‘Close,’ he told the black-ear, who was staring up at him with bulging eyes, ‘but not close enough.’
He pulled out his knife, wiped it on his sleeve and stepped back. The black-eared goblin groaned and pitched forward, face first onto the tavern floor.
Nate sat, rooted to the spot, horrified by what he’d just witnessed. Behind him, one of the webfoots leaned forward and whispered in his ear.
‘Your “Two Professors” win after all. The pot is yours.’
Nate looked up into the goblin’s scaly face, trying to make sense of his words.
‘Go on, take it!’ The webfoot gestured to the pile of gladers at the centre of the table.
With trembling fingers, Nate scooped up the gold coins and promissory notes, filling the pockets in his jacket until they bulged on either side. There must have been over two hundred gladers in all! He paused for a moment at the sight of two tapkeepers in ale-stained aprons dragging the body of the black-ear from the tavern hall, feet first. Then, his head clearing, Nate found his voice.
‘But you must take some of this, Professor,’ he began, turning back to the table. ‘After all, he cheated both of us. Professor? … Professor?’
Slipping the splinter of the Professor of Light into his top pocket, Nate looked around, but the fourthling in the crumpled funnel hat had gone.
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN •
From high above came the boom of the steam klaxon, just as it had each morning for the past two weeks. One, two, three times it sounded in the dawn stillness. Far below in the depths, Nate rolled over and opened his eyes.
‘Great Glade,’ he whispered and, gripping the side of the hammock, peered down. ‘Slip, we’re here. We’ve arrived, Slip … Slip?’
The hammock below was empty. Just then, he felt a light tap on his left shoulder and, turning, found the bandy-legged grey goblin standing on the other side of his hammock, a small glass bottle in his outstretched hand.
‘Darkelm oil,’ Slip announced with a gap-toothed smile. ‘Slip’s been up since dawn, siphoning it off from them big globe lamps up where the rich folks live.’
Nate smiled in return, taking the bottle from his friend. ‘You didn’t need to do that, Slip. I’ve still got plenty left from my winnings to buy lamp oil …’
Slip shook his head determinedly, his big eyes wide with concern. ‘No, friend Nate. That money’s got to last us in the Big Steam …’
‘Big Steam?’ said Nate, stifling his urge to laugh. ‘Is that what they call Great Glade up where the rich folks live?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Slip earnestly. ‘It’s what they calls it in the hanging galleys. Slip’s heard them. The Big Steam – where the avenues are wide and the factories never sleep, and all are welcome, who aren’t afraid of honest toil … That’s right, isn’t it, friend Nate?’
Nate laughed. ‘Whatever you say, Slip. Whatever you say.’
He undid the strap of his knapsack and carefully removed the lightbox inside. Opening it up, Nate unscrewed the cap attached to the underside of the lid and, with the bottle unstoppered, ran a trickle of darkelm oil into the lamp’s reservoir. The two glittering crystals of stormphrax glinted in the light. Satisfied with both the wick and the flow valve, Nate closed the lid with a click.
‘It’ll last for a couple of weeks now,’ he said. ‘By which time we should be nicely settled in Great Glade … sorry, the Big Steam – and have no need to siphon off oil from others’ lamps.’
‘Nicely settled,’ echoed Slip, a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Who’d have thought it? Slip the scuttler, nicely settled in the Big Steam …’
‘Come on,’ said Nate, swinging down from his hammock. ‘Let’s get up top and stake our place at the balustrades before the crush.’
Slip gathered his bedroll, while Nate secured his knapsack, and they headed up the flight of wooden stairs that led through the great phraxship. On the third landing, a huge family of gnokgoblins cut in ahead of them. Their leader was a dumpy, open-faced matron, who chivvied her young’uns along with a mixture of wheedling, pleading and sudden bursts of anger.
‘Come on now, Glemp, we’re nearly there. That’s the way, Gala. And Gamp, try not to dawdle, there’s a dear … Gussock, stop that at once!’
Stepping out of their way, Nate counted off the young’uns. There were thirteen in all, both small and large, as well as a tiny baby strapped to the matron’s back. The young’uns all had bulging bags slung over their shoulders, while behind them came uncles, aunts and assorted old’uns, lugging crates and boxes, both on their own and in pairs.
‘Come on, Slip,’ said Nate. ‘We’ll cut through midships and come out on the fore deck. We’ll get a better view from there.’
Slip followed as they took several turns down long corridors already bustling with passengers, gathering their belongings together and preparing to disembark. Five minutes later, Nate and Slip emerged on the fore deck, which was beginning to fill up. The two of them made their way through the growing crowds of passengers, all of them wrapped in topcoats, shawls and blankets against the crisp early-morning air and clustered round their piles of belongings. The excited babble of voices rose and fell as they crowded round the portside balustrade. Nate and Slip found a space beside half a dozen hefty cloddertrogs in heavy work clothes.
‘Look, Slip,’ Nate breathed.
Far below, the borders of Great Glade were coming into view. Although dawn had broken over the city, the lamplighters had not yet had the chance to extinguish the streetlamps, and all over the vast city, pockets of light glittered like moonlit pools.
Spread out far below them in the dawn light were the twelve districts that made up the magnificent city of Great Glade. In the far distance, the sparse lights and clearing fires of the Southern Outer City twinkled next to the fringes of the Deepwoods forest. To the east, smoke, steam and factory glow picked out the industrial districts of East Glade and Copperwood, while to the west, the academy domes and spires of the Cloud Quarter stood out against the pale yellow sky. Beneath them lay the pleasant parkland of the Silver Pastures, the bustling hive towers and woodhalls of New Undertown and the rich mansions and wide avenues of prosperous Ambristown.
Nearer – and getting closer with each passing minute – lay the southern districts of Old Forest, beautiful New Lake, with its fine houses, and, to the west, the Ledges – the bustling harbour district which waited to greet the returning skytavern. Nate could smell the faint tang of woodsmoke rising from the Northern Outer City, just below them now as they came round in a sweeping arc, but his eyes were focused firmly on the glittering district at the very centre of the great city.
The Free Glades.
This, after all, was where it had all begun, centuries before. Now just one of the twelve districts, the Free Glades had once stood alone, a solitary beacon of freedom and hope in the vast darkness of the perilous Deepwoods. Nate searched for the legendary landmarks as they came into view.
The great jagged silhouette of the Ironwood Stands, once home to the renowned Freeglade Lancers. South Lake, with its ancient clams; the beautiful shimmering waters of the Central Lake, with its ancient library and academy; and North Lake, with Lullabee Island, home to the oakelf brotherhood. Nate’s gaze took in all these places, steeped in history from the dawn of the First and Second Ages of Flight, but it lingered longest on one: the mysterious and mystical Waif Glen and its beautiful Garden of Thoughts.
His father had spoken of it often: the arbours and alcoves beside clear pools and waterfalls; the avenues of evergreens fringing lawns of fragrant herbs. How exotic and beautiful it had sounded to Nate, growing up in the dust and din of the mining camps. The glen was a place of tranquillity and healing, and his father had even taken Nate there once as a tiny child, no older than two or three, as he searched for a way through his grief at the death of his beautiful young wife. Nate couldn’t remember it, but his father’s words came to life in the dreams of his boyhood – beautiful dreams of that place of tranquillity an
d healing …
‘Nate! Nate!’ Slip was tugging his arm excitedly and pointing wildly into the near distance. ‘We’re coming into dock! Look!’
Nate leaned as far over the balustrade as he dared and craned his neck forward to see past the phraxship’s great snub-nosed prow. Sure enough, the Deadbolt Vulpoon was approaching the Ledges – a series of high bluffs that rose up from the ragged forest fringes on the western approach to Great Glade.
A vast array of timber cradles and gantries sprouted from the cliffs in ordered tiers, or ‘ledges’, offering berths for the numerous phraxships plying their trade in this, the Third Age of Flight. Large twin-funnelled cargo carriers with side-mounted phraxchambers; heavy-beaked tugboats and lighters, fast and sleek, with their phraxchambers mounted below the hull; the high-funnelled vessels of the phraxguard and the brooding, low-set phraxrams, with their sinister phraxcannon berthed below them. These and a hundred more of varied size and design lay berthed, prow first, in the timber cradles, or tied up, sideways on, at the gantries.
All at once, from behind Nate in the midships, came the sound of cheering and calls of ‘good luck’ as the wealthier passengers from the staterooms and fine cabins of the aft hull stepped aboard the Deadbolt Vulpoon’s private phraxlaunches – small, elegant vessels with cushioned seats, fringed canopies and tall, thin funnels billowing ribbons of white steam behind them.
Having wined, dined and seen the wonderfully wild Deepwoods from the safety of the skytavern’s hanging baskets, it was time for the mine owners and factory masters and their wives, the high professors, the fleet admirals and phraxmerchants, to return to their luxurious homes in the more fashionable districts of the great city.
Nate smiled as the wealthy young heir to a phrax fortune and his new bride, together with their smartly uniformed lugtroll servants, sailed past the port bow aboard their launch. Below them on the gantries of the Ledges, luggers and loaders, lightermen and crane marshals, well-wishers and ledge hawkers were gathered in an excited, jostling throng waiting for the skytavern to dock.
No crowded gangplank and seething mass of bodies to push past for that fine young couple, Nate thought, as the Deadbolt Vulpoon’s snub-nosed prow eased itself into the vast timber cradle jutting from the grey rockface just ahead.
With a loud clang and a judder that had the crowds at the ship’s balustrades gripping the rail in front of them, the mighty phraxship entered the cradle, hit the dampening stanchions, and was held fast. The tinkling sound of thousands of tiny ice shards dislodged from the phraxchamber high above the midships mixed with the cheers of the crowd. In the distance, trailing a long ribbon of vapour, the phraxlaunch sailed off to the north and the beautiful district of New Lake with its privileged young passengers.
‘Come on, Slip,’ said Nate, shouldering his knapsack. ‘Time to seek our fortune in the Big Steam.’
‘Where the avenues are wide and the factories never sleep …’ the goblin beamed back at him. ‘Slip’s ready, friend Nate.’
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN •
Half an hour later, and they’d shuffled down one of the half dozen broad swaying gangplanks in the midst of a dense, bustling crowd of disembarking passengers, and fought their way good-naturedly through the chaos of the crowded gantry platform – full of tearful reunions of long-separated gnokgoblin clans, excited dances of greeting between burly cloddertrogs, and heavy back punching and chest thumping as flatheads and hammerheads got reacquainted. By the time Nate and Slip had left the platform and descended in huge baskets down into the bustling alleys and narrow streets of the Ledges district, another hour had passed, and they were exhausted.
High above them, in its massive sky cradle, they could see the huge prow of the skytavern, still swarming with individuals as the important business of unloading its cargo holds got under way. It would take the rest of the day and into the night before the Deadbolt Vulpoon was ready to take on fresh supplies of goods and passengers and set off once again, in the early light of dawn, for the Eastern Woods.
That life, Nate realized more forcibly than ever, was behind him now. Ahead lay an uncertain future in this strange, overwhelming city that he’d heard so much about.
They stopped at a small stall run by a dumpy goblin matron and bought crusty fresh-baked loaves and a jar of sweet hyleflower honey, which they ate in a shady square, surrounded by the tall, thin houses occupied by the dockworkers of the Ledges. Pausing only to fill their water pouches at a small fountain, Nate and Slip soon found themselves in the broader streets and leafy avenues of Ambristown – named after Ambris Metrax, one of the pioneers of phraxship design. The houses here were grander than those in the Ledges, and the families who lived in them boasted cloudpilots, phraxengineers and quartermasters amongst their number. Indeed, in Ambristown, any who didn’t earn their living in the skies were referred to, somewhat dismissively, as ‘groundlings’.
Footsore and weary, Nate and Slip turned a corner into a wide avenue. Opposite them, surrounded by a semi-circle of tall lufwood trees, was a round barn-like building with the distinctive tall conical ‘hive’ roof common in goblin architecture. From the trees came the barks and growls of roosting prowlgrins.
‘Just the place!’ said Nate excitedly. ‘Follow me, Slip.’
The goblin looked uncertainly from the trees to his friend and back again, but did as Nate asked, following him inside.
‘Greetings, strangers,’ a cheery voice sounded from the roofbeams above as they entered. ‘Eastern Woods by the look of you. Just out of the mines, I’ll be bound.’
Nate looked up to see an elderly tufted goblin in a tilderleather apron sitting on a sumpwood stool, which was tethered to a crossbeam high in the roof timbers. From hooks and pegs around the walls and beams, harnesses, bridles and saddles hung in a bewildering array.
‘How can you tell?’ asked Nate, impressed.
‘When you’ve run a prowlgrin roost as long as I have, you get to see all manner of folks passing through,’ the goblin chuckled, unhooking a double saddle and head harness from an overhead beam and winching his stool down to the floor. ‘Forest Ridge fur trappers, resin traders from Four Lakes, Nightwoods herbalists. You name it …’ He frowned. ‘Just the one prowlgrin?’
‘Er … yes. I mean, I think so …’ Nate began.
The goblin looked them both up and down. ‘Your mate – he’s a little’un. Don’t need a whole prowlgrin to himself.’
He stood up, handed the double saddle to Nate and walked outside. Nate and Slip followed. The goblin walked over to the nearest lufwood tree, his large tufted ears twitching, and gave a short sharp whistle. In answer, a large heavy-set prowlgrin with dark eyes and gleaming black fur, leaped from the branches and landed nimbly on powerful widespread toes just in front of them.
‘Meet Tallix,’ said the goblin, tickling the prowlgrin round the nostrils. ‘He’ll cost you thirty gladers. Half refunded on return.’
‘We’ll take him!’ said Nate, ignoring the look of wide-eyed alarm on Slip’s face.
He counted out the money in coins and notes, and put the remaining gladers back in his pocket.
‘… And four for the saddle and harness.’
Nate reached into his pocket and handed the goblin another four gladers.
‘Much obliged, young sir,’ the goblin smiled. ‘I’ll saddle him up. You’ll find Tallix here dependable and hardworking, but please, no rooftop galloping – the constabulary don’t like it, and it plays havoc with the prowlgrin’s feet, trust me.’
Nate nodded, and watched as the goblin pulled the harness over Tallix’s head, placed the double saddle on his back and tightened the strap round the creature’s girth.
Five minutes later, Nate and Slip were travelling down the broad tree-lined central avenue of Ambristown on prowlgrinback. Beneath them, Tallix took long purposeful strides, sidestepping carts and wagons as they trundled across his path, and once even leaping several feet over a small group of cloddertrogs who were arguing over a load of spille
d timber.
‘Hey, not so tight!’ Nate had to exclaim as, behind him in the double saddle, a terrified Slip clung on round his waist.
‘Not like Slip’s pit prowlgrins, this one!’ protested the grey goblin. ‘He’s too big, too powerful. He’s … ooohhh!’
Tallix took another leap, clearing a hay cart, before landing and resuming a slow, steady climb up the rapidly steepening avenue. At the top of the road, as they passed beneath a tall arch of gleaming marble, the elegant towers and shining spires of the magnificent academies of the Cloud Quarter came into view. Slip sat forward in the saddle.
‘Slip never saw nothing so beautiful before,’ he murmured. ‘The village Slip grew up in was made of mud and straw.’
Nate smiled. ‘These buildings are constructed from the finest marble and polished cliff rock. Nothing but the best for the esteemed schools and colleges of the Great Academy,’ he said. ‘And the finest views in Great Glade, by the look of it.’
He scrutinized the ornate name plaques over the grand entrances all round them.
‘That’s the Institute of Phrax Studies there,’ he said, pointing to an imposing building to the right.
Broad and squat, it had a tall tower at its centre and a series of flying buttresses on both sides, which gave the impression of a crouching nightspider, ready to pounce.
‘And that large building,’ he said, ‘that’s the famous School of Weather.’ He nodded towards a vast yet elegant construction with ornate pilasters and a sweeping, latticed roof. ‘Centuries ago in the ancient floating city of Sanctaphrax, there used to be a school or academy for every type of weather. Rain. Fog. Mist. Snow. Even drizzle!’ he said. ‘But these days, they all study under one roof.’
‘It’s a mighty big roof,’ said Slip, wide-eyed, and they both laughed.
Tallix continued climbing the steep hill to a level square, then up to another, and another, until they were high above the rest of Great Glade and looking down at the spires and rooftops of the schools and academies below. In front of them, on the highest peak of the Cloud Quarter, was the finest building of them all – the Debating Chamber of the Great Glade Academy: the Hall of Whispers.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 11
