The Alchemaster's Apprentice (4 page)
Read The Alchemaster's Apprentice Online
Authors: Walter Moers
‘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
G
hoolion’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 the Alchemaster’s presence.
hoolion’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 the Alchemaster’s presence.
The most prolific source of rumours, however, was Ghoolion’s legendary fat collection. This contained no vegetable fats, no olive or burdock, walnut or rapeseed, trefoil or moonflower oils. To gain admittance to Ghoolion’s collection, a fat had to have been obtained from some living creature, and even if it fulfilled that requirement, the Alchemaster was very choosy. His exclusive selection contained no common-or-garden pork fat, beef suet or goose grease, for he limited it to the adipose tissue of creatures few people cared to eat. The greater their aversion and the rarer the breed, the more the Alchemaster coveted it for himself.
Many will find it hard to accustom themselves to the notion that a Tortoise Spider
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possesses a store of fat. More repugnant still is the thought of extracting it from such a monstrous creature’s body. However, anyone who has grasped that this process and hundreds of even more frightful activities formed part of Ghoolion’s daily routine will readily accept that the happenings in the Alchemaster’s home were the most remarkable in all Malaisea.
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possesses a store of fat. More repugnant still is the thought of extracting it from such a monstrous creature’s body. However, anyone who has grasped that this process and hundreds of even more frightful activities formed part of Ghoolion’s daily routine will readily accept that the happenings in the Alchemaster’s home were the most remarkable in all Malaisea.
Ghoolion possessed the fat of rare Flutterbugs and Murches, Porcotrolls and Werewolves, Cralamanders and Luminants, Snow-swallows and Sunworms, Lunar Mantices and Speluncodiles, Tortovulks and Bathystars, Jellybellies and Tunnel Dragons, Mummybugs and Skunkodors, Ubufants and Zamingos. One had only to name a creature whose appearance on a restaurant menu would have evoked universal revulsion to be assured that Ghoolion possessed a sample of its fat. He was versed in numerous methods of fat extraction ranging from alchemical liposuction to surgical amputation and primitive mechanical extrusion under pressure. But rendering down was still his favourite process, which was why the gigantic cauldron in his laboratory continued to seethe day and night, filling the castle with an endless succession of unappetising smells.
The Alchemaster needed these fats mainly in order to preserve exceptionally volatile substances. In addition to smells, these included fumes, fog, vapour and gases. Using his alchemical equipment, Ghoolion was able to trap and conserve the nebulous mixture of steam and fat droplets continuously given off by his cauldron. He possessed samples extracted from the notorious Murkholm jellyfish and preserved in Shnark dripping, and his collection included cadaveric gas from the Graveyard Marshes, particles of will-o’-the-wisp, Troglotrolls’ mouth odour and the farts of the sulphurous Toadfish. He had trapped and stored thousands of volatile substances, each in the only kind of fat he considered suitable for the purpose.
Installed on a wooden platform approached by a short flight of steps was the most sensational contraption in the laboratory. An impressive agglomeration of glass balloons, some filled with bubbling liquids, others with taxidermal specimens, it was attached to spiral copper tubes, crackling alchemical batteries, Bunsen burners, armatures of precious metal, brass vessels, barometers and hygrometers, pressure cookers, bellows and gold valves. This was the Ghoolionic Preserver, the Alchemaster’s greatest invention to date, with which volatile substances were trapped, condensed and coated in a layer of fat.
Every time Ghoolion used the machine to preserve a new specimen, the apparatus would wheeze and splutter for minutes on end, then finally eject a ball of fat the size of an orange. This he would bear solemnly downstairs to the castle cellars, where there was a low-ceilinged but cool and spacious chamber in which he stored all his balls of fat, neatly arrayed on stone shelves like a connoisseur’s vintage wines.
Echo had heard rumours of Ghoolion’s collection. At the moment, however, he devoted no thought, either to the collection or to the exclusive place he himself would soon occupy within it. For the time being he merely roamed the laboratory, hungry and inquisitive, while Ghoolion busied himself with his alchemical equipment. He tried to ignore the Anguish Candles because the sight of them made his skin crawl. As long as you didn’t scrutinise the pathetic creatures too closely, they looked almost like ordinary candles. They moved so slowly that their progress was undetectable by the casual observer, but their muffled sighs and groans occasionally carried to Echo’s ears, depending on the angle at which he happened to have cocked them.
But there were so many other things to be discovered in this most remarkable room in the most remarkable building in Malaisea. Echo took a closer look at one of the crowded bookshelves, which held an unsystematic jumble of parchments, letters, memoranda, reference books and taxidermal specimens. His mistress had taught him the Zamonian alphabet as a Critten, so he could read the titles of the books on the lowest shelf with ease:
Distillation for Advanced StudentsThe Heptagram of SublimationFurnaces of the SoulSulphur, Saltpetre and Sulphate of Ammonia,
the Alchemist’s Three Great Sibilants
Golem Gâteau and Mandrake Soufflé,
Choice Recipes for the Alchemical CuisineAntimony: Lethal Poison and Sovereign Remedy
The Myth of ‘Prima Zateria’
Metals Susceptible to Pain
and How to Avoid Hurting Them
Zamonium, a Curse or a Blessing?Echo came to a sudden halt. A title had caught his eye:Alchemical Taboos
by
Succubius GhoolionA book by Ghoolion himself? There! There was another:The Confessionator,
A Device for the Interrogation
of Uncooperative Subjects
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Succubius GhoolionIt hadn’t occurred to Echo that the Alchemaster possessed a forename because everyone referred to him as Ghoolion. He knew very little about his host, and even less about exactly what lay in store for him.
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