The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,50
snarls and hisses.
At that moment the eagle uttered a hoarse scream, flapped its wings and rose into the air. As it left the mantelpiece, something happened which Echo found far more astonishing than anything else that had occurred in the course of this astonishing evening. From one moment to the next, the bird ceased to look like a two-dimensional shadow and became a solid body. Transfixed with fear, Echo didn’t move until the eagle uttered another scream, swooped down, landed on the seat of the chair and slashed at him with its big beak. He shrank back and hit his head on a chair leg. The pain brought tears to his eyes and prompted him to leave his uncertain shelter.
Reaching for the painful spot on the back of his head with a forepaw, he felt something moist and sticky. Genuine blood! Had he broken the skin himself, or had the bird nicked him with its beak? Had these shadowy creatures suddenly become capable of causing pain and physical injury?
There was a rustling sound overhead like wind blowing through a forest. Echo looked up. The Nurn was quivering in a frenzy and stalking around the room on its long legs. It, too, had ceased to be merely a shadow and become a three-dimensional being, a pitch-black sculpture suddenly endowed with life. Echo wondered if the scent of his blood had aroused its killer instincts. The Nurn raised one leg, flexed it and pointed its foot straight at him. He managed to leap aside just as the tip embedded itself in the floor.
Long tentacles came snaking down from the creature’s body. With a menacing crack like that of a bullwhip, they lashed the air in search of their prey. Echo zigzagged around the chamber, narrowly avoiding the Nurn’s elastic tentacles and trampling feet.
He was just about to escape by leaping into the fireplace when the rat, which had also become massively three-dimensional, barred his path. Echo glanced over his shoulder in dismay. To make matters even worse, the huge snake was also wriggling towards him. He could neither advance nor retreat.
Help came from an unexpected quarter: one of the Nurn’s tentacles smacked into the rat like a sodden rope. The huge creature’s bloodlust was such that it drew no distinction between a rat and a Crat. A dozen more tentacles wrapped themselves round the rodent and yanked it into the air. Squeaking with terror, it vanished into the Nurn’s gaping, rustling maw.
Now that his route lay open, Echo leapt boldly into the fireplace. Ash swirled around him in a dense grey cloud, concealing him from view for a few moments and enabling him to catch his breath. For some seconds he was as invisible to the shadowy creatures as they were to him.
Then the ash began to settle and he saw to his utter horror that the chimney was not built of stone. The flue was an iron tube whose sides were far too smooth to climb.
Through the steadily thinning cloud of ash he saw the snake’s huge black head loom up in front of the fireplace. It opened its jaws and almost lazily retracted its head as though to increase the momentum with which it planned to strike its prey.
Something rustled above him. The Nurn? Impossible, it was far too big to fit into the chimney. No, it wasn’t a rustle, it was the whirring of wings. In the general confusion, when the pall of ash was at its thickest, the eagle must have managed to fly up the chimney. Now it was fluttering above him, ready to pounce at any moment.
Sure enough, powerful talons gripped him painfully by the neck and hauled him upwards. He bit and scratched, but his teeth and claws met thin air. The eagle had him securely in its grasp and it wasn’t hard to guess the bird’s intentions: it would haul him out of the chimney, high into the sky, then let him fall. He would drop like a stone and leave his shattered body on the flagstones of Malaisea.
Echo’s fur suddenly fluttered in a cool breeze and he found himself looking down at the lights of the town far below. He was back outside.
The talons let go of his neck, but he didn’t go plummeting to his death; he fell a few feet and landed safely on the mother of all roofs. Theodore T. Theodore touched down beside him a moment later.
‘Theodore?’ said Echo, rubbing his eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’