The Descenders

by Paul Stewart

  For a moment, the two sides were locked in conflict, trading fire. It was difficult to tell who had the upper hand. But then, without any warning, the phraxmusket fire from the towers abruptly stopped.

  The skymarshals had run out of ammunition.

  Celestia trained Cade’s spyglass on the East Landing. A group of academics in blue-grey robes – mistsifters by the look of them, and no friends of descending – had emerged from the side streets, their hands up, and were walking in a line across the timber boards. They wanted to surrender. But then, from one of the barges, a volley of phraxmusket fire broke out – followed by another and another …

  When the steam cleared, the landing was littered with bodies.

  Celestia lowered the spyglass. Beside her, Tug’s muscles tensed as his grip tightened on the scythe. Cade’s face had drained of colour.

  ‘Murderers,’ he breathed.

  It was over. New Sanctaphrax had been beaten. And so quickly …

  But then, as Cade and Celestia were on the point of giving up all hope, seemingly out of nowhere, something glinted in the evening sky; something sleek and shiny and very, very fast.

  · CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ·

  The phrax-powered cloudcruisers sped in across the sky, their armoured prows gleaming in the last glow of twilight. As the vessels went into a steep dive, the low thrum of their phraxchambers turned to a high-pitched whine, and plaited trails of steam stretched out from the multiple funnels like a fisher goblin’s net.

  Cade, Celestia and Tug watched from below, hearts in their mouths, as the cloudcruisers smashed into the Great Glade fleet that was hovering at the East and West Landings. Their beak-like prows sliced deftly through the aft decks of the phraxfrigates, severing them from the phraxchamber at the heart of each vessel. One after another, the frigates plummeted out of the sky, raining down debris and bodies as they fell.

  ‘Into the tunnels!’ Fenda Fulefane shouted from the entrance to her sewer laboratory as the pastures along the banks of the Edgewater lit up with explosions from the falling phraxchambers. ‘All of you! Now!’

  High above, blazing buoyant timber from the disintegrating phraxships shot upwards in sparkling constellations, vivid against the darkening sky. A little way off, a swivel-gun crashed into the earth, shattering a group of ancient statues and sending stone shards flying off in all directions.

  Tug tossed his scythe aside, swept Cade and Celestia off their feet and ran, head down and shoulders hunched, towards the sewer entrance. Behind them, his sculpture garden was suddenly engulfed in a ball of flame as the swivel-gun’s phrax mechanism exploded. Cade glanced back to catch sight of a group of tall-hatted figures, their impassive carved faces staring out from the inferno.

  Tug ducked inside the arched opening to the sewer and fell to his knees, releasing his hold on Celestia and Cade, who tumbled gratefully to the stone floor. Celestia sprang to her feet.

  ‘Tug, you’re hurt!’ she exclaimed, immediately pulling phials and tied-up bundles from her flight tunic.

  Cade looked. She was right. Tug’s back was peppered with jagged fragments of stone from the shattered statues.

  ‘Tug not hurt,’ he said as Celestia began picking the bloody shards out of his shoulders with tweezers and applying a sweet-smelling salve. His small deep-set eyes narrowed, and he shuddered. ‘Tug has suffered much worse.’

  ‘Yes, yes, dear Tug,’ Sentafuce’s voice sounded in all their heads. ‘But the horrors of the Nightwoods are behind you now.’

  She, Fenda Fulefane, Grent One-Tusk and Demora Duste had gathered together in the darkness of the arched sewer entrance. As Celestia dressed Tug’s back, they all looked out on the inferno that gripped Undergarden. The pastures and fields beyond were lit up with countless fires, large and small, that flared then died out as blazing debris from the sky battle continued to fall.

  Celestia handed Cade his uncle’s spyglass, and Cade trained it on the floating city.

  At the West Landing, the cloudcruisers had circled back round. They were hovering in the air now, their prows pointing menacingly at the remaining phraxfrigates and barges, the decks of the Great Glade vessels crowded with phraxmarines. Some sort of dialogue must have been going on, Cade concluded, because, as he watched, Quove Lentis’s phraxlaunches and frigates slowly wheeled round and headed back the way they’d come.

  The cloudcruisers rose in the sky to let what remained of the Great Glade phraxfleet steam back across the glowing fires in Undergarden. Then, like woodwolves shadowing a tilder herd, they pursued the retreating Great Glade vessels until they entered the grasslands beyond and disappeared into the night.

  With the enemy fleet gone, the cloudcruisers – a hundred or so in Cade’s estimation – returned to the floating city they had just rescued. On the West Landing, academics were now crowding the boards, waving and cheering as the vessels began to throw down tolley ropes to dock.

  ‘Who are they?’ Cade said in awe. ‘And where did they come from?’

  ‘Tallow-hats,’ said a soft, familiar voice. ‘And I sent for them.’

  Cade and the others turned to see Eudoxia, her storm-grey travelling cape around her shoulders. She was standing at the entrance to one of the sewer tunnels on the far side of the chamber. In the flickering light of the lamp she was holding, her face looked drawn and weary.

  ‘We’ve been expecting Great Glade to attack for some time now,’ she said quietly, her voice amplified by the stone vaults above as she stepped towards them. ‘Quove Lentis had grown impatient with his blockade and decided to gamble everything. To have any hope of defeating him, we also had to gamble.’

  Cade nodded thoughtfully. The tallow-hats certainly had a reputation for pursuing their own interests. But today they had proved themselves worthy allies – and formidable fighters.

  ‘The Friends of New Sanctaphrax in Gorgetown, Hive and Riverrise – and Great Glade itself – all pooled their resources to buy the services of the tallow-hats,’ Eudoxia went on, turning to Cade. ‘While you and your friends were working for Nate on his descending plans, I was negotiating to secure outside help.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘There are plenty in the New Sanctaphrax academies who disapprove of both.’

  She took Cade’s arm and guided him back across the gallery, motioning to the others to follow.

  ‘Thank Sky I was able to make a deal – and that the tallow-hats arrived in time,’ she went on. ‘Another week or so, and the Academies of Mist and Rain would have caved in and accepted all Quove Lentis’s demands.’ She turned and looked into Cade’s face. ‘You must have seen what happened up on the East Landing when the academics tried to surrender.’

  Cade nodded dully.

  ‘It’s a terrible tragedy that lives were lost,’ said Eudoxia, ‘but at least now everyone here in New Sanctaphrax understands just how ruthless Quove Lentis truly is.’

  They walked on through the tunnel and, at the far end, took a left turn into another. None of them had ever gone this deep into the sewers before.

  ‘Where exactly are we going?’ Cade asked.

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Eudoxia with a smile.

  The maze of underground waterways had been constructed centuries earlier – back before the great exodus; back when Undergarden was still Undertown, a bustling industrial city with a population numbering many thousands. A feat of engineering, the vast sewerage system had been maintained by a small army of workers.

  Today, it was neglected. Tangles of nethergrass and black fern clogged the walkways, while ferocious creatures were said to lurk in its dark corners – muglumps: huge armoured predators with six thick-set limbs and a whiplash tail that paced the ceilings and sniffed the air for intruders. Bat-like shadowflits and shriekmice were flapping silently through the dank air; sleek oozefish swimming in the filthy water at the bottom of the tunnels, seeking out prey.

  Cade turned to Celestia. ‘Keep close,’ he whispered.

  Celestia didn’t need to be told twice. She was at home up in the airy light
of the forest canopy, not down here in these cold dark tunnels. The ceilings dripped and the walls were slimy, while underfoot the thick mud reduced their progress to a slow trudge. She hated it.

  ‘I wish we’d get to wherever we’re going,’ she whispered back.

  Eudoxia, by contrast, seemed oblivious to their surroundings. Striding confidently ahead, she had turned the conversation to descending which, now that the Great Glade phraxfleet of Quove Lentis had been defeated, might finally be resumed.

  ‘I trust Danton Clore,’ she told Cade. ‘He’s proved his worth. With him and his tallow-hats on hand to defend New Sanctaphrax, the denizens can return to their efforts beneath the Edge. Nate will be overjoyed,’ she added.

  Cade was puzzled. ‘But surely Nate won’t want to descend now,’ he said. ‘After all, as High Academe he’ll have to oversee the running of New Sanctaphrax—’

  ‘Cade Quarter!’ Eudoxia said sharply – causing Cade to turn, wondering what he’d said wrong. ‘I managed to “oversee the running of New Sanctaphrax”, as you put it, for fourteen years while Nate was away. I daresay I can do it again.’

  ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean … I …’

  His aunt’s face melted into a smile and she reached across and squeezed his arm. ‘I’m teasing,’ she said. ‘Nate and I have discussed it. As I always say to him, “You concentrate on the future and I’ll worry about the present.”’

  Cade nodded. He’d heard his uncle say the self-same thing back on the Viaduct Steps.

  ‘I’d assumed he wanted to descend again so that he could find that missing friend of his, the Professor,’ said Cade. ‘But from what he told me, it’s so much more than that …’

  ‘I know,’ said Eudoxia. ‘For Nate, the unknown world that lies beneath the Edge is no less than the final frontier of knowledge, just waiting to be explored. He believes that if its secrets can be unlocked, then the academic endeavours of the last thousand years will finally bear fruit. In short, Cade, that the mystery of life itself in the Edge will be revealed.’

  ‘And … do you believe that as well, Aunt Eudoxia?’ Cade asked softly.

  Eudoxia laughed, breaking the spell that she had woven. ‘It really doesn’t matter what I believe,’ she said. ‘Once Nate sets his heart on achieving something, nothing will deter him.’ She hesitated. ‘As I’m sure you understand, Cade. After all,’ she added, ‘you’re just like him.’

  Cade thrilled at the words. But, like him? Like the great Descender, Nate Quarter? Surely not. Even this short trudge through the sewers was proving an ordeal.

  He had completely lost his bearings by now – and was beginning to think that Eudoxia had too. And judging by the long sighs and muttering behind him, the others thought so as well. But then, as they turned yet another bend, there appeared the trace of a yellow glow on the far wall, along with the sound of low voices.

  Moments later, they stepped out of the tunnel and into a huge underground chamber. Spanning the vaulted cavern was a magnificent bridge of carved blackwood, as broad as one of the landings in the floating city. And there, waiting beneath it, was Nate.

  Cade stared at him. His uncle looked different somehow. Younger. Fitter. He was dressed in full descending armour and holding a glister-proof helmet under one arm. But that wasn’t it … Then he realized what had changed in Nate’s appearance: his uncle had shaved off his shaggy white beard.

  Beside him was the wiry armourer of the Knights Academy, Seftis Bule, and Theegum the banderbear. They too were kitted out in armour and descending gear.

  ‘This is the Blackwood Bridge,’ said Nate, ‘built in the Second Age by the librarian knights as a refuge from their enemies. When I learned just how far the project had progressed, I told Seftis it would be a suitable place to relocate to in case our enemies triumphed.’

  He laughed, clapped each of them on the back in turn and embraced them.

  ‘Yet it was us who prevailed.’

  He paused in front of Eudoxia for a moment, the look on his face a mixture of excitement and sadness. Then he hugged her too.

  ‘Sentafuce told me that the tallow-hats have defeated the Great Glade fleet,’ he said, pulling away at last. ‘The blockade is over and our work can resume!’

  ‘Theegum and I have laid out armour for each of you,’ Seftis announced.

  ‘You mean … it’s ready?’ Cade could hardly contain his excitement. ‘But only yesterday you told me that the stone-band wasn’t fully weighted.’

  Demora Duste stepped forward and held up the lamp casket containing Tug’s harvested seed-stone.

  ‘It will be now,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Celestia. ‘What is it that you’ve all been working on, and where are we going?’

  Behind Nate, neatly laid out on the black timbers of the bridge, were seven more suits of armour, complete with phraxchambers and glister helmets. He turned to Celestia, his eyes gleaming, and grasped her by the hands.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘But first we have to suit up, Celestia, because we’re going to be Descenders!’

  PART FOUR

  THE DESCENT

  · CHAPTER EIGHTEEN ·

  Undertown’s ancient central sewer emerged from the Edge cliff and jutted out over the abyss below. There, moored to the great outfall pipe by half a dozen tolley ropes, was an extraordinary-looking vessel. The nightship. Seftis Bule reached out and ran his hand over its metal surface. The black globe was smooth and cold to the touch.

  Seftis turned to Nate, a smile on his face. ‘We did it,’ he said. ‘At last.’

  ‘You did it, old friend,’ Nate said. ‘I never thought it was possible.’

  The two of them surveyed the vessel that hovered before them – the vessel both of them hoped was not only robust enough to survive freefall, but also powerful enough to return from the depths. It was, as Seftis Bule had maintained throughout the nightship’s construction, all about phrax power and control.

  Painted pitch black with burnt ironwood-pine resin, the nightship was a curious hybrid, like nothing that had ever been built before. At the front of the black globe was the snub-nosed prow, an armoured carapace with sinew-like cabling leading back to the phraxchamber. It contained the upper deck, where the winch controls, sleeping berths and galley were sited. And below that the descent deck, with its reinforced glass panels, through which rows of sumpwood seats, with descent levers embedded in their sides, could be seen.

  The black globe itself formed the outer hull that enclosed the powerful phraxengine. At the core of the chamber was a crystal of stormphrax, kept buoyant by internal lamps, and ready to unleash the latent power of lightning when the torsion-vice tightened around it. Surrounding the core were five smaller phraxchambers, each one containing its own tiny crystal shard. On either side of the main globe were rows of steam funnels that looked curiously like the stubby legs of an insect; while around its middle was a glowing network of pipes, heated from within by phraxlamps: the stone-band.

  ‘I certainly couldn’t have done it on my own,’ said Seftis as he stared at the finished nightship proudly. ‘Everyone played their part.’

  His mind recalled the process by which they had finally reached this moment. The first problem he had had to deal with was building a phraxchamber capable of generating enough power to slow the vessel’s fall. This long-running problem had, of course, been solved by the High Academe Elect’s nephew Cade – a nephew Nate Quarter hadn’t even known he had – who, seemingly out of the blue, had arrived in New Sanctaphrax with Eudoxia and a handful of his father’s working drawings.

  As Seftis and his team had worked on them, the armourer had become increasingly impressed with the Great Glade academic who had first come up with the designs for the power-efficient phraxchambers. The drawings had detailed innovation after innovation, revealing phrax-power technology far beyond anything seen before.

  And just think, Seftis had marvelled, all this was the work of an obscure phraxengineer bac
k in Great Glade. It was hard to take in.

  Thadeus Quarter was that scholar’s name. Back in the old days, Seftis Bule himself had trained at the Great Glade academy. Who knows? he’d often mused in those past few months. Maybe he had even met this Thadeus Quarter. Not that he could remember. It was a pity, without doubt, but at least he’d now had the privilege of getting to know his son …

  Finally, after much trial and error, Seftis had constructed a model that did indeed have the power to stop its fall. But it came at a cost, for although the phraxchamber remained intact, coming to such an abrupt halt just above the ground, the casement surrounding the model ship was torn free by the force and broke into a thousand pieces.

  Nate had shaken his head in despair as Seftis’s sixth model – having dropped from the top of the ancient Loftus Observatory, the highest point in Sanctaphrax – had suffered the same fate as all the rest.

  ‘The fall is the easy part,’ Seftis had muttered. ‘Controlling that fall is proving to be impossible.’

  But then, just as Cade’s arrival in New Sanctaphrax had been a fortuitous coincidence, so too was the chance meeting in the Great Library between Nate and a professor from the newly formed Academy of Earth and Sky Studies. In their subsequent conversation, Nate had recognized the potential importance of the so-called seed-stones that Demora had discovered in the Stone Gardens, and – just as he’d done with his nephew – had put her in contact with Seftis Bule.

  In the Armoury, it was discovered that these little stones, when heated and cooled, could soften and stabilize the fall, in much the same way that full-grown flight rocks had once allowed sky galleons to fly.

  Cold rock rises, hot rock sinks.

  That was the principle by which the fabled stone pilots of the First Age of Flight had, for centuries, flown their skyships. And seed-stones, it was discovered, had a similar power to those flight rocks, but in miniature. By using them, it was hoped that a fourth age might be ushered in.