The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,2
proudly. ‘Between now and the next full moon you’ll have the time of your life. I’ll introduce you to gastronomic pleasures no Crat has ever experienced before. I’ll transport you to a peak of culinary perfection from which you can look down like a king on your own kind and all the other domesticated felines that have to eat stale codfish out of a bowl. I’ll show you around my secret garden on the highest roof in Malaisea, which contains the most delightful nooks and hideaways any Crat could dream of. That’s where you’ll be able to walk off your meals and nibble digestive herbs if ever too much rich food upsets your stomach. Then you can go on gorging yourself. Delicious Cratmint grows there, too.’
‘Ah, Cratmint,’ Echo purred wistfully.
‘But that’s not all, oh no! You’ll sleep on the softest cushions beside the warmest stoves in town. I shall attend to your well-being in every respect. And to your entertainment! You’ll have the most enjoyable time you’ve ever had, I promise - and the most exciting and educational. You’ll be permitted to watch me at work, even on the most arcane experiments. I shall let you into secrets which even the most experienced alchemist would give his eye teeth to know. After all, you won’t get a chance to use them yourself.’ Ghoolion uttered a cruel laugh, then submitted Echo to another piercing stare. ‘Well, how about it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Echo said hesitantly. ‘I’m rather fond of life …’
‘But you Crats are reputed to have eight lives.’ Ghoolion bared his yellow teeth in an evil grin. ‘All I want is one.’
‘Sorry, but I believe in only one life before death,’ said Echo. ‘The other seven don’t count.’
The Alchemaster drew himself up with a jerk, rattling like an articulated skeleton.
‘I’m wasting my time here,’ he snapped. ‘There are plenty of other desperate animals in this town. Au revoir! No, goodbye for ever! I wish you a long and agonising death by starvation. Three days of torment, at a guess - four at most. You’ll feel as if you’re devouring yourself from inside out.’
Echo had already been feeling like that for several days. ‘One moment,’ he said. ‘Full board and lodging? Till the next full moon?’
Ghoolion, who had turned away, paused and glanced back over his shoulder.
‘Yes indeed, till the next full moon,’ he whispered seductively. ‘The finest gourmet cuisine. Poached turbot afloat in a sea of milk. Menus with so many courses you’ll lose count of them. That’s my final offer.’
Echo thought it over. What had he got to lose? He could either die empty-bellied within three agonising days or survive with a full stomach for another thirty.
‘Cratmint?’ he asked softly.
‘Cratmint,’ Ghoolion assured him. ‘In full bloom.’
‘Done,’ said Echo, and he held out a trembling little paw.
The Alchemaster’s Castle
Although the town of Malaisea contained plenty of weird buildings in which weird things occurred, Alchemaster Ghoolion’s castle and the things that occurred there were the weirdest of all. Erected on a hill in very ancient times, it overlooked the town like an eagle’s eyrie. The whole of Malaisea could be seen from there, just as there wasn’t a single spot in the town exempt from the sight of the creepy castle. It was a perpetual reminder of the Alchemaster’s constant surveillance.
Constructed of black stone said to have been quarried from the depths of the Gloomberg Mountains, the castle was so cockeyed and misshapen that it resembled a monstrous, other-worldly excrescence. There was no glass in any of the windows. Ghoolion didn’t feel the cold, even in the iciest of winters, so he liked it when the wind came whistling through his castle and played on it like a demonic flute. Installed in several of the gloomy window embrasures were some strangely convoluted telescopes through which he could spy on any part of town whenever the fancy took him. It was rumoured in Malaisea that Ghoolion had ground the lenses of those telescopes with such skill that they enabled him to see round corners and through keyholes - even down chimneys.
It seemed almost incredible that such an apparently haphazard heap of masonry hadn’t collapsed at some stage in its many centuries of existence. If you knew that its builders were the same as those who had constructed the Bookemists’ ancient houses in Bookholm’s Darkman Street, however, you realised that this type of architecture was designed to last for ever. The castle had been standing there before a town named Malaisea existed.