bulging skull. Swathes of filthy bandages and even a rope were wrapped about its trunk, keeping its heaving chest and stitch-grafted abdomen together. What struck Rossamund most was the utter absence of any threwd about the thing. A threwdless monster: how could you ever tell it was coming? Indeed, it was devoid of even a flicker of real vitality: a man-made thing, a dead thing.Yet its full and putrid reek, unmasked by swine's lard, was potent. The gudgeon opened its slavering mouth and a long tongue like a lizard's lolled obscenely, flicking in the dusty air. Even as Rossamund stumbled backward onto the furtigrade and down the way he had come, the abomination stared with hungry curiosity as the crack between door and wall grew ineluctably wider.
'Hmm,' it seethed, licking at the gap between it and the prentice, 'yooouuu mmmake mmeee huuunnngreee…'
With one powerful spring, the made-monster flung itself through the gap, viper-quick, at Rossamund, slamming into the balustrade as it made pursuit.
Tripping, nearly falling, Rossamund blundered down the stair. The gudgeon staggered and turned with a dry, rattling hiss. On the lower landing Rossamund twisted and flung the potive at it as it pounced at him from on high. His aim was as true at a natural throw as it was off with a firelock. The Frazzard's powder burst against the creature's neck and shoulder with a flash of bluish sparks and a series of tight detonations that sounded like the popping of corks.
'Aaiieeee!' The creature hit the wooden steps with a crash and tumbled into Rossamund as it fell. A thousand stars erupting across his senses, the prentice was crushed over and over between wooden step and rever-man. Together they toppled a whole other flight, then another, striking the banister rail on the lower landing hard, causing it to crack dangerously.
The gudgeon was on him in an instant, pressing him down, its whelming stench all about him, teeth snapping clack! clack! seeking to nip at exposed flesh: fingers, knees, cheeks. In white, blind terror Rossamund heaved the abominable creature off and shoved it-almost threw it though it was twice his size-across the tiny landing. Free of its imprisoning bulk, he sprang up the stairs he had just descended so painfully, pointlessly crying, 'Help! Help!'
'Ahhh! Yoouuu liiittle beeeast!' he heard it hiss behind him.The rever-man was fumbling about on hands and knees, its piggy little eyes burned out by the Frazzardian chemistry. The distinct peppery-salty smell of the spent potive spiced the close fug of the furtigrade. 'I caaan stiiill heeeaaaarrrr yoouuu…'
The gudgeon shuffled toward Rossamund and he turned to face it, scuttering up each step upon his bottom.
It made a strange cackling. 'I could eeeat yoouurrr kiiind aaall the looong looong daayyy!' It sprang catlike at what it believed to be Rossamund's position, and struck the banister three steps below the prentice with enough force to smash the rails to flinders, which toppled down into the darkness. Nothing could stop the gudgeon. It bounced off the ruined wood, its arm a spasming dead weight, the left shoulder dislocated and deformed by the blow-the vile creature so utterly ravening it was destroying itself to get to him. It pounced again.
Rossamund kicked out with all the might his horror could muster-and missed. The unhallowed thing gripped his flailing leg and bit at his shin, a bite meant to tear away muscle. Its crooked teeth met proofed galliskins, cruelly pinching flesh against bone but failing to penetrate. Once again Rossamund had been saved by the wonders of gauld. With a yelp, he lashed with his free leg, striking the putrid thing upon its face. The gudgeon must not have been well knit, for its jaw gave way with sickening ease under his boot-heel; teeth sprayed and clattered about the stair. The cobbled-together thing gurgled and shrieked and sought to grasp Rossamund in a death grip. Kicking again, the prentice got his footing and bounded up the stairs.
Below, the gudgeon was hissing and sucking through its mangled mouth, struggling once again up the furtigrade seeking nothing but gory murder, utterly heedless of its broken parts.
Rossamund extracted another salpert of Frazzard's powder. Oh, for something more deadly! Yet he did not dare use the loomblaze for fear it would cause the dry, dusty furtigrade to take fire, and start an unstoppable conflagration right within the foundations of the manse. He threw the potive hard on the step before the gudgeon, seeking to make a brief barrier, to give the abomination second thoughts.The potive popped and crackled as it erupted and sprayed the gudgeon again. With its cries of rage oddly flat and muffled in the squeeze of the dusty furtigrade, Rossamund dashed up the stairs, pain jarring up his bitten shin.
The foul thing was staggering up after him-he could see it through the frame and rails-eyes fizzing, weeping gore, utterly ruined by two doses of Frazzard's powder, jaw a crooked mass, mouth dribbling unstoppably. There was something almost pathetic about this abominable creature with its terrible injuries, yet it did not heed its damage. With long, clumsy reaches of its arms, the gudgeon slapped its hands on a higher step, felt the way and pulled itself up, gaining pace. There was no escaping the thing. Rossamund could only try to flee up the furtigrade and out into the unknown cavities of the vault above.
'Help!' he cried, a small pathetic sound in this claustrophobic fastness.
The gudgeon slunk around the landing below, starting up the very stair he was upon. It jabbered at him incomprehensibly, trying to form vile taunts with its broken, dribbling maw.
'Help!' Rossamund bellowed again. He knew it was hopeless, but sanguine hope kept him crying.
He set his feet on the creaking boards of the tiny landing by the wrenched door, giving himself a little space to fight from, and seized a caste of loomblaze from his salumanticum. He had to risk it or perish. Rossamund watched the ill-gotten thing climb, and waited. Waited till it was close enough.
'Whhyyy-bbll-ssooo-blbb-ssstiiilll-blbl, littbblle-bblmooorsel-bbl,' the horror drooled and, despite blindness, gathered itself to pounce.
With a tenorlike wail, Rossamund leaped down the stairs and grappled the foul creature once more, hitting the banister rail as they collided, wrenching it with an ominous crack. The gudgeon tried to pound at him, but Rossamund was in close, too close for its swings to be effective. It thumped at his shoulders, pushing him down beneath its wrath. He gagged and spat bile.Yet as it smothered him, the prentice gripped the gudgeon about its festering neck and shoved the caste of loomblaze down into the foul, broken mouth, right into its crop.The gudgeon tried to chew off his hand, its broken jaw doing little more than a gory flapping. It wrapped its tongue about Rossamund's wrist and with groping, gripping hands sought to gouge at the prentice's face. Straining and twisting his head, Rossamund wrenched himself loose and away, bringing his arm back sharply to chop at the creature's throat, where the frangible vial had lodged. At the second blow the gudgeon gave a convulsing, gargling shriek: a half-human, piglike squeal. Yellow-green gouts of light flared from its mouth and nostrils as the loomblaze erupted within its neck. It writhed and arched its back, still screaming as Rossamund kicked it away and fumbled for safety on higher steps. He watched in horror as the burning rever-man toppled against the already weakened rail. It gave way and the beast plummeted through the thin gap about which the furtigrade wound, shattering the rail below; falling, colliding and falling again a score of times more than Rossamund could follow, before abruptly halting, a small bright fire in the darkest depths below.
Laboring for breath, shin a torture, his mind's eye revisiting the horror over and over in a giddy spin, Rossamund pulled himself away from the edge of the gap. He shook himself, stood, and on wobbling legs went as fast as he could down the furtigrade, terrified that some other revenant-beast might be waiting for him above. Far down the dangerously shuddering stair, deeper still, he could see the dying flicker of the loomblaze burning.The frame of the furtigrade began to crack and sag, the age-rotten wood not able to support such rough use. Back at the walled valley he leaped from the tottering stair and ran, legs still shaky, back the way he had come, finding the original four-way vault. Going left again he pushed on, listening always for sounds of pursuit, another caste of loomblaze ever ready in his grasp. So intent was he on knowing if he was followed he took little notice of the perpendicular twists and the turns, choosing left when he could, going either up or down with an instinct born of desperation. If he hit a dead end he would simply turn about and take the next left, eyes wide as wide could be, ears pricked for any wheezing shuffling of a gudgeon in pursuit.
Driven by the nauseating urgency to be free of this crowding, dusty labyrinth, Rossamund pushed on through more and more cramped passages and buried, forgotten rooms. Stumbling dizzily several times, he had no notion of how long or how far he had come, but at some point the way became straighter and the architecture familiar. At the top of a solid flight of stone steps he stopped in front of a door with a very ordinary-looking handle in it, just like those on the doors of the manse. Excited, he tugged. The door resisted at first, but after a determined pull it opened with a clatter. The relief was powerful, hysterical. Rossamund sprang out, all sense of decorum abandoned.
