by Paul Stewart
Cade stepped forward and gathered Rumblix up in his arms. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he told Tug. ‘Rumblix is just trying to say hello.’
Cade put Rumblix down and got him to sit, then took hold of one of the nameless one’s massive hands and brought it close to the prowlgrin’s head. Tug flinched and pulled back, but Cade tightened his grip.
‘Stroke him just above his nostrils,’ he told Tug. ‘Rumblix likes that, don’t you, boy?’
At the feel of the prowlgrin’s fur, the nameless one let out a grunt.
‘That’s it,’ Cade reassured him. ‘Now tickle him with your fingertips,’ he said.
Rumblix began purring as Tug’s great fingers gently ruffled his grey fur. Tug cocked his head to one side. The purring grew louder, and Rumblix rolled over onto his side. Tug crouched down, and kept tickling him, up and down his haunches, on his belly, under his chin . . .
Finally Rumblix could stand it no more. Jumping up, he leaped onto Tug’s forearm and clung on tightly. Tug stared down at him for a moment, then slowly inclined his head. Rumblix rewarded him by licking his face, and Cade heard the most extraordinary sound bubble up from the back of the huge creature’s throat. Part growl, part purr, part soft wheezing sigh, it was the sound of a nameless one from the Nightwoods laughing.
Just then, from far in the distance, there came a mournful yodelling call. Tug paused, cocked his head to one side and stared off into the forest, a puzzled look in his eyes.
‘That’s the call of a banderbear, Tug,’ said Cade, patting his arm reassuringly. ‘I’m pretty sure there aren’t any of those in the Nightwoods where you come from.’
For the rest of the afternoon, as Rumblix bounded about the meadowlands, Cade and Tug worked together as a team. The sun was sinking by the time they had completely cleared the vegetable plot of rocks, which had been piled, one on top of the other, to form a rough drystone wall that enclosed the garden. Tired but elated, Cade returned to the cabin, followed by Tug and Rumblix.
He fetched some offal from the storeroom and set it down on the veranda for Rumblix to eat, while Tug sat beside him with a pile of fresh-cut meadowgrass which he chewed contentedly. When they had finished, the pair of them ambled slowly down to the lakeside and, lowering their heads, lapped at the cool lakewater side by side.
Cade pulled up a chair on the veranda and was just about to sit back and admire the fiery sunset over the Farrow Ridge when he spotted something out on the glittering lake. It was Thorne Lammergyre in his coracle, far out in the middle, a paddle in his hands. Seated behind him was Celestia, the pair of them paddling towards the rock jetty.
Cade raced down to the end of the jetty to meet them.
‘Thorne! Celestia!’ he shouted as they drew closer, then stopped as he saw the expressions on their faces. Thorne was frowning and Celestia looked white-faced and red-eyed, as if she’d been crying. ‘What’s wrong?’ he called as the coracle approached.
Thorne raised a hand. He brought the coracle close to the jetty, but didn’t moor it. Celestia rested her paddle across her legs and looked up. Cade stared back at her.
‘It’s my father, Cade,’ Celestia called out. ‘When I got back yesterday, he was just setting off for the caverns. Said he’d return by nightfall, but he’s still not back. It’s just not like him. And I’m worried.’ Her voice faltered.
Thorne reached back and placed a hand on her arm, then turned to Cade, his square jaw set.
‘We’re going into the caverns behind the Five Falls to look for him,’ he said grimly. ‘And we could use another pair of hands . . .’
Cade saw the old phraxmusket strapped to the fisher goblin’s back, the telescopic sight glinting in the sunlight – and the two pistols at Celestia’s belt.
He nodded. ‘Give me a moment to get my phraxmusket,’ he said.
He turned on his heels and raced up to the cabin. Caught up in the excitement, Rumblix scampered after him, Tug following on behind.
At the cabin, Cade hurried inside. He grabbed the phraxmusket and his backpack, then took two lakefowl from the store. He ran down the steps, two at a time. Rumblix and Tug were waiting at the bottom. He tossed the lakefowl to Rumblix.
‘That should keep you going for a while, boy,’ he said, before turning to Tug. ‘Look after him, Tug,’ he said, and Tug nodded his head – and as if in response, the prowlgrin pup jumped up onto the creature’s forearm, one of the lakefowl dangling from his mouth.
Cade walked to the end of the jetty and stepped down into the coracle, which rocked from side to side. He sat on the bench next to Celestia.
‘Let’s go,’ said Thorne.
He pushed the coracle away from the end of the stone jetty with his paddle, and brought it about till the rounded prow was facing the distant falls. Then, with Thorne at the front of the coracle, paddling first on one side, then on the other, and Cade and Celestia behind him, paddling in unison, port and starboard, they set off toward the glistening cascades of water.
It was Cade’s first time out on the lake, and in the evening light, it looked even more beautiful than from the shore. Following Celestia, Cade got into a smooth and easy rhythm as he plunged the paddle deep into the water, pulled back; then withdrew and plunged it down again. He was soon sweating from the exertion. Behind him, when he glanced round, he saw a V-shaped wake, shot with late afternoon gold, spreading out over the surface of the lake.
The sound of the waterfalls grew louder as they approached the Five Falls, rising little by little to a deafening roar. Spray flew into their faces, fine and drizzle-like at first, but quickly growing heavier. As they drew closer to the falls, the water grew violently turbulent and Thorne’s coracle was tossed about like a piece of flotsam. It was all the goblin could do to stop it being dashed against the rocks.
‘Which way?’ he called back to Celestia.
Celestia looked up, hand raised, shielding her face from the spray from the waterfalls. ‘My father said the third of the five caverns led down into the crystal caverns.’ She struggled to make herself heard over the roar of the falls. ‘And then the drowning pools . . .’
‘The drowning pools?’ said Cade, gripping tightly to his paddle as the coracle bucked and swayed in the current.
‘That’s right, Cade,’ said Celestia, leaning close to him and talking into his ear. ‘I’d understand if you felt you couldn’t follow us down there.’
Cade turned and looked deep into Celestia’s green eyes. His face coloured up. She had saved his life; had become his friend. He’d hoped she knew just how he felt about her.
‘You can count on me, Celestia,’ he told her fiercely. ‘I’d follow you anywhere.’
· CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE ·
‘THERE’S A MOORING rock behind the waterfall,’ shouted Thorne. ‘If we can get to it without capsizing . . .’
Celestia pushed back her dripping wet hair and nodded. ‘Get as close to the falls as you can,’ she said, pulling a length of rope from her backpack. ‘I’ll do the rest.’ She tied one end of the rope to the bow of the coracle and fashioned a noose at the other end.
Cade looked up at the Farrow Ridge, a sheer flat cliff face of glistening grey rock. The third cavern of the Five Falls was directly above them, water gushing down from its black mouth in a steady, unceasing torrent. Behind the falls, Cade could make out a definite ascent, a natural cutting in the rock that zigzagged its way up to the cavern entrance.
Thorne tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Paddle, lad!’ he bellowed. ‘Paddle as if your life depended on it!’
Cade crouched forward and, shoulders hunched, began to paddle. Thorne did the same. The pair of them drove the coracle through the swirling, bubbling water at the foot of the falls. The noise of the crashing water made their ears ring. Celestia stood at the front of the coracle, legs apart to steady herself, and tossed the rope.
The noose seemed to waver for a moment in the air, then dropped down over the spur of rock jutting out from the cliff face behind the waterfall. Thorne a
nd Cade stopped paddling. The rope went taut. The wickerwork at the front of the coracle creaked under the strain.
Thorne reached forward, seized the rope and pulled. The coracle, buffeted by the boiling currents, inched forward. He pulled again, gaining enough slack in the rope for Cade to grab onto. The two of them pulled together, then Celestia joined in. Rocking and shuddering, the little vessel shot though the waterfall to the other side.
It was eerily quiet at the base of the cliff behind the falls, the roar of the torrent muffled by the wall of grey rock directly in front of them. Thorne stepped out of the coracle onto a thin apron of gravel-strewn rock. Celestia climbed out next, followed by Cade, and, soaked to the skin, the three of them looked up at the cliff face towering above them. Close up, it looked even more daunting than it had from the other side of the waterfall, the rock-ledge steps that rose up the cliff far more haphazard and precarious than they had appeared at first glance.
Thorne stepped up onto the first ledge, then paused. He pointed to a mark which had been scratched into the rock – a curved line bisecting a triangle.
‘See this? It’s a skyshipwright’s mark,’ he explained. ‘Blatch uses it to signpost trails when he’s exploring. Leastways he did back when we were mapping the lake fringes of the Western Woods.’
Cade saw the look of relief that passed across Celestia’s face as she shot a glance at the mark on the rock. Her father might still be in trouble, but at least they were going the right way.
Thorne started to climb the zigzagging steps, placing his boots down square on each rock ledge in turn and securing a firm handhold before stepping up to the next one, maintaining contact with the rock at all times. Loose-limbed and strong, Thorne made it look easy – as did Celestia, who followed close behind him. But when Cade started to climb, he discovered that the spray from the waterfall had left a fine layer of water on the rock ledges. It made them slippery and cold to the touch.
He tried to copy Thorne – raising his arms and feeling round until he found a handhold to pull himself up. He took a step. Then another. And another . . .
He glanced over his shoulder. At his back, the waterfall was like a vast curtain, glittering and opaque. The chill generated by the water rushing past him made his teeth chatter. Drops of water splashed over the back of his collar and coursed down his back. His arms and legs ached and he gasped in lungfuls of air as he forced himself on. Looking up, Cade saw that Celestia and Thorne had reached the jutting lip of rock at the cavern entrance, and he gritted his teeth.
‘You can do it, Cade,’ Celestia called down to him as, hand over hand, foot after foot, Cade scrambled up the last half-dozen strides.
Reaching down, Thorne grasped him by the shoulders and pulled him up onto the ledge. Cade slumped to his knees, fighting to catch his breath. Directly beside him, the torrent of water gushed out of the inky blackness of the cavern and cascaded down to the lake far below.
Cade looked up.
Before him in the dappled sunlight, the Farrow Lake and its shoreline stretched out in a magnificent panorama. Far to his left lay the Levels, the flat marshy lowlands that bordered the forest to the west. To his right, Gart Ironside’s sky platform rose up from the surrounding forest to the east. While in front of him, in the far distance, Cade was able to make out a thin ribbon of emerald green along the east shore.
The meadowlands . . .
Cade squinted, trying to make out his cabin. But it was impossible. Even the vegetable patch he’d cleared was not visible from this far away. He thought of Rumblix and Tug patiently waiting for him to return, and felt a lump rise in his throat.
‘My father mentioned the crystal caverns,’ Celestia was saying. ‘And discovering the place he called the drowning pools. That’s where he found the arrowheads,’ she added, and turned to him, her green eyes narrowed. ‘You remember the arrowheads, don’t you, Cade?’
Cade nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, climbing to his feet. ‘He was examining them in his study.’
‘Load your weapons, both of you,’ Thorne broke in. ‘Keep close behind me and look out for more marks.’ He slipped his old phraxmusket from his shoulder and cocked the trigger, then unhooked the lamp that dangled from his belt. He took a wax-sealed box from his jacket and removed two fire-flints. He lit the lamp and raised it, then turned and headed into the forbidding blackness of the cavern. Celestia went with him. Cade followed, gripping his phraxmusket tightly.
After the sunset dazzle outside, Cade was struck blind by the dark of the cavern, despite the lamp. He paused and pressed his hand against the smooth cold rock wall to steady himself as he waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness.
When they did, he gasped in astonishment.
The cavern they had entered was vast: a great domed chamber through which the water gushed in a deep channel on its way to the entrance. The light from Thorne’s lamp illuminated the ridged walls of the cavern that stretched up high above their heads, and in the soft glow, Cade could see thousands of tiny, translucent creatures shimmering on shifting currents of air.
With translucent, bulbous bodies and heads set with bunches of pearl-like eyes and long thin feelers, the tiny creatures seemed to sense their presence and started drifting down towards them, their long tendrils trailing behind them. Cade was transfixed. They clustered around his face and hands, and his skin tingled as though from countless gentle pinpricks.
He swallowed. ‘What are they?’
‘Air shrimps!’ Celestia exclaimed. ‘They live throughout the caverns – my father showed me drawings of them in his notebook last week.’
Brushing aside the clouds of shrimps that hovered around them, they made their way through the vast cavern. It echoed with the roar of rushing water, which drowned out the sound of their footsteps on the loose gravel beneath their boots.
‘Over there!’
Thorne pointed to one of Blatch Helmstoft’s marks on the far wall of the cavern. It was beside a low-ceilinged tunnel, the smallest of three leading out of the cavern. Water spurted from cracks and fissures in the cavern wall in great jets, which they had to duck under to reach the tunnel.
Cade shivered as he followed the others. His wet clothes clung to his body, chilling him to the bone, and he wondered what could have possessed Celestia’s father to enter this dark, inhospitable world, and not just once, but time and time again. The tattoo on the chest of the old hammerhead goblin came into his thoughts, and Cade flinched.
White trogs . . .
Just then, something slithered over Cade’s boot, and he gave out a shrieking yelp that made the others turn, their weapons raised in their hands. Thorne held out the lantern and Cade looked down at his boot. It was coated in a trail of a silver-white mucus-like substance. Slowly making its way up the tunnel wall was a giant colour-less snail.
‘Did your father ever draw that?’ said Cade as the snail continued slowly on its way.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Celestia. ‘That’s a slime snail. A small one by the looks of it.’
She reached out and lightly touched the glistening trail. When she pulled her finger away, a long thin strand clung to the tip. It was transparent and smelled of spiced honey.
‘My father collected a jarful of this stuff on his last trip,’ she said. ‘It’s good for gluing broken pots back together, but not much else.’ She smiled at Cade. ‘You look cold.’
‘Oh, I . . . I . . . I’m all right,’ said Cade, trying to stop his teeth chattering.
‘Here, take a sip of this,’ said Thorne, pulling a flask from his back pocket and handing it to Cade.
Cade took a sip, and the warm, fiery glow of woodgrog filled his mouth and throat, and then his belly. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
They continued down the small tunnel, which twisted and turned and seemed to double back on itself, the floor sloping downwards all the while as they descended ever deeper. The air grew warmer the further they went, and Cade felt his clothes begin to dry out. Finally, turning a sharp corner, the air f
illed with a soft, mournful sound that reminded Cade of the sonorous windchimes that hung from the rooftops of the academies in the Cloud Quarter of Great Glade. Up ahead, the light from Thorne’s lamp seemed to explode into great shafts of brilliant light as the tunnel opened out into a larger space.
The next moment, Cade emerged from the tunnel. He straightened up and looked around him. ‘These must be . . .’
‘. . . the crystal caverns,’ said Celestia, finishing his sentence, her voice hushed with awe.
Thousands upon thousands of crystals filled the cavernous space in front of them. Hexagonal. Octagonal. They lay at angles to one another, crisscrossed and intersecting, like branches of trees. They towered above Cade’s head. Thin and thick. Long and longer still. Some were bifurcated, some were branched; some came to angled points, while others split into dozens of smaller crystals that splayed out like spiky seedheads. It was a forest of crystals stretching off into the distance, and as Thorne held up his lamp, the light bounced from facet to facet, intensifying as it did so. The whole cave was illuminated. It glowed through the flat, polished faces of the crystals; it glinted at the angled edges. It flashed and shimmered while an echoing, bell-like chiming filled their ears.
Cade touched the hard surface of the nearest crystal. It was gently vibrating, and the eerie sound it emitted rose and fell as he trailed his fingers over it.
‘They seem to be sensitive to the smallest disturbance in the air currents,’ said Celestia, looking around, fascinated.
They stepped forward and as they picked their way through the forest, the crystals chimed and sang all around them.
‘If Blatch is down here, he’ll certainly hear us coming,’ said Thorne, and in the sparkling light Cade could see the fisher goblin’s finger tighten on the trigger of his phraxmusket.
They made their way through a succession of caves, each filled with crystals and the haunting, vibrating music they produced. Finally Thorne found what they were looking for: Blatch Helmstoft’s mark. It was scratched into the rock above the entrance to a downward-sloping tunnel that led out of the last of the crystal caverns.
