by Paul Stewart
He turned and took the path that ran along the bank of the Edgewater River towards the sewer entrance. The tiny waif professor followed, dropping quite naturally into step beside him.
‘Of course,’ she said softly, both inside his head and out loud, ‘those ruins are of the Palace of a Thousand Statues. It was where that old tyrant Vox Verlix once ruled all Undertown. You can read about him in the barkscrolls of the Great Library … Do you like to read, Tug?’ she asked. ‘Ah, yes, I can see that you do.’
Tug smiled again. Having this soft voice inside his head had alarmed him at first, but now he was finding it quite soothing.
‘Tug wonder …’
‘Yes, Tug, I would very much like to see your collection,’ said Sentafuce, reading his thoughts. ‘What a perfect setting you’ve created for them.’ She looked up. ‘Hasn’t he, Demora?’
They had reached the sculpture garden that Tug had created on the river bank above the arched sewer entrance, and in which he had carefully set out the ancient statues. Fifteen to date. They stood in groups of two or three, facing each other, as if in conversation, clumps of gorse-grass and meadowwort already sprouting up around their bases.
Standing in their midst was the towering figure of a quarry trog wearing the robes of the Academy of Earth Studies. Wiping her hands on her robes, she stepped forward.
‘I’m Demora Duste,’ the quarry trog introduced herself.
She was tall, almost as tall as Tug himself, and when she shook Tug’s great clawed hand, her grip was firm and strong.
‘I work in the Stone Gardens,’ she told him, ‘and as a stone scholar, I can certainly appreciate careful, precise excavation like this.’
She ran a hand over the conical hat of the statue that Tug had just brought back.
‘Which is why,’ said Sentafuce’s soft voice in Tug’s head, ‘we would like your help, Tug.’
Seftis Bule looked up as Cade stepped back inside his small office. His eyes glittered with excitement as he shook the sheaf of barkscrolls in his hand.
‘These are exciting, Cade,’ he said. ‘Very exciting. I’ve had my Armoury academics look them over and they’ve confirmed my initial thoughts. We’re looking at improved phrax technology that could revolutionize life on the Edge.’
Cade smiled, his chest bursting with pride for his father.
‘Not only will it mean that a single shard of phrax crystal could produce enough energy – clean energy – to power an entire Edgelands city. Lighting, heating, factories and so forth. But – and it’s a big but – if that power can be safely controlled, it would also mean that exploration beneath the Edge might finally bear the results we’ve been hoping for. Instead of climbing down the cliff, Descenders would be able to go down in some kind of vessel.’
Warming to his theme, Seftis climbed to his feet and, still clutching the barkscrolls, began pacing around the small office.
‘Raw materials should be no problem,’ he went on, ‘despite the blockade.’ Stopping for a moment, he glanced at Cade. ‘You’ll no doubt have noticed the piles of metal objects near the entrance as you came in,’ he said.
Cade nodded.
‘It’s all part of our defence effort,’ he explained. ‘Everyone in New Sanctaphrax is doing their bit. Ancient stores have been ransacked, unnecessary decorations have been stripped from the buildings and walkways, while everyone living here has surrendered what they can – all for the common good. It means we have a vast supply of metal objects that we can smelt down to keep the forge running – which, in turn, means that, trade embargo or no, we can continue to produce everything we need.’
The chief armourer paused in front of Cade. He glanced down at the scrolls, then looked up into Cade’s face.
‘Which brings me to my proposal.’
Cade returned Seftis Bule’s intense gaze. ‘Proposal?’
‘Your father was a genius, Cade,’ Seftis told him, ‘and we shall certainly make use of his working drawings, endeavouring to turn his theories into something practical. What I propose is that you work alongside us, here, in the Armoury. I know it’s not the most exciting place in New Sanctaphrax perhaps—’
‘Yes,’ Cade said softly.
‘But you’ll be able to monitor the progress on your father’s work and—’
‘Yes,’ Cade repeated, louder this time. ‘I’d love to work in the Armoury. When do I start?’
Seftis Bule looked taken aback, surprised perhaps that Cade hadn’t asked for time to think about it. Then a smile spread across his face.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘You can start tomorrow morning.’
· CHAPTER THIRTEEN ·
Celestia Helmstoft had been wondering what to do with herself of late. The blockade was still in full force, making the lives of those who lived in New Sanctaphrax more difficult by the day.
Surely, she thought, there was something she could do to help out. After all, her friends were all doing their bit.
Tug, for instance, spent most days down in Undergarden, busy from dawn to dusk with his beloved tilder herd and hammelhorn flock. On occasions, he would also accompany Demora Duste to the Stone Gardens, though why that was, Celestia had no idea.
As for Cade, she’d hardly seen anything of him for weeks. He was in the Armoury every morning, then, if he completed his work early, he would visit his uncle in the Great Library. Most of the time he seemed so lost in thought that, even when they did meet up, they hardly exchanged two words with each other.
Not that Celestia held that against him. She knew that Cade valued having her – and Tug – close by, even if his head was filled with other matters. The trouble was, with her friends off helping the floating city to keep going, Celestia herself was left all the more aware that she too ought to be doing something useful.
Then one evening, several weeks after their arrival in New Sanctaphrax, Eudoxia suggested they take a walk together. They strolled through the great mosaic courtyard of the Knights Academy in companionable silence, ducking their heads as they passed beneath the old tilt-poles where the knights academic in full armour would train their prowlgrins. Suddenly the quiet was broken by the sound of raised voices and some kind of a struggle.
They turned the corner to see a ragtag group of hungry-looking individuals in the middle of a fight. Fists were flying, boots were going in and the air was filled with angry shouts and cries.
‘Get off, they’re mine!’
‘Not now, they’re not!’
‘Get your filthy hands off …’
Then someone spotted Eudoxia – for so long, their acting High Academe Elect – standing watching them, her hands on her hips. The fight stopped at once.
‘There is no need for this,’ Eudoxia told them calmly. ‘Not if we all work together.’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Sorry, ma’am.’
Celestia watched, amazed once again by the power of Eudoxia’s soothing words, as the protagonists climbed to their feet, shame-faced and apologetic, and one by one shuffled away – leaving the cause of the dispute lying on the ground. It was a basketful of honeybeets and glimmer-onions, the basket now upturned and the vegetables ground to a useless pulp underfoot.
‘New Sanctaphrax is approaching crisis point, but we shall remain strong,’ said Eudoxia, turning back to Celestia. ‘I believe that Cade, Tug and you, Celestia, have a role to play in our city’s future – and the future of the entire Edgelands, perhaps.’
At the sound of the quiet, reassuring words, Celestia found herself falling under Eudoxia’s spell.
‘But you must remain patient, my dear,’ Eudoxia added, ‘and listen carefully to what New Sanctaphrax is saying.’
‘The towers, you mean?’ Celestia asked. ‘The music of the city?’
And Eudoxia nodded.
So it was that Celestia took to walking through the mosaic-tiled streets, courtyards and quadrangles on her own, all the while listening to the strange sounds of the winds that blew through the turrets and spires a
round her. On stormy days, the music could be deep and sonorous, with fog-filters booming and drizzle-plates spinning, emitting their bright shimmering chimes. In the rain, the pitch would lighten, the mistsifting towers making the air pulse and churn with melodies, while the turrets of the upper viaduct added a thrilling percussion of countless different types.
Loud or soft, the music was never less than mesmerizing. Yet the days Celestia grew to love more than any others were the ones when the wind slowed to a light breeze and gentle, almost imperceptible, breaths of air. On days like these, the towers sang sweetly, filling the streets with the lulling cadence of wistful murmurs and whispered secrets.
It was on one such day, when she was following a delicate sliver of sound down to the clinking cages of the East Landing, that Celestia caught sight of the skymarshals coming in to land. As she watched, standing beside the ancient cages that the scholars of old had used to winch themselves down the side of the floating rock in order to study the sky, the tiny phraxcraft glided towards her like a flock of strange insects.
With their phraxchambers thrumming and their burnished funnels sending thin trails of steam out behind them like woodspider silk, the single-seater vessels came closer. Some two hundred skymarshals in all, she reckoned. They landed in cohorts of ten, smoothly and almost soundlessly, then the pilots jumped down from their saddles, seized the mooring-tethers and led the bobbing phraxcraft back into the floating city.
Celestia couldn’t take her eyes off them. Fourthlings, goblins, mobgnomes; all of them dressed in blue-grey topcoats and burnished copperwood helmets, and with long-barrelled phraxmuskets like lances at their shoulders. As the last cohort came in to land and dismounted, Celestia found herself following them.
The skymarshals talked among themselves, greeting one another and engaging with passing academics anxious for the latest news, as they made their way through the city towards the Knights Academy. They reached the small entrance to the skymarshals’ barracks, where the duty marshal ticked off their names on a ledger as they entered, one after the other.
‘And last but by no means least, Skymarshal Rolnix,’ announced the duty marshal, a portly goblin with tufted ears. ‘Perfect score at the cloud range?’ he enquired.
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ the skymarshal replied with a wry smile. ‘But we can’t waste ammunition on target practice these days. Just pull the trigger and fly past.’ To demonstrate, he raised his phraxmusket in the air and pulled the trigger. There was a dull click. The chamber was empty.
‘Can we help you, miss?’
The skymarshal had spotted Celestia. She’d been staring at his skycraft, its prow carved into the likeness of what she took to be a rock demon.
‘Um … I was just wondering what it must be like to fly one of those,’ she said, feeling a little bit flustered under the skymarshal’s unblinking gaze.
‘Best job in the floating city, eh, Mudgutt?’ the skymarshal said, and laughed.
‘That’s Sky Sergeant Mudgutt to you, Rolnix,’ the duty marshal said. ‘And I prefer the bench of my sumpwood desk these days. Leave the heroic stuff to you young’uns.’ He turned to Celestia. ‘Are you interested in flying, miss?
‘Yes,’ Celestia confessed. ‘I’ve trained and ridden prowlgrins, and that can sometimes feel like flying – though I’ve never been on anything like these phraxcraft.’
‘If you can handle a prowlgrin,’ said the skymarshal, ‘then you shouldn’t have too much trouble with phraxcraft.’ He smiled. ‘Would you care to see the Tether Hall, where we keep them?’ he asked. He stuck out his hand. ‘The name’s Brocktinius, by the way,’ he said. ‘Brocktinius Rolnix …’
‘One of the finest skymarshals I have under my command,’ the sky sergeant broke in. ‘Eight Great Glade phraxship captains to his credit so far, each one shot through the circular windows of their phraxships—’
‘Thanks, Mudgutt … Sky Sergeant Mudgutt,’ Brocktinius muttered as he turned a deep shade of crimson, ‘but—’
‘Including none other than Admiral Lode Threwlin himself,’ Mudgutt went on, undeterred. ‘Only the chief of Great Glade’s blockade effort. Picked him off from the quarterdeck of his flagship, the Herald of Wealth, he did.’ He chuckled. ‘Later on, that Quove Lentis described his chief henchman’s death as “food poisoning while on a trade mission”, but we knew.’ He patted Brocktinius on the shoulders. ‘Didn’t do your reputation any harm, did it, lad.’
‘Take no notice of him, miss,’ said the skymarshal, cringing with embarrassment. ‘And my friends call me Brock,’ he added.
Celestia shook his hand, her green eyes gleaming. ‘Celestia Helmstoft,’ she said.
Brock’s face fell. ‘Ah,’ he said awkwardly. ‘You’re the friend of the High Academe Elect’s nephew, aren’t you? Cade Quarter. I took him stone-spotting a while back and … well, maybe he would object to us … errm …’
Celestia flicked her hair back from her face and laughed. ‘Cade and I are just friends,’ she said. ‘Nothing more. And I’d love to see the Tether Hall,’ she added, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘Brock.’
The two of them crossed the courtyard and Brock, still pulling the Rock Demon behind him, led Celestia through the great ironwood doors and into a vast hall.
‘These used to be the prowlgrin stables,’ Brock explained, ‘back in the First Age of Flight.’
‘Oh, I would so like to have seen them in those days,’ said Celestia, staring up at the beams crisscrossing the ceiling vaults of the huge hall. ‘There must be roost beams for three hundred prowlgrins—’
‘Five hundred and eighty-two actually,’ said Brock. ‘Old stock prowlgrins. Heavy-set and powerful they were, to take the Knights Academic down into the Twilight Woods on their quest for stormphrax.’
‘Stormchasing,’ Celestia breathed, her eyes sparkling. ‘And now, instead of prowlgrins, there are those.’ She nodded up at the clusters of tethered phraxcraft, their carved sumpwood prows bobbing in the warm air. ‘Does each one represent a different creature?’ she asked.
Brock nodded. ‘A different creature, a different name. Mine’s the Rock Demon,’ he said, ‘as I’m sure you already noticed.’
He climbed the pegs of a tall pillar and walked along the horizontal roost beam, then tethered his phraxcraft to a mooring ring. Five other phraxcraft were tethered to the same ring.
‘These are waiting to be assigned,’ Brock told Celestia, who had followed him up and was balancing expertly on the beam as she watched him. ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested hesitantly, ‘you’d like to take one of them out.’
‘I’d love to!’ said Celestia, and then blushed at the childish enthusiasm she heard in her voice.
But she was excited. Perhaps, she thought, this was what Eudoxia had meant when she told her to listen to what New Sanctaphrax was saying. The beautiful music of the city had led her to the East Landing – and now she was here.
Was this how she was to play her part in helping the besieged floating city?
‘I think,’ Celestia said slowly, trying to keep her voice calm and neutral-sounding, even though her heart was racing at the prospect, ‘it has to be that one.’
Brock smiled and nodded his approval. ‘The Stormhornet,’ he said.
Seated in the saddle of the phraxcraft with the carved stormhornet prow, Celestia raised the spyglass that Cade had lent her and trained it on the horizon. She knew how much the spyglass meant to her friend, but Cade had insisted she take it.
‘For luck,’ he’d said, tying the tilderleather strap to her flight tunic on the morning of her first patrol.
That had been over a month ago. Before that, Celestia had practised at the end of a tolley rope that was attached to the upper ramparts of the Knights Academy tower – seemingly endless flights on the Stormhornet under Brock’s watchful eye until, after many weeks, the skymarshal was finally satisfied with her balance and control. Even now, though, Brock still liked to keep a close watch over her when they flew the daw
n patrol.
With the chill of the phraxchamber cold on her back as it thrummed behind her, Celestia looked around. The white glow of the combusting phrax crystal cast a beam of light out of the chamber’s glass phraxport, while from the funnel above, a thin trail of steam snaked back across the early morning sky. And there was Brock, the steam trail of his Rock Demon running parallel with that of the Stormhornet, then looping and twisting around it.
Celestia turned back.
Brock accelerated, guiding his phraxcraft round to fly back past her in a protective manoeuvre that would see their steam trails intertwine once more. As he flew by, Celestia noticed that he had slipped the long-barrelled phraxmusket off his shoulder. Moments later, the carved rock-demon prow drew level and, glancing around again, Celestia saw Brock pointing into the distance.
She focused the spyglass. Two phraxfrigates were hovering high above the rolling grasslands of the Mire. Further off, mere specks of black on the horizon, was the rest of the Great Glade fleet that Quove Lentis had sent to bolster the blockade of New Sanctaphrax. And while Celestia watched, she saw flashes of light as the frigates’ swivel-mounted guns raked the grasslands below with phraxbullets.
‘They must have spotted a scuttlebrig convoy bringing in fresh supplies,’ Brock called across to her. ‘Stay low and cut power when I give the signal.’
Celestia nodded, then lowered the spyglass and took her own phraxmusket off her shoulder.
If the crews of the enemy phraxfrigates had any sense, they would be watching out for any telltale steam trails. She and Brock would have to glide when they approached, to avoid detection. The phraxchamber’s thrum rose in pitch as she pushed the flight levers to full power. Then, pushing down on the stirrups, Celestia sent the Stormhornet into a steep dive.
The rippling grasslands rose to meet her before turning to a green blur as Celestia pulled back on the stirrups and levelled her phraxcraft off, no more than a couple of strides above the nodding seed heads of the grass. Ahead of her, Brock did the same, then raised a hand. Celestia cut the power to the phraxchamber and the trail of white steam from the funnel abruptly stopped.
