The Descenders

by Paul Stewart

  Tug, a friend of Nate’s nephew – who had arrived in New Sanctaphrax with Cade – showed an extraordinary talent for harvesting these seed-stones. Soon Seftis had enough to carry out more experiments using the newly modified technology. And it worked. The last scale-model skyvessel to be dropped off the Loftus Observatory came to a fast, yet smooth, halt, and the tiny phraxship remained in one piece.

  Heartened by this, Seftis had started work on a full-scale version. With Demora Duste’s help, he devised what they called the ‘stone-band’; a network of pipes encircling the phraxchamber, which contained dozens of the precious seed-stones harvested so carefully by Tug in the Stone Gardens.

  ‘It still seems like a miracle to me,’ Nate mused, ‘the way everything slipped into place. First Cade. Then Demora – and Tug. Almost as though the building of the nightship was meant to happen. And then finding the last seed-stone the very day Great Glade’s attempt to crush our beloved floating city was finally thwarted.’

  Seftis Bule didn’t believe in miracles. He knew only that controlled freefall was possible after all. Now, with the nightship that hovered before them – the last seed-rock in place – he, Nate and the other Descenders were going to test it out for real.

  The sound of approaching footsteps broke into their thoughts, and Seftis and Nate turned to see Theegum striding along the sewer walkway towards them. Following close behind her came the seven others, each of them now kitted out in descending armour and equipment.

  Celestia’s voice, soft and awestruck, spoke for them all as it echoed around the great chamber. ‘So this is it,’ she gasped. ‘The nightship.’

  Nate stepped forward to meet them. He was looking more youthful than ever, Cade thought. His back was straight, his stride confident, while his eyes were a more intense shade of blue than he had ever seen them.

  ‘My fellow Descenders,’ he said, ‘we have worked long and hard. Now, thanks to all our efforts, we are ready to launch. But before we do, there is one last thing to be done.’

  Cade turned to Celestia and smiled. ‘The naming ceremony,’ he mouthed.

  As the construction of the nightship had progressed, Nate had thought long and hard about what it should be called. Nothing he came up with seemed quite right. Then, shortly before she’d gone off to negotiate the alliance with the tallow-hats, Eudoxia had made a suggestion.

  ‘With its seed-stone and phrax crystals, Earth and Sky has been combined in this extraordinary vessel,’ she’d observed. ‘There was once an academic long, long ago who united Earth and Sky scholarship. His name was …’

  Nate smiled to himself as Seftis handed him a lufwood log with letters carved into its dark bark. Everyone had agreed that it was the perfect name for the nightship.

  Pulling a bundle of long resin matches from a jacket pouch, the armourer removed one and struck it on the side of the phraxchamber. It hissed and flared, and he gave it to Nate as well. The High Academe looked down at the log and the blazing match for a moment, his brow furrowed – before turning to Cade, who was standing at his side.

  ‘You do it,’ he said simply, passing both the log and the match to his nephew.

  ‘Me?’ said Cade. He swallowed, overwhelmed by the honour.

  Nate nodded. ‘You, Cade.’

  His hands trembling, Cade approached the hovering nightship. He knew every bolt and rivet of it from the months of its construction, carried out secretly in the Armoury. Yet now, seeing it hovering over the void, black and sleek against the dawn sky, it didn’t seem quite real. For a start, it looked smaller here against the white of the billowing clouds than it had in the Armoury. Back there, it had loomed like a monstrous woodbeetle, suspended from the rafters. Now the nightship awaited them, a tiny world ready to be populated by these Descenders.

  Had he, Seftis and Theegum the banderbear really made this? he marvelled.

  Cade felt the heat of the match as it burned down towards his fingers. He held out the lufwood in front of him and touched the match to it. A purple flame flared, and the log rose from Cade’s outstretched hand and flew up into the air. The carved letters blackened as the flames consumed the soaring log. Cade blew out the match.

  ‘I name this vessel the nightship Linius Pallitax,’ he announced.

  Cade watched his fellow Descenders fondly as they climbed aboard the nightship. They were a motley collection. Old friends and new.

  Celestia and Tug, from his home in Farrow Lake, he trusted with his life, and of course the same applied to his uncle Nate. But then there were the others. Demora Duste the quarry trog and her friend Sentafuce, the waif professor; Grent One-Tusk the long-hair and Fenda Fulefane the fettle-legger; Seftis and Theegum from the Armoury. Cade had got to know them all so well during his time in New Sanctaphrax. Now, as they were about to head down into the depths beneath the Edge, his heart swelled. Surely there was no finer crew to be travelling with.

  Celestia took Tug’s hand as she stepped aboard the nightship, and the two of them climbed down through the roof hatch onto the upper deck. There was room for her to stand up, but Tug had to stoop, and even then his skull ridges grazed the ceiling. His descending armour, like that of Demora Duste and Theegum, was far bigger than that of the other crew members, and made him appear much bulkier than usual. And yet, as he guided Celestia to the rear of the deck and inspected the glowing phraxstove and well-provisioned shelves, he moved with a grace and balance at odds with his size.

  ‘Tug happy to cook,’ he said, with his lopsided grin. ‘But any help is appreciated.’

  He turned and ducked through a doorway. Celestia poked her head round the corner of the narrow side cabin, and saw the row of hammocks strung from side to side, and the store lockers below. Tug climbed into the end hammock. His massive arms trailed on either side, knuckles resting on the cabin floor.

  ‘I’ll take the one next to you,’ Celestia said, and giggled. ‘I’m used to your snoring.’

  ‘Tug doesn’t snoring,’ Tug laughed, and Celestia had to admit that this was true. Her friend slept as quietly as a lemkin – unless, of course, he had one of his Nightwoods dreams. Then he would thrash about, howling and yelping as he relived the torments of his past. But thankfully such troubled nights were rare these days.

  Celestia opened a store locker and began to fill it with parcels and bundles taken from the forage bag slung across her shoulder. She looked round.

  ‘If you’re ship’s cook, Tug,’ she said, ‘I’ll be ship’s doctor.’ She smiled. ‘But any help is appreciated.’

  Below them on the descent deck, Grent One-Tusk reached to his shoulder to unbuckle the breastplate of his armour, only for Fenda Fulefane to stretch forward and stay his hand.

  ‘The High Academe … I mean, Captain Quarter,’ she corrected herself, ‘has ordered that armour be worn at all times while we’re on duty. After all, we are Descenders now.’

  ‘Indeed we are,’ said Grent, and chuckled. ‘Sky above, if someone had told me back in my apprentice days at the Sumpwood Bridge Academy in Hive that one day I’d be a Descender, I’d have laughed my whiskers off.’ He crossed the deck to the small porthole and peered through it.

  ‘I’d have done the same,’ said Fenda, hopping over to join him. She laughed. ‘If I had whiskers to laugh off, that is.’ Her expression grew serious. ‘But here we both are, suited and booted’ – she looked down at the phraxboots, modified to fit her taloned feet – ‘about to embark on the greatest adventure of them all. I only wish my mother could see me now …’

  Grent put an arm round the fettle-legger’s shoulder. ‘Perhaps she can,’ he said, looking out at the swirling clouds. ‘Perhaps she can.’ He turned to Demora Duste, who had sat down in the sumpwood chair opposite. ‘What do you think, Demora?’

  The quarry trog laughed. ‘I have the feeling that anything and everything is possible on this expedition.’

  She reached down and adjusted the height of her chair by cranking the handle in its arm rest. Beside her, Sentafuce the nightwaif did
the same, but in the opposite direction, until the two of them were eye to eye with each other.

  On the other side of the descent deck, Seftis and Theegum the banderbear made similar adjustments.

  ‘What a mixed bunch we are,’ Sentafuce observed, her voice in everyone’s head. ‘I—’

  ‘Please, my dear Sentafuce, speak out loud,’ Demora broke in gently. ‘We are descending into regions where thoughts can become complicated, so we must try to think and speak as clearly as possible.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Sentafuce out loud. Her barbels quivered at the corners of her mouth. ‘It’s just nerves. Am I alone in feeling nervous?’ she asked, and looked around at her fellow Descenders, her enormous eyes widening. ‘No, I think not.’

  Opposite them, Seftis patted Theegum’s paw. ‘Thank you, old friend,’ he said quietly. ‘I know this must be hard for you – bringing back memories …’ He smiled ruefully. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t manage the phraxglobe on my own.’

  Theegum raised a paw and circled the air with a claw. ‘Wurgh … wuh-wuh … wurrgggh,’ she said. This path that leads to the depths should not be travelled alone.

  Seftis shrugged, baffled by his friend’s language.

  ‘And thank you, Seftis,’ Demora broke in as she checked the stone-band control levers that fringed her seat, ‘for believing in my work in the Stone Gardens, when so many called it outdated.’

  ‘The First Age of Flight combining with the Third Age of Flight,’ Sentafuce’s voice sounded once more in everyone’s head. ‘Stone and phrax united.’

  ‘You’re doing it again, dear,’ said Demora, a little more forcefully this time.

  Cade took his seat and strapped himself in. Celestia took her place beside him.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ Nate called back from the controls.

  There was a ripple of assent and Nate reached forward for the tolley-rope release lever. In the sumpwood seats around him, the Descenders tensed. Below their feet, through the glass panels of the descending deck, they saw the billowing clouds of the white swirl thicken and eddy.

  ‘Phraxengine set at slow descent,’ Seftis Bule reported.

  ‘Stone-band at quarter heat,’ Demora Duste added.

  Nate pushed the release lever forward. ‘Tolley rope released,’ he announced, and the nightship gave a little jolt.

  Sentafuce’s voice whispered throughout the Linius Pallitax: ‘May Earth and Sky protect us all.’

  · CHAPTER NINETEEN ·

  The nightship plunged into the roiling clouds of the white swirl, swaying gently at first, then juddering with increasing intensity as the air currents took hold. Cade felt the seat harness strain at his shoulder; the cable attached to his sumpwood chair slackened, then went taut with each dip and roll. Outside, the clouds thinned for a few moments, and through the glass panels of the descent deck he could see the rock face of the high cliff speeding past in a dizzying blur.

  At their respective controls, Demora and Seftis worked in tandem to keep the Linius Pallitax stable. They regulated the light in the phraxchamber and the heat in the stone-band, causing gusts of dense steam to pour out of the funnels at the sides of the outer hull.

  It was going well, but then, all of a sudden, the cliff came rushing up to meet them. Cade flinched, fearing that the winds were about to slam the nightship into the rock face, shattering the glass of the descent deck and sending them hurtling down into the abyss below.

  In his sumpwood chair, Nate’s jaws clenched as his hands sped over the flight levers, swivelling the funnels and sending jets of cushioning steam blasting against the cliff. The nightship slowed, steadied itself, then abruptly picked up speed again, and Cade felt his stomach do a churning somersault as the vessel resumed its descent.

  It was to become a familiar feeling in the voyage ahead. After an hour or so, Cade was just about getting used to it, and he lost himself, staring out through the panelled glass at the mesmerizing white swirl.

  For Nate and his two assistants, though, the concentration needed to keep the Linius Pallitax from crashing was taking its toll. One moment of inattention or relaxation and the nightship would buck and threaten to spin out of control – only for the phraxchamber to thrum, the stone-band to glow, and fresh clouds of steam to burst forth from the funnels.

  ‘Prepare the tolley ropes!’

  Nate’s order roused Cade from his reverie. Turning away from the ever-changing patterns of the swirling white mist, he cranked his sumpwood seat up towards the ceiling rung above him. Then, grasping the overhead rungs in turn, he made his way across to the far side of the descent deck. Cade lowered himself, coming down beside the window, the glass pane etched with calibrations that would enable him to take aim.

  ‘Stand by, Cade,’ Nate’s voice sounded.

  Cade shifted in his sumpwood seat. He looked out at the array of mooring rings directly below them, anchored deep in the cliff face on a massive jutting spur called ‘the Cusp’.

  These had been laid out in an unbroken line by the Descenders who had continued Nate Quarter and Ambris Hentadile’s work in the years following their disappearance. No nightship descent for them, though; just the painstaking, arduous manual climb down the cliff face, rock spike by rock spike, as they’d hammered the rings securely into place.

  The mooring rings came closer. Cade braced himself.

  ‘When you’re ready …’

  Cade took careful aim, his hand on the harpoon lever in the side of the sumpwood seat. He eased it slowly forward and saw a white flash out of the corner of his eye as the phraxharpoons fired. Below him, through the glass panels, grapples with tolley ropes attached to them spiralled through the air, passed through the mooring rings and spun around them like yarn collecting around a spool.

  The tolley ropes, all six of them, sprang taut as the nightship fell past the mooring rings, bringing the vessel to a surprisingly smooth halt. Nate slumped back in his seat, his face bathed in sweat.

  ‘In one short hour, we have made a descent that would have taken many long days on the cliff face,’ he said, relief clear in his voice. He unclipped his harness and pulled himself up with the help of a ceiling rung. ‘Well done, everyone. We’ll rest up here for a while.’ He frowned. ‘Then we’ll enter the dark swirl.’

  He locked the flight levers and looked around at the crew.

  ‘We will take the next part of our descent at a more measured pace,’ he said. ‘Tug and Theegum, I’m going to need your strength on the winches. Cade, I believe you told me that Celestia is an even better shot than you? I want both of you on the phraxharpoons. Sentafuce, help them. And Grent and Fenda – could you two relieve Demora and Seftis on the phraxchamber and stone-band?’

  ‘But what about you, Captain?’ said Fenda, rising from her chair.

  ‘Surely you need to rest more than any of us,’ added Sentafuce kindly.

  ‘Don’t you worry about me,’ said Nate. He smiled, but there was a quiet intensity in his manner. ‘I’ve been resting for sixteen years, waiting for this …’ His voice trailed away, and he shrugged. ‘So, Tug, how about some charlock tea?’

  Soon they were all gathered around the phraxstove in the galley, drinking the sweet tea that Tug had prepared. Cade was sitting beside him and Theegum, interpreting the banderbear’s sign language for his friend. The two of them seemed to have a natural affinity that Cade loved to see.

  ‘The winch will wind our precious vessel to safety,’ he told Tug, translating the banderbear’s words. ‘And we two shall work with gladness in our hearts that will give strength to our arms.’

  Tug stroked Theegum’s paw. ‘Tug has a strong heart,’ he told her.

  ‘Are you ready for the dark swirl, Cade?’ asked Celestia. She leaned forward, her voice hushed in his ear. ‘Ravine demons and Edge wraiths and all …’

  Cade nodded. ‘I think we’re both ready,’ he said.

  They assembled on the descent deck – all apart from Theegum and Tug, who remained on the upper deck. The two of th
em took up positions at the sally-ports in the nightship’s armoured hood, next to winches that were attached to the tolley ropes. Cade and Celestia were situated on the descent deck directly below them, seated in their sumpwood chairs beside the glass aiming panels.

  At the flight controls, Nate sounded the bells. This was how they would measure out the rest of the day as they plunged into darkness. Then he released the tolley ropes, and Cade felt the tension rise on the descent deck as the nightship began to descend into the swirling half-light of the grey clouds.

  ‘Fire!’ Nate’s command rang out as the first of the gale-force winds suddenly buffeted the Linius Pallitax.

  Cade and Celestia fired the phraxharpoons at the fluted rock formations below them, and not a moment too soon. There were white flashes, puffs of steam, then echoing cracks and thuds as the harpoons struck the rock and held fast. The nightship bucked and rolled, and the crew fought hard to counter the intense swirl of the storm.

  From above him, Cade heard the steady whirr of the winch as Tug and Theegum leaped into action, pulling the vessel towards the harpoons now anchored to the rock face somewhere below them in the darkness. As the nightship approached the harpoons, small phrax explosions released yet more of them, and in the rough and tumble that followed, Cade and Celestia fired again at the fleeting glimpse of rock. Then the winches whirred into action once more …

  Over and over, this procedure was repeated – fire, winch, descend – allowing them to drop down the cliff face safely, and with a remarkable degree of control. They passed jutting spurs and nubbed outcrops, and vertical ravines where Cade caught sight of the glinting eyes of what must have been ravine ghouls peeking out. None of them emerged, though. It was as if they were unwilling to take on this monstrous metal insect that was slowly making its way down the Fluted Decline.

  That night, at six bells, the crew slumped gratefully into their hammocks. Moored to the cliff face, the little vessel shuddered and shook, rocking them all to a deep, yet far from dreamless sleep.