The floor and walls shuddered again and again. Timbers creaked and cracks appeared in the masonry. Ghoolion reeled around like a drunk.
Boom! The fireplace belched a dense cloud of soot.
Boom! The alchemical furnace rocked precariously.
Ghoolion spun round and tossed the scalpel on to a workbench. He ran to a window and leant out as far as he could.
‘It’s those infernal great trees!’ he fumed. ‘They’re pounding the castle walls with their huge wooden fists and using uprooted tree trunks as battering rams!’ He took a closer look through the telescope. ‘They’re wrenching rocks out of the ground and hurling them! They’re going berserk!’ His voice broke with fury.
Echo was also feeling uneasy now. No one was safe in this crumbling old pile. He simply had to get rid of this confounded chain.
‘You must show me to them!’ he shouted above the din. ‘That’s all they’re after. That’ll calm them down.’
Ghoolion didn’t react. He stood silently at the window, clinging to the sill and staring out.
Boom! A whole bookcase toppled over, spilling hundreds of ancient volumes across the floor.
Boom! The Ghoolionic Preserver clinked and rattled. Gas came hissing out of a fractured valve.
Boom! Fist-sized stones fell out of the walls and landed on alchemical vessels, shattering them.
Ghoolion tore himself away from the window at last. Having lurched across the laboratory to Echo, he bent down and removed his collar.
‘But I warn you!’ he growled. ‘One false move and I’ll throttle you!’
He gripped Echo by the scruff of the neck and carried him over to the window, where he held him up and shouted, ‘Here he is! Here’s what you’re after! Now stop that!’
Echo got his first sight of the Ugglian Oaks clustered around the castle. What a spectacle they presented! Izanuela had told him they never lost their temper. They had certainly lost it now! Some were stomping around on their big black roots, massive trunks swaying to and fro as they pummelled the ancient building with their gnarled wooden fists. Others were prising huge boulders out of the ground and hurling them at the castle like trebuchets. The old eyes in their knotholes were blazing with anger. Their mournful music was almost drowned by the ear-splitting creaks and groans they made in their frenzy. They were so engrossed in their display of brute force that none of them paid any attention to Ghoolion or what he had shouted.
‘Pure pandemonium,’ Echo whispered to himself. He didn’t know whether to be delighted or horrified. The giant trees hadn’t come to liberate him; they were bent on sheer destruction.
‘They aren’t calming down!’ Ghoolion exclaimed. ‘They’re getting wilder and wilder!’ He tightened his grip on Echo.
Instead of replying, Echo twisted his head round and bit Ghoolion’s hand - bit it harder than he’d ever bitten anything or anyone before. The skin split open like paper and his teeth sank in up to the bone. Even the Alchemaster couldn’t ignore pain of such intensity. He uttered a yell and relaxed his grip. Echo promptly took advantage of this to squirm and struggle, hiss and scratch. He raked Ghoolion’s face with his claws and inflicted four deep scratches on his cheek. One claw on his other paw caught the Alchemaster’s long nose and laid it open from bridge to tip. And still Echo raged on, biting and lashing out in a fury. Ghoolion suddenly found himself holding a wildcat armed with a hundred teeth and a thousand claws. He dropped Echo, who landed on the windowsill, and retreated a few steps.
‘Never touch me again!’ hissed Echo. He arched his back in a way that made him look twice as big. His eyes gleamed belligerently. ‘Never again, you hear?’
There was a massive jolt and a long crack appeared in the laboratory floor. Ghoolion went staggering backwards, caught his foot in it and fell headlong.
‘You little devil!’ he yelled as he scrambled to his feet. ‘You said they’d stop this if you showed yourself.’
‘I lied!’ Echo shouted back above the din. ‘I learnt that from you! You should have listened to the Snow-White Widow! Never put your faith in someone else’s honesty!’
This remark seemed to hurt the Alchemaster more than