by Philip Reeve
Shielding their faces as best they could from the rain of dust and shards, the sorcerers stopped, and turned, and looked up at the Keep. It was not falling as a felled tree would: it was just crumpling in on itself, collapsing down into the cloven mountaintop from which it had emerged so long ago. The bits that were dropping off it were just the extra towers and ramparts with which the Lych Lord had encrusted it: gutterings and gargoyles.
“What about the other buildings?” Prawl shouted through the din. “Will they fall too?”
Fentongoose shook his head. “The Keep is different. Men made those other buildings. They ought to stand. Unless the Keep actually falls on them. . .”
A whole tower came slamming down. A fleeing Chilli Hat was flattened by a huge siege catapult which had come tumbling down the Keep’s flank from some disintegrating rampart high above. The sorcerers with their escort of newborn dragonets went hurrying into the shelter of an alcove near the gate; a useful alcove that was not part of the Keep, but carved into one of the crags of Meneth Eskern itself. Goblins were still running past, dragging large pieces of loot they’d liberated, some forming bickering gangs to try and haul away whole ships and carriages. Even they were growing wary now, and quite a few came to lurk in the lee of the buttress too, not seeming to care that they were sharing it with softlings.
“There goes the Keep, then,” said Fentongoose sadly, as they watched the great tower grow shorter and shorter, folding into itself like a telescope.
“We are well rid of it,” said Prawl. “It was nothing but trouble.”
Then nobody said anything for a while, because no one could be heard above the enormous bellowing of rock and stone as the remnants of the Keep collapsed into the caverns beneath. Upflung lava glopped and spurted, angry orange in the dark. A few last fragments fell like hammer-blows. Dust swirled and settled. Where the Keep had stood there was now emptiness, and the Lych Lord’s star pinned to the high sky.
Nuisance took flight, and the newer dragonets went with him, rising higher and higher as they searched for some sign of Henwyn and the others, and their thin, sad cries faded into the rattle and slither of the settling stones.
“Poor Princess Ned,” the sorcerers whispered, as the silence slowly gathered around them. “Poor Henwyn. Poor Skarper. . .”
“. . .rrrrrrrrrrrgh!” said Henwyn and Skarper and the princess, plummeting. They had started off clinging to one another, but somehow they had been parted, and now they fell separately, three plunging specks screaming the same long scream.
Then Skarper saw it, bright in the last of the moonlight: the cloud of the cloud maidens, gusting around the corner of the collapsing tower and rushing into place below them. The cloud maidens stood on its top, faces raised to the fallers and arms outstretched.
“Let us catch you, O Prince!” called Rill.
“Quickly!” said another. “We must not tarry long; this horrid dust will make our cloud all dirty. . .”
“They are falling as fast as they can, Bree. They cannot fall faster. It’s to do with gravity.”
“Oh, look; he has that horrid goblin with him again. . .”
“They’re here!” Skarper shouted to the others, who were falling with their eyes tight shut, and he flailed his limbs and tail, flapping himself closer to Ned and Henwyn so that they would all land in the centre of the cloud. At the last moment he shut his eyes too, bracing himself for the soft impact, while cloud maidens scattered nervously to make a landing space. . .
There was a ripping sound, and a feeling, familiar to Skarper, of sinking fast through sparse, wet wool. He felt himself slow, grabbed fistfuls of cloud-stuff, and climbed up out of the pit he’d made. Princess Ned was emerging shakily from her own hole just next to his. She took his paw and they scrambled up together on to the cloud’s top where the cloud maidens were waiting. They’d all gathered around Henwyn’s hole, of course.
“Well, we’re all right,” Skarper announced cheerfully, annoyed that they were only interested in his friend.
None of the cloud maidens so much as glanced at him.
“Oh no!” breathed Ned.
Skarper pushed his way between the sorrowing cloud maidens and looked down the hole which Henwyn had made.
It went clean through the cloud, like a hole in a shape-sorter designed for giant babies to fit bricks in the shape of spread-eagled cheesewrights through. Skarper could see right through it to dark trees and ruined roofs.
“He was heavier than you,” said Rill.
“The cloud is thinner here. . .” said one of her sisters.
“He went straight through!”
“He is still falling!”
“Oh, poor Henwyn!” cried the other cloud maidens.
The dust of the fallen Keep had stained their faces, and they leaned over the hole and let their big, grey teardrops fall upon the Inner Wall, a thousand feet below.
Henwyn plunged the rest of the way in silence, too surprised to start screaming again. Rags of torn cloud unravelled, caught between his clutching fingers. He fell face upwards, watching the cloud shrink above him, and at first he thought that was a good thing, because he couldn’t see the hard stones rushing up towards him from below, the sharp stone spikes and broken tiles and rusty railings waiting like teeth to tear at him, the broad expanses of stone pavement on which he would soon smash like an egg.
His landing was like a great blow.
It was not nearly as bad as he’d thought it would be. Whatever he had landed on, it was surprisingly soft and yielding. After a few seconds he found that he badly needed to breathe, which he supposed must mean he wasn’t dead. He opened one eye, and a face the size of a ceiling returned his curious gaze.
“Are you well, little softling?” rumbled Fraddon.
Henwyn lay in the hat which the giant had held out to catch him. He breathed deeply in and out, and couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I came down from the mountains when I heard all the commotion,” said Fraddon. “I feared you small ones might be in trouble. Then I saw you tumbling. The old Keep’s gone, I see. And now on top of everything, it’s raining. . .”
Henwyn felt the raindrops on his face. Above him, a dirty cloud was lowering, the hole he’d made in it already half healed. Cloud maidens and a scruffy goblin and a princess of a certain age were looking down at him over its edges, and around it in the moonlight flew eleven tiny newborn dragons.
The comet called the Lych Lord’s star (though it had other names as well, on other worlds) rushed on through space, minding its own business, never guessing the trouble it caused, or the magic that stirred on the worlds that it passed as its train of slowsilver dust sifted down through their skies. It soared over the moon, and forests of white trees sprouted there and raised pale crowns to its silver light like daisies turning to the sun. It swung twice around the world, and magic woke there; there were trolls in the rivers again, and giants in the hills; sea serpents and mermaids sported off the beaches of Coriander, and Doctor Quesney Prong’s latest lecture on Why Magick Does Not Exist was interrupted when an angry fairy flew in through the window and punched him on his learned nose.
There was no one to direct the old things this time; no one to form them into armies; no dark tower tempting men to turn the magic to their own ends. Yet many of the creatures who woke as the star went by still found their way to Clovenstone. There, instead of a new Lych Lord, Princess Eluned and her friends were waiting for them.
The Great Keep was gone, of course, and in the quakings and shakings that had accompanied its fall large sections of the Inner Wall had fallen too, but the towers still stood, ringing the cloven summit of Meneth Eskern. Fraddon had carried Princess Ned’s ship there as soon as it was repaired. He had set it on the top of Blackspike Tower, from where she could keep an eye on the new fields and gardens which the goblins were laying out on the south-facing slopes of the summit.
At first they had been a little bewildered by the idea of gardening, and they’d tended to use their hoes and rakes and spades to hit each other instead of hoeing or raking or digging with. They had soon come to understand, however. Most of the really big, greedy, dangerous goblins had been slain during that last battle in the Keep, or squashed afterwards as they tried to haul their loot away. The lesser ones seemed glad of a bit of peace for a change, and they had turned for leadership to Princess Ned, the Lady of Clovenstone. In the lands of men there were already stories being told about the Goblin Queen. (“But you’re better off without kings or queens,” Ned told the goblins. “People who like telling other people what to do are usually trouble. As long as you don’t interfere with anyone else, you should do as you like. Though it might be a nice idea, don’t you think, to plant some apple trees upon the old parade grounds down behind Southerly Gate?”)
The apple-tree saplings had been delivered quite recently by a trading caravan which had ventured over the Oeth Moors on the orders of Carnglaze. Carnglaze had retired from the Sable Conclave and gone home to Coriander, and since he had taken a few small but valuable items from the Keep with him he was now one of the richest merchants in that city of rich merchants. He was keen to trade with Clovenstone, giving useful things in exchange for any trinkets and gewgaws which had escaped the collapse of the Keep – and it was surprising how many had, and were still being found by sharp-eyed goblins, scattered around among the ruins.
Carnglaze had even bought the Lych Lord’s Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, which some enterprising Growlers had dragged clear of the Keep before it came down. He rode around Coriander in it now, the envy of the other merchants: a good cartwright had put new wheels on it, and it was pulled by a team of grey horses.
Carnglaze’s personal bodyguard stood on the running boards, causing almost as much amazement as the Silver Shadow itself, for he was none other than Knobbler. The goblin king had slunk away from Clovenstone in shame after the Keep fell. He knew that he could be king no more. What goblin would obey him, now that news of his knickers had got out? He could rage and roar and beat them, but they would only giggle and make jokes about his pants. So, wishing he had fallen down that flue after all, he went off alone across the moor, and somewhere on the road Carnglaze overtook him, and felt sorry for him, and offered him the job of bodyguard.
It had worked out very well. As the only goblin in Coriander the former king was something of a celebrity, and beneath his elegant new armour he wore not just pants but socks and vests of exquisite warmth and softness, tailored to fit his squat and scaly body by the finest seamstresses in the undergarment district.
His master was content too, for one glance at Knobbler’s massive fists and ugly face was enough to scare off any burglar or cutpurse who might have hoped to separate Carnglaze from his newfound riches.
The other members of the Sable Conclave had stayed at Clovenstone. Princess Ned had said that it would be nice to have some wise gentlemen to talk to, and they were so flattered and surprised at being called wise that they completely forgot the vows they’d made to go back to their homes and have no more to do with magic. They were busy ransacking the bumwipe heaps of all the goblin towers for scrolls and books which could be salvaged. (There was no need at all now for the bumwipe heaps, since Carnglaze’s caravan had brought to Clovenstone great reams of soft, absorbent paper: Princess Ned was forever reminding the goblins to make use of it.)
The caravan had also brought cows; good red cows from the softlands, who grazed the grass outside the Outer Wall, and whom Henwyn taught the goblins how to milk. Henwyn sent word to Adherak and his family came hurrying over the moor roads, bringing some old cheese vats and all their knowledge of the cheesemaking process. They were nervous of the goblins at first, but Ned calmed their fears, and Henmor soon declared that goblins were natural cheesemakers, and that Clovenstone cheese would one day be among the finest in all the Westlands. (He had quite forgiven his son for destroying his cheesery. A nice new one had been built with Henwyn’s share of the treasure salvaged from the Keep. He had decided, against all the customs, to hand it on to Herda, Gerda and Lynt.)
For a month or so after the Keep fell everyone had thought the lava lake was choked with rubble, and that no more eggstones would ever come from it. Then, from the crevices of the summit, a few bewildered hatchlings emerged, blinking in the daylight and looking about for rocks and planks to thump each other with. So investigations were made, and it was found that the lake was still there, a little smaller than before, but still throwing up eggstones. The tunnels which led to it had fallen in, but after a little work the dark ways down from Blackspike and Growler Towers were opened again, and Fentongoose became the first softling hatchling master; he moved into Growler Tower, and there he patiently instructed new-hatched goblins in the goblin lore.
It took a long time for Henwyn’s wound to fully heal, and longer still for him to get over the shame he felt for having given in to the power of the Stone Throne; for almost having become another Lych Lord.
“I always thought I was a hero,” he confessed to Ned and Skarper, one day at summer’s end. The three of them were sitting eating apples on the top of the Inner Wall, watching Nuisance and the other dragonets play tag with young twiglings in the treetops below. The Lych Lord’s star, visible even in daylight by then, hung above them in the dusty blue sky.
“You are a hero,” said Ned. “All that rescuing people and fighting monsters.”
Henwyn shook his head. “All those things I used to feel, that need I had for magic and adventures, it was just his blood in me, calling me to Clovenstone. All I really wanted was the Stone Throne. That’s what led me here.”
“Then that makes you even more of a hero,” Ned said firmly. “To know you could have such power, and give it up. I think that’s the most heroic thing I’ve ever heard of.” And if she had still been young she would have kissed him, but she wasn’t, so she gave him a good, friendly punch on the arm instead, and then went back into her ship: she had some scones in the oven, and wanted to see if they were ready.
“You’re just feeling a bit down, that’s all,” said Skarper, when she had gone. “That’s the trouble with adventures. When you’re having them they’re really, really scary and uncomfortable, and you’ve got bog water in your boots and your paws are wet and you ache all over and monsters keep trying to kill you, so you just wish the adventures would stop. And then when they do stop, you sort of miss them, and you wish they’d start again.”
They thought about this for a time, while big white clouds trailed their shadows across the ruins and the woods.
“I think the trouble with not having adventures,” said Henwyn, “is that it’s sort of dull. Dull in a nice way, but still dull.”
Skarper finished his apple and tossed the core out into the air, where one of the dragonets swooped by and caught it. He had been enjoying himself since the Keep fell: it had been interesting, watching all these changes taking place. He had a cabin of his own in Ned’s ship, and he’d built up quite a little hoard for himself out of bits and pieces he’d found among the ruins. Yet somehow it was not quite enough, and in these warm, end-of-summer days he often found his mind turning to thoughts of the world beyond the Outer Wall: those vast lands he had seen mapped out in metal on the Lych Lord’s throne-room floor.
“It seems to me,” he said, “there must be all sorts of adventures waiting to be had. It seems to me there must be other places in the world like Clovenstone. Places where magic happens.”
“They say there’s a chasm in Barragan which leads right down into the Underworld,” said Henwyn. “In Musk the sorcerers ride about on flying rugs.”
“Flying rugs?” scoffed Skarper, waving to Rill as the cloud maidens’ cloud went drifting overhead. (They’d sculpted it into an O, and the dragonets had left their games among the trees and were zipping through it like trained puppies jumping
through a hoop.) “Your trouble is, you believe everything you hear in stories.”
“There are whole mountains filled with treasure in the country of the Leopard Kings,” Henwyn said, ignoring him.
“Treasure, eh?” said Skarper thoughtfully. “And I suppose there might be different sorts of goblins in those other lands. . .”
“We should go and see!” declared Henwyn. “The two of us! Skarper and Henwyn: Gentlemen Adventurers! Companions together in the wild places of the world! With my swordsmanship and your cunning. . .”
“Well, I couldn’t let you go off alone,” said Skarper. “You’d prob’ly end up selling all you have for a handful of magic beans or something. . .”
“Ooh, magic beans?” said Henwyn, sounding interested.
“’Course,” Skarper went on, “we’ll come back to Clovenstone sometimes. For rests, and tea and stuff, and to tell Princess Ned of our discoveries. . .”
“Clovenstone will always be here,” said Henwyn, but his eyes were still on the horizon, and his mind was wandering among stories that had come from far further and stranger places than Clovenstone. “The Autumn Isles,” he murmured. “The Ice Crystal Mountains at the Edge of the World. . .”
“Tea!” called Ned, and the smell of the fresh-baked scones reached them at the same time as her voice.
They scrambled up, making ready to go back towards the ship, but just for a moment they lingered there, the two of them, looking beyond Westerly Gate to the long silvery line of the wet road shining in the heather. South and west it stretched away, across the moors and over the hills, into a blue distance filled with the promise of adventures.
Hearty thanks to my editors, Marion Lloyd and
