by Paul Stewart
It was, Cade realized, a wonderful day. And he was glad to be alive . . .
At the far end of the Farrow Lake, the torrential Five Falls were cascading down into the waters below. Cade’s gaze came to rest on the entrance to the cavern at the top of the central waterfall. It was the cavern that he, Celestia and Thorne had entered. He shivered at the thought of it . . .
Where were they now? he mused.
Thorne, most likely, was out in his coracle netting lakefish. And Celestia – well, maybe she had returned to the hanging-cabin with her father. He hoped that she’d be back soon . . .
Cade looked around the cabin. The table and chairs had been brought in from the veranda and were standing beside the hammock. His leather jacket hung over the back of one chair, torn at the shoulder and stained with blood, while draped over the other was a black scarf that belonged to Celestia.
The tabletop was strewn with Celestia’s medicines. Unstoppered pots of creams and salves were clustered together with vials containing liquids of various colours: purple, green, yellow, clear. And a charred ash-fringed ember of something soft that lay on the blade of a knife.
Frowning, Cade reached out and took the knife by the handle. He brought it to his nose and sniffed.
‘Shriekroot,’ he murmured, remembering the bitter taste in his mouth.
He had been close to death and Celestia must have fought hard to save him.
He reached up and slipped his hand down the back of his shirt. His fingertips glided over smooth, unblemished skin, with trace of neither wound nor scar, and he frowned as he recalled the crystal dagger that had struck him there. The venom-coated dagger . . .
Celestia had thought he would die, he remembered. There had been tears in her eyes.
He looked down at the salves and potions. At the bloodstained jacket. And at the nub of shriekroot.
He shook his head. She had tended to him, looked after him, tried everything she could think of to bring him back from the brink of death; from the burning fever and racking pain.
From the blackness . . .
Cade swung his legs over the side of the hammock and pulled himself to his feet. But the nightmare was over. The fact was, he’d never felt so well as he did now. Fit and healthy and strong – and very, very hungry. He padded over to the fireplace, where a pot of barley broth was bubbling over a crackling fire.
His gaze fell upon the mantelpiece, with the spyglass at one end and the glass vial of perfume at the other, and pinned to the log wall above it the parchment scrolls his father had entrusted him with . . .
‘Father . . . Mother . . .’ Cade whispered, his eyes misting over.
Picking up a mug from the table, he peered down into the steaming pot. There wasn’t much broth left, but enough. He ladled some of it into the mug, then took a sip.
The barley broth, he discovered, was seasoned with meat stock, nibblick and peppercorns, and tasted delicious. Cupping the mug with both hands and sipping at its thick, peppery contents, Cade sat down at the table and gazed out of the window.
Rumblix jumped from the hammock to the back of the chair next to Cade’s, his dextrous hind paws gripping the wooden frame. He kept turning his large head and looking at Cade as if to check that he was still there, and every so often, he would stick out his long prehensile tongue and lick at Cade’s forearm.
‘Were you worried about me, boy?’ Cade asked.
He smiled, absentmindedly stroking the loyal pup’s thick grey fur. Rumblix purred contentedly and nuzzled up against Cade’s side.
‘It’s all over now,’ he said. ‘And it’s a bright new day.’
He drank the rest of the soup and, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve, crossed back to the fire to see whether he could scrape some more out of the pot. Rumblix followed Cade, leaping across the cabin from the chair to table, table to floor, where he squatted at Cade’s feet looking up, his head cocked to one side.
The pot was all but empty, Cade discovered, and he noticed the stack of bowls and spoons in the wash-bowl suggesting that the others had also eaten. Cade smiled. His friends had saved his life. Thorne, Blatch and Gart, pulling him out of the cavern and into the phraxlighter; Celestia tending to his wounds, and then . . .
Cade paused in his thoughts as he remembered the bottle at his lips. The fur-faced creature with the kindly wise eyes; the life-giving water which had taken away the pain . . .
Just then, there came a knock on the door. Rumblix, who had been balanced on the back of one of the chairs, jumped down and raced across the floor, yelping and purring. Cade paused. Thorne’s knock was usually louder. Celestia’s, a familiar rat-a-tat-tat. This knock was soft, almost hesitant.
Rumblix was jumping up and down excitedly on the spot, until the door handle turned, when he sat down and looked up expectantly as the door slowly opened. Fingers appeared, gripping the edge of the door. Then a head; thick hair, goggles. Dark blue eyes scanned the room . . .
‘Gart,’ said Cade, leaping to his feet.
‘Cade, lad,’ said Gart, stepping inside the cabin and closing the door behind him. ‘Good to see you back on your feet.’
‘I’ve got to thank you,’ Cade said. ‘For rescuing me from the cave—’
‘Cade,’ Gart interrupted him. He reached up and twisted the points of his moustache, his expression troubled and grave. ‘There’s something I must tell you.’
· CHAPTER FORTY-ONE ·
GART RAKED HIS oiled hair back across his head with his fingers, then looked up and held Cade’s gaze.
‘I’m not a bad person,’ he said quietly.
‘Of . . . of course you’re not,’ Cade began.
Gart cut him off with a raised hand. ‘Hear me out, Cade,’ he said, sitting down at the table. ‘I came to say goodbye, remember?’
Cade nodded.
‘Well, that morning, I had been hunting weezits over the upper ridges. It was dawn and the sun was rising, and as the first rays hit the High Farrow, I saw a red glow shining up from a cleft in the rock . . .’
Cade leaned forward. Gart had tried before to explain, he remembered, down on the floor of the cave. This is all my fault, he’d said.
‘The jewel,’ Cade breathed.
For a moment Gart did not move. Then he sat back in his chair and nodded slowly. ‘I laid eyes on it when I took the phraxlighter down for a closer look and saw that the cause of the glow was a shaft of light hitting the tip of a stalactite and being diffused by the magnificent jewel embedded there. I’d never seen a jewel so large, so flawless. So valuable . . .’ He paused. ‘And I knew in that instant that I had to have it. It was the answer to all my problems . . . So I set the phraxlighter to hover and climbed down to get it. And that’s when I saw them . . .’
‘The white trogs?’ said Cade, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.
Gart nodded. ‘Hundreds of them, bathed in the red light like . . .’
‘Blood,’ said Cade.
‘They were on their knees, heads bowed and arms raised, making a kind of clicking noise . . .’
‘That’s their language,’ Cade said. ‘Only the queen used words, and then only to speak to us.’
Gart was looking out of the window at the distant view of the Five Falls.
‘Then the sun shifted, the shaft of light was extinguished, and with it, the blood-red glow. I was frozen to the spot, clinging onto the rope ladder as the trogs all filed out of the cavern. Then I reached out and prised the jewel free with my knife. It was so easy, Cade. So simple . . .’
Cade watched Gart. He seemed to be avoiding his gaze.
‘Eight years. Eight long years I’ve been up on that platform. Eight years to think about the merchants who swindled me out of my business, sold me a phraxmine that was played out and useless. The great swindle,’ he snorted. ‘I lost my wife, my children, my home, my money, my reputation . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Eight years to think about the gambling debts I built up on the skytaverns trying to get my fortune back. Shu
ttle, rumblestakes, carrillon, splinters. I played them all, and won. At least, at first . . . But then I lost. And I kept losing . . .’
Gart’s eyes narrowed as he stared out across the lake.
‘Eight years paying off those debts,’ he said quietly, ‘working on that platform in total isolation, setting foot on solid ground only once in all that time – on the boards of your cabin that day I came to say goodbye . . .’
‘But you didn’t leave,’ said Cade softly.
‘I was going to,’ said Gart. ‘When I left you, I went back to the platform to pick up some tarpaulin in case of bad weather. Opened a bottle of woodgrog to toast my departure. And sat up there drinking alone far into the night. I fell asleep just as dawn was breaking . . . When I woke up, I realized I’d slept most of the day away, but I set off at once, despite a sore head.’
He suddenly turned and looked at Cade, and Cade saw the guilt in his face.
‘And then I saw you climbing up the cliff face at the Five Falls,’ he said. ‘The three of you. Thorne, Celestia and you, Cade. I saw you enter the cavern. And at that moment it was clear to me: I could not leave. I flew down to the cavern entrance and shouted out warnings to you, into the darkness, but got no response, and I couldn’t bring myself to step out of my phraxlighter and follow you.’
Gart looked down at the table. ‘So I flew up to the High Farrow and hovered above the cleft in the rock, trying to summon up the courage to climb down and look for you. I failed. I had taken the jewel and what happened to you was all my fault, Cade.’
Cade stared back at Gart. He was right. It was his fault. He had caused everything that happened. Yet he had tried to put it right. And he had done so. After all, thought Cade, Gart could have simply left them to their fate and returned to Great Glade. No one would ever have known. And even after he had rescued them in the phraxlighter, he could still have kept the jewel. But he didn’t. He had decided to return it to its rightful place.
No, thought Cade, you’re not a bad person. You made a mistake, that’s all.
‘It’s over,’ he said simply. ‘No hard feelings.’
Gart stared down at the salves and ointments and tinctures spread out on the table. ‘We thought you were going to die,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘I thought my greed had killed you.’
‘But it didn’t,’ said Cade. ‘I’m fine. We all are, thanks to you, Gart. You saved my life, not once, but twice. First up in that ironwood pine when I jumped from the skytavern. You gave me tools, provisions and a phraxmusket. I couldn’t have survived without them . . . without you. And then you saved my life by coming back to the cavern when you didn’t have to. I owe you everything.’
‘But you saved my life, Cade,’ said Gart quietly, looking down at the floor. ‘You have shown me the value of friendship.’
When he looked up at Cade, his eyes were glistening, but he was smiling. He laid a hand on Cade’s shoulder.
‘They’re wonderful friends you’ve made, Cade. Thorne and Celestia – and her father, Blatch. While you’ve been ill, I’ve been getting to know them, and it’s made me realize just how isolated and lonely I was up on that accursed platform. The trouble was, I thought I could live without others; I wanted to live without others.’ He frowned. ‘Having been betrayed so badly in Great Glade, I never imagined I would trust anyone ever again. How wrong I was . . . I only hope that, after everything I’ve done, they might also accept me as their friend.’ He looked almost bashful. ‘Thorne has invited Blatch and me to supper at his hive hut.’
‘And Celestia?’ asked Cade.
Gart crossed to the door and opened it, his smile growing wider. ‘Celestia’s been very patient, letting me speak to you, Cade,’ he said. ‘You’ll find her waiting for you down at the end of the jetty. She wants to speak to you as well.’
· CHAPTER FORTY-TWO ·
CADE STEPPED OUT onto his veranda. There was a chill in the air and the billowing clouds had melted away, leaving the sky an unbroken canvas of blue. Celestia was standing at the end of the jetty looking out across the mirror-still water, her back to him. Her gleaming jet-black hair was over her shoulders.
As he went down the steps, Cade heard a soft snort behind him. He looked round to see Tug and Rumblix snuggled up on a nest of meadowgrass beneath the veranda. Tug looked up and his face twisted into a lopsided, thin-lipped smile.
‘Master,’ he said, his voice like rumbling thunder.
‘Cade,’ Cade told him, smiling back. ‘Cade.’
‘Cade better?’
‘That’s right,’ said Cade, and stooping down, he patted Tug on his shoulder. ‘Much better.’
Tug bared his crooked brown teeth happily, and Rumblix, who had been asleep in the crook of Tug’s arm opened one eye, saw Cade, then opened the other and purred loudly.
‘Earth and Sky, you seem to grow bigger every day,’ Cade murmured. He ruffled the fur around the prowlgrin’s neck. ‘I remember the moment you hatched, popping up out of your egg – and out of that porthole.’ He smiled. ‘You fitted inside my hat back then. And now look at you . . .’
Rumblix’s purring grew louder.
‘Won’t be long now before we can ride over the treetops together,’ said Cade, crouching down and tickling the prowlgrin on his belly. ‘Will it, boy?’
That first ride Cade had taken through the Western Woods on one of Celestia’s prowlgrins was still fresh in his mind. Gripping onto the reins of the sleek black creature as it had leaped from branch to branch through the forest had been exhilarating, but how much more wonderful it would be to ride on Rumblix’s back – his very own pedigree grey prowlgrin that he’d raised from a pup.
Cade patted Tug on the arm, ruffled Rumblix’s fur, then backed out of the shadows beneath the veranda and turned. Celestia hadn’t moved. She was still standing stock-still at the end of the jetty, gazing out across the gleaming lake.
He crept along the jetty towards her, picking his way over the rocks as silently as he could, a smile on his lips. He stopped behind her. He breathed in the sweet jasmine-hay smell of her hair. Then, raising his hands, he was about to reach forward and cover her eyes when Celestia suddenly spun round, seized one of his wrists, twisted him about and brought his arm up behind his back.
‘Don’t mess with me, city boy,’ she laughed.
Back bent forward and arm throbbing, Cade half laughed, half groaned. ‘How did you know I was behind you?’
‘This isn’t Great Glade,’ Celestia said, letting him go.
Cade rubbed his wrist and smiled ruefully.
‘You need to look after yourself in the Deepwoods. There are no tavern waifs or Freeglade Lancers here to do it for you,’ Celestia added.
Cade found himself nodding. The quiet cloisters and dusty colleges of the Cloud Quarter hadn’t exactly prepared him for a life out here in the wilderness.
‘You have to watch how the creatures of the forest behave,’ Celestia was saying, her green eyes staring into his. ‘Always stealthy. Watchful. Ready to react . . .’
Cade nodded again, realizing just how in awe of Celestia he was. She was so capable, so independent. So at home in the Deepwoods.
‘Anyway,’ she said, and laughed, ‘I saw your shadow.’
Taking his hand, Celestia led him to the very end of the jetty, where the rocks went down in a series of natural steps. The pair of them sat down on a flat, jutting boulder and dangled their legs over the water. Celestia turned her head and looked out across the lake. A family of paddlefowl passed by the end of the jetty, their flat orange feet pedalling hard at the water. Small waves from their wake lapped at the rocks. Cade picked up a couple of flat pebbles and skimmed one of them out onto the water, sending it bouncing off across the surface of the lake.
Celestia watched the ripples fade. ‘Last night, I thought we’d lost you,’ she said quietly. ‘You were dying.’
Cade put down the other pebble and looked at her. Celestia’s profile was dark against the sky. A tear caught t
he light as it trickled down her cheek. Cade reached out and took hold of her hand.
‘Celestia . . .’ He paused. ‘What did happen last night? I mean, I can remember some of it. Lots of it . . . The rope ladder being hauled out of the cave. The flight. You . . .’
‘I tried everything I’d ever learned,’ Celestia said. ‘Firebane tonic. Feverfew lotion. Healwort and hyleberry salves . . . Keeping you hot to sweat out the fever. Chilling you down with ice-cold water . . . The shriekroot was the last resort, and even that didn’t seem to be working . . .’
Cade frowned as the memory of the looming figure with white-flecked fur and kind, wise eyes came back to him once more. ‘Perhaps I was dreaming, but last night it seemed as if there was someone else there,’ he said. ‘It . . . it looked like a banderbear.’
Celestia turned to Cade, her green eyes sparkling. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ she said. ‘You weren’t dreaming, Cade. It was a banderbear – he told my father his name was Goom.’
‘I’ve never met a banderbear before,’ said Cade. ‘They were few and far between in Great Glade.’ He frowned. ‘I didn’t know they could talk. I mean, I heard a banderbear yodelling somewhere far off in the High Ridges the other day, but—’
‘That was Goom!’ said Celestia excitedly. ‘He told my father everything. You see, banderbears use a language of signs, of movements. My father learned their language from an old banderbear years ago, back in his skyshipyard.’ She smiled. ‘The thing is, while Goom was making signs with his paws and ears and the angle of his head, all I could hear him saying was wuh.’
‘Wuh,’ Cade repeated.
‘Wuh. Wuh-wuh. Wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh.’ Celestia laughed. ‘At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. Though my father understood.’
‘And what did he say, this Goom?’ asked Cade.
