The Curse of the Gloamglozer by Paul Stewart, Chris Riddell Page B

Quint.’
    ‘I am,’ said Quint. ‘Shattered!’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘What is the time?’
    ‘Approaching five hours,’ said Tweezel.
    Quint groaned. ‘And school at six,’ he said wearily.
    ‘Look, I'll take care of the master now,’ said the spindlebug considerately. ‘You go and grab yourself a bit of shut-eye. After all, one hour's sleep is better than none.’
    ‘True,’ said Quint wearily. What with the night in the Great Library and the night in the low-sky cage, snatched naps were all the sleep he was getting. He turned to go. As he did so, the spindlebugreached out and grasped him by the shoulder.
    ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘not a word of this to anyone outside the Palace of Shadows. Is that understood?’
    Quint nodded. He'd been in Sanctaphrax long enough by now to know the importance of minding what one said. Rumours, however unfounded, could and often did prove perilous – even fatal. As Welma had so neatly put it, One loose tongue can still many a beating heart .
    ‘My lips shall remain sealed,’ he promised.
    Still fully dressed, Quint collapsed onto his bed and fell into a deep yet troubled sleep the moment his head touched the pillow. Time and again, he dreamt he was falling – from the top of the Central Viaduct; from the ladder-ways high up in the vaulted ceiling of the Great Library; off bridges, out of baskets, from the low-sky cage – arms flailing, legs pedalling. Yet not once did he land. Every time, just before the moment of impact, the dream would shift to a new location as if, even in his sleep, Quint knew that once he struck the ground, his heart would stop.
    It was during the fall from the West Landing that Quint realized – as dreamers sometimes do – that he was in the middle of a recurring nightmare. He'd been peering into the shadows, convinced that someone was there, when all of a sudden and without any warning a white-collar woodwolf had sprung at him. Its yellow eyes glinted. Its yellow teeth sparkled.
    ‘No,’ he groaned as he stepped back, lost his footingand began the long, tumbled fall to the ground far, far below him. ‘It's not happening,’ he gasped. ‘Wake up, Quint. Wake up!’
    He opened his eyes.
    A grey light was streaming through the unshuttered windows. The bell at the top of the Great Hall was chiming. Quint looked round. It was seven hours, and he was late for school. Wilken Wordspool would be furious.
    ‘Oh, Maris!’ he exclaimed, as he leapt out of bed. ‘Why didn't you wake me?’
    Having quickly splashed his face with water from the wash-bowl and run his fingers through his hair, Quint dashed off. He skidded down the flights of stairs, across the marble hallway and out through the front door. To his surprise, the weather had changed completely. The temperature had risen, and the snowfall had given way to torrential rain.
    Collar up and head down, Quint barrelled past the Faculty of Moisture and on towards the school building. And as he rounded the Patriot's Plinth, there it was standing before him: the Fountain House.
    Quint gasped in amazement. It was the first time since he'd arrived in Sanctaphrax that he had seen the Fountain House in all its glory. Now, at last, he could see why all the other apprentice-students in his class called it the Holey Bucket, for in the heavy downpour that was exactly what it looked like – a huge bucket full of holes out of which flowed streams of water.
    ‘It's incredible,’ he murmured.

    At the very top of the building was a huge bowl-shaped structure which all but sheltered the entire dome below it. It was in this bowl that the rain collected. If the rainfall was light, the bowl served as a makeshift bird-bath to the white ravens that lived in the Stone Gardens. When the rainfall was heavy, as it was today, the bowl filled and a valve in its base sprang open. Then the collected water would flow down inside the dome itself, along a series of pipes and out through gushing spouts which sent mighty