by Paul Stewart
A moment later, with the sound of splintering icicles, a huge snow-encrusted eyelid peeled back to reveal a second eye, then a third and a fourth – until there were a dozen bulging eyeballs clustered like glistening wood-grapes around the first. At the centre of each sphere was a pulsating indigo circle, which contracted, then dilated – spreading out like an ink blot on yellowing parchment – as it focused on the tiny sky ship hurtling towards it.
‘Raff! Watch out!’ screamed Quint. He tore himself away from the balustrade and dashed towards the helm, where the young knight academic was standing transfixed by the monstrous, staring eyes in the sky ahead.
Pushing Raffix aside, Quint yanked the flight-levers back, and spun the heavy lufwood wheel hard to the right. Suddenly the massive eyes blurred as the Cloudslayer lurched violently, keeled over to one side and swerved upwards in a squeal of creaking timbers and flapping sails.
‘Hold on!’ Quint shouted, his breath billowing in the freezing air, as the old sky ship went into a near vertical climb, the wind whistling through its rigging, and jagged shards of ice and swirls of snow buffeting its pitted hull. He battled against the wheel in his hands, which bucked and juddered and fought to break free - but Quint maintained his grip.
He knew that if he let go, the Cloudslayer would turn turvey And if that happened, the ascent would become uncontrollable and the whole sky ship would tear itself apart …
Slowly, straining to hold the wheel steady with one hand, Quint reached out with the other towards the flight-levers. One by one, he pushed them forward, gingerly adjusting the sails and realigning the flight-weights, a fraction of an inch at a time. As he did so, the sound of the wind roaring past his ears gradually began to subside, as did the sound of the protesting timbers. And, by degrees, the Cloudslayer's wild, hurtling ascent began to slow.
Soon, Quint was able to make out the resonant hum of the glowing fire floats as they swarmed busily around the flight-rock; that, and the excited shouts of the Winter Knights.
‘Phin, are you all right?’
‘I'm fine, Mistress Maris. Where's Stope?’
‘Here, Master Phin! With Master Raffix – he's hit his head.’
‘It's nothing, dear chap,’ Raffix's voice sounded from the quarterdeck, below the helm. ‘Thank goodness for armour …’ There was a clanking sound as he scrambled back to his feet. ‘I say, sorry about that, Quint. Taken by surprise just then …’
Looking up from the bone-handled flight-levers, Quint saw Raffix's rueful head appear at the foot of the stairs. His spectacles were lopsided and there was a red bump on his forehead, but otherwise he looked none the worse for his fall.
‘Never mind that, Raff,’ he said, turning the wheel to starboard. The Cloudslayer levelled off, a stiff breeze setting its patched and tattered sails fluttering. He brought it gently round until the prow was dipping down. ‘Look at that!’
The other Winter Knights scrambled up to the helm, clustered round Quint at the wheel and peered down.
‘What in Sky's name … ?’ breathed Raffix.
Far beneath them, hovering in the sky, was some kind of monstrous creature. It was lumpy, ill-shapen and encased in a glistening carapace of ice and snow – its surface scarred and pitted with what looked like weeping sores and oozing boils. The creature was massive. Its bulbous head alone was twice the size of the Sanctaphrax rock, while its coiling, sinuous body, which trailed back across the sky towards the Edge, could have circled Undertown three times over. The creature's immense, frozen body tapered into gigantic fraying strands which ended in wispy tendrils, stretched taut in the sky, as if held by some invisible force.
Beyond these tendrils, in the distance, as the clouds thinned, the great gleaming column of ice hanging from the Edge cliff shone out for a moment. And beyond that, the hazy outline of the Stone Gardens and the floating rock could just be glimpsed.
With a sigh – a dry, rasping sound like the wind blowing through ironwood pines – the immense creature curved round in the sky, its numerous eyes glittering hungrily. Approaching it was a mountainous bank of silver-edged clouds, billowing in from Open Sky towards the Edge on a balmy breeze as warm gusts enveloped the Cloudslayer, so different from the freezing winds Quint had become used to in the ice-bound floating city. The words of the ancient barkscroll came back to him once more: The balmy breezes and fragrant zephyrs have curdled into blizzards of snow and ice …
Just then, with a deep and sonorous cry – like a muffled clap of thunder – the creature swung round, drifting across the sky, until its great head was hovering just ahead of the approaching cloudbank. Its jaws opened wide and, with a thick, gurgling sound, the creature began to swallow the cloudbank.
It gulped greedily, huge lumps of compacted snow and shards of ice falling away from its body as it swelled and contracted, like a wood-python swallowing a fromp. As the Winter Knights watched, the creature sucked the very last strands of cloud into its great gaping mouth, leaving nothing but empty sky in its place. The mouth closed and, for a moment, the creature seemed to pause.
Then its eyes swivelled and its long, coiled body writhed and swayed. From deep inside it, there came a low rumbling sound, as it began to ripple, to convulse …
All at once, a particularly violent spasm passed from its bulbous head, all the way down towards the fraying strands at the end of its tail. The wispy tendrils trembled and strained, but remained stretched taut in the sky, as if trapped in an invisible vice. However violently the creature twisted its immense body, the tail seemed to tether it in the sky.
The rumbling grew louder and louder, and was joined by a long moaning hiss. Maris gasped. Quint held his breath …
The next moment, exploding from the ducts along its great ice-encrusted body, came huge billowing jets of freezing air which stabbed the sky like great glistening spikes, before dissolving at their ends into white clouds. As they did so, the very sky itself seemed to curdle, and the creature ululated with a low, wailing howl.
From their vantage point, high up above, the Winter Knights watched as the clouds which had been expelled by the creature sped across the sky towards the Edge in great swirling blizzards of snow and ice. Soon the Edge cliff, the Stone Gardens and the floating rock itself were lost from view, swallowed up by the ice and snow being expelled from the creature's writhing body.
Even at this distance from the creature, those on board the sky ship were not spared. With a sudden rushing sound, the Cloudslayer was abruptly engulfed in a wave of ice-cold air that set the vessel pitching precariously to and fro. Several of the fire floats were extinguished in the blast, and the flight-rock juddered violently, threatening at any moment to turn super-buoyant and pitch them into the farthest reaches of Open Sky, a place from which there would be no return.
‘So this … this … thing,’ said Phin with a shudder as he gripped the balustrade, ‘is what's causing the endless winter?’
‘It certainly looks like it,’ said Raffix grimly. ‘Gobbling up cloud and spewing out ice and snow like that … Quanx-Querix must have discovered something just like it, and slain it with stormphrax.’ His lip curled. ‘Hideous, loathsome, evil creature …’
‘No,’ said Maris softly. ‘Not evil …’
Quint stared at its frost-encrusted body, the outer carapace pitted and cracked. Thick, pale liquids oozed from the fissures - liquids which froze and melted, melted and froze, as the wheezing creature breathed painfully in and out. Its eyes were dim and misted. They swivelled round, some pale blue, others milky white and dripping with filmy mucus. Its jaws shuddered, its mouth opened a crack, and a thick glutinous stream of half-frozen fluid drooled from the corners.
‘No, not evil,’ he echoed Maris. ‘But sick.’ He continued to gaze at the creature. There was something about it that seemed horribly familiar. It reminded him of the formless monster which had roamed the stonecomb – the blood-red glister which had been created by the ancient scholars in their Great Laboratory from the curious, ethereal glisters th
at inhabited the depths of the Sanctaphrax rock. They were creatures of the air, sucked into the glass tubes of the laboratory, and horribly deformed there. The writhing, shifting body, the clusters of glistening eyes, the long tendrils that swayed and swung in the sky like ragged ribbons blowing in the wind …
‘Whatever it is, it's a creature of the air,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘When your father re-opened the Great Laboratory and attempted to create life, it must have been drawn here from Open Sky. And now,’ he sighed, ‘it is trapped, look …’
Quint pointed to the long fraying tail. The Winter Knights followed his gaze. As the creature writhed and twisted, the taut strands of its tail looked, more than ever, like strands of rope from which it was struggling to break free.
‘It's as if it's frozen from the tail up,’ said Stope, ‘and every time it gulps down the warm clouds and tries to blast itself free, it just freezes up a little more …’
‘And freezes Sanctaphrax and Undertown along with it,’ interrupted Raffix. ‘We'll have to kill it …’
‘The poor thing can't help it. It's only trying to break free,’ said Maris. ‘We can't just kill it …’
Quint motioned to Raffix to take the wheel, and walked away. When he returned a few moments later, he was wearing a pair of parawings and holding the glowing light-casket in his gauntleted hands.
‘If we don't kill it, then Sanctaphrax is doomed,’ he said grimly. ‘But I was your father's apprentice, Maris. I am responsible. I can't ask the rest of you to risk your lives.’
He turned to Raffix. ‘Do you think you can get close enough for me to jump?’
Raffix smiled. ‘Oh, I reckon I can get us close enough all right, old chap,’ he said. ‘But we're the Winter Knights, remember. We stick together. There's going to be no jumping.’
Phin and Stope both nodded, and Maris grabbed Quint's hand. ‘The Winter Knights stick together, Quint,’ she said. ‘You mustn't do anything stupid. Promise me you won't.’
‘I promise,’ said Quint.
Far below them, the creature swayed back and forth in the sky, icy blasts of snow-filled air bursting from the ducts along its body as it swallowed another bank of incoming cloud.
‘Everybody rope themselves down!’ Raffix called out. ‘I'm taking us in!’
With its ragged, patched sails billowing and hull-weights swinging, the old sky ship swooped down in a wide arc, gathering speed as it did so. The sound of protesting timbers filled the air as the topmast cracked, the rudder creaked and the fore-decking buckled and groaned. Ice particles and snow flurries flew towards them, clinging to the hull-weights, settling in the folds of the now frozen sails and, despite the fire floats, beginning to clog up the porous flight-rock.
Tied to the helm, Raffix clenched his jaw as his hands raced over the flight-levers. On the rock-platform, Stope and Phin - their faces pale, their bodies trembling - had lashed themselves to the mast. Behind them, the fire floats on the ends of their silver chains - twists of dark, aromatic smoke coiling from the orange sumpwood charcoal as it hissed and glowed - spread out from the flight-rock like the wings of a giant snowbird.
Up at the battered prow, Quint stood like a carved figurehead in full knight academic armour with the shining light-casket clutched to his breast-plate in both hands while Maris crouched behind him, the rope around her waist tied to the foredeck balustrade. She was staring up at her friend, her face drawn and white with fear.
They sailed out further into Open Sky, then turned and raced back towards the Edge, through the gathering clouds. Up ahead of them, the cloudeater loomed. And as they drew closer, the glistening eyes focused once more on the tiny sky ship.
With a shudder, Quint saw that the eyeballs were tinged a jaundiced yellow colour and that the surface of every one was covered in a latticework of broken capillaries. The filmy discharge had thickened, becoming as viscous and opaque as prowlgrin glue. It hung down beneath the lower eyelids in pleated ribbons of frozen mucus.
From behind him, Quint heard Maris gasp. And from the helm, Raffix's voice rang out.
‘I'll follow this cloudbank in as far as I can, Quint, old chap. Then, I'll pull up sharp. But we're only going to get one go at it, so be ready to release the stormphrax on my command!’ Ahead of him, through the thinning clouds, Quint saw the lips of the great creature slowly part to reveal a huge, cavernous mouth. Out of it came a long, silent roar.
For a moment, warm, sickly air enveloped the sky ship, melting the snow and ice and causing the flight-rock to sink in the sky … But only for a moment. The next, the creature took in a huge, gulping breath, and the Cloudslayer hurtled towards the creature's great, gaping maw.
Quint gritted his teeth and raised the glowing light-casket.
‘Now, Quint!’ bellowed Raffix. ‘Now!’
Quint looked up into the cavernous mouth of the monster, which filled the sky ahead, its glowing red edges disappearing into the inky blackness of the gullet at the centre. All he had to do was flick the catch at the top of the light-casket, and the precious shard of storm-phrax would be released. His fingers tensed inside the metal gauntlets.
Click!
The gauntlets jammed! He flexed and strained, but they wouldn't open. They wouldn't move! His hands were locked tightly into place around the glowing lamp …
‘Now, Quint!’ bellowed Raffix.
Desperately, Quint struggled to break free from the rope that tethered him to the ship. If he couldn't release the stormphrax crystal then he'd throw himself into the gaping mouth instead – light-casket, stormphrax and all!
With a grunt of effort, he wrenched himself free – only for Maris to grab him by the arm.
‘Don't, Quint!’ she shouted. ‘You promised!’
With nimble fingers, she reached forward and flicked the catch on the light-casket. The door sprang open. There was a low hiss and the pungent scent of toasted almonds filled the air as the tiny crystal flew out of the box, as if shot from a crossbow. Sparking and flashing, it blazed a trail through the sky as it shot into the vast dark maw of the creature.
The next instant, as Raffix slammed the flight-levers back, Quint was knocked from his feet. The Cloudslayer pulled up hard, juddering to a halt in mid air, preventing it, too, from being swallowed up by the gargantuan creature.
A dazzling flash lit up the sky as the crystal exploded deep down inside the cloudeater's body. Every cell, every tendril, every scale of its icy carapace glowed as the fragment of stormphrax, made solid in the Twilight Woods, returned to its original form in Open Sky – pure energy, blindingly bright and blazing hot.
Suddenly the Cloudslayer was speeding across the sky back the way it had come, tossed and twisted on the bucking eddies as the shockwaves from the massive explosion rippled out through the air. For a moment, it seemed as if the sky ship's timbers had finally had enough and would shatter into fragments beneath the feet of the Winter Knights. The topmast splintered, the rudder shattered and much of the fore-decking was ripped to pieces – but somehow, the Cloudslayer stayed intact.
When it finally righted itself, and Raffix had brought it under control, Quint struggled to his feet and gazed out into Open Sky.
‘Did we kill it?’ he asked.
A warm wind was blowing in from Open Sky, and ahead the carapace of snow and ice that had enveloped the cloudeater was falling away. Icicles dripped, snapped off and plunged down through the air like discarded lances. Great disintegrating chunks cracked and slipped from the creature's back, breaking up in mid air, and turning to showers of ice fragments which seemed almost to effervesce. And as they melted in the turbulent air, so the sky was filled with shimmering curtains of rainbow-coloured light – red and yellow, purple and green – that criss-crossed and collided with each other in shifting arcs of exquisite colour.
The Winter Knights watched, transfixed, as the last of the ice-cold carapace melted into thin air. From inside the grey and lumpy shell of ice, an extraordinary creature had emerged.
It was di
aphanous, and translucent, as if moulded from the crystal air itself. Long, twisting tentacles fanned out from its glassy body, catching the sunbeams like a tasselled fringe of light. Its eyes were clear now, and sparkled like marsh-gems. And as the light passed through its body, it was rendered visible only by the ripples of its movement. Its mouth opened like a tremor on the surface of a crystal lake, and the cloudeater's great glassy body seemed to swell and surge forward.
All at once, with a rippling flick of its barely visible tail, the transparent fronds at the tip finally broke free from the warming sky with the sound of a thousand panes of glass shattering at the same instant. Then, with a second flick, like a fountain of crystal clear water, the mysterious cloudeater sped off into Open Sky in one long, languorous ripple of movement.
Maris turned to Quint, her eyes shining. ‘We didn't kill it, Quint,’ she said. ‘We cured it!’
•CHAPTER TWENTY TWO•
THE RATBIRD
With a high-pitched screech and a flap of its leathery wings, the tiny ratbird flew up from Quint's outstretched hands and darted through the open window at the north end of the Upper Halls. For a moment, it hovered in the sky, the warm sun beating down on its small, sleek body. It looked down at the Knights Academy below; at the thirteen towers, the Lower Halls, the wide expanse of the Inner Courtyard, then up at the great yellow clouds billowing over the towers and turrets of Sanctaphrax.
‘Sky protect you, Nibblick, little friend,’ breathed Quint as the little ratbird disappeared from view. ‘I only hope my father has the answer to the question you carry.’
Then, as if making up its mind, it let out a second screech and, with a twitch of its whiskers and a flick of its tail, soared off into the sky towards the distant Deepwoods.
*
Three days earlier, a battered sky ship – its sails in shreds and its hull timbers creaking – had approached the Edge cliff through a warm sunlit sky. Far below, the Edgewater River swirled and writhed like a mighty log-worm as a vast torrent of snowmelt brought its frozen waters back to life.
