The Last of the Gloamglozer

Anyway, we thought up a new way of reading the Edge Chronicles while you wait for the Sedge.....take one sentence from each and put them together!
The characters change name, gender and even species! Who could have known that Linius Pallitax was a hammelhorn, or that a simple shryke tally-hut could strike fear into the hearts of many?

Chapter 1

The young under-librarian awoke drenched in sweat. High up above, beams of dim light streamed in through a circle of arched windows and criss-crossed the shadowy air. How they knew the sun was rising over Undertown, high above them, was a mystery to Rook Barkwater.
The spindlebug paused for a moment and looked up. The other nineteen under-librarians in the small sleeping chamber twitched and stirred in their hammocks, but slept on. The light glinted on quivering antennae, and on the goblet and oval-shaped bottle of cordial which stood on the burnished copper tray clutched in the creature's claws. Until then Rook had the sewers to himself. "Where are you, master? Where are you?" he murmured to himself.
The oil lamp fixed to the cold, damp, mossy wall flickered as he passed by. The antennae quivered impatiently. "For Sky's sake, don't wake up," Rook whispered as Millwist scratched his nose.
"I hear you, master," the creature responded. Rook crept out of the chamber and into the gloom of the narrow corridor outside. And with the goblet clinking against the bottle, he began the long climb up the staircase. His boots splashed in the puddles on the floor and water dripped down his neck. What was more, the creature knew all the palace's secrets, his antennae picking up the whispers, the gossip, the rumours and cries. But still it seeped through the walls and dripped from every ceiling. Indeed, even for a spindlebug, he was old. It fell on mattresses, on blankets, on weapons, clothes - and on the librarian-scholars themselves. So long ago, so very long ago...
The dream still echoed in his head. They'd destroyed the precious fungus beds and enslaved the spindlebugs who tended them. White-collared. He was a young bug then, fast, quick-thinking. Their terrible yellow eyes flashing in the dark forest... Then he had fled into the Deepwoods; always listening, always on his guard. He didn't know what to do. Tweezel reached the second landing, the place where he'd first laid eyes on his new master - Linius Pallitax, the youngest Most High Academe anyone could remember - and his young wife. Everywhere were flashing yellow eyes and the sharp, barked commands of the slave-takers. Big with child, and so pretty and full of life, she had seemed out of place in the dusty old palace.It was a nightmare, but what came next was worse; far worse... Tweezel stopped. The howling of the slavers' wolf pack was receding into the distance. Pitiful sounds. Rook would never see them again. And then, silence. Something huge...
He still remembered how long the silence had seemed to last and how impenetratable it had been. Then he'd woken up, drenched inn sweat, with the shrill sounds of piebald rats in his ears. The seconds had ticked past, one after the other... The nightmare would return every few weeks, always the same and as far back as he could remember. The sound of the young mistress. Rook took the left fork at the end of the corridor and went immediately left again; then, fifty strides further on, he turned sharp right into the opening to a low, narrow pipe. It had been, Tweezel thought, almost like the old days when he'd first come to the great floating city, and tthe palace had been a noisy, bustling place, bursting with life.

But not Rook Barkwater. Why, even he, Tweezel, had been considered a marvel! He knew that the pipe he was in was a short cut to the Great Storm Chamber Library - and that even though he had grown tall since he first discovered it, and now had to stoop and stumble his way along, it was still the quickest route. Oh, happy, happy memories!
To his right, the broad Main Tunnel disappeared back into shadows. And he, Tweezel, the strange creature seemingly made out of glass, had been appointed its custodian. To his left, it ended with a great, ornate arch, on the other side of which lay the chamber itself. But times had changed. No matter that he had seen it almost every day for the best part of a decade, the place never failed to amaze him. Earth-study was no longer fashionable, it seemed. The buoyant lecterns - which housed the vast library of precious barkscrolls and bound treatises - gently bobbed in their 'flocks', straining at the chains which secured them to the magnificent Blackwood Bridge below. With the completion of the College of Cloud, the Palace of Lights had finally been surrounded totally, and thrown into deep shadow.
Beside it was the older Lufwood Bridge and numerous gantries; below, the floating waters of this, the largest of Undertown's sewers. Tweezel sighed. No dripping water or leaks of any kind were permitted here; nothing that could harm the precious library that so many earth-scholars had died to establish and protect. The old librarian had died and a sky-scholar had been elected new Most High Academe. 'Remember,my lad,' he would say, 'this great library of ours represents just a fraction of the knowledge that lies out there in the Deepwoods.' But shadows were his friend. 'Never forget, Rook, that there are those who hate librarian academics and mistrust earth-scholarship; those who betrayed us and persecuted us, who blame us for stone-sickness and have forced us to seek refuge down here, far from the light of the sun.' And then - some sixty years later - Linius, the young Professor of Mistsifting had become the Most High Academe.
'But we shall not give up.' But he had been wrong. 'One day, my lad, it will be your turn.' He respected the old ways.
There was someone on the adjacent bridge, which was unusual for so early in the morning - and though it was probably just a lugtroll there to clean, Rook didn't want to take any chances. The sky-scholars hadn't liked that one bit - then or now. It was something every under-librarian did automatically, for those who made an error about which buoyant lectern was a the end of which chain did not last long in the Great Storm Chamber. Linius was the Most High Academe. A Study of Banderbears' Behaviour in Their Natural Habitat, it was called. 'Come in, Tweezel,' came a weary voice. Rook Barkwater owed his life to the treatise, and he could never forget it. 'He sends word of his estimated time of arrival.' Link by link, the chain wound its way round the central axle and the buoyant sumpwood lectern came lower. 'Three hours, master.' The last thing he wanted to do was keel over backwards and fall into the sluggish water of the underground river.
'Stop!' his daughter commanded, and Linius felt her little fingers teasing at the knot behind his head. The honey-coloured wood felt warm and silky to the touch.
However, as with all timbers of the first order of buoyant wood, the minutest shift in temperature or humidity could destablise the timber - and so the sumpwood lecterns bobbed and jittered constantly, making sitting at one for any length of time an art in itself.
'All right,' she said. He shifted his position on the bench.
Linius did as he was told. 'That's better,' he said. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Squinting into the bright spherical light above the lectern, Rook reached up and pulled a large, bound volume from the uppermost shelf of the floating lectern. Maris held her breath. As he laid the treatise out on the desk before him, he felt a familiar surge of excitement, tinged with just a hint of fear. When she'd started out, making a copy of the ancient Quadrangle Mosaic had seemed like such a good idea, and Maris had spent several hours the previous day down in the airy marble square in front of the Great Hall taking detailed measurements of the intricate design.
His head bowed forwards. The angle of the lightning bolts.
No longer was he sitting at a floating lectern, in a vaulted chamber, deep down underground...
Later, she had turned the figures into a sketch, which she was now using to make as accurate a reproduction as she could.

The air was cool and filled with the sound of bird-cry and rodent-screech... 'It's...'
The yodelled communication cry, he read, is meant for one specific banderbear alone. Maris swallowed anxiously. In this respect it is as if a name had been used. A caterbird, perhaps.
Rook looked up. Or maybe the white ravens circling the towering Loftus Observatory...
One matter appears certain. He leaned across the redoak table and tousled his daughter's hair.
It is perhaps this fact that makes banderbears such solitary animals. Maris smiled. The further my travels take me...

'What about over there?' Linius suggested, and pointed to a gap in one of the zigzag lightning bolts.
'The further my travels take me...'
She looked up and smiled shyly - but her father had turned away and was staring out of the tall glass balcony-doors, a puzzled frown on his forehead. How he would love to explore the endless Deepwoods for himself, to spend time with banderbears, to hear their plaintive yodelling by the light of the full moon...
'What? I...' Linius muttered absent-mindedly. Of course! he thought, and smiled bitterly.
'Oh, I see.' It was the day of the Announcement Ceremony, when three apprentice librarians would be selected to complete their education far off in the Deepwoods, at Lake Landing.
'Tell me, Maris, why did you decide to make your mosaic in the shape of the Great Seal?'
He was a foundling, a nobody.
'Yes, child,' said Linius, a little impatiently.
Varis, daughter of the High Librarian, Fenbrus Lodd, was the author of the treatise Rook now held in his hands.
'Oh, that,' said Maris. Yes, Rook Barkwater did indeed owe his life to this particular bound treatise.
'But my picture is of the Quadrangle Mosaic.'
The old librarian professor, Alquix Venvax, had befriended the sad, lonely boy and done what he could, but Rook was well aware that an orphan with no family connections would never be more than an under-librarian.
'Three hours we spent there yesterday.'
Unlike Felix.
Linius turned round and peered into the shadows. If he couldn't go to Lake Landing, then at least Felix could.
'No, it's the Queen of the Wodgiss parade,' the voice replied sarcastically. He was tall for his age, powerfully-built and athletic. How different from the academics Deepwooders were. Felix was an apprentice and had made up his mind to look after the small orphan his sister had found. With Welma, the woodtroll nurse, what you saw was what you got.
It didn't matter.
'If three hours of standing around in the bitter wind is what it takes for a daughter to get her father's attention, then so be it.'
Felix fought the apprentices who tried to bully Rook, and Rook helped Felix with those studies the older boy found difficult.
'No offence intended,' she added. And now all the hard work was about to pay off, for Felix was one of the favourites to be picked to go to Lake Landing and complete his education. He knew there was truth to her words. One day, he might even be sitting at this lectern with Felix's treatise in his hand. The floating rock of Sanctaphrax turned once more, sending the shadows darting round the vast room.
'You, there!' She was seated in a hanging-sofa with her embroidery frame on her lap and Maris's pet wood-lemkin on her shoulder. Surely he couldn't have been spotted. The shadows swallowed her up once more. Whoever it was must be shouting at that lugtroll on the Lufwood Bridge.
'Quite, quite,' said Linius, who hadn't heard a word.
Rook groaned. The long, lace curtains fluttered in the breeze. That was when he realized how high up he was.
'I could have sworn Tweezel said three...'
Now he was trapped, far up in the air on the buoyant lectern, which was floating higher from the Blackwood Bridge than any of the others.
Waa-iiiii - kha-kha-kha-kha-kha...
Rook peered down and swallowed unhappily.
'Come on, now.'
A fastidious, flabby individual with small pink eyes and bushy side-whiskers, Squinx was one of the library's various under-professors. But the lemkin would not quieten down, and when Welma tried to hold it in her lap,it scratched at her legs and slapped her face with its prehensile tail, so hard that it left an angry white weal on her cheek. He liked order, and he liked comfort and - as he'd grown older - he'd also discovered a distinct aptitude for throwing his (increasing) weight around. The lemkin leapt to the floor and bounded towards the door, its large eyes narrowed and mottled blue fur bristling. Rook stared down at the portly, red-faced individual.
'You naughty thing, you.'
They both knew that Rook couldn't get down without the under-professor's help.
'Waa-iiii - kha-kha-kha-kha,' the lemkin shrieked back.
'Then you shouldn't be up there in the first place, should you?' said Squinx triumphantly.
'At once!'
'Should you?' he rasped. He'd never approved of her keeping a pet in the palace, and the last thing she wanted to do was give him an excuse to get rid of it.
'No, sir!' Squinx barked back.
And then Maris saw why.
'Do you know how many rules and regulations you have broken, Rook?'
Its sails fluttered, its brasswork gleamed in the golden light of the setting sun.
'One, the buoyant lecterns are not to be used in the hours between lights-out and the tilderhorn call.'
What was more, from the curve and carvings of its shiny polished bow, she recognized it as the Galerider.
'Three, under no circumstances whatsoever,' he hissed, speaking each word slowly and clearly, 'is an under-librarian ever to board a buoyant lectern.'
The next moment, a gangplank was lowered onto the balustrade, and the Galerider's elegant captain descended.

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