The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,5
domain lead a life of their own? To Echo, anything seemed possible in this weirdest of all the buildings in Malaisea. But Crats are level-headed creatures, so he set about getting to the bottom of the mystery. Did the light sources move by mechanical means? Cautiously, he clambered over some worm-eaten books, made his way between two stacks of time-yellowed documents and squeezed past some big glass bottles thick with dust. Nearer and nearer he crept to one of the candles, only to be brought up short by a magnifying glass the size of a soup plate. He froze. His determination to show no sign of fear evaporated, for the sight that confronted him through the dirty lens was so bewildering, so startling and unreal, that it put all the laboratory’s other sensations in the shade: he saw a grotesquely magnified candle with a pain-racked face streaked with waxen tears. To his utter consternation, Echo saw that it was almost imperceptibly propelling itself along at a snail’s pace, sobbing and sighing as it went.
‘An Anguish Candle,’ Ghoolion explained with a touch of pride, stirring something in a big bowl. ‘One of my minor alchemical creations. It consists of candle wax, a Leyden Manikin and some snails from the Gargyllian Bollogg’s Skull, very slowly simmered over a low flame - plus one or two secret alchemical ingredients, of course. The wick is woven from the spinal column of a Blindworm and the ganglia of an Oxenfrog. Candles of this type are extremely sensitive to heat and spend their entire existence in the most terrible agony. Imagine if your tail were on fire - that’s the kind of agony I mean.’
‘What would happen if you blew it out?’ asked Echo, who was thoroughly unnerved by the sight of the tormented creature. He now saw that several more of the laboratory’s candles were propelling themselves along in an equally painful manner. If he strained his ears, he could even hear them moaning softly all around him.
‘Its sufferings would cease, of course,’ Ghoolion replied curtly. ‘But what’s the use of a candle that isn’t alight, let alone an Anguish Candle that doesn’t groan with pain?’
His tone implied that Echo wasn’t all there. With a shake of the head, he put down the bowl of sweetened cream he’d been stirring. Then, taking a small phial from a shelf, he added a few drops of some colourless liquid. Instantly, the cream was infused with the glorious scent of vanilla. To Echo, even that simple trick seemed like magic. He tore his eyes away from the Anguish Candle and fell on the bowl as if dying of thirst.
‘Steady, steady!’ Echo had only lapped up a couple of mouthfuls when Ghoolion took the bowl away and deposited it on a shelf out of his reach. ‘Not too much on an empty stomach! Besides, that cream was only an appetiser. We must proceed systematically. Everything has to be done on a scientific basis, and that includes fattening you up. So give me a list of your favourite dishes in exact order of preference. Which do you like best of all?’
Taking a pencil and a sheet of paper, Ghoolion gazed at Echo sternly. The little Crat knit his brow and searched his memory for favourite foods.
‘Best of all?’ he said. ‘Grilled mouse bladders. Grilled Piddlemouse bladders, to be precise.’
‘Right,’ said Ghoolion, and made a note. ‘Grilled Piddlemouse bladders. Hardly gourmet fare, but still. Go on …’
The Fat Collection
Ghoolion’s origins were shrouded in mystery. Some said he hailed from the Graveyard Marshes and was a nocturnal growth that had sprouted from a bed of cadaveric compost. Others believed him to be one of the mysterious Undead of Dullsgard, the city no living creature could enter without being transformed into a walking corpse. He was also rumoured to be one of the legendary Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse who had left the other four and gone freelance. Many swore that he came from an unknown continent, not from Zamonia at all, having flown there across the sea on black wings, which he unfurled only when no one was looking. Still others claimed that Ghoolion had come straight from Netherworld, the legendary realm of darkness beneath Zamonia, and had risen to the surface to pave the way for an imminent invasion by the Evil One. Different though these theories about his background were, they all had one thing in common: not a single citizen of Malaisea had ever dared to broach them in