all the bites and scratches he’d sustained. The anger in his face gave way to a look of bewilderment.
‘You mean they haven’t come to set you free?’ he said. ‘Why, then?’
‘To avenge Izanuela!’ Echo shouted. ‘And to send you to perdition. She’s too powerful for you. She’s defeating you after her death.’
Another violent jolt brought down a beam that grazed the Alchemaster’s head. He swayed and clutched his bleeding ear but stayed on his feet. A second beam came crashing down on the Ghoolionic Preserver, smashing numerous glass vessels and spattering the room with chemical fluids. The stone lintel above the door became dislodged and fell with another crash. Within moments, a heap of collapsing rubble had precluded any chance of escape.
‘Then you’ll go to perdition with me!’ Ghoolion yelled, pointing to the blocked exit. ‘Those Ugglian Oaks don’t seem too eager to save your life.’
Echo was prepared to fight if the Alchemaster went for him again, but Ghoolion displayed no sign of aggression. Bereft of all his authority, he simply stood there, swaying under the impact of the blows his castle was receiving. It was as if he himself were being struck.
Yet another violent jolt upset the cauldron. The alchemical soup flowed out across the floor and disappeared down the cracks.
Ghoolion staggered over to Floria’s corpse. Taking it by the shoulders, he hoisted it into a sitting position. ‘Floria!’ he sobbed. ‘What am I to do?’
The Alchemaster was begging a cadaver for help! Echo would have liked to revel in his triumph, but this wasn’t the moment. The castle was disintegrating around them. If the building was done for, so were they. Ghoolion’s question to a dead woman wasn’t unjustified. What could they do?
There were three possible routes out of the laboratory. One was the doorway, which was hopelessly obstructed. The second was the cauldron, the gateway to another world, but that held little appeal. The third was a window, through which anyone so minded could leap to his death in the town below.
Izanuela’s route …
Echo opted for the last-named exit. He looked over at the Alchemaster. Floria’s skeleton rattled as he shook it, but that was her sole response: a shake of the skull.
‘Floria!’ he cried again. ‘What am I to do?’
Ghoolion’s alchemical universe was going up in smoke. The whole laboratory was a mass of crackling flames fed by volatile liquids escaping from shattered retorts. Stones were falling from the ceiling, powdered chemicals swirling into the air, glass vessels exploding, gases hissing. More and more cracks were appearing in the walls. The castle was doomed. It would soon collapse with an almighty crash.
Echo exchanged a final glance with the Alchemaster. Ghoolion’s expression conveyed none of his former majestic malevolence, just fear and consternation. That was how Echo wanted to remember him: as a pathetic madman.
Then he turned and leapt off the windowsill.
‘No!’ Ghoolion called after him.
But he was already in free fall.
Izanuela’s Route
It was over very quickly - far more quickly than Echo had expected. Wind whistling in his ears, the world rotating around him, four or five aerial somersaults and that was it: the roofs of Malaisea were already gleaming in the moonlight just below him. Izanuela’s route … He shut his eyes.
Then came the impact and a terrible pain in his neck.
Strangely enough, though, the pain not only persisted but grew worse. How could it, if he was dead? Would this final pain accompany him to the grave?
He opened his eyes. Fluttering overhead were Vlad the Seven Hundred and Seventy-Fourth and Vlad the Twelfth - he knew this even though the Leathermice hadn’t introduced themselves. They were gripping him by the scruff of the neck and carrying him ever higher.
‘Ouch!’ he said. ‘Many thanks. This is the second time you’ve saved my life. Where are you taking me?’
‘This you must see!’ said Vlad the Twelfth. ‘It’s not a sight one sees every day of the week!’
‘Our lovely home is going up in smoke,’ sighed Vlad the Seven Hundred and Seventy-Fourth.
They carried Echo even higher - higher than he’d ever been before. He gazed down at Ghoolion’s castle, which now looked as toylike as the town that lay at its foot. Hundreds of Leathermice were fluttering up here in the night air, many of them silhouetted against the full moon.
Some of the castle’s windows were belching soot and its walls were wreathed in long plumes of dark dust. It was collapsing, subsiding into the ground like a sinking ship. Lit by intermittent flashes, dense clouds of