The Edge Chronicles 11: The Nameless One: First Book of Cade

by Paul Stewart

  ‘This way,’ said Thorne, entering the tunnel.

  Celestia ducked down and followed him. Cade stepped past a large, round boulder at the tunnel entrance, and hurried after them. As he did so, he felt something brush against his ankle, and looking down saw that he had snagged a strand of what looked like a cobweb. At the same moment, he heard a low creak behind him.

  He glanced back . . .

  The other end of the sticky strand was attached to a small wedge-shaped rock that held the big boulder in place. As Cade watched in horror, the cobweb plucked the wedge from beneath the boulder, sending it rolling forward.

  ‘Run!’ Cade shouted to the others as it rumbled down the tunnel towards them.

  The boulder gathered speed, its surface grazing the pitted sides of the tunnel as it rolled. Just ahead, Cade, Celestia and Thorne dashed headlong down the increasingly steep incline in a desperate bid to outrun the oncoming boulder.

  Before them, the end of the tunnel was in sight. With his lamp swinging violently from side to side, casting wild shadows across the walls, Thorne threw himself through the narrow opening, followed closely by the others. As they fell sprawling to the floor there was a crash behind them as the boulder slammed into the opening, sealing it shut.

  The three of them picked themselves up. Thorne raised the lamp and they looked about them.

  They were in a small cavern. Clusters of pearly stalactites hung down from the low ceiling; stalagmites rose from the floor. And set between them at various points were a dozen bowl-shaped depressions with holes at their centre.

  Celestia turned and stared at the boulder blocking the end of the tunnel. It was wedged tight like a stopper in a bottle.

  ‘We’re trapped,’ she said, and Cade could hear the panic in her voice.

  Thorne knelt down at the edge of one of the depressions in the cave floor and examined the small grooves on the surface of the rock. When he looked up, his brow was furrowed.

  ‘These aren’t natural formations,’ he said. ‘They’ve been created – cut into the floor with rock chisels . . .’

  Just then, with a deep echoing gurgle and a sudden roar, water gushed up from the holes at the centre of the depressions, one after the other, until twelve mighty geysers of water were pouring into the cavern. They hammered against the ceiling, coursed down the walls and swirled around their feet . . .

  ‘The drowning pools,’ Celestia breathed.

  · CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR ·

  THE GUSHING WATER flooded the cave. Strong, swirling currents seized Cade’s legs and threatened to spin him round. His boot went over on a lump of rock. He stumbled, lost his balance, fell forward and landed with a splash. The stock of his phraxmusket swung round and struck him on the side of his head.

  Sprawling and splashing, he managed to grab a stalactite and pull himself back onto his feet; then, legs braced, to push himself upright.

  ‘Are you all right, Cade?’ Celestia shouted above the roar of rushing water. She was clinging to a stalactite over by the cave’s entrance and was waist deep in the surging water. Thorne stood beside her, furiously swinging the butt of his phraxmusket against the boulder that blocked the tunnel.

  Cade moved towards him. The water was up around his chest now, currents beneath the surface threatening to pull him under with each step. As he reached Celestia and Thorne, the fisher goblin took another swing at the boulder, only for the copperwood butt of the phraxmusket to shatter. Thorne threw the old musket aside in disgust.

  ‘Stand back,’ said Celestia. ‘I’ve got an idea.’ She pulled her phraxpistols from their holsters and aimed at the side of the boulder, where it formed a watertight seal with the cave wall. ‘Cade, you take the other side . . .’

  Cade pulled his phraxmusket from his shoulder and took aim.

  ‘Fire!’ Celestia shouted.

  With a blinding flash and a deafening crack, the phraxweapons discharged. The bullets struck the rock, sending splintering fragments off in all directions. They reloaded. Fired again. More rock crumbled.

  But the seal between the boulder and the cave wall remained watertight.

  Cade reloaded again. ‘Move, curse you!’ he roared. ‘Move!’

  He fired again, and again. And again . . .

  The water was now up around their necks, submerging the blocked entrance and threatening to drag them under.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Thorne told Cade. ‘We need to get up as high as we can.’

  Stalactites hung down from the roof of the cave in needle-like clusters, and as the level rose, the three of them trod water and rose with it. Thorne held the lamp above his head. It cast an eerie, shadowy light on the hanging rock formations. Below their feet, the dark water bubbled as the jets continued to surge up from the cave floor.

  Reaching up, Thorne grasped one of the ridged stalactites and, with the handle of the lamp clamped between his teeth, hauled himself up out of the water. Celestia grabbed another stalactite and did the same, and Cade followed, the three of them scrambling up towards the roof of the cave.

  Shivering, Cade gasped in lungfuls of air. It tasted stale and dank in his mouth. He looked up. A little way off, Celestia clung to the top of a stalactite, her face drained of colour. Their eyes met.

  She winced. ‘I’m so sorry I got you into this,’ she said, and glanced across at Thorne. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Your father is my friend,’ Thorne said simply.

  ‘And you and Thorne are my friends,’ added Cade.

  Celestia nodded, and in the light of the lamp Cade could see that her eyes were brimming with tears.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ she said, voicing what they were all thinking.

  Thorne flinched and held up the lamp, illuminating the turbulent depths below. The water was rising towards them, already lapping at their boots.

  Cade looked up, searching the ceiling for any sign of a crack or fissure that might offer a way out. But there was none he could see. The space between the rising water and the rock ceiling would close up. And they would drown . . .

  Cade swallowed.

  ‘There must be a way out,’ Thorne muttered. ‘When your father mentioned the crystal caverns and the drowning pools, Celestia, did he say anything else?’

  Celestia frowned. ‘You know what he can be like, Thorne,’ she said. ‘Vague, distracted, lost in his thoughts . . .’

  ‘Think, Celestia!’ urged Thorne. ‘Anything he said. Anything at all . . .’

  The water had spilled over the tops of their boots and Cade could feel its icy touch moving up from his ankles to his knees. He shuddered and closed his eyes, pressing his cheek against the smooth, cold surface of the stalactite he was clinging to.

  ‘He took his pack, his lamp . . .’ Celestia recounted. ‘I gave him salve and some hyleberry-soaked bandages in case he needed them . . .’ She let out a sob, then collected herself. ‘And . . . and he said that on his last trip, he’d explored some “very interesting” caves beyond the third of the falls . . . He mentioned the crystal caverns, where he found the arrowheads. And the drowning pools . . .’

  The water was now at chest height, and Cade jerked his head back, fighting the rising panic surging up from within him. He opened his eyes. To his right, its surface illuminated by the lamplight, was a small stalactite, its grey-green colour different to the pearly white stalactites around it.

  ‘He said the drowning pools were “fascinating”. That was how he described them. “Fascinating” . . .’

  Celestia’s voice was beginning to crack, and she was speaking very fast as she fought against the same panic that Cade was feeling. It wouldn’t be long now before the water was at neck level and Thorne’s lamp would begin to gutter and then go out, pitching them into darkness . . .

  ‘His last words to me were that he was going to explore beyond the drowning pools, “as silently as a slime snail” . . . Oh, Thorne, Cade, I’m so sorry . . .’

  Cade stared at the stalactite. There, carved into its surface was a skysh
ipwright’s mark – scratched hastily, the lines wobbly and uneven, but unmistakable. A line bisecting a triangle.

  ‘He was here!’ Cade shouted out. ‘Your father was right here! Where we are now!’

  Just then, with the water in their faces and the ceiling grazing the tops of their heads, Thorne’s light went out. In the pitch blackness, Cade blindly reached out for the stalactite and grasped it with both hands.

  The stalactite abruptly lurched forward.

  As it did so, there was a loud grinding sound from somewhere within the walls of the cavern followed by stone scraping against stone. Around them, the water seemed to tremble. The next moment, a broad shaft of light appeared below in the cave floor and the water was sucked rapidly away, taking them with it.

  Twisted and spinning, his hands raised protectively to his head, Cade closed his eyes as the powerful current dragged him down, down, down. His lungs were burning. His temples throbbed.

  Suddenly he was falling through the air in the cascade of water. His arms flailed. He snatched a breath. Then, with a great splash, he struck more water and plunged deep into a seemingly bottomless pool.

  He kicked his legs. He drove upwards with his arms. And he broke the surface, gasping and spluttering.

  ‘So, you followed me,’ came a thin, reedy voice. ‘I was afraid you might . . .’

  · CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE ·

  CADE WAS TREADING water in a deep dark pool at the centre of a vast domed cavern, its steep, faintly luminescent walls lined with gouged-out alcoves. Waves caused by the cascade of water slapped at the sides of the pool, and the sound echoed around the cavern.

  Close by him, Celestia broke the surface and gasped for breath, followed, moments later, by Thorne.

  ‘Celestia!’ It was the same thin voice that Cade had heard before. ‘Thorne!’

  Cade looked across to where the words had come from, and there, hunched down low in one of the shadowy alcoves carved out of the wall, was Celestia’s father.

  ‘I’d come and help you out of the water, but . . .’ He nodded down at the glistening rope that crisscrossed his body like the laces of a shoe. ‘The white trogs have bound me up in this slime-rope of theirs!’

  Blatch was wearing a scuffed leather jacket with a high collar and studded patches reinforcing the shoulders. Attached to the front, on cords looped around buttons, were various brass instruments with glass panels and dials, together with a notebook and leadwood pencil. He was half sitting, half crouching in the alcove, his hands bound tightly to his sides by the slime-rope. His feet were bare and blistered, and there was an angry-looking welt on the side of his cheek.

  ‘Oh, Father,’ Celestia said, swimming over to the side of the pool below the alcove. ‘What have they done to you . . .?’

  Just then, the cavern filled with a deep, sonorous sound and, looking up, Cade saw a huge white spider emerge from a crevice high up in the roof. On its back was a figure sitting astride a curved saddle. The spider scuttled across to the stone trap door in the vaulted ceiling through which Cade and the others had fallen.

  The rider paused beside the opening, looking up into the cavern and then down at the swimmers in the pool below. He took a shell from his belt and blew into it, once, twice, three times, then reached out for a stalactite beside the opening. The rider pulled the stalactite back and, with a grinding sound, a stone slab slid back across the opening, sealing it once more. Then, turning, he urged his spider down the cave wall towards the pool, where Cade, Celestia and Thorne were treading water.

  As the spider approached, Cade noticed the figure on its back was clutching a length of glistening rope in one hand and a jagged shard of crystal in the other.

  As if in response to the first rider’s call, two more spiders emerged and scuttled down the walls, their riders arching back in their saddles as they hurled strands of glistening rope down at the surface of the pool.

  Cade felt a sudden stinging sensation, as if from a slap, and looking down saw that a coil of rope had struck his chest and stuck fast. The next moment, he was yanked up out of the water and the cavern walls blurred as he felt himself being spun bodily round and round, then dropped. He landed heavily, the wind knocked out of him and his head spinning. When it cleared and he got his breath back, Cade looked up and saw that he was lying in a shallow alcove, his chest tightly laced with slime-rope that bound his arms to his sides, just like Celestia’s father.

  From the alcoves on either side of him came gasps and grunts that told him that Celestia and Thorne had also been captured. Above the alcoves, sitting back in their saddles as their spiders clung motionless to the cavern wall, the white trogs eyed their prisoners silently.

  Cade stared back at them, his mouth dry.

  The white trogs were tall and brawny. They had cowl-shaped ears that flexed and quivered; they had broad flat noses and sunken eyes, and bumpy bone-ridges that crossed their scalps from the top of their brows to the nape of their necks. In the stirrups of their saddles, their three-toed feet were bare, and they wore bleached-out snailskin capes over white robes that shimmered and glowed in the dim light. The barbed crystal spears they carried were pointing down at the alcoves.

  One of them reached inside his cloak. He looked older than the others and more powerfully built, and Cade assumed he must be the leader. He drew back his hand and Cade saw that he was holding the shell of a slime snail, which he raised to his lips and blew into. The cavern filled with the deep, sonorous sound once more – but this time Cade heard a similar sound answering it from somewhere in the distance.

  The trogs twisted in their saddles and dug their heels into the sides of their spiders, which turned and scuttled back up the walls of the cavern before disappearing into the shadowy crevices in the ceiling.

  Cade shuffled forward on his knees, and heard the others do the same. They leaned out from the alcoves. Below them, the dark surface of the pool was mirror-still, reflecting their faces back to them. Cade trembled. Bound tight by the slime-rope as they were, one slip and they would tumble from their alcoves, and drown. In the reflection of the pool, Cade saw Blatch Helmstoft’s face, his dark beady eyes glinting from behind his wire-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘You followed my marks, I take it,’ he said sadly, looking at each of their reflected faces in turn. ‘My loyal friend, my brave daughter and her new young friend . . . I wish you hadn’t. The marks were for me to find my way back, not a trail for you to follow.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m so sorry I’ve led you into this misadventure of mine. I’m only grateful that you didn’t all perish in the drowning pools.’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, when I heard the water come rushing in—’

  ‘I saw your mark,’ Cade broke in. ‘On that stalactite.’

  ‘Thank Earth and Sky for that much at least,’ Blatch said with a sigh. ‘Though this, I fear, is where the journey ends. The trogs have been holding me captive here and, despite my best efforts, have yet to communicate their intentions – or, indeed, utter a single word in my presence . . .’ Blatch frowned and pointed to his left and right. ‘Though these alcoves do the white trog’s talking for them,’ he added grimly.

  Cade heard Celestia gasp and, looking down into the pool, he saw the reflection of the alcoves on either side of them. Hanging from slime-rope slings in the shadowy recesses were various victims of the drowning pools. The corpses of half a dozen tilder calves. Several plump lemkins. And a bedraggled-looking weezit . . .

  They were clearly in some sort of larder where the trogs kept their fresh meat. Was this to be their fate? Cade wondered. He remembered the gruesome tattoo on the hammerhead’s chest and shuddered.

  ‘You see,’ Blatch was saying, ‘the crystal caverns warn the white trogs of any intruders into their realm. The lightest touch, the brush of a fingertip, the tremble of footfall, and the crystals start vibrating, producing that eerie sound – and alerting the trogs to prepare their defences . . .’

  ‘The drowning pools,’ said Celestia.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Blatc
h. ‘Though I didn’t know that at the time.’ He frowned. ‘I’m afraid it took the misfortune of another creature to unlock that cave’s terrible secret.

  ‘It was on my fourth trip, and I was taking my usual meticulous care not to touch or disturb anything – and thank Earth and Sky I did! – when I discovered the pools. I realized instantly that they were not a natural feature, though their purpose was a mystery to me. The cave seemed to be a dead end, so I withdrew. It was only when I was back in the crystal caverns that I realized I was not the only one there. Somehow, a weezit had made its way into the caves.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve seen them on the cliff-sides behind the falls, grazing on crevice-moss. This one must have got lost . . . Anyway, it blundered past me, and the next thing I knew it had run down the tunnel and into the cave I’d just left, tripping the spiderweb trap as it went. The great boulder rolled down into the tunnel and wedged itself tight at the far end . . .’

  In the pond’s reflection, Cade and Celestia exchanged glances.

  ‘I went back down and pressed my ear against the boulder and listened,’ Blatch went on, ‘which is when I heard the sound of water flooding the cave, and the sound of the weezit crying out in alarm . . .’ He paused. ‘When it fell silent, I heard the rush of the water draining out again. Then the boulder shuddered, as if something was pushing it from the other side. I retreated back to the crystal caverns and waited. And that’s when I caught my first sight of the white trogs . . .’

  Blatch’s eyes twinkled with excitement as he remembered the moment.

  ‘As the rock boulder moved, I realized that two spiders were pushing it. The white trogs were riding them. When the spiders had shoved the boulder back up to the top of the tunnel, the trogs reset their ingenious trap. Then they returned to the cave, and I silently followed.