The Descenders

by Paul Stewart

  ‘Things have changed, that much is clear,’ said the pilot of Cloudbreaker, a dour-faced grey goblin called Thane Two-Blades. Behind him, his crew – a gnokgoblin and a hammerhead – nodded grimly. ‘Kendius and the others found that out the hard way.’

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ said Danton Clore, turning to the youngest member of the crew of Rainhawk, a fourthling who answered to the name ‘Splinters’.

  ‘I already have,’ came the reply. ‘Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘Indulge me,’ said Danton Clore, a harsh edge to his voice.

  ‘Well,’ said Splinters, with a barely suppressed sigh, ‘we towed the merchant ship to the usual glade in the Eastern Woods, just outside the phraxmine stockade. But, like I said, instead of the mine sergeant waiting to pay us our tallow tax, there was a squadron of Freeglade Lancers. They had the whole place staked out and—’

  ‘I’m still having trouble understanding this,’ Danton Clore broke in, removing his broad-brimmed hat and examining the blood-red candles, their wicks neatly trimmed. ‘Why would the phrax commander double-cross us like this?’

  He left the question hanging in the air for a moment before continuing.

  ‘We have a deal,’ he said simply. ‘We hijack the cargo of phrax, take it back to be re-stamped at the mine; he gets to sell the same cargo twice to the Academy of Flight. We both win. Unless …’

  Danton Clore’s eyes narrowed. The wind had dropped and a damp blanket of fog was settling over the pinnacles like a shroud. He turned back to the young fourthling.

  ‘You piloted Rainhawk back here, Splinters, single-handed,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right, Mr Clore, sir,’ the youth replied, breaking into a gap-toothed grin. ‘And she flew like a beauty. The Great Gladers couldn’t keep up …’

  ‘You left Kendius and the cloddertrogs to be taken prisoner,’ said Danton Clore quietly, tracing the rim of a candle with a fingernail, ‘to be chained and hauled off to Great Glade, where they were fed to those hideous snaggletooths of Quove Lentis.’

  ‘I got lucky,’ Splinters said defiantly, although there was a tremor in his voice. He was no longer smiling.

  Clore nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Does the name Drax Adereth mean anything to you?’ he asked as he examined the second candle.

  ‘Yeah, he ran a gang on the skytavern I used to crew. What of it?’ Splinters’ eyes were wide, and he was looking to the others for support.

  But the other tallow-hats were avoiding his gaze.

  ‘What if I was to tell you that Drax Adereth is one of Quove Lentis’s spies?’ said Danton Clore slowly. He put his hat back on and fixed the youth with an unblinking stare. ‘Are you a spy, Splinters?’

  ‘I … I …’

  The fourthling gasped, then stumbled forward, his face contorting with pain. He tumbled to the deck. Thane Two-Blades stepped over the body, wiping the blood from the blade of the stiletto dagger on the sleeve of his topcoat.

  ‘We’d better move our stone harbours somewhere else,’ the grey goblin said. ‘Somewhere safer. Splinters here has probably led the whole Great Glade phraxfleet to us.’

  Danton Clore shrugged. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘The Great Glade phraxfleet has its hands full with the blockade of New Sanctaphrax.’ He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘But if, as I’m beginning to suspect, Phrax Commander Lennius Grex is no longer in charge, then there’ll be no more tallow tax, and the next merchant ship we take on might be a whole lot harder to hijack.’

  He prodded Splinters’ body with the tip of his boot.

  ‘Everything changes,’ he mused. ‘Perhaps we should also turn our attention to New Sanctaphrax. I’m about to have a meeting with one of their beleaguered leaders. Eudoxia something or other. It seems she wants our help,’ he said and laughed. ‘And we tallow-hats are nothing if not helpful.’

  Clore pushed the body with his foot, sending it tumbling off the deck and down into the gathering fog. The wind through the pinnacles picked up with an eerie howl.

  ‘Just one more ghost,’ he muttered, ‘to sing us to sleep.’

  Then he turned and went into the light tower, closing the door behind him.

  · CHAPTER SIXTEEN ·

  As Grent One-Tusk brought the phraxlighter down low over the Stone Gardens, Cade immediately spotted Tug. His friend was stooped over next to a towering stone stack, his massive shoulder muscles rippling as he delicately scraped at the ground beneath him with his long, curved claws.

  With Fenda Fulefane’s help, Grent landed the phraxlighter. Celestia climbed shakily to her feet, while Cade jumped down and secured the vessel to a rock with a tolley rope. Then, one after the other, the others followed him off the hovering phraxlighter and onto the rocky ground below.

  They were greeted by a small blue waif who was, it seemed, closely monitoring Tug’s work. She stared at them intently, her eyes wide, then raised her hands. And in their heads they heard her speaking.

  ‘Quiet, please,’ she said, her voice low and urgent. ‘Twilight is upon us and Tug must work quickly.’

  With the sun low and the light fading, the stacks of buoyant rocks, each boulder larger than the one below it, were casting long shadows across the stone pavement. High above the visitors to the Stone Gardens, white ravens circled, their angular wings outstretched as they glided on swirling up-currents, and their raucous cries filling the air.

  Tug clearly hadn’t noticed the arrival of his friends, for he continued to scratch away at the stone at his feet, working with painstaking attention. Intrigued, Celestia approached, only to feel a hand on her sleeve.

  ‘Not yet,’ the voice sounded in her head, and, glancing down, she found herself gazing into the waif’s clear blue, and disapproving, eyes.

  Celestia turned her attention back to Tug himself. Leaning so far forward now that his nose was almost touching the ground, he was gently blowing the dust away from the small hole he’d been digging in the rocky ground. Then, with obvious care, he reached down into the hole with his talons and removed a glowing pebble, roughly the size of a white raven’s egg.

  ‘A seed-stone,’ the voice in her head informed her. ‘And beautifully harvested – like all the rest. Your friend Tug has a great talent indeed …’ The waif smiled. ‘But then you know that already, Miss Helmstoft.’

  Just then, a tall quarry trog stepped forward, a small casket in her hands. She lifted the lid to reveal a glowing lamp inside, then held it out. Tug placed the seed-stone carefully inside the casket and looked up – and as he caught sight of his friends, a lopsided grin broke across his features. He lumbered over to them and swept Celestia off her feet, enfolding her in an enthusiastic but surprisingly gentle embrace.

  ‘Tug happy you well again,’ he crooned. ‘Tug did what you teached him. Cleaned and dressed wound with mosswort and hyleberry salve …’

  ‘Yes, yes, and you did it very well,’ laughed Celestia as Tug placed her back on the ground. ‘And it seems that while I’ve been out patrolling with the skymarshals, you and Cade have made some fine new friends.’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it, Tug?’ said Cade, smiling. ‘We all sit at the same refectory table now,’ he explained, and nodded to each of the academics who had gathered round. ‘Grent One-Tusk here is an expert on storm-stones and their origins. Fenda has been studying the blue moss spores found on those stones, and—’

  ‘I am Sentafuce,’ said the waif, speaking aloud now that Tug’s painstaking work was complete. ‘Professor Sentafuce. And I am interested in the origin of clouds, while my colleague Demora Duste here has devoted her life to studying these magnificent Stone Gardens.’

  The quarry trog nodded and held up the casket.

  ‘Tug has been helping us to harvest seed-stones,’ Sentafuce went on. ‘The work is difficult. You see, they only reveal themselves at twilight, when their glow can be detected below the surface. Then they must be excavated with extreme precision and at great speed to avoid disintegration.’

  Demora laid a hand o
n Tug’s shoulder. ‘Tug here has my strength and Sentafuce’s delicate touch,’ she said, causing Tug himself to turn a bashful red. ‘Without him,’ the quarry trog went on, ‘we would never have made the progress we have.’

  ‘Progress?’ said Celestia, looking around at the smiling faces.

  ‘We are all working for the High Academe Elect,’ said Fenda Fulefane, lowering the burnished copperwood spyglass she’d been using to scan the horizon. ‘It was he who brought us all together in the first place to carry out his plans. Sky willing,’ she added, ‘we’ll have completed those plans before Quove Lentis loses patience and launches his phraxfleet. We’ve been hearing rumours of an imminent attack.’

  Cade nodded. ‘We’re in an even worse position than you and your skymarshals, Celestia,’ he told her with a rueful smile. ‘You see, it’s Descenders that Great Glade truly hates. And we’re all Descenders – or at least, we will be if this blockade ever ends.’

  ‘Come,’ said Demora. ‘We need to get this seed-stone back to Seftis Bule without further delay.’

  They all climbed back aboard the phraxlighter, and when everyone had taken their seats, Grent One-Tusk powered up the phraxchamber and they took off, a trail of steam coiling away behind them. Cade and Celestia fell into conversation about the skymarshals, and how she’d happened to get wounded, with Tug chipping in about how deep the bullet had gone, when suddenly Fenda Fulefane let out a cry of alarm. Standing up now, her spyglass trained on the horizon, she was hopping agitatedly from one taloned foot to the other.

  ‘There! There!’ she shouted, pointing.

  The others followed the line of her outstretched arm. Sentafuce groaned with dismay, a sound that echoed in all their heads.

  The rumours had finally become reality. Quove Lentis’s Great Glade phraxfleet was on its way to attack New Sanctaphrax.

  His hands a blur of movement, Grent immediately changed course, bringing the phraxlighter round in a broad arc and steering it down towards Undergarden. They’d barely managed to moor up and disembark before the sky above them filled with enemy phraxfrigates and the sound of artillery fire.

  ‘Take cover!’ Cade bellowed.

  Up in the great floating city of New Sanctaphrax, alarms were sounding. The mist horns boomed from the towers of the Academy of Rain; the wind hammers and hail gongs resonated all along the Upper Viaduct; while the sonorous beat of the barrel drums on the East and West Landings rumbled ominously through the streets.

  Academics spilled out from gates and doorways, clasping phraxpistols and muskets, and fastening pieces of armour as they ran. In the courtyard of the Knights Academy, the ranks of skymarshals assembled rapidly and with tidy precision. Then, in groups of ten, they leaped into the saddles of their skycraft, powered up the phraxchambers and took to the air.

  High above the bustle of the streets, the skymarshals formed themselves into three bristling waves, each of them two hundred strong and positioned one above the other. Then, all at once, responding to the raised arm of the pilot at the front of the squadron, they gave full power to their phraxchambers, gripped their tillers and soared off fast, flying over Undergarden and out across the evening sky to confront the enemy fleet.

  Advancing towards them in arrowhead formations came the Great Glade phraxvessels. Triple-funnelled phraxlaunches were out in front, flanked by smaller single-funnel attack ships. Then, bringing up the rear of each formation, came a mighty phraxfrigate, towing barges packed with phraxmarines. Spreading across the horizon there were more than two hundred and fifty vessels of different sizes: the entire battle fleet of Quove Lentis’s Academy of Flight.

  At a safe distance behind the advancing armada was the skyvessel of the new phrax commander. Unlike the armoured, shuttered fighting ships, with their phraxcannon ports and mounted swivel-guns, the Progress of Plenty resembled an ornate skytavern, complete with viewing platforms and pleasure gantries decked out in chequerboard flags and garlands. And on the gleaming aft deck sat Quove Lentis himself, dressed in a simple green uniform and plain crushed funnel hat that was pulled down low over his bloated features.

  His former phrax commander, Lennius Grex, had proved useless, and his replacement hadn’t fared any better. The recent attack on two of his phraxfrigates had been the last straw. High Professor of Flight Quove Lentis wanted revenge. Putting himself in overall command, he’d finally given the order for the Great Glade fleet to attack. The renegade upstarts of New Sanctaphrax would be destroyed once and for all.

  Stationed on either side of Quove Lentis, and looking somewhat uncomfortable, were two phrax admirals, kitted out in all their finery – the brocaded topcoats and plumed bicorne hats making a tempting target for any sharp-eyed skymarshal. Standing behind him was Captain Felicia Adereth. She leaned forward.

  ‘The fleet is closing in as ordered, High Professor,’ she whispered in Quove’s ear. ‘And I made sure to place the captains who are critical of your battle plans in the front rank of the formations.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Quove Lentis with a low chuckle. ‘Let them bear the brunt of the skymarshals’ counterattack.’ He smiled greedily. ‘Then the frigates can finally take control of the floating city.’

  Raising a silver spyglass to his eye, Quove looked ahead. His face hardened. What he saw did not please him.

  The first wave of skymarshals had levelled their long-barrelled phraxmuskets, and the line of their skycraft glittered like a string of marsh-gems as they fired. The effect was immediate. The first arrowhead formations of the Great Glade fleet buckled as phrax captain after phrax captain collapsed in the wheelhouses, sending their ships careering out of control. Numerous attack ships spiralled to the earth and exploded as they crashed into the verdant pastures of Undergarden below.

  Not that the defenders of the floating city were getting it all their own way. As Quove Lentis continued to watch, he saw his Great Glade phraxships return heavy fire, the swivel-guns of the phraxlaunches sending a hail of bullets into the ranks of skymarshals. The sky became crisscrossed with steam trails and yellow tracer fire as the formation broke up and unseated skymarshals toppled to their deaths.

  Then, like a great pendulum, the battle swung back in the skymarshals’ favour once more.

  Rallying their number for a renewed attack, the second and third wave of the skymarshal squadron opened fire. More arrowheads were blunted, with the phraxlaunches losing control, crashing into each other and bursting into flame. Behind them, one of the huge barges snapped its tow rope and plummeted out of the sky, causing the desperate phraxmarines on board to leap over the side in an attempt to save their lives.

  Suddenly the booming call of a skyhorn rang out. The phraxfrigates abruptly turned sideways on and set a new course. They flew along the waves of skymarshals at full steam, their gun ports blazing.

  For a moment, a dense billowing fog of steam engulfed the lines of battling skycraft, and the pungent odour of burnt almonds filled the air. When it cleared, dozens of individual steam trails were revealed, the white lines leading down through the sky to small explosions on the ground, each one a disintegrating skycraft.

  The remaining skymarshals were scattered. Swarming in twos and threes around the larger vessels of the Great Glade fleet, they looked like tackflies buzzing around hammelhorns. More phraxships were toppled, but the phraxmarines in the barges towed by the frigates had by now levelled their phraxmuskets and were steadily picking off the skymarshals, one by one.

  ‘Excellent, excellent.’ Quove Lentis smiled from the safe vantage point on the foredeck of the Progress of Plenty. ‘The skymarshals are falling back at last. Now the phraxmarines can get to work.’ He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘I trust that my order was made clear to my captains.’

  ‘It was,’ Captain Adereth confirmed. She leaned forward again and spoke softly. ‘Kill them all. Spare no one.’

  ‘I should be up there with Brock and the others,’ said Celestia, her voice trembling with emotion.

  Cade nodded, but he
was glad that she was standing beside him.

  An hour had passed since the sky battle first began, but they were still spectators, staring up at the deadly combat that raged in the skies above their heads. The two of them were standing in Tug’s sculpture garden on the banks of the Edgewater River, along with Tug himself. Cade and Celestia held phraxmuskets; Tug was clutching a long-handled scythe. Like the ancient statues around them, all three stood rooted to the spot.

  Craters, where skycraft had crashed and their phraxchambers exploded, pock-marked the pastures on the far side of the river, while the wreckage of phraxlaunches and attack ships lay blazing in the gardens below the floating city. High above them, the Great Glade phraxfleet was now closing in on the East and West Landings, both of which had been cleared of defenders by the attackers’ relentless phraxfire.

  It was looking as though it would all soon be over, with Quove Lentis’s phraxfleet victorious.

  The skymarshals – or what was now left of them – had brought their skycraft in to hover among the tallest towers of the city. They were returning fire as best they could, but it was not enough. Several academy towers on the Great Viaduct had been hit by phraxcannon and were on fire; the stonework of the Loftus Observatory was peppered with phraxbullet holes.

  ‘It would be suicide to attempt to get up to the city now,’ Cade said through gritted teeth. ‘We should go down into the sewers and plan a counterattack.’

  Grent, Fenda and the others were already down there, barricading the laboratory and stockpiling equipment and supplies. But Celestia couldn’t take her eyes off the terrible sky-battle. As she watched, two mighty frigates towing barges full of Great Glade phraxmarines wheeled round and closed in on the East and West Landings.