The Descenders

by Paul Stewart

  ‘Prepare to ascend!’ Nate’s order cut through the silence on the deck.

  Cade fell into his sumpwood seat and fastened the harness. He felt light-headed; elated, yet strangely calm. Theegum was at the flight-rock controls, her gestures puzzled and concerned.

  Seftis nodded. ‘My controls aren’t responding either,’ he told Nate.

  Nate pushed the flight levers forward, then pulled them back again – once, twice, three times – before slumping back in his seat.

  ‘We have no power,’ he said.

  Just then, a ripple of light passed across the glass panels of the descent deck, and Cade felt a slight lurch as the nightship began to rise. Slowly at first, then gathering speed, they ascended between the twisting columns of glisters.

  Outside, the sky creature that had been the Professor seemed to be towing the nightship up towards the beginnings of the scree fields. As their speed increased though, the energy of the task was obviously taking its toll. Time and again, the sky creature flickered and faded, then grew bright, only to fade again moments later.

  The air around the nightship pulsed in waves, and the sky began to darken. The scree fields were just above them.

  All at once, the sky creature glowed a dazzling white and an explosive air current erupted from the scree, flinging the nightship upwards. Then, far behind them as they rapidly rose, the sky creature seemed to vaporize into a glittering array of glisters.

  ‘Goodbye, old friend,’ said Nate, looking back as they sped on. ‘And thank you.’

  · CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX ·

  ‘The flight-rock coils are back in action,’ Theegum reported with a tuskless smile. ‘Phraxlamps on low heat …’

  ‘Phraxchamber not responding!’ Seftis called out. There was unmistakable panic in his voice. ‘Unless we can turn up the phraxlamps in the chamber, we risk the phraxchamber going dark.’

  Cade swallowed uneasily. In darkness the phrax crystals would become immeasurably heavy and send the nightship hurtling back down in freefall. At the flight levers, Nate was battling to keep the Linius Pallitax stable as the powerful air currents continued to propel the vessel upwards.

  ‘I’ll go and check,’ said Cade, unbuckling his harness. ‘The connecting rods might have jolted loose when the chamber became unstable back at groundrise.’

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ said Celestia, leaping from her seat.

  Outside, the scree fields were indistinct as the nightship hurtled past them. At this rate, they would reach the beginning of the glister face in a few minutes. If the air current dropped, though, they would be dependent on the power from the phraxchamber. Time was running out. They had to get the phraxlamps working, and fast.

  Otherwise they would be trapped here in the depths. For ever.

  Cade and Celestia scrambled onto the upper deck, where Tug had already opened the panel that led into the phraxchamber. Cade peered in through the opening. He knew the inner workings of the chamber from the months of patient construction in the Armoury of the Knights Academy. And he knew the dangers.

  Ahead of him was a narrow walkway that passed through a thicket of cooling pistons and stabilizing rods. At the far end was the inner chamber, around which the phraxengines were whirring in orbit. It was bitterly cold and, despite his descending armour, Cade realized he was shivering.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Celestia as she handed him a long-handled ratchet.

  ‘I will,’ he reassured her.

  He felt Tug pat him on the back. ‘Duck your head, Cade, or one of those phraxengines will take it off,’ he said in that clear voice he had so recently acquired.

  Cade stepped out onto the walkway and inched his way forward, stepping over cooling pistons and squeezing carefully past the thick stabilizing rods that led to the steam funnels. One touch, he knew, and he would be fused to the freezing metal.

  As he got closer to the central chamber, the nightship juddered, and Cade was almost thrown off his feet – but not before he had to duck as one of the spherical phraxengines shot past his right ear. He hesitated for a moment, looking around cautiously. Then, straightening up, he began to check the connecting rods that controlled the phraxlamps in the central chamber.

  Numbers four and five were solid, but number one looked loose, and two others had come adrift completely. The nightship juddered again.

  All too aware of how quickly he needed to work, Cade reached out with the ratchet, only for another of the phraxengines to dash it from his hand as it whirred past. The ratchet bounced off the walkway with a loud clang and clattered down through a steam funnel vent.

  ‘Cade? Are you all right?’ Celestia called into the chamber from the opening. Her voice, strident with alarm, echoed around Cade’s head.

  ‘Lost the ratchet,’ he called back. ‘I’ll have to tighten it by hand.’

  To do that would mean going to the very edge of the walkway, then leaning down as far as he dared to reach the disconnected joint, all the while dodging those orbiting phraxengines. It wouldn’t be easy. Was this how it was going to end? Cade wondered. His brains dashed out by his own father’s brilliant invention …

  Cade pushed the thought from his head as he reached the end of the walkway.

  Thrum! Thrum! Thrum!

  The phraxengines whirred past again and again, missing him by inches. Lying on his front, his body pressed against the sumpwood slats of the walkway, Cade stretched out one hand, then the other. He slotted the first joint, then the second, into place, and twisted the rods until he felt them click.

  Thrum!

  The hair at the back of his head was parted as a phraxengine hurtled past, grazing it.

  ‘Cade!’ Celestia called. ‘Cade! Get out of there. Seftis has to power up the chamber …’

  Cade turned and scrambled back as, sure enough, the chamber began to hum loudly and ice-cold steam shot out from the stabilizing rods. Tug reached in through the opening, grasped Cade by the shoulders, and pulled him back out onto the upper deck. Celestia slammed the panel into place.

  ‘Thank Earth and Sky,’ she murmured.

  The nightship bucked and rolled, then righted itself as the phraxchamber returned to full power. The steam funnels billowed out great white vapour clouds, and the nightship continued to rise.

  Cade and Celestia clambered down to the descent deck and buckled themselves back into their seats.

  ‘Good work, Cade,’ said Seftis approvingly. ‘I hope I didn’t give you too much of a scare.’

  The Linius Pallitax was rising at a considerable speed now, no longer dependent on the air current, but flying with the smooth buoyancy afforded by the phraxchamber and the flight-rock coils. Looking out through the glass panel beside him, Cade saw the flickering lights of the glister cliff face, and pulled on his protective helmet. They passed on rapidly, and as the time sped past, Cade found his thoughts wandering …

  They had descended to the very bottom of the Edge cliff to discover where life began and ended; to a place where both Sky and Earth were born, only to find that they couldn’t stay there. They, the Descenders, had reached the end, but also the beginning.

  Cade looked up at his friend, Tug. What was it the Professor had said? Groundrise has been good for you. He had certainly been right.

  Smiling down at him from his sumpwood seat, it was as if Tug – the real Tug, who Cade had come to know so well – was now visible. His jawline was tighter, the hunch had gone, and the contours of his face seemed to have meshed together to reveal a sensitive and intelligent nature.

  ‘My thoughts are so much clearer,’ said Tug, as if in answer to a question Cade had not quite formed. ‘It’s as though my mind has been released, up into the light.’

  He smiled with a trace of that lopsided grin. Cade smiled back.

  ‘I’m glad, Tug,’ he said. ‘And glad to be heading home.’

  The nightship travelled up past Denizens Keep – where Demora and Sentafuce came aboard, fully recovered from their injuries, although appalled by the news
of the loss of Fenda and Grent; up the Fluted Decline, with eerie Edge wraiths gliding past and ravine demons scuttling through the shadows; and beyond. Nate steered an even course, flying wide of the cliff face as he kept on upwards through the dark swirl, confident that the combined power of the phraxchamber and the flight-rock coil would combat the unpredictable gusting winds.

  Above the Cusp, they made short work of the High Cliff, rising swiftly through the white swirl, and continued past the Low Gantry. Soon, the great cascade of the Edgewater falls was washing the nightship clean with its fine spray. Then, moments later, the Linius Pallitax abruptly broke cloud cover and, leaving the eternal darkness behind, soared up over the jutting lip of rock and on towards the floating city itself.

  Cade stared down at the Stone Gardens and, once again, found himself thinking about the cycle of life on the Edge that they had learned about from the Professor. As they approached New Sanctaphrax, Nate steered the nightship round the Loftus Observatory and, looking across at the East and West Landings, Cade was surprised to see that they were crowded with the sleek cloudcruisers of the tallow-hats.

  So was Celestia. ‘How long have we been gone?’ she asked. ‘Two weeks, is it? Three?’

  ‘Longer,’ said Cade.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Celestia. ‘Well, the tallow-hats certainly seem to have made themselves at home in that time,’ she murmured, then looked up at Cade. ‘And that’s odd …’

  ‘What is?’ asked Cade.

  ‘No skymarshals on patrol.’

  Nate didn’t say anything as they came in to land in the central square below the Great Viaduct. Cade released the tolley ropes. They were taken up by a group of tallow-hats, each of them festooned with phraxpistols, muskets and sabres.

  ‘And no academics around either,’ said Cade to Celestia.

  The crew of the Linius Pallitax climbed out of the hatch and stepped down onto the mosaic tiles of the square. Tallow-hats, dozens of them, rose from the Viaduct Steps and came clattering down to meet them. Orders were barked, messengers dispatched, and the tallow-hats levelled their weapons at the Descenders.

  ‘This is a fine greeting,’ said Nate, stepping forward. ‘Where is Eudoxia?’

  A tallow-hat strode towards them, the others stepping aside to let him through.

  ‘You’ll find Eudoxia Prade waiting for you soon enough,’ the tallow-hat said with a nonchalant smile. He nodded to his comrades. ‘Seize them!’

  PART FIVE

  THE FOURTH AGE

  · CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN ·

  With a bony finger, Danton Clore traced the nubbed ridge of the scar that ran down his right cheek.

  ‘Be sure to include this,’ he told the portrait painter, a short, angular gnokgoblin academic from one of the Viaduct Schools.

  The goblin nodded, his feathery brush dabbing away at the wooden panel on the easel in front of him.

  ‘Certainly, your … erm …’ he replied uncertainly.

  ‘Knight-General of New Sanctaphrax,’ Danton Clore said, his voice clipped and clear as he stressed each word. ‘No more High Academes and Professors of this, that and the other for the floating city, but instead the Knights of the Tallow and the Company of the Willing.’

  Danton Clore sat back in the high-backed sumpwood chair. He clasped his hands behind his head and gazed up at the vaulted ceiling of the Great Hall of the ancient Knights Academy.

  Willing Companions, he mused. As well they should be.

  At the easel, the painter stiffened, his brush poised, and tutted softly. ‘If the Knight-General doesn’t hold his pose,’ he said, ‘I can’t guarantee the portrait will be finished for the Launch Ceremony.’

  ‘You have taken the Oath of Loyalty, I trust,’ said Danton, sitting up and turning his head back to its original position.

  The portrait painter plucked at his black robes, the front emblazoned with a white bloodoak.

  Danton smiled to himself. Restructuring the upper echelons of New Sanctaphrax hadn’t been easy, but he was finally beginning to make real progress. One by one, his tallow-hats had forced the academics of the floating city – willing or unwilling – to pledge their allegiance to the new order. And it was a nice touch, he thought, to have made them give up their blue-grey robes for something altogether darker.

  ‘I have sworn to serve the Knights of the Tallow,’ the gnokgoblin confirmed, without enthusiasm.

  ‘Then my portrait will be finished, even if you have to stay awake for the next three nights to get it done,’ said Danton, his voice soft but edged with menace. He fixed the portrait painter with an unblinking stare. ‘Scar and all.’

  The gnokgoblin dipped his brush into red, then ochre paint, and returned to dabbing at the wooden panel.

  He, along with his fellow scholars, had been ambivalent about the presence of the newcomers in the floating city at first. Long discussions and heated debate had ensued, weighing up the pros and cons. Now that the tallow-hats had established themselves permanently, though, he had learned to keep his mouth shut. It wasn’t wise to question the decisions made by the new Knight-General.

  In stark contrast to the scholars in the small viaduct schools, many New Sanctaphrax academics had welcomed the tallow-hats with open arms. After all, Danton Clore and his comrades had saved the floating city from the phraxships of Quove Lentis, just as they’d promised they would …

  Danton Clore himself had relived that day a hundred times or more, and the sequence of events that had led up to it. Even now, his heartbeat quickened as he remembered Eudoxia Prade in that smoke-grey cloak of hers, stepping down from the scuttlebrig onto the Edgeland pavement. She’d looked so vulnerable, yet so determined. Then she had lowered her hood, and the moment Danton had looked into her clear green eyes, he knew that he would follow her anywhere in the world.

  ‘I need your help,’ she’d said simply, her voice soft and lilting.

  She sounded shy, nervous even, but those green eyes of hers had spoken to Danton of the inner strength she possessed. Back then, though, with the phraxfleet of Quove Lentis threatening to attack, that was not enough – she needed strength of a more practical kind.

  ‘Can you help me, Danton Clore?’ she asked, then smiled. ‘Will you help me?’

  And Danton had been powerless to say no.

  The other tallow-hats were less sure. Danton had sent out ratbirds summoning the cloudcruisers, and they had come in their hundreds. Gathered together in the desolate fringes of the Edgelands, where the barren pavement fell away into the abyss, they had listened to Eudoxia appealing to them for their help.

  ‘If New Sanctaphrax should fall to Quove Lentis,’ she’d argued, ‘then his fleet of phraxships will come after you next. And with all their might. The tallow-hats will be destroyed.’

  Her words had failed to impress them. The tallow-hats were used to a life on the run; used to hiding out in these barren wastelands, fighting and fleeing. They were not afraid to die. Scornful and dismissive of this elegant young woman, they were preparing to leave when Eudoxia made them an offer that had captured Danton Clore’s attention.

  ‘New Sanctaphrax,’ she said, that beguiling smile playing on her lips, ‘has something new and important to trade.’

  She explained how the academics of the floating city had made a great breakthrough in phrax technology, enabling them to produce an almost limitless supply of energy from a single phrax crystal. It was, she went on, an advance that would not only produce clean power for the great cities, but would also make all phraxships faster and more powerful than ever before – introducing a fourth age of flight that, in the right hands, could spread peace and prosperity throughout the Edgelands.

  ‘And in return for your cloudcruisers coming to our aid,’ she told the tallow-hats, ‘I, as acting High Academe and representative of the Descenders of New Sanctaphrax, am prepared to share that great breakthrough with you.’

  It was an offer she would live to regret. At the time, though, Eudoxia had been sure that Nate would have approv
ed. After all, during his long absence before, she had made many decisions on his behalf – and certainly it got Danton Clore’s attention.

  He saw all the possibilities at once. While the grizzled captains of the tallow-hat fleet remained unimpressed, shaking their heads and muttering among themselves, Danton Clore had taken Eudoxia aside.

  ‘Leave them to me,’ he’d whispered. ‘You shall have our help.’

  How he treasured the look she had given him at that moment, one of trust and gratitude. It was a look he received from her a second time when, days later, he had climbed down from his cloudcruiser onto the West Landing, victorious after the great battle with the phraxfleet from Great Glade.

  But no longer.

  Danton abruptly stood up and, ignoring the painter’s protests, strode across the hall to the great circular window and looked out. There, by the West Landing, in a specially constructed skyship cradle, was a cloudcruiser. He nodded appreciatively. Eudoxia had certainly been right about the advances in phrax technology.

  With its sleek beaked prow and burnished ironwood bows gleaming in the sun, the phraxvessel looked magnificent. Danton admired the curved phraxchamber, with its encircling flight-rock coil, full of latent power; and the sinuous lines of the steam vents that arched so elegantly from the twin-ruddered stern. A flight across the Edgelands that would once have taken weeks to complete should soon be possible in hours.

  As Danton watched, a black-robed team of the newly created Companions were carefully painting letters on the polished hull of the vessel. The Herald of the Fourth Age. It had been a difficult journey but, after weeks of intense and careful planning, Danton could feel the prize almost within his grasp.

  And the hardest part of that journey?