Stormchaser

by Paul Stewart

  The words of the sepia knight popped back into Twig’s head. A quest is a quest for ever. And he shuddered with horror as he realized what must have happened.

  Even though Screedius Tollinix had wrecked his ship, he had not been able to abandon his quest. After all, like Garlinius Gernix and Petronius Metrax before him and Quintinius Verginix after, he would have pledged to dedicate his life to the finding of stormphrax and sworn never to return to Sanctaphrax until and unless he had completed that sacred quest.

  Unable to return to Sanctaphrax empty-handed, Screedius Tollinix had single-mindedly pursued his goal no matter what that involved. The noble Knight Academic, whom Twig had glimpsed at the moment of death, must have been driven insane by his desire to fulfil the promises he had made at the Inauguration Ceremony no matter how much he amassed, it could never be enough.

  ‘And I wouldn’t like to guess how many had perished to satisfy the wicked creature’s hideous lust,’ the professor was saying.

  Twig stared down at the glittering crystals. Each one, he now knew, had been paid for in blood. Trembling almost uncontrollably, he reached forwards, seized the lid and slammed it shut.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ he stormed. ‘I dreamed of returning successful and victorious with enough stormphrax to stabilize the floating city of Sanctaphrax for a thousand years.’

  ‘But you still can,’ the professor wheezed.

  Twig rounded on him furiously. ‘Not like this!’ he shouted. Behind him, the Stone Pilot muttered drowsily. ‘I wanted to discover new stormphrax, pure stormphrax,’ he continued. ‘Fresh from a Great Storm. In the Twilight Woods. Not this … this evil treasure-trove scraped from the toes of the dead.’

  ‘Ah, Twig,’ the professor groaned. ‘Twig, my boy …’ He began coughing again, a low rasping sound that rattled in the back of his throat. ‘Ends and means,’ he wheezed. ‘Ends and…’ The racking cough returned, more heart-rending than ever.

  ‘Professor!’ Twig ran towards him. His face had turned a pale shade of yellowy-grey His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow. Every breath was an effort. Twig took his hand. ‘Professor, are you all right?’

  The professor stared at Twig’s gauntleted hand. Weakly, he drew his finger across the metal knuckles. Sepia dust clung to his fingertip. ‘Of course,’ he whispered, barely audibly. ‘Phraxdust…’ He paused.

  ‘Yes,’ said Twig, ‘when Screed’s blood touched it, it turned to pure water.’ He bent down until his ear was all but pressing against the professor’s quivering lips. The warm breath in his face smelt of decay.

  ‘The secret…’ the professor whispered. ‘I know how to produce phraxdust. Safely’ He gasped and brought his hands to his throat. ‘The Twilight Woods were telling us all the time.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Twig, and swallowed away his tears. ‘In your own time, Professor.’

  A smile played over the professor’s lips. ‘Time!’ he croaked. ‘Time…’ His eyes rolled in his head. ‘Stormphrax breaks down in the twilight of the woods. The twilight, Twig! Not darkness, not light but twilight. Slowly it crumbles over the centuries, ground down by the pressure of twilight. Ground down, Twig, for hundreds upon hundreds of years, into dust. Phraxdust. The phraxdust that coats the armour of those poor lost knights that coats the glove you wear.’

  Twig looked down at the gauntlet and the fine layer of sepia dust. ‘But the secret?’ he whispered. ‘I don’t understand.’

  The professor sighed and summoned up the last of his strength.

  ‘Don’t you see, Twig? What it takes hundreds of years for the Twilight Woods to do naturally, we can do with a single crushing blow. But that blow can only, must only, fall at the very moment of …’

  ‘Twilight!’ gasped Twig.

  The professor let out a long, pitiful sigh. ‘Tell … Professor of Darkness,’ he whispered. ‘You can … trust … him …’

  He fell silent. The warm breath ceased. Twig straightened up and looked down at the wise old face.

  The Professor of Light was dead. Already, the white ravens were screeching noisily outside. Twig heard them scrabbling overhead, scraping at the wood; he saw the boldest of them poking their heads through the hole in the side of the hull and peering round with their beady scavenging eyes.

  ‘Be gone with you!’ he cried.

  The birds retreated, but only for a moment and not very far. Twig knew he would have to bury the professor’s body at once. As he dragged it outside, the white ravens flocked round him, screeching with rage.

  ‘You shan’t have him!’ Twig screeched back.

  With the sun now low in the sky, he followed his lengthening shadows across the path, towards a circular patch of quickmud. There, at its edge, he lay the professor down. The white ravens flapped and fluttered in a frenzy of excitement. Twig tried hard to think of some words to mark the solemn occasion.

  ‘Professor of Light,’ he murmured. ‘Venerable academic of Sanctaphrax. A wise and noble individual. This place is not good enough for your final resting place …’ He faltered, then took a deep breath. ‘Rest in peace.’

  And with that, he pushed the body forwards. The feet went into the sinking-mud first, followed by the legs and the torso. The white ravens, beside themselves with rage, were swooping, diving, yet unable to get at the dead body. The mud crept up the professor’s chest. His arms. His fingertips. Tears streamed down Twig’s face.

  ‘Farewell,’ he whispered, as the head disappeared from view.

  For a moment, all that could be seen to mark where the professor had been, were the uppermost twigs of the branch that Twig had secured to his neck. Then they too slipped down out of sight. A bubble of air plopped on the surface. Then stillness. Calmness. Peace.

  Twig knelt on one knee, reached forwards with his gauntleted hand and dipped it into the pool of warm sinking-mud as a mark of respect. As he did so, it abruptly changed. Twig gasped. Before his very eyes, the thick white mud turned to water, as crystal clear as the babbling brooks which meandered through the Deepwoods. Far below him, he could see the professor’s body spiralling down deeper and deeper in its watery grave.

  Twig sat back on his haunches and stared at the heavy gauntlet. The sepia dust, so fine it moved like liquid, was still slipping over the polished silver.

  ‘Phraxdust,’ he whispered reverently, as he picked himself up and looked around.

  Far, far away in the distance he could make out the lights of Sanctaphrax, twinkling in the air. Below it, the squalid sprawl of Undertown squatted under its blanket of filthy brown smoke. The inhabitants of both places would benefit from the contents of the glass and iron-wood chest. The stormphrax would restore equilibrium to the floating rock, while the phraxdust would purify the festering Edgewater River.

  Ends and means, the professor had said. Twig was unsure whether the lives that might be saved in Sanctaphrax and Undertown by the crystals could ever justify Screed’s massacre of so many individuals. What he did know was that if he failed to return with the chest of stormphrax, then they would certainly all have died in vain.

  ‘I must try’ he said to himself. ‘For the sake of the living. For the sake of the dead.’

  Just then, he heard a troubled groaning coming from inside the hull of the shipwreck. It was the Stone Pilot. He was finally coming round.

  •C H A P T E R T W E N T Y•

  THE STONE PILOT

  The first thing Twig did on re-entering the shipwreck was to light the lantern which Screed had hanging on a nail by the opening. A warm honey-like glow filled the gloomy interior, and Twig saw that the Stone Pilot was sitting up.

  ‘Thank Sky you’re still alive,’ he said.

  The Stone Pilot nodded. ‘But only just,’ came a timid, muffled voice from inside the heavy suit. There was a pause. ‘I can’t feel my right leg at all.’ Twig stared back in shocked silence. ‘I was attacked by that so-called guide of ours,’ the Stone Pilot went on. ‘Must have knocked me senseless. I don’t know how I ever got here.’

 
‘I … I brought you here,’ Twig explained.

  The Stone Pilot nodded again. ‘And Screed?’

  ‘Screed is dead,’ said Twig. ‘By my sword. He … I…’ He crouched before the Stone Pilot, confused. ‘You can speak,’ he said.

  ‘I can.’

  ‘But, I didn’t know … I mean, forgive me, but I always assumed you were dumb.’

  ‘I don’t waste my words,’ he said. ‘The world is wide and treacherous. These clothes and my silence are my protection.’ He paused. ‘Your father understood this well.’

  ‘My father?’ said Twig, surprised. ‘He knew you could talk?’

  ‘He knew everything,’ said the Stone Pilot and, with these words, began squirming and wriggling until he had manoeuvred his right arm up out of its sleeve. Through the glass panels, Twig saw the surprisingly delicate fingers fiddling with the inner set of bolts which secured the hood to the shoulders. One by one, the catches clicked open.

  Twig was spellbound. Not only had the Stone Pilot revealed that he could talk, but now for the first time he was about to show his face. Twig held his breath. What horrible disfigurement or affliction could the poor creature be suffering from, that he had gone to such lengths to conceal himself? What terrible secret lurked within that cumbersome suit of clothes?

  As the hood was lifted, a neck came into view, pale and slender. Twig bit into his lower lip. The next moment, a mass of thick orange hair cascaded over the face. The Stone Pilot raised a hand, and swept it away.

  Twig gasped. ‘You’re … you’re …’ he blustered.

  ‘A girl,’ the Stone Pilot replied. ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘Of course I am!’ said Twig. ‘I had no idea. I thought you were going to be some kind of … monster …’

  The Stone Pilot scowled and looked away. ‘Perhaps it would be better if I were’ she said quietly. ‘The most deformed and hideously scarred creature in the Deepwoods cannot be as lost and alone as I, now that I have lost Cloud Wolf and the Stormchaser. It was the only place where I felt safe, and even there I still needed this.’ She tapped the discarded hood.

  ‘Cheer up’ said Twig, trying to sound reassuring. ‘We’ll get out of this.’

  ‘It’s no use’ cried the Stone Pilot. ‘We’re going to die in this great wide place. I know we are.’

  ‘You mustn’t talk like that’ said Twig sternly. Then, trying to distract the distressed girl, ‘According to a story my father once told me, you were there at my birth’ he said. ‘On board a sky ship, it was a sky ship captained by the notorious …’

  ‘Multinius Gobtrax’ the Stone Pilot interrupted. ‘I recall it well’ she said, her voice thick with tears. ‘We were over the Deepwoods in the middle of a terrible storm when Maris, your mother, went into labour.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve never known up-currents like it. The sky ship was sucked up above the forest before anyone had a chance to down anchor or secure the grappling-irons. ’

  ‘Yet you managed to save the sky ship’ said Twig. ‘I remember Cloud Wolf telling me how you doused the buoyant wood-burners, released the balance-weights, and climbed over the side to chip away at the flight-rock itself.’

  The Stone Pilot looked down. ‘I did what needed to be done’ she said quietly.

  ‘And I’m glad you did’ said Twig. ‘After all, if you hadn’t, then I wouldn’t be here now.’

  The Stone Pilot managed a smile. ‘And who would have saved me from Screed if you weren’t?’ she said. ‘We’ll call it quits, shall we?’

  ‘Yes’ said Twig uncertainly.

  ‘But?’ said the Stone Pilot.

  ‘Nothing’ said Twig. ‘It’s just … Well, that was sixteen years ago. How come you …’

  ‘Look so young?’ she said, finishing his question for him.

  Twig nodded.

  The Stone Pilot looked away; a pale and slender hand reached for the hood. Twig stared thoughtfully at the seemingly ageless girl with her pale, almost translucent, skin and her shock of orange hair. She looked so familiar … And then he remembered.

  ‘Mag!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said the Stone Pilot, surprised.

  ‘That’s who you remind me of,’ he said. ‘Someone I met a long time ago. She was a termagant trog girl. She…’

  ‘What do you know about termagant trogs?’ the Stone Pilot asked hesitantly.

  Twig shrugged. What did he know about the termagants? He knew that Mag a similarly pale-skinned and red-haired girl had caught him and kept him as a pet in their underground caverns. He knew that, when she’d come of age, Mag had drunk from the sacred roots of the bloodoak tree and been transformed into a hulking great beast of a woman like Mumsie, her mother. He knew, too, that if he had not escaped when he did, he would have been torn to pieces.

  ‘A pet?’ said the Stone Pilot.

  Twig nodded. ‘She kept me on a long tether. She pampered and patted me.’ He winced. ‘And she used to spend hours beading and braiding my hair.’

  ‘Until she turned termagant?’

  ‘Exactly’

  The Stone Pilot fell silent and stared down stony-faced at the ground. When she looked up, Twig saw the tears welling in her eyes. ’That was one good thing about wearing the hood,’ she said, hugging it to her body. ‘Nobody ever saw me cry’ She sniffed. ‘As you can see, I never turned termagant.’

  Twig nodded, relieved that she hadn’t. Watching his sweet, loving Mag turning into the fearful, bloodthirsty creature had been one of the most distressing incidents of his entire life.

  ‘When my time came and the Mother Bloodoak bled for me, I was not there,’ she explained sadly. ‘And those who miss their appointed moment can never turn, but are condemned to remain as you see me now, until the day they die.’

  ‘But… but why did you miss it?’ Twig asked.

  The trog girl sighed. ‘It was on the day before I was due to turn termagant,’ she said. ‘I was outside the cavern walking my pet, a prowlgrin pup, when I was surrounded by a pack of trained whitecollar wood-wolves. They tore my pet to pieces but left me to their master. A slaver from Undertown,’ she said, spitting out the words. ‘He shackled me along with woodelves, trolls, goblins, and marched us off to a Deepwoods slave market. That’s where your father found me filthy, ragged and half out of my mind.’

  ‘He bought you?’ said Twig, wide-eyed.

  ‘He saw the state I was in,’ she said. ‘He seized that miserable slaver’s whip from him and nearly flayed him alive. Then he took me by the hand and said, “Come, little one, Maris will fix you up.” And I went.’

  Twig crouched back down beside her. ‘It … it must have been awful for you,’ he said sympathetically.

  The Stone Pilot nodded. ‘I could never find my cavern home,’ she said. ‘Sky knows, I’ve searched over the years. But in due course Cloud Wolf even gave me a home.’

  ‘The Stormchaser,’ said Twig.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the Stone Pilot. ‘And a trade. I’m the best Stone Pilot in the skies. Or was. Now I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘You’ve got me,’ said Twig, stretching out a hand.

  The Stone Pilot looked up at him and, hesitantly, took his hand in hers.

  ‘If we’re going to stay here, then we’ll need to find some food,’ said Twig brightly.

  ‘Stay here?’ said the Stone Pilot.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How else are we going to make the ship skyworthy again? We’ll never get out of the Mire if we don’t.’

  Twig looked round at the broken hull of the wreck. Getting the sky ship airborne again would be a formidable task particularly since the Stone Pilot’s injured leg meant he would have to do the work on his own. Then again, what choice did he have?

  ‘The repairs don’t have to be perfect,’ said the Stone Pilot, following Twig’s gaze. ‘So long as you can locate the flight-rock, I think I can get the Windcutter flying again. Cloud Wolf taught me well.’

  Twig smiled. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

 
The Stone Pilot stared back at him for a moment, eyes narrowed in thought, her hands gripping the protective hood. Finally, she spoke. ‘My name is Maugin,’ she said. On that first morning, the rising sun woke Twig early. He left the sleeping Maugin to rest and made a thorough inspection of the entire sky ship. It was soon clear that the sun would rise above the fetid Mire many times before the Windcutter was skyworthy again.

  The hull was not only broken in places but also rotting on the starboard side that rested in the mud, the mast was cracked and, though several of the hanging weights were in place, many were missing. The flight-rock had split in two. One half lay trapped beneath a heavy beam in the warm mud. The other half was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘First of all’ he said, ‘I must see whether there are any tools on board. If I can’t find a hammer and some nails then I won’t be able to repair anything.’ He hesitated. ‘On the other hand, what’s the point of doing that before I find the other half of the flight-rock.’ He turned. ‘Then again, if there are no supplies on board, we’ll starve to death anyway’ And with that, he returned the way he’d come.

  Yet wherever Twig looked, he drew a blank. The ’tween-deck store-room, stock-room and stowing-room were all empty. The cabins and steerage had been stripped bare. And he already knew there was nothing in the hold where he and the Stone Pilot had spent the night.

  ‘We’re done for,’ he sighed. ‘I’d better break the news to Maugin.’ And he headed down the stairs that would take him back down to the hold.

  On reaching the bottom, Twig frowned with confusion. Where was the Stone Pilot? Where was the chest of stormphrax and the gruesome display of toes? As his eyes got used to the darkness, he realized he was in a different part of the hold altogether the forehold rather than the mainhold. He looked round, first gasping, then grinning, then whooping with delight.

  ‘Twig?’ came a voice from the other side of the wooden wall. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Yes!’ Twig shouted back. ‘And I’ve found it. I’ve found Screed’s store and sleeping quarters. And … and … there’s everything here we need,’ he said. ‘Plates and goblets, knives and spoons. Oh, and here are his fishingrods, and hooks and lines. Candles and lantern oil. And a large box of ship’s biscuit. And a barrel of woodgrog. And … Oh, Maugin! He’s been sleeping on the sails.’