hm,’ thought Echo. ‘A charming story about a pastry cook, eh? The old boy really has changed his spots.’ All Ghoolion’s stories in the past had been about vampires and demented mass murderers, Snow-White Widows and lethal wines that choked those who drank them.

The Alchemaster proceeded to beat up some white of egg in a large bowl.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘At first this pastry cook was a rather crabbed individual. He despised sweet things of all kinds, detested cakes and puddings, abhorred meringues and biscuits. Puddings were an abomination to him and whipped cream he found loathsome. What he liked best were pickled gherkins and rollmops, smelly cheeses and salt cod, hard roe and sauerkraut from the Sourwoods swimming in sour cream.’

‘Ah,’ thought Echo, ‘that’s more like the old Ghoolion. At least his story’s beginning on a sour note.’

‘Best of all, however,’ Ghoolion went on, ‘he preferred to eat nothing at all. He was as tall and thin as a beanpole.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ thought Echo.

‘By the way,’ said Ghoolion, using a cut-throat razor to dissect an apricot into slices so thin one could have read a book through them, ‘I forgot to mention that my story takes place in Ingotville.’

‘Ingotville?’ Echo exclaimed in surprise.

‘Yes,’ said Ghoolion. ‘Anything wrong with that?’

‘Yes,’ Izanuela chimed in, ‘what’s wrong with Ingotville?’

‘Absolutely nothing,’ Echo said hastily. ‘Please go on.’

‘Well, Ingotville, as everyone knows, is the ugliest, dirtiest, most dangerous and unpopular city in the whole of Zamonia. It consists entirely of metal, of rusty iron and poisonous lead, tarnished copper and brass, nuts and bolts, machines and factories.’

‘Strange,’ thought Echo. ‘Those are precisely the words I used in my own description of Ingotville.’

The Alchemaster was now stewing some green tomatoes in a cast-iron saucepan, together with raisins, orange peel, brown sugar and sherry vinegar.

‘Yes,’ he went on, ‘the city itself is even said to be a gigantic machine that’s very, very slowly propelling itself towards an unknown destination. Most of the Zamonian continent’s metalworking industry is based there, and even the products it manufactures are ugly: weapons and barbed wire, garrottes and Iron Maidens, cages and handcuffs, suits of armour and executioners’ axes. Most of the inhabitants dwell in corrugated-iron huts black with coal dust and corroded by the acid rain that falls there almost incessantly. Those who can afford to - the gold barons and lead tycoons, arms dealers and arms manufacturers - live in steel fortresses, in constant fear of their starving and discontented underlings and workers. Ingotville is a city traversed by streams of acid and oil, and perpetually overhung by a pall of soot and storm clouds in which shafts of lightning flash and thunder rumbles. The grimy air is forever filled with the pounding and hissing of machinery, the squeak of rusty hinges and the rattle of chains. Many of its inhabitants are machines themselves. It’s a vile city, perhaps the vilest in all Zamonia.’

‘Those are my own words, syllable for syllable,’ thought Echo. It was amazing how well the old man had memorised them. Where was this leading?

‘Well, one day, in the midst of this hideous city, our ill-natured hero encountered the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.’

‘Ah,’ Izanuela exclaimed, clapping her hands, ‘a love story!’

‘This sounds familiar too,’ thought Echo, but he said nothing.

‘Picture to yourself the most beautiful girl imaginable!’ said Ghoolion. ‘She was so beautiful that there would be no point, in view of my meagre talent for storytelling, in even trying to put her beauty into words. That would far exceed my capabilities, so I’ll refrain from mentioning whether she was a blonde or a brunette or a redhead …’

‘He’s telling another story but in my words,’ mused Echo. ‘What’s he up to?’

‘… or whether her hair was long or short or curly or smooth as silk,’ Ghoolion pursued. ‘I shall also refrain from the usual comparisons where her complexion was concerned, for instance milk, velvet, satin, peaches and cream, honey or ivory. Instead, I shall leave it entirely up to your imagination to fill in this blank with your own ideal of feminine beauty.’

Echo inferred from Izanuela’s downcast eyes and stupid smirk that she had substituted her own likeness for that of the beautiful girl.

‘If he’s memorised it to this extent,’ he reflected, ‘my story must have left a far deeper impression on him than I thought.’

Ghoolion was now, with the deft and graceful movements of a head waiter, serving the first course. A warm salad of gossamer-thin slices of apricot on a bed of puréed green tomatoes, it was topped with a remarkably firm dollop of whipped egg white flavoured with vanilla. He gave Izanuela a fiery glance that would have melted the ice in the Cold Caverns of Netherworld, then went on with his story.

‘Well, it was widely known that, besides being the loveliest creature in Ingotville, this beautiful girl had an absolute mania for sweet things. She adored bonbons and pralines, chocolate and marzipan, nougat and Turkish delight. She was crazy about pastries and whipped cream, millefeuilles and lemon cheesecake.

‘The ill-natured young man cursed his lot. “I work in a vinegar factory,” he grumbled, “where I skim the scum off the gherkin tubs. How can someone like me win the affections of so sweet a girl?”’

Echo felt relieved. ‘He’s getting around to it at last,’ he thought. ‘In his own words, too.’

The Alchemaster peeled a pear while some crystallised chestnuts were simmering in cream in the saucepan in front of him.

‘I must say,’ trilled Izanuela, ‘this tomato compote is a dream. As for the vanilla foam, you could positively chew the stuff! How do you get it like that?’

‘Many thanks, my blossom,’ Ghoolion replied with a smile. ‘One simply has to beat it hard enough. But that’s just an appetiser designed to loosen your delightful tongue. I’m producing the other courses as fast as I can.’

He removed the chestnuts from the stove and proceeded to mash them with a fork.

‘One day,’ he went on, ‘when the young man was strolling along, sodden with acid rain and lost in his own gloomy thoughts, he passed a patisserie. It was a rare sight amid the ubiquitous rust and soot and metallic greyness of Ingotville: a shop window filled with colourful, cream-topped pastries, chocolate gâteaux, cinnamon rolls, crystallised fruit and glazed tartlets. To anyone else that shop window would have seemed like an oasis in the desert, a starving man’s hallucination, but its effect on our young man was diametrically different. The sight of all those sweet things revolted him.’

Ghoolion tossed some flakes of white chocolate into a saucepan to melt, then added some cream and spiced the result with cinnamon.

‘The young man was about to walk on quickly when he caught sight of his beloved inside the shop, her eyes shining with anticipation as she pointed to the various items she wished to purchase. He was quite convinced he had never seen her look as beautiful as she did at that moment.’

Ghoolion removed the white chocolate sauce from the stove. It smelt tempting.

‘A strange kind of rage welled up in the young man’s breast. He was disconcerted to note that he was jealous of a slice of gâteau. Envious of a strawberry tartlet. Infuriated by a chocolate wafer.

‘“Just wait,” he said to himself. “I shall be able to make her delicacies far superior to that sugary muck in there. I shall become the best pastry cook, the most famous confectioner, the greatest exponent of seduction by sugar in the whole of Zamonia! I shall produce the most delicious puddings and elaborate gâteaux ever devised. I shall create pralines to break a person’s heart. Fondants to fight over. Meringues to kill for. A bitter chocolate velouté that will make her love me to the point of idolatry.”’

Ghoolion broke off because he was removing something from the oven and dishing it out on the plates. It smelt of baked pears and marzipan.

‘I must say,’ Izanuela whispered to Echo, ‘I think he’s doing terribly well. Did you know he was such an expert storyteller?’

‘Yes,’ Echo whispered back.

‘He’s a man of many talents,’ she said under her breath.

Ghoolion served the next course. Baked to a pale golden brown, it was a pear-and-marzipan strudel afloat in a warm sea of melted white chocolate.

‘Enjoy,’ Ghoolion said with a bow.

What impressed Echo most was not the sophistication of the food they were being offered - he was only too accustomed to that - but the fact that Ghoolion was so unpardonably neglecting his real work in the laboratory. Indeed, he seemed to have forgotten about it altogether. Tomorrow was full moon, the night he had been working towards for so long, and here he was, telling stories and cooing at Izanuela. To Echo, this was the surest proof of the love potion’s potency.

‘Aah! Mmyummm …’ said Izanuela as she took her first mouthful of the strudel. ‘This is simply in-cred-ible! It tastes like … like …’

‘Like love itself?’ Ghoolion amplified with a seductive wink. ‘That brings me back to my story. It was love that had wrought such a complete change in our young man. His gloom gave way to good cheer, his sourness to sweetness, and Ingotville to Florinth. He realised that he must become an utterly different person if he was to win his beloved’s affections. Ingotville being a place where a man might learn how to cast a cannon but not how to make a perfect crème caramel, he left there and went to Florinth, where culinary decadence was then at its height. The reigning Zaan of Florinth had proclaimed cake-making to be an art form in its own right and nine of his cabinet ministers were former pastry cooks. If anyone wished to achieve success in that field, Florinth was the ideal spot to choose. The cherry on the trifle, so to speak.’

Izanuela laughed rather too loudly at Ghoolion’s feeble joke for Echo’s taste. Meanwhile, the Alchemaster set to work on the next course. He squeezed some blood oranges and limes and chopped up a handful of almonds.

‘Our hero began by renouncing all things sour,’ he went on, ‘and devoted himself to all things sweet. He became a member of the Mielists, a secret society that worshipped honey and believed in a god named Gnorkx who was reputed to live on the sun and be immortal. They bathed in honey every time the moon was full.’

Echo gave a little start at the mention of Gnorkx’s name. Ghoolion glanced at him conspiratorially as he brought a pudding to the boil.

‘He learnt his trade from the bottom up. At first he worked in a sugar beet factory, then in a dairy and finally in a cocoa mill. Having enrolled in the cake- and candy-making courses at the Culinary College in Florinth, he completed an apprenticeship at the biggest confectioner’s in the city. He also did a three-year course in Advanced Patisserie under Maître Gargantuel, the Zaan of Florinth’s pudding and pastry chef. Gargantuel, who recognised the young man’s exceptional talent, made him his star pupil and initiated him into the mysteries of the pastry cook’s art.’

Ghoolion cleared away and served the next course at once: cold blood-orange soup with gingerbread blancmange and lime-infused butter. Izanuela fell on it as if she hadn’t eaten for days.

‘For the Zaan’s birthday party he produced the longest Swiss roll ever baked. Then he opened his own patisserie, with the result that most of the other patisseries in Florinth went bankrupt because people wanted to eat his pastries and no one else’s. The Zaan offered our young man the post of Minister for Desserts, but he declined because he thought the time had come for him to return to Ingotville and win his beloved’s heart with a trayful of his most daring creations. When he eventually set eyes on her she was five times fatter and married with three children. Our young man threw himself into the city’s most polluted river and died of mercury poisoning before he could drown.’

Echo and Izanuela stared at the Alchemaster, dumbfounded.

‘Is that it?’ Echo asked.

‘Well, yes,’ said Ghoolion. ‘All Zamonian stories end tragically, as you know. There are two lessons to be drawn from it: first, don’t wait too long before marrying your beloved, and secondly, too many sweet things make you fat.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Echo, ‘and the more courses you eat, the thinner you get. What a stupid story.’

‘Well, I thought it was lovely,’ Izanuela said defiantly. ‘The ending was a bit abrupt, but it went perfectly with this pudding. The lime-flavoured butter is simply fantastic!’ She extended her outsize tongue and proceeded to lick her plate.

‘Oh, don’t mind him, my blossom,’ Ghoolion said. ‘Echo’s tired of my stories. I sympathise with him, but he’ll soon be spared them and left in peace. For evermore.’

Echo’s blood ran cold. This might be Izanuela’s engagement party, but for him it was the equivalent of a condemned man’s last meal. He’d forgotten that for a moment.

Izanuela was equally dismayed by Ghoolion’s tactless remark, Echo could tell that from the way her false eyelashes quivered. She stopped licking her plate and put it down.

Ghoolion threw himself at her feet. ‘I, at least, intend to take my cue from the story and marry you as soon as possible. Let’s tie the knot before the week is out!’

Izanuela turned crimson and struggled for words. ‘If you’re really sure …’ she said eventually.

Ghoolion jumped up. ‘Then let’s go on celebrating! I shall make you all the heavenly things our unfortunate pastry cook was unable to create for his beloved.’

He hurried back to the stove. Judging by the symphony of sweets he produced in the hours that followed, Ghoolion himself might have studied in Florinth under Maître Gargantuel: raspberry millefeuilles with champagne cream, rennet mousse with chocolate-flavoured zabaglione and cinnamon dumplings, coconut parfait with strawberry fritters, lemon sorbet tinged with saffron, doughnuts stuffed with cherries soaked in port, elderflower pastries topped with creamed pistachio nuts, hazelnut chocolate fingers on a bed of passion fruit and gilded Demonberries.

Echo’s dark thoughts were soon dispelled by all these delicacies. He and Izanuela had never been so stuffed with food in their lives, yet they felt as light as air and extremely cheerful - probably because of the various liqueurs and brandies in the puddings they’d consumed. Izanuela had hiccups and Echo was just about to break into song when Ghoolion suddenly said, ‘Well, my blossom, it’s growing late and the journey from Ingotville must have been long and tiring. I shall now show you to your sleeping quarters.’

‘Ingotville?’ thought Echo, but he refrained from saying the word out loud. Izanuela was equally puzzled.

Echo was on his guard. Whenever Ghoolion had conducted him to a remote part of the castle, a nasty surprise had been waiting there. Although the Alchemaster was now under the spell of the love potion, he was still dangerous and unpredictable.

‘I told you that story, my dearest,’ Ghoolion said suddenly, ‘because it bears a certain resemblance to our own.’

‘Really?’ Izanuela looked mystified.

‘Yes, in some respects. Our love, too, began in Ingotville. I also lived there as a young man, then went to another city and became a completely different person. But there the resemblance ends. Our own story has a happy ending.’

The Uggly gave Echo a look of enquiry and shrugged her shoulders. She clearly had no idea what Ghoolion was talking about.

He paused outside a massive door. The frame was of polished steel, the door itself of solid iron. It looked like the entrance to a strongroom. ‘Or a prison,’ thought Echo.

Ghoolion produced a big key from his cloak and unlocked it.

‘Here it is, my blossom,’ he said solemnly. ‘Your bedchamber. I trust you’ll find everything to your satisfaction.’

He pushed the door open and went in. Echo and Izanuela followed.

Echo was flabbergasted. There wasn’t another room like it anywhere in the castle. The walls, floor and ceiling were of rusty iron, the furniture of polished steel trimmed with copper. The chamber was windowless but brightly lit by Anguish Candles. The pictures hanging on the walls in gold and silver frames had probably been painted by Ghoolion himself. They were gloomy views of Ingotville: factory chimneys wreathed in fog, rain beating down on rusty machinery, cogwheels the size of millstones. Even the roses in a vase were made of iron.

‘I want you to feel thoroughly at home,’ Ghoolion said with a smile. ‘Welcome to your new abode, Floria!’

‘FLORIA,’ thought Echo.

FLORIA OF INGOTVILLE …

He had a sudden vision of his late mistress’s grave in the Toadwoods.

‘Floria?’ Izanuela asked in a puzzled tone of voice. Echo gently prodded her foot with a forepaw.

He understood it all now. The love potion’s sweet poison, coupled with the potency of the Cratmint perfume, had deluded Ghoolion into believing that his long-lost love, Echo’s late mistress, had found her way to him at last. Floria of Ingotville … His ideal of feminine beauty, which he’d cherished within him since his youth, had become identified with Izanuela, whom he now regarded as the love of his life.

The Uggly interpreted Echo’s nudge correctly and asked no more questions. ‘This is, er … incredible …’ she said haltingly. Ghoolion smiled.

‘It’s all falling into place now,’ thought Echo. They said love blinded a person, but in this instance it had driven someone mad. Maybe it had all started when he told Ghoolion the story of his mistress’s life, maybe long before that. The Alchemaster had finally flipped. He had told his story in Echo’s words because he believed they were his own. He thought he was face to face with his beloved because he mistook Izanuela for Floria. When he looked in a mirror, perhaps he saw the young man he used to be. Ghoolion’s sick brain had turned time and space, emotion and reason upside down.

‘Up is down and right is wrong,’ thought Echo. Was it the effect of the potion? If so, the potion was probably just the last straw. The Alchemaster had doubtless begun to lose his wits a long time ago.

‘Come now, Echo,’ he said. ‘Floria needs her beauty sleep and we’ve got a big day tomorrow.’

The Last Breakfast


Something was restricting Echo’s breathing when he awoke the next morning. He felt his throat with his forepaws and was horrified to find a chain encircling it. Ghoolion, standing beside his basket, was smiling benevolently down at him.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Our great day has dawned! The moon is full at last! I hope you’ll understand why I can’t let you roam around at liberty any more, not on such an important occasion. I don’t want to have to go looking for you in the castle’s ventilation system just when I need you most.’

The collar that had been slipped over Echo’s head while he was asleep was composed of links of solid steel, and it was attached by another chain to the Alchemaster’s wrist. Now he was physically as well as hypnotically debarred from trying to escape.

‘If you refrain from tugging so hard at that necklace of yours,’ said Ghoolion, ‘it won’t restrict your breathing. I took great care to make it a perfect fit.’

He led Echo to the Uggly’s metallic bedchamber, where some breakfast was waiting for him. Izanuela was sitting up in bed in her floral gown with a huge tray on her knees. Discounting a few crumbs, the plates on it were empty. So was the cup in her hand.

‘Oh,’ Ghoolion exclaimed delightedly, ‘you obviously enjoyed your breakfast, my blossom. May I fetch you some more coffee?’

Izanuela nodded demurely.

‘It was excellent,’ she whispered.

Having secured Echo’s chain to the brass bedstead with a small steel padlock, Ghoolion put a bowl of milk down for him, together with a plateful of seared tuna cut up into bite-size portions. Then he left the room.

‘What, eating again?’ said Echo when the Alchemaster was out of earshot. ‘I simply couldn’t. All that sweet stuff is lying on my stomach.’

Izanuela brushed some crumbs from the corner of her mouth.

‘My,’ she said, ‘do ham omelettes taste good! Not to mention croissants with melted chocolate. Have you ever tried strawberry jam and peanut butter on white bread? It tastes divine! As for smoked salmon with dill remoulade and beef tartare on pumpernickel…I had no idea! I could become addicted to all this stuff. If it weren’t for Ghoolion, I’d never have eaten anything but cheese all my life, can you imagine?’

‘Beef tartare?’ said Echo. ‘You mean you’ve been eating raw meat already? At this hour of the day? Has it really come to this?’

‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t eat all those things,’ she retorted, pouting.

‘Yes, but I wasn’t a devout cheese eater until yesterday, like you. What next? Will you be renouncing your Ugglian beliefs?’

Izanuela bowed her head. ‘I can’t help it if he cooks so well. He’s a man -’

‘- of many talents,’ Echo broke in. ‘Yes, yes, I know, but he’s still the confounded Alchemaster. He’s your arch-enemy, or had you forgotten?’

She stared down at the crumb-strewn counterpane. ‘A person must also be capable of forgiveness,’ she said softly.

Echo rolled his eyes. The situation was taking a turn he hadn’t expected. Izanuela was becoming more and more infatuated with Ghoolion, and time was running out. He had only minutes and hours left, not days and weeks.

‘Doesn’t it worry you that he calls you Floria and thinks you come from Ingotville?’ he demanded.

‘I couldn’t care less where he thinks I come from,’ she said pertly. ‘And, heavens alive, he can call me whatever he likes as long as he waits on me hand and foot like this. Anyway, Floria is a nice name! Floria, his blossom. It suits me better than Izanuela. I always thought Izanuela sounded silly. I’m starting a new life today. Why shouldn’t I do so under a new name?’

Echo didn’t have the heart to point out that Ghoolion wasn’t really in love with her, he’d simply lost his wits. She wouldn’t have believed it anyway, she was so besotted, and he might even have driven a wedge between them. This was a tricky situation. Ghoolion was insane, Izanuela infatuated, and he himself had one paw in the grave. It was impossible to carry on a normal conversation with the Uggly. He would have to weigh every word with the utmost care.

‘We must work out the best way of putting your request to Ghoolion,’ he said cautiously.

‘Eh? What request? Oh, you mean the lilac curtains. Never mind about them, there’s no real hurry, I -’

‘No, I don’t mean the lilac curtains! I mean your request that he should spare my life and let me go! That’s the request I mean!’ Echo’s voice broke.

‘Oh, that request. I’d almost forgotten, but there’s no reason to get so heated.’

‘He’s chained me up!’ Echo hissed. ‘Tonight he intends to cut my throat and boil off my fat! Forgive me for being a bit on edge!’

Dismayed that he’d blown his top after all, he did his best to calm down.

‘It’s all right,’ Izanuela said awkwardly. ‘I’m rather flustered, that’s all. This has never happened to me before. Emotional turmoil …’ She gave an embarrassed little laugh.

‘All right,’ said Echo, ‘but we must keep a clear head. Time is running out.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Should I ask him as soon as he comes back?’

‘No, we mustn’t jump the gun. Listen, I’ve got a plan …’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I think we should lure him out on to the roof.’

‘The roof? Must we?’ Izanuela shuddered.

‘I’m sure it would have a beneficial effect on him. Ghoolion is completely off his…I mean, he’s under considerable pressure at the moment. We must get him away from this unhealthy environment. All those acrid fumes and intoxicating gases. All that hard work and stress he subjects himself to.’

‘Good idea. He is looking rather pale.’

‘The roof has always had a liberating, soothing effect on me. The fresh air. The light. The view. It’s another world up there. You develop a new outlook on things. It helps you to see what really matters. In short, it’s therapeutic. That’s where we should present him with your request.’

‘You think I should ask him to show me the roof?’ asked Izanuela.

‘Better not. It might sound odd - he’d smell a rat. No, I’ll do it. I’ll ask him to take me up to the mother of all roofs one last time. Before he … well, you know what I mean. He’s already gathered how much I like it up there. It’ll sound more convincing, coming from me.’

‘All right. What then?’

‘You must come too, that’s all. Once we’re up there, you douse yourself in some more of that perfume.’

‘What, more? I must be economical with the precious stuff if I want a long-term relationship with -’

‘Izanuela!’ Echo hissed the name so loudly that she flinched. ‘My life is at stake! Kindly spare a thought for something apart from your flirtation with the Alchemaster!’

‘I’m sorry.’ She blushed. ‘So I put on the perfume -’

‘- and then you ask him. As casually as you can. You don’t beg or implore, you simply ask him the way you’d ask for a kiss.’

The Uggly giggled like a teenager, then froze. Ghoolion’s metallic footsteps were approaching: he was hurrying back with her coffee. He appeared in the doorway a moment later.

‘What a glorious day!’ he exclaimed. ‘The wind is getting up and it’s growing steadily warmer. There could well be a thunderstorm tonight.’

‘How nice,’ said Echo.

‘Breakfast with the two individuals I care about most,’ Ghoolion purred as he refilled the Uggly’s cup. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much this means to me.’

‘Too true,’ thought Echo. ‘I wouldn’t.’

Ghoolion laid the coffee pot aside and drew himself up to his full height.

‘This is a special day from many points of view,’ he said. ‘Let’s start it off in a worthy manner. How would you like me to show you both the best-kept secret in this ancient building?’

The Treasure Chamber


Echo kept wondering what secret he could mean. The Snow-White Widow? The fat cellar? But they didn’t go down to the cellar, they climbed the stairs to an upper floor.

‘Before a man of honour marries his beloved,’ said Ghoolion, ‘he discloses his financial circumstances.’ He was going on ahead as usual, leading Echo by his chain with Izanuela following obediently behind. ‘Well, in my case that’s quickly done. I’m merely the municipal Alchemaster of a small and impoverished town. I don’t even receive a salary and my meagre inheritance was soon used up. True, I own the biggest property in Malaisea, but who would care to live here apart from me and the Leathermice?’

‘I would!’ Izanuela said softly.

Echo suppressed a sigh.

Ghoolion smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you would, and for that I’ll be eternally grateful to you. But who else? The castle may look impressive from a distance, but any potential purchaser who inspected it more closely would run off screaming, especially if he learned of the building’s gruesome history. Fundamentally, therefore, I’m just a poor devil living in a dilapidated ruin. Right?’

‘What if you are?’ said Izanuela. ‘Money isn’t everything.’

They came to a halt in a room Echo had already visited dozens of times before. It contained nothing special, just some dusty pieces of furniture.

Ghoolion went over to a bare wall of blackened brick and paused in front of it. For a few moments he seemed to be collecting his thoughts or trying to remember something. Then he proceeded to press various bricks like an organist manipulating the stops of his instrument.

‘He’s crazy,’ thought Echo. ‘Even Izanuela should be starting to realise that by now.’

Ghoolion stepped back. There was a sound like an enormous clock beginning to tick. Clickety-clack it went. Metal springs contracted and expanded with a whirring noise. The bricks in the wall started to move in and out and behind one another, grating together as they rearranged themselves to form a steadily widening aperture of triangular shape.

‘An ancient mechanism left behind by the Rusty Gnomes,’ Ghoolion explained. ‘It still works, but I don’t know how.’

So he knew of the existence of the dwarfish race whose skeletons Echo had discovered in the building. Echo made no comment because he was far too fascinated by what was happening now. Light was issuing from the aperture. Only a little at first, but the bigger it got the brighter the light became.

‘What’s that?’ Izanuela enquired nervously.

‘It’s the entrance to my treasure chamber, my blossom,’ Ghoolion replied. ‘Or should I say, to our treasure chamber? Your assumption that you were being wooed by a poverty-stricken wretch wasn’t entirely correct, so the fact that you accepted my proposal notwithstanding does you twice as much credit. It has intensified my love for you to an immeasurable extent! I should now like to acquaint you with my true financial circumstances. Kindly follow me, my dears, and feast your eyes on a thing of beauty: the greatest treasure in Malaisea!’

He ducked through the opening, which had now attained the dimensions of a doorway, gently pulling Echo after him. Izanuela hesitantly followed. They were suddenly bathed in a golden glow that seemed to come from all directions at once. The chamber was as spacious and high-ceilinged as several others in the castle, but this one was unique. It consisted entirely of gold. A gold floor. Walls papered with gold leaf. A gold ceiling composed of massive gold panels. A huge, thick carpet woven out of gold thread. A candelabrum of gold with gold candles. A gold fireplace with gold coals in a gold grate. Gold pictures in gold frames on the walls. A gold library comprising thousands of gold books. Cupboards, armchairs, upright chairs and a long refectory table, all of gold. A gold pipe in a gold ashtray. Even the knocked-out ash and the charred match were of gold. Beside them were a half-eaten apple and an open book with a pair of glasses lying on top of it. They, too, were of solid gold.

Echo and Izanuela were dazzled by all this splendour, and even Ghoolion shaded his eyes with his hand. The chamber was invested with its magical refulgence by the dozens of Anguish Candles that were creeping or standing around on tables, shelves and cabinets.

‘Isn’t gold the loveliest of all the elements?’ Ghoolion asked without waiting for an answer. ‘Not the rarest, nor the most useful, nor the most effective, but the loveliest.’

Echo tried to tread on the carpet, but the pile pricked his paws like needles. He swiftly removed them.

‘You gilded the whole room?’ said Izanuela. ‘Why?’

Ghoolion smiled. ‘I didn’t gild it. Everything here is made of solid gold. The table, the shelves, the books, every stone in the walls. Go and touch it.’

Izanuela went over to the table and picked up the apple. It was quite an effort.

‘My, that’s heavy!’ she gasped. ‘You’re right, it’s solid gold!’

Ghoolion walked across the chamber with his arms outstretched. ‘Yes indeed!’ he exclaimed. ‘Tons and tons of it. More than a hundred men could carry.’

‘Was it always here?’ Echo asked. ‘Did you discover this chamber?’

‘The chamber and its secret mechanism, yes. I found an old parchment in the cellar and managed to decipher it. It bore the formula required to open the door, the language of the stones. But the walls and furniture, floor and ceiling, carpet and books - they were still composed of the materials such things are usually made of. Stone, wood, iron, wool, leather, paper.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Izanuela. She was admiring her own reflection in a pot-bellied gold vase. ‘How did all these things turn into gold?’

‘Echo,’ Ghoolion commanded, ‘quote me alchemy’s four supreme objectives.’

Echo didn’t have to think for long. ‘To find the Philosopher’s Stone. To construct a perpetual-motion machine. To attain immortality. To transform lead into gold.’

Ghoolion nodded proudly as the last words were uttered.

‘Can you really transform lead into gold?’ asked Izanuela.

‘Not only that!’ Ghoolion said triumphantly. ‘I can transform almost anything into gold. Any relatively solid substance. Any metals, of course, apart from quicksilver. Wood, too. Stone. Dust. Wax, as long as it’s firm. Lead too, naturally.’

‘You told me once it was impossible,’ said Echo.

‘I had to keep it a secret, of course. You have a nimble tongue, my friend, not to mention a command of every language in existence. Imagine what would happen if it became known that I can manufacture gold - any amount of it! This castle would be under siege! Every mercenary in Zamonia would be at the gates. Every criminal would be after me, hoping to torture me into revealing the secret. Every royal megalomaniac would send his myrmidons to get me.’

Ghoolion gave a mirthless laugh.

‘That’s why I confined my gold-making activities to this secret chamber. At first I transmuted small objects into gold: a book, a plate, a stone in the wall. Then bigger and bigger articles - chairs, benches, tables - until everything in here was solid gold. I still bring things here and transmute them from time to time, but it became boring in the long run.’ ‘Why are you telling us all this now?’ Echo asked.

Ghoolion smiled. ‘Where my future wife is concerned, I consider it my duty.’ He gave the chain a gentle tug. ‘As for you, my dearest Echo, you’re past being able to betray my secret. You’ll soon be taking it to the grave with you.’

‘Many thanks for reminding me,’ thought Echo. The sight of all this splendour had almost made him forget how quickly time was speeding by.

‘I only came upon the formula by chance,’ Ghoolion went on. ‘It probably won’t surprise you, Echo, to learn that I discovered the solution to one of alchemy’s greatest secrets in the smallest of objects: a dried leaf from the Miniforest, it was the size of a grain of dust. I had only to interchange a few molecules, but one has to know which ones. Moreover, interchanging molecules is an art in itself.’

‘So you’re a very wealthy man, Master,’ said Echo. ‘You never cease to surprise me.’

‘I have acquired a certain degree of financial independence, it’s true.’ Ghoolion smirked. ‘But take it from me, the two of you: all this gold means nothing to me in comparison with what I hope to achieve tonight. If I could exchange it all, together with my gold-making formula, for the certainty that I shall be successful, I would do so on the spot. For what is wealth compared to immortality? What good is all this loot if I’m doomed to die? And that brings me to the reason for your presence here, Echo.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Echo.

‘I’ve filled your little head with all my alchemistic knowledge, but I’ve left this last piece of information, the formula for making gold, until last. Your brain must, of course, have absorbed it by the time I render you down.’

Ghoolion produced a sheet of parchment from his cloak and held it under Echo’s nose. It was covered with alchemistic symbols.

‘Would you be kind enough to memorise this?’ he asked.

‘Hm …’ said Echo, scanning the document. It dealt with cohesive and adhesive forces, chlorophyll atoms, graveyard gas, lime, Leathermouse blood, fivefold distillation processes.

He didn’t understand the first thing about the formula he was memorising, but by the time he’d finished he knew how to make gold.

‘All done,’ he said. His head was buzzing.

Ghoolion took the parchment and tore it into tiny little pieces.

‘He must feel pretty sure I’m going to die if he entrusts me with such a secret and then destroys the formula,’ Echo reflected.

The moment had come at last.

Echo cleared his throat. ‘But now, Master, I’ve got a request for you.’

Ghoolion stiffened. ‘What is it?’ he demanded sternly.

‘I’d like to visit the mother of all roofs again. For the very last time.’

‘Oh,’ said Ghoolion, relaxing, ‘if that’s all it is, of course you may.’ He turned to Izanuela. ‘I meant to show you the view from up there in any case, my blossom. It’s absolutely breathtaking.’