by Paul Stewart
‘I promised I would never forget him,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘The Professor … It was the last thing I recall.’ He shook his head. ‘I have no memory of the ascent itself,’ he admitted wearily. ‘Or how I got to the Stone Gardens.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Nate,’ she assured him, squeezing his hand warmly. ‘You’re home now. Safe. That’s all that matters.’
But to Nate it did matter, and whenever Eudoxia was gone, he racked his brains as to what had taken place. By what buried instinct had he let go of the rock spike to land wherever he had? For even this was uncertain to him. Had he come down in the Mire grasslands, or maybe in the pastures of Undertown on the rock’s downward trajectory, then crawled to the stone stacks? Or had he perhaps flung himself down into the Stone Gardens as the hurtling storm-tossed boulder flew up over the Edge cliff?
He couldn’t remember. Maybe he never would …
As Nate’s health continued to improve, Eudoxia allowed others to share his care while she was dealing with the running of the floating city. Gumble and Girolle, a pair of trusted gabtrolls, cooked for him, washed and dressed him; while Strake, a wiry pink-eye, was taken on as his physical therapist. For her part, Eudoxia took it upon herself to inform him – little by little, so as not to trigger any relapse – about what had been happening in New Sanctaphrax while he was gone.
Matters with Quove Lentis and Great Glade had come to a head, Nate learned. The threatened blockade was now in place. The numbers of Edgelanders reaching New Sanctaphrax had dropped dramatically. The upkeep of the beautiful buildings was deteriorating as supplies became harder and harder to obtain. As for the work of the Descenders, Quove Lentis would be delighted to learn that the Knights Academy had suspended all expeditions while resisting the blockade took priority.
It wasn’t until months later, when she was sure Nate was up to it, that Eudoxia gave him the most devastating news of all. Stories of a purge in Great Glade’s academies had begun to reach New Sanctaphrax – a purge sparked by rumours of Nate’s return.
‘Because of me?’ he said bleakly.
She nodded and patted his hand. ‘But don’t worry,’ she told him. ‘It’s all going to be all right. Trust me.’
From that moment on, though, Nate sensed a difference in Eudoxia’s behaviour. She would listen to him as he tried, again and again, to flesh out the account of his fourth descent, and offer wise counsel. Yet there were occasions when she seemed off-hand. Distracted …
Once, he asked her about the whereabouts of his spyglass. He was sure he’d given it to her. But Eudoxia evaded the question, unable to meet his gaze. Nate grew increasingly uneasy. What was it that he could sometimes see in Eudoxia’s troubled green eyes?
What was she hiding from him?
Then, before he found out, Eudoxia abruptly left the floating city. It was almost a year after Nate had got back. She told him he was going to be fine; that Strake and the gabtroll couple would take care of him; that the finest healers were at hand; that she would be back soon. But she had to go. All she would say was that she had received important news from the Friends of New Sanctaphrax – that elusive network of hers – and needed to ‘deal with matters’.
Now, months after her departure, life had returned to a certain normality, despite the blockade. Most mornings, as High Academe, Nate dealt with the affairs of office; most afternoons, he would withdraw to the Great Library, where he pored over ancient barkscrolls, losing himself for a few hours in the arcane tracts and academic treatises about descending. But his studies offered only temporary relief, for when he left the library and returned to his bedchamber, his heart would sink on finding it still empty.
‘Oh, Eudoxia,’ he whispered. ‘Where are you?’
PART TWO
THE VOYAGE
· CHAPTER FOUR ·
‘Sanctaphrax.’ Cade started back in surprise.
Sanctaphrax … The name of the distant city seemed to hang in the moonlit air like a beautiful soap bubble, its delicate surface shimmering with colour. Yet, to the fourthling who had just uttered the word, it seemed less enchanting, for there were tears in her eyes.
For most of that day, Cade had been busy. He’d cleaned his lakeside cabin, cleared his vegetable patch of weeds and harvested fruit and vegetables, which he’d pickled, salted, bottled and boxed, then stored in his underground larder. And when that was all done, he’d sat down and set to work polishing his precious spyglass, thinking as he did so of the famous Descender, Nate Quarter: the uncle he’d never met.
As night had fallen, he’d noticed the Xanth Filatine docked at Gart Ironside’s lofty sky-platform on the opposite side of the Farrow Lake. He hadn’t really given the skytavern much thought – until, noticing the lights of Gart’s phraxsloop coming towards his cabin, Cade had stepped out onto the veranda to greet him, only to discover that Gart was not alone.
‘You’ve got a visitor,’ Gart called to him.
Standing beside him on the stone jetty was the beautiful stranger who had just uttered that magical word. Sanctaphrax …
‘Though actually,’ she said with a smile, ‘we call it New Sanctaphrax these days.’
‘New Sanctaphrax,’ Cade repeated, abashed to be standing in front of this woman who, it seemed, had come especially to visit him.
She was tall and elegant, with dark eyes and thick blonde hair that was braided and coiled into an intricate plait on top of her head. The long dark cape she wore was well-tailored and expensive-looking. Its hem, though, was frayed and mud-spattered, and beneath it she wore sturdy boots with worn-down heels and scuffed leather. Together, they spoke of the long and arduous journey she’d undertaken.
‘Come on then, lad,’ said Gart. ‘Refreshments for your guest?’ He laughed. ‘Or are you just going to stand there gawping?’
‘I … errm. Of course,’ said Cade, feeling flustered. ‘Would you like some hyleroot tea? Or charlock? I’ve got both, and …’
‘Hyleroot tea would be lovely,’ said the woman, and Cade heard the unmistakable trace of a Great Glade accent in her voice; refined, lilting, from one of the city’s richer districts. ‘My name’s Eudoxia,’ she told him, extending a hand. ‘Eudoxia Prade, wife of Nate Quarter …’
And Cade felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingle at the sound of his family name on her lips.
‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ said Gart, unhitching the tolley rope and climbing back aboard his little vessel.
While Gart Ironside powered up the phraxchamber and set off back across the lake, Cade led Eudoxia along the jetty, up the wooden stairs to the veranda and inside his cabin. She looked around and, as Cade turned up the tilder-oil lamp, he suddenly saw the place through her eyes: a modest two-room timber dwelling, simply furnished; so much more rustic than what she was used to if her clothes were anything to go by – though at least it was clean.
‘I’ll put some water on to boil,’ he said, and gestured to the fireside chair. ‘Do sit down.’
But Eudoxia didn’t seem to hear him. She had crossed the cabin and picked up the brass spyglass. With narrowed eyes, she read the letters engraved in the side.
‘N Q,’ she said. ‘Nate Quarter. My husband …’ She smiled again, and Cade noticed that her eyes, which had looked black in the moonlight, were in fact a new-leaf shade of green. ‘And your uncle, Cade.’
Her smile broadened, but it seemed brittle to Cade, and he thought the tears he’d seen before might be about to well up once more. She looked into his face.
‘You and I have much to talk about.’
When the pot of hyleroot tea had brewed, Cade poured two mugs, sweetened it with woodhoney, and he and Eudoxia took them out onto the veranda. The pair of them sat opposite one another on stout wicker chairs, a small lufwood table between them. Cade set his mug down. Eudoxia held hers, warming her hands and staring thoughtfully at the steam that swirled over the surface of the tea.
‘I was born and raised in the New Lake district of Grea
t Glade,’ she began at length.
Cade nodded. That would explain her accent. He knew the area, though not well. It was full of lakeside mansions, owned by some of the wealthiest individuals of the city. Eudoxia’s father, it transpired, was one of them. A phraxmine owner, Galston Prade, who had made a fortune in the Twilight Woods. And she went on to explain how she’d met his uncle Nate when the two of them were not much older than Cade was now.
‘We had so many adventures together,’ she told him, her eyes sparkling at the memory. ‘Fighting in the battle of the Midwood Marshes. Journeying to the distant Nightwoods – and to the waif city of Riverrise.’ She raised a hand and touched behind her ear lightly. ‘I’d been injured. A bullet,’ she explained, and then tossed her head as though it was nothing.
Still clasping the hot mug, she leaned forward and took a sip of the hot tea. She smiled appreciatively and drank a little more.
Once she was fully recovered, Eudoxia went on, she and Nate had set forth on an epic voyage back across the vastness of the Deepwoods. They travelled to the very edge of the world, to find that the floating city of Sanctaphrax – which had drifted off into Open Sky centuries earlier – had returned.
‘But all was not what it seemed,’ she said, her voice laden with doom, ‘for the whole place was infested with the most fearsome of all Edge creatures …’
‘Gloamglozers,’ Cade breathed.
‘Gloamglozers.’ Eudoxia nodded, and Cade’s eyes widened as she recounted the pitched battle that had taken place between the legendary fiends and the handful of Edge folk. It was touch and go who would prevail, even tipping in the gloamglozers’ favour – until the three Immortals manifested themselves.
‘Quint and Twig Verginix,’ Eudoxia said. ‘And Twig’s grandson, Rook Barkwater. Your ancestors, Cade. They defeated the gloamglozer, finally ridding the family of the curse that had plagued it for so long.’
Cade’s face broke into a smile.
‘And it was there, in Sanctaphrax – New Sanctaphrax,’ she said, ‘that Nate began his career as a Descender.’
As she continued, Cade saw the beautiful stranger’s expression change from excitement to … to what exactly? Sadness? Regret? She drank the rest of her tea, placed the mug down on the table and, smoothing the creases in her gown with the palms of her hands, explained how Nate had embarked on the first of several expeditions down the Edge cliff.
‘With his friend and mentor, Ambris Hentadile,’ she added. ‘The Professor.’
Her voice cracked as she spoke of watching Nate descend into the darkness with the Professor that first time, leaving her behind to help establish a new society in the floating city. It was a hard and lonely time whenever he was gone, she confessed. Yet the city had flourished.
Cade glanced down at those sturdy boots she was wearing, scuffed and muddy, and so at odds with the fine materials of her gown and cape. Eudoxia was clearly practical and strong. Of course New Sanctaphrax had done well under her guiding hand.
She fell still and, from the expression on her face, Cade knew she was reliving incidents from the past. Then she looked up and gave him that same brittle smile.
‘Four descents there were in all, each more perilous than the last,’ she told him. ‘The fourth was the hardest of all for me to bear.’ Her soft lilting voice was suddenly charged with emotion. ‘Fourteen years he was away, Cade. Fourteen long years. And during that time, Quove Lentis and his allies grew in strength. They cut off all trade with New Sanctaphrax and made it as difficult as they could for Edgelanders to reach us. But we had friends and supporters, and …’ She hesitated. ‘It was through one of these supporters that I learned Nate had an older brother he wasn’t aware of.’
She plucked agitatedly at her cuff, her eyes lowered, then turned and looked in through the open door. Her troubled gaze came to rest on the mantelpiece.
‘Nate had forgotten to take it with him on that last descent,’ she said. ‘His spyglass. So I sent it to your father, and explained the family connection …’
Eudoxia fell abruptly silent, the words choking up in her throat. Her eyes glistened in the moonlight, and suddenly the tears that had been threatening for so long spilled over and coursed down her face.
‘It was a terrible, terrible mistake,’ she said, trying but failing to regain her composure. ‘A mistake I will regret for the rest of my life. For by sending the spyglass, together with my message, I believe I must have alerted Quove Lentis and his network of spies. Your father got married, you were born, Cade, and all the while those spies were watching and waiting. Then Nate returned …’
Beyond the jetty, the lake had grown still, with the full moon reflected on its mirror-like surface. Only the distant sounds of the forest creatures – fromp barks, weezit squeals and the ghostly hoots of hunting quarms – broke the silence.
Cade staring grimly ahead. ‘My father was murdered when news of Nate’s return reached Great Glade,’ he told her. ‘But then I think you know that.’
‘Oh, Cade, Cade, I am so sorry,’ Eudoxia said, leaning forward and clasping his hands in her own. ‘I can’t undo the damage I have caused. Sky alone knows, I would if I could … But I have come here in the hope that I can prevent you coming to any worse harm.’
Cade listened, his emotions in turmoil. Eudoxia’s one simple act, carried out in all good faith, had had such awful repercussions. What was she about to do now?
‘It took me so long to find you,’ she said, and smiled weakly. ‘I hadn’t realized how many tiny settlements there are out here in the Deeplands. Then I heard from one of the Friends of New Sanctaphrax that you’d been seen here, at Farrow Lake. And I came to find you. I didn’t trust anyone else to bring the news …’
‘News?’ said Cade.
Eudoxia swallowed. ‘There are others who also know of your whereabouts, Cade. Enemy spies, working for those who wish to see you dead. Quove Lentis, back in Great Glade. And one of his paid henchmen, a certain Drox or Drex …’
‘Drax,’ said Cade numbly. ‘Drax Adereth.’
He remembered only too well the look of scornful amusement on the face of the Xanth Filatine’s notorious gangmaster as he’d raised the blowpipe to his lips. If Cade hadn’t jumped from the skytavern when he did, then the poisoned dart would have killed him. More than two years ago that had been. He’d hoped Drax Adereth might have forgotten about him by now – but Eudoxia had just dashed those hopes.
‘It’s no longer safe for you here,’ she said, pressing home the point. ‘You must leave Farrow Lake.’
‘But … but where should I go?’ he said.
‘Back with me, Cade,’ she told him simply. ‘To New Sanctaphrax.’
They talked some more, swapping information about the floating city and the little settlement by the lake. Cade told Eudoxia about his old life in Great Glade; his new life at the Farrow Lake, spending time describing his closest friends – and also about the barkscrolls she’d noticed pinned to the wall above the mantelpiece; the working drawings on the theoretical harnessing of phrax power that his father, Thadeus, had entrusted to his care. For her part, Eudoxia expanded on the details of the Friends of New Sanctaphrax, and the blockade that was slowly strangling the floating city – and, of course, on his uncle, Nate Quarter.
Cade could have gone on talking for ever, but as the sky began to grow lighter, he saw how tired Eudoxia had become. She rubbed her eyes. She stifled a yawn …
‘You must be exhausted after your long journey,’ Cade ventured, and she readily agreed.
He offered to put her up for the night – what was left of it – and Eudoxia seized the offer gratefully. Leaving the empty mugs on the table, Cade took her back into the cabin and gave up his bed for his aunt to use. For himself, he dragged a hammock outside and hung it from the hooks screwed into the upright posts at the front of the veranda. He removed his jacket, shucked off his boots and climbed into it.
By now, the day creatures had emerged from their roosts and lairs, and the air was
full of twittering, screeching and squawking as they saw in the new morning. Cade lay back in the hammock, one arm folded behind his head, and closed his eyes. From inside the cabin, he soon heard the lulling sound of Eudoxia’s gentle snoring. As for Cade himself, sleep would not come. He was simply too excited. He rolled onto his side, then over onto the other side, then back again …
‘Hopeless,’ he muttered.
He slipped out of the hammock and, having put his boots back on, descended the stairs and roused his prowlgrin, Rumblix, from his roost beneath the veranda. There, too, was Tug, his friend from the Nightwoods. Tug – born a nameless one, but named by Cade himself – actually had a room of his own in the undercabin. More often than not though, preferring to sleep close to Rumblix, he would curl up in a nest of meadowgrass at the foot of the wooden roost-pole.
Cade looked down at him affectionately. In the short time they had known each other, they had been through a lot together, with Tug ever the true and trusted companion. But he too had a past.
Watching him now, Cade saw how Tug’s gigantic claw-tipped hands twitched as he slept. His massive shoulders rose and fell rhythmically, the angry scars that crisscrossed them a testament to the cruelties he had suffered before Cade discovered him. Soft whimpering noises escaped from his fang-studded mouth as he dreamed of things that Cade could only guess at.
Taking care not to disturb his friend, Cade saddled Rumblix and climbed up.
The pedigree grey prowlgrin that Cade had raised from a hatchling, veteran of Hive city’s high-jumping race, purred with keen anticipation. Then, as rose-coloured streaks of light spread out along the horizon, they set off at a gallop, through the woods, then up and across the treetops.
There was a chill to the air, and the leaves were glazed with dew. As Cade reached the forest canopy, the bright sun broke over the jagged mountain tops, making him squint. In the distance, the mighty Five Falls glittered as its great torrents of water fell into the lake below, while stormhornets swooped and fluttered across the rippling surface.
