Titus Groan the Countess. Here, Steerpike takes the opportunity to spy on the Groan family. Despite having led him there, the fiercely loyal Flay is angered by Steerpike's eavesdropping and locks him in a small room. Steerpike, however, escapes out of a window, risking his life above a sheer drop. He manages to climb up onto the roofs and towers of Gormenghast, and from there begins his rise to power. After spending twenty-four hours clambering over the enormous castle searching for a means to enter, Steerpike manages to climb in through a window into the secret attic of Lady Fuchsia Groan. Fuchsia,
Gloriana (novel) doubt," from other spheres, perhaps separated by layers of ether. Gloriana's Thane of Hermiston has travelled to some of them, and Albion has been visited from other spheres by such as Cagliostro and Adolphus Hiddler, an Austrian who claimed to have conquered his own world. The novel's atmosphere owes something to English writer Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast" novels, published in the 1940s and 1950s, and Moorcock dedicated "Gloriana" to the memory of Peake, one of his literary heroes. Similar to the castle-city of Gormenghast, Gloriana's palace is riddled with abandoned chambers, apartments, hallways, passages, balconies, stairways, and caverns—"the walls"—within which live