‘I liked the shadows in the catacombs and they liked me. They concealed me from Bookhunters and allowed me to become one with them, so that I could suddenly emerge and fall on my enemies like a ghost. They enshrouded me and kept watch over my slumbers. It’s not surprising that people in many parts of the world call me the Shadow King, although no name could be less appropriate. No one rules the shadows of the catacombs.’
Homuncolossus gave a little bark of laughter and fell silent.
‘Are you referring to the shadows that flit through this castle?’ I asked.
He looked up. ‘So you’ve seen them too? Yes, they’re the ones I mean, but first things first. All in good time. I still haven’t got to Shadowhall Castle in my story, not by a long chalk.’
I was afraid he might give me another harsh reprimand, but he simply picked up where he’d left off.
‘All Bookhunters have a style of their own, their identifying marks, their own types of armour, their special weapons, methods of hunting and killing and so on. These are dictated by their personal vanity and code of honour. They may band together to carry out joint military operations, but they always go their own way afterwards. Most of them are inveterate loners. That was my great advantage from the start, and they still haven’t grasped that they’ll never deal with me unless they cooperate. But then they’d have to split the bounty and they’re too avaricious for that. So I picked them off one by one, and it gave me particular pleasure to employ their own techniques against them. For instance, Hokum Bogus used to hound his adversaries until they went mad with fear. I drove him insane by whispering to him out of the darkness for a whole year without ever showing my face.
‘The Krood brothers, Aggro and Glubb, were among the few Bookhunters who operated as a team and attacked their victims from two directions at once. I managed to trick them into slitting each other’s throats.
‘Yonti Yooble, known as “The Sexton” because he liked to bury his opponents beneath piles of books, I buried beneath a pile of books.
‘But what I enjoyed most was using my own body as a weapon in one-to-one confrontations. I sensed that I was growing stronger every day. If paper is compressed tightly enough it turns back into timber. My arms are as robust as tree trunks, my fingers as sharp as spears, my teeth as keen as razor blades.
‘I hounded many Bookhunters to death, pursuing them with my inexhaustible reserves of energy until their heart or their whole organism failed and they simply dropped dead. I led them astray, luring them over precipices or into their own traps. I ambushed them in the most unlikely places - even in their own secret haunts. That frightened them most of all, because they now knew that nowhere was safe. Some I knocked unconscious and dragged off to remote parts of the catacombs they’d never dared to set foot in before. They may still be roaming around there, if the Spinxxxxes haven’t devoured them. Either way, their cries of despair will be audible for ever in the Chamber of Captive Echoes.’
Homuncolossus rose and proceeded to circle his throne as he spoke.
‘I became the secret ruler of the catacombs, it’s true, but nobody knew what I really looked like, because anyone who did was dead shortly afterwards. That was how the legends began, and soon there were a hundred different notions and descriptions of who or what I was. To some I was an animal, to others a ghost, a demon, an insect, or a combination of all three. That made me proud and gave me an unfamiliar feeling of omnipotence that intoxicated me more and more.
‘One sigh or cry of mine was enough to depopulate whole areas of the catacombs and drive out their inhabitants for ever. I had only to kill one Bookhunter for rumour to transform him into a dozen and for two dozen Bookhunters to abandon their profession. Many believed me to be a whole host of shadows, an army of darkness, a legion of ghostly, invincible warriors that marched through the catacombs and devoured their victims alive.’
Homuncolossus came to a halt and fixed me with his dark, empty eye sockets.
‘How do you think I felt with all that blood on my hands? When everyone or everything I met, even the vilest and most vicious denizen of the catacombs, shrank away from me in terror? Did I feel guilty? Remorseful? What do you think?’
He laughed.
‘No, anything but! I felt wonderful! It was a sensation of absolute freedom. I was free at last from all moral constraints, from feelings of guilt, responsibility, compassion and other such pointless ballast. That’s the greatest freedom of all, take it from me. Artistic licence is a joke in comparison.’
Homuncolossus returned to his throne. He had uttered the last few words in a loud, resonant tone, as if drunk on the sound of his own voice. Now his voice sank almost to a whisper.
‘All the mental energy I used to devote to my literary work I now invested in the art of killing. I was always trying to think of even more ingenious ways of sending Bookhunters to kingdom come and, believe me, I thought of one or two. I hardly noticed that the shadows of the catacombs had turned away from me. I lay down to sleep, but they no longer tucked me up. I registered their absence but I didn’t miss them, nor did I need them any longer. What protection could they afford to someone like me? Me, Homuncolossus, whom no one dared to approach? Whom everyone feared more than death itself?’
Homuncolossus paused and stiffened for a moment. The candlelight flickered over his rune-covered body and I tried to imagine the horror felt by any Bookhunter taken unawares by such an apparition.
‘On one of my restless subterranean reconnaissance patrols I came to a cave in the upper reaches of the catacombs which a megalomaniac book prince had converted into his secret palace. It contained a hall of mirrors that must have been abandoned centuries before - the cobwebs were thick as fishing nets and the mirrors milky with dust. I must have activated some secret mechanism as I walked in, because the whole room slowly started to revolve. The dust and the cobwebs began to dance to a gentle melody that sounded like a melancholy children’s song played by a mechanical piano in need of tuning. The walls of the circular room were lined with a hundred-odd mirrors, each in a gold frame and big enough to reflect a figure as bulky as mine. Many were cracked and others too thickly coated with dust, but a few were clear enough for me to see myself in. It was ages since I’d seen my own reflection. I had quickly averted my eyes on the few occasions when I glimpsed my new face and body in an enemy’s shield or a pool of water, but this time I gazed at my reflection with a strange blend of pleasure and disgust. I perceived for the first time the strength and majesty that emanated from my massive form and - also for the first time - the full extent of the terror it inspired. Simultaneous thrills of happiness and fear ran down my spine. I remembered admiring my reflection as a child and hoping to become just like this figure in the mirror. Just as solitary.
‘And then I started to weep. I shed no tears, for no tears have been available to me since Smyke did heaven knows what to my eyes, but my emotions were the same as those of a weeping child who feels that everyone has abandoned him. Why? Because I realised what I had become: Pfistomel Smyke’s tool and accomplice, who got drunk on the blood he shed to no purpose, merely so as not to have to remember the person he used to be. I saw the monster into which I had transformed myself. Not the one fabricated by Smyke, but the real monster deep inside this paper shell, for which I myself bore responsibility. I smashed the mirrors - smashed them all in a towering rage.’
Homuncolossus hid his face in his hands. Several Animatomes had sidled right up to him and were emitting thin, piping sounds as if trying to console him. He straightened up again.
‘For some considerable time,’ he went on in a firmer tone of voice, ‘one Bookhunter had been dogging my footsteps with exceptional tenacity. Not only did he venture into areas no normal Bookhunter would have dared to enter, but he was forever surprising me with his tricks, his intelligence and staying power. He never set eyes on me, of course, but he aroused my curiosity to such an extent that I began to study him.’
‘Colophonius Regenschein,’ I put in
quietly.
‘Correct. I learnt his name from a dying Bookhunter who also told me that Regenschein was no ordinary hunter. He hunted books. Far from lying in wait for other Bookhunters, he tried to avoid them, and the most impressive thing about him was that, although the others kept trying to kill him, he succeeded again and again in escaping or even eliminating them. I actually helped him once, when Rongkong Koma tried to bury him alive beneath a bookcase.’
‘He went looking for you because he wanted to be your friend,’ I was bold enough to interject in a low voice.
‘Really?’ said Homuncolossus.
I wondered whether to inform him of Regenschein’s death. It seemed an inopportune moment, however, so I decided not to do so until later.
‘That was when I began to think about myself,’ Homuncolossus went on. ‘Regenschein demonstrated that an inhabitant of the catacombs could do something other than hunt and be hunted, kill and eat and die. He tried to steer clear of confrontations instead of seeking them as I did. This vast subterranean realm, which contained a store of invaluable knowledge, was in the hands of murderers and bandits, wild beasts, rats and insects whose senseless ravages were rendering it uninhabitable and would one day destroy it completely. Regenschein, it seemed, had different aspirations. I watched him making notes and read them in secret while he slept. He wanted to salvage the catacombs’ greatest treasures, not in order to possess them himself, but to conserve them and make them accessible to the general public. That earned my respect. I watched and followed him more closely still. When he visited the surface, as he did from time to time, I trailed him ever higher into the upper reaches of the catacombs and the vicinity of the world I had avoided until then - the world I was trying to forget. The result was just what I’d been dreading: overcome with curiosity about life and freedom in the real world above, I began to spy on the inhabitants of Bookholm through the chinks and cracks in their floors. So near to them again, yet so far, I was separated by a magical frontier I was not at liberty to cross. Only a few feet above my head was an immense stage, a vast theatre presenting an endless tragicomedy, a spectacle I never tired of observing with envy and nostalgia. It was the life Smyke had wrested from me, real life lived in the light of the two heavenly bodies that illumine our planet; the diametrical opposite of my own ratlike existence in subterranean gloom. I attended timber-time readings, seated beneath the cellar steps like an old ghost, and listened to lousy poems being recited by tipsy jobbing poets as if they were the music of the spheres.
‘I also watched writers at work in their shabby basements. There’s nothing more tedious than the sight of an author writing, believe me, but I never tired of watching some pale, careworn novice scratching away at a pad of cheap paper. That was how I myself had looked in a state of supreme happiness during the finest hours of my former existence.
‘The hatred I felt for Smyke became steadily more ferocious and preoccupied me more and more. I conceived a plan to break into his library and lie in wait for him there. Sooner or later he would visit it; then I could kill him.
‘But whenever I tried to get to the library I wound up in a cunning maze of passages that made it impossible for me to reach my destination. The Smykes must have developed and perfected this defensive system for centuries, because it’s genuinely impenetrable - the most sophisticated labyrinth in the catacombs. It took me days, sometimes weeks, to find my way out again, and once I almost died there of thirst. I was eventually forced to accept that Smyke was beyond my reach.’
Homuncolossus sank back on his throne and sighed.
‘That was when I resolved to descend as far as possible into the catacombs, never to return. I renounced my existence as a hunter of Bookhunters and plunged ever deeper into the bowels of Bookholm.
‘Not even the rubbish dump of Unholm and its surrounding graveyards or the Rusty Gnomes’ railroad station seemed secluded and deserted enough for my taste, so I went deeper and deeper. That was how I discovered Shadowhall Castle. It reminded me of my childhood castles in the air, as if my imagination had built it for me a long time ago. I made Shadowhall my home. This was where I wanted to live and some day die. This was where I rediscovered the beloved shadows that had fled from me and my rampages. At Shadowhall we finally made peace.’
I ventured to ask Humuncolossus a question that had been plaguing me: ‘Do you know who or what those Weeping Shadows are?’
‘I can’t say for sure, I must admit,’ he replied. ‘After much thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re the restless souls of old books. Buried and forgotten down here, they now lament their sad fate in perpetuity. All I can say for certain about the Weeping Shadows is that they mean no harm. If you have the good fortune to be tucked up by one when you go to sleep, let it happen and don’t be afraid. You’ll be rewarded with dreams of exceptional beauty.’
He rose from his throne.
‘I’ve talked a great deal,’ he said. ‘More than I have in a very long time. Now I’m weary.’ And he prepared to leave the throne room.
‘Thank you,’ I called after him. ‘Thank you for your trust and hospitality. Please answer me one last question.’
He paused.
‘Am I your guest or your prisoner?’ I asked.
‘You are free to leave Shadowhall Castle at any time,’ he replied. ‘If you can do so unaided.’
Then, with scores of Animatomes trailing after him, he strode out.
The Plan
I didn’t see Homuncolossus again for the next three days. At sporadic intervals I came across food and water, which had obviously been left out for me, and I sometimes heard rustles in the darkness while vainly reconnoitring Shadowhall Castle’s nightmarish architecture, but this was all that enabled me to infer his presence.
I had reached a tacit understanding with the Animatomes: we left each other in peace. They no longer fled in panic when I entered a room, though they respectfully stood aside when I crossed it. I sometimes threw them a few of the desiccated bookworms of which my meals consisted and, although hesitant at first, they didn’t spurn them.
As for the Weeping Shadows, I was never sure if they registered my presence at all, or if their presence occupied another dimension that happened to coincide with ours at the point where Shadowhall Castle was located. From time to time I would glimpse one gliding through the eternal twilight, sobbing. Then my heart became heavy and I welcomed its disappearance.
Once, when I was lying sleepless in the semi-darkness, one of them entered the room and enshrouded me in its shadowy self with a sigh. Paralysed with fear at first, I soon became weary and dozed off. I dreamt of a city whose curious buildings were composed of the most unusual materials - cloud or flame, ice or rain - until it occurred to me that these were the imaginary edifices of which the Shadow King had dreamt in his childhood. Then I awoke to find the shadow gone.
Whether a guest or a prisoner, I was quite uninterested in leaving Shadowhall Castle ‘unaided’. Once outside, where would I have gone? Back into the domain of the Harpyrs and Bookhunters, or still deeper - if that were possible - into the catacombs?
If anyone could show me the way back to Bookholm, it was Homuncolossus himself, so I racked my brains on those endless, lonely excursions for some way of persuading him to guide me back to the surface. I was in an extremely weak negotiating position, admittedly, because I had nothing to offer in return but gratitude. What good would that be to him? It would only reopen old wounds and rekindle his hatred of Pfistomel Smyke. He would watch me ascending to freedom, whereas he himself would have to return to the darkness below. From the Shadow King’s point of view, not a good bargain.
I kept wondering what he really wanted of me. Why did he tolerate me, of all living creatures endowed with speech, in his palace populated by Animatomes and Weeping Shadows? Why had he told me his story?
One thing was certain: I would never succeed in leaving Shadowhall Castle, that place of windowless exile, without his help.
Windowless e
xile . . .
What did that remind me of? Of course, a passage in Colophonius Regenschein’s book. All at once, I perceived a thoroughly realistic way of helping Homuncolossus to resume life on the surface of Bookholm. Regenschein had devised the solution a long time ago. Yes, that could be the answer, the incentive Homuncolossus needed. But first he would have to reappear so that I could submit my plan.
Conversation with a Dead Man
Towards the end of the fourth day (if one could speak of days in the catacombs; I simply counted the periods during which I was awake as days and the hours I spent asleep as nights) I found Homuncolossus in the dining hall where my frugal repasts were customarily left out for me. The spacious room was lit by only a few candles, the way he liked it. He was seated at one of the tables with a key, a jug and a glass in front of him. One or two Animatomes were scurrying around at his feet.
‘Good evening,’ I said.
He gave me a long, silent stare.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said at length. ‘Good evening. It’s an age since I heard anyone say that. I never know for sure if it’s morning, noon or night. Time means little down here. Nothing at all, in fact. Here, this food is for you. Sit down.’
He pushed a bowl of root vegetables towards me, also the water jug and glass.
‘Tell me,’ he said when I was seated, ‘in your opinion, how many days have elapsed since our last meeting?’
‘About four,’ I replied.
‘Four?’ he exclaimed in astonishment. ‘And I thought it was only one! I really have lost all sense of time.’
He reached beneath the table and produced a bottle. ‘Would you care for a glass of wine with your meal?’
‘Wine?’ I repeated, rather embarrassed by the tremor of excitement in my tone. I pulled myself together. ‘Yes, some wine would be nice,’ I said, doing my best to speak in a calm, steady voice.
He poured me a glass of red wine, and only iron self-control prevented me from draining it at a gulp. I took a sip. The wine tasted more delicious than any I’d ever drunk.
The City of Dreaming Books Page 36
