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flapping, slurping reef round the sledges, kept at bay for the moment by brazier-wielding ghosts – but inching closer by the second.
    Rook stopped. If they went any further, they risked straying into the midst of the muglump pack. He shook his head miserably. There was nothing they could do; they were helpless spectators. He sank to his knees in the cold white mud. How he hated the oozing filth that seemed to cling so, pulling you down, smothering the life out of you, until you were so weary you just didn't care any more …
    All at once, the mire mud erupted in front of him. Felix had cut the last harness and given the signal. With piercing screams, the prowlgrins – all two hundred and fifty of them – stampeded out across the mudflats.
    The mounds closed in around them. Up out of the mud, the muglumps reared, in plain sight at last. Rook stared, transfixed with horror. The last time he'd seen a muglump was with Felix, in the sewers of old Undertown – but that sewer-dweller seemed tame compared to these monsters. The size of a bull hammel-horn, with six thick-set limbs and a long whiplash tail, each muglump slithered through the soft mire mud

    just below the surface, breathing through flapped nostrils.
    Now, with a bone-scraping screech, they pounced on the hapless prowlgrins and, in a frenzy, tore them limb from limb with their razor-sharp claws. Soon, the mire mud was drenched in prowlgrin blood as the muglumps feasted.
    ‘Let's save this library of yours!’
    Felix's booming voice pulled Rook away from the horror. He was helping the librarians down from the sledges, organizing them into teams and picking up the traces.
    ‘We don't have much time,’ said Felix, motioning to the ghosts to join them. ‘They'll be back for us soon.’
    ‘Come, librarians!’ Cowlquape's voice rang out. ‘We must all pull together!’
    Rook, Xanth and the banderbears ran over the mud to join the librarians who, when they saw the huge figures of Wuralo, Weeg and Wumeru, gave a cheer.
    ‘Thank Sky we've got you,’ said the prowlgrin-driver, greeting them. ‘If you and your friends here could set the pace, we'll try to keep up!’
    They picked up the traces and tether-ropes, and each sledge, drawn by a team of ghosts and librarians, resumed its journey across the wastes towards the thin grey ridge in the distance, now twinkling with purple lights. Behind in the gathering dusk, the snarls and grunts of the muglump feast spurred them on.
    One step after the other, Rook thought grimly. One step. Then another, and another…

• CHAPTER FOUR •
THE EDGELANDS
    I t was dark as the exhausted librarians dragged the last library sledge up out of the Mire and onto the flat, rocky pavement of the Edgelands. They were greeted by Undertowners, young and old, who held out flasks of warming oakapple brandy and bowls of broth. There were small braziers ablaze, groups huddled round them for warmth, and clusters of muddy-cloaked Under-towners who'd simply lain down and fallen asleep where they'd stopped.
    Rook rubbed his eyes and looked about him. To the south were the Twilight Woods, their hypnotic golden glow bright and enticing in the darkness. To the north, the Edge fell abruptly away into the bottomless void. Trapped between the two, the vast multitude of Undertowners, librarians, sky pirates and ghosts prepared to sleep, while all around them miasmic mists writhed and swirled – now thinning to show the full moon glinting on the rocky pavement, now thickening and obliterating everything from view.
    Rook accepted a bowl of warm broth from a gnok-goblin matron, and stumbled over to a brazier where the banderbears were being patted on the back by some library scroll-scribes and lectern-tenders. Xanth hung back with that unhappy look in his eyes that Rook noticed whenever his friend was near librarians.
    All around them, the night was throbbing with activity as the Undertowners pitched their tents, raised their wind-breaks and got their