Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  ‘It’s the Thunderer,’ breathed Nate. ‘The most powerful phraxweapon ever built …’

  Positioned next to a flagpole at the head of the great gathering of soldiers and guards, the phraxcannon’s massive barrel was cranked upwards till it was pointing over the top of the nearest trees. The hammelhorns were led away. From the left, on a jutting platform, the guard general – a powerfully built tufted goblin, the braids of battle honours and ribbons of victories fluttering from his jacket as his tall funnel hat swayed on his head – stepped forward. He addressed the troops in a deep, booming voice that was whipped away on the wind. Neither Nate nor Slip made out a single word – but the troops must have …

  As one, they marched on the spot, they sloped arms and hoisted their heavy phraxmuskets from one shoulder to the other; turned about face, then marched to a halt and stood crisply at ease. A silence fell. Two individuals broke ranks. One raised the Great Glade flag; a red banderbear against a white ground, the pennant flapping in the cold wind. The second stopped at the base of the phraxcannon, where he reached forward, seized the flashpin and tugged hard.

  There was a crack and a hiss. Nate clamped his hands over his ears, nudging Slip to follow his example. The next instant, in an explosion of billowing white cloud, a heavy phraxshell burst from the end of the barrel and, with a rushing whoosh, shot high up into the air. It soared over the treetops, a gleaming ball of light that flew past the outlying Northern Outer City and on to the Deepwoods where, with a booming crack! and a dazzling flash, it exploded high above the forest.

  ‘Great Glade!’ bellowed the massed ranks of its loyal guards, sworn to protect the great city till their last breath.

  With the daily ceremony over, the phalanx broke up. Nate looked down at the emptying drill field wistfully as it returned to the normal routine of barracks life. He would have liked to look over the phraxcannon for himself; to stand on the edge of the drill field and maybe even to walk through the great lullabee arch, where – or so the stories went – the famous caterbird who watched over his friend, the great ‘Twig’ Verginix, had hatched more than five centuries earlier, when the whole area had been a vast lullabee glade. But the rain was falling steadily now and they would be hard pressed to reach Copperwood by nightfall if they didn’t push on.

  • CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR •

  Flicking Tallix’s reins sharply, they set off once more, driving through the forest at mid-branch level. They didn’t stop again until Old Forest was behind them and, leaping from the broad branch of a lufwood tree, they landed in the rolling parkland and flower gardens of the Silver Pastures district.

  After the dense foliage of Old Forest, the Silver Pastures felt airy and spacious, its expansive parkland dotted with rustic buildings – cottages, barns, byres and granaries. Down to a trot now, they picked their way along winding paths and past great swathes of original grassland, the long blade-like leaves swaying in the wind like a mighty lake. Once, the Silver Pastures had been ten times as large – a great oasis in the middle of the inhospitable Deepwoods, where vast migrating herds of wild tilder and hammelhorn would gather to eat their fill of sweet gladegrass. Now, much of the land had been ploughed up or built on, and what was left was fenced in to contain the smaller herds of domesticated hammelhorn and tilder.

  As they rounded a small copse of sallowdrops fringing a dewpond, they disturbed a flock of vulpoons that flapped up screeching into the air, their shaggy feathers fluttering in the wind. Tallix slowed and sniffed. His nostrils quivered and, with a growl that started in the depths of his stomach, he howled loudly and galloped off in their direction.

  ‘Tallix! Tallix!’ Nate cried out, and tugged as hard as he could at the reins.

  But nothing would stop the prowlgrin. Gathering speed with every stride he took, he sprinted towards the far side of the dewpond, and as he drew close, Nate saw the body of a dead hammelhorn lying on its side by the water’s edge. The vulpoons were beginning to land once more, and hopped about it, stabbing at the carcass with their razor-sharp beaks.

  Tallix stopped of his own accord, and began pawing at the ground and snorting.

  ‘All right, boy,’ said Nate softly.

  He dismounted. Slip jumped down beside him. Nate unbuckled the saddle and the two of them stood by as their prowlgrin hurtled off, bellowing loudly. The vulpoons screeched with frustration as the prowlgrin brushed them aside, pounced on the carcass and began to feed.

  Slip watched, transfixed. He had often fed the pit prowlgrins in the phraxmine, labouring back and forth with buckets of rancid offal. How those poor half-starved creatures would have relished the feast that Tallix was enjoying, Slip thought. Beside him, Nate turned away and tried to drown out the sounds coming from the dewpond by putting his hands over his ears and whistling tunelessly. By the time Tallix came trotting back, there was nothing left of the hammelhorn but its two curling horns and the needle-like pelt.

  ‘Better now?’ said Slip.

  As if in reply, Tallix rolled around in the grass before him, cleaning the blood from his fur. He was purring loudly as he climbed to his feet. Nate refastened the double saddle, buckling it tightly around the prowlgrin’s now swollen girth, and he and Slip climbed back into the saddle. Nate twitched the reins, and the three of them trotted off once more. Glancing over his shoulder, Nate had to admit that the prowlgrin had done a very effective job at cleaning up the dewpond.

  It was early evening when, ahead of them, they saw the curious gold-tinged steam above Copperwood. The rain had cleared and the wind had dropped and, pumped out constantly from the phrax-driven workshops and factories and illuminated by the globe lamps, the steam hung over the industrial district like a vast halo. Tallix trotted along the road, seemingly none the worse for wear after the long journey. They approached a low arched bridge spanning a small river which marked the northern border of the district and clip-clopped over its wooden boards. As they reached the far side, Nate glanced down to find a face staring back up at him.

  ‘Greetings, stranger.’

  Nate tugged at the reins and brought Tallix to a halt. ‘Greetings,’ he said in reply.

  It was a gnarled slaughterer who had spoken, his face creased and his spiky hair as white as snow. He was sitting on the bank below the bridge, a wicker creel by his side and a hook and line dangling down into the swift current from the end of his fishing rod.

  ‘One more, and I’m done,’ said the slaughterer, nodding towards the basket which, as Nate looked, trembled with movement as the fish inside it wriggled and flopped about.

  ‘Good fishing, is it?’ asked Nate.

  ‘Best in the twelve districts,’ said the old slaughterer, and grinned toothlessly. ‘These be steam fish. They grow fast and fat on the cloud dew from the stiltshops.’

  Nate was surprised. Back in the Eastern Woods, the slagheaps and waste middens leached into the streams, turning them muddy brown and killing off the fish that once had teemed in their waters. He looked across at the rows of tall stilted workshops, swathed in mist as each one billowed thick steam from the tops of their towering chimneys.

  ‘Tell me, friend,’ said Nate, ‘do you know of any work to be had here in Copperwood?’

  ‘Work, you say?’ said the slaughterer. He shoved the end of his fishing rod into the mud, the shaft resting on a crutch-shaped branch, and climbed to his feet. ‘Ay, there’s work enough to be had in Copperwood.’

  Smoothing down his bulging pocket-filled jacket, he clambered up the riverbank and approached the prowlgrin. Nate dismounted.

  ‘Best thing you can do to find work is go to the hiring posts,’ the slaughterer told him. ‘That’s where the factory owners and stiltshop overseers put all their vacancies and requirements.’ He clamped one hand on Nate’s shoulder and pointed with the other. ‘You want to go along that road there, till you comes to a small square. You can’t miss it. There’s a statue in the middle of Mangobey Cartshank – founder of our fair Copperwood … Anyway, turn left, and you’ll find the hirin
g posts along a ways, on your right.’

  Thanking the slaughterer, Nate seized the reins and led Tallix, with Slip still in the saddle, away from the babbling river and into the industrial district. On either side of the broad paved road were the stilted workshops – or stiltshops, as the slaughterer had called them – each one of a slightly different design, depending on what they produced. One was tall and thin and studded with small windows; another was squat and L-shaped, with a tall three-sided chimney; while a third was comprised of three pitch-roofed buildings joined one to the other by tiled walkways. The only feature they all had in common was the tall scaffold of stilts they stood upon, which elevated the buildings high above the ground to allow easy access for the phraxbarges that delivered raw materials and collected the finished products.

  ‘This way,’ said Nate, glancing up at Mangobey Cartshank’s thick beard and glaring eyes. He turned left onto a narrower road lined with shops and stores which, like all the other buildings in the district, were raised up high above the thoroughfare and hummed and steamed with activity.

  The hiring posts came into view – eight tall poles with lengths of diamond-shaped trellis linking them, sandwiched between two stilthouses. Countless pieces of waxed parchment had been nailed to the crossboards and fluttered in the breeze. Nate helped Slip down from the saddle. Tallix jumped up onto a roost post, settled down comfortably and immediately fell asleep.

  ‘Hammelhornskin rilker required,’ ‘Experienced wood turner needed,’ ‘Hardworking metalworker to start immediately …’ Nate read off the words on the squares of parchment as he scoured the hiring posts for something suitable. His gaze fell upon a note that looked newly posted. He read it quickly through, and grinned. ‘Sounds just right for us, Slip,’ he said. ‘Listen to this.’

  Slip turned from the parchment he had been struggling to read and listened.

  ‘Experienced lamptender and mate wanted in busy phraxchamber works,’ Nate read out. ‘Apply Clemp Sprake, foreman, Glemlop and Drew’s stiltshop, Steamhammer Yard.’ Nate smiled. ‘Perfect for a qualified lamplighter and his apprentice, I’d have thought …’

  ‘Do you think there’ll be anyone there this late?’ asked Slip, his large eyes looking up and down the lamplit street.

  ‘In the city that never sleeps?’ said Nate, clapping his hand on the grey goblin’s shoulder. ‘Of course there will, Slip.’

  • CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE •

  Glemlop and Drew’s stiltshop was situated on a gently rising hill just to the south of Copperwood’s central square, surrounded by numerous other factories. It was a vast construction, formed of two wedge-shaped buildings which mirrored each other, and were joined together with a covered bridge high above the ground, teams of gnokgoblins with laden barrows scurrying from one to the other. Nate was relieved to see the windows still blazing with light and the twin chimneys pumping thick steam into the air.

  He and Slip approached the tall factory gates, Glemlop and Drew picked out in ornate ironwork letters arching over their thick bars. Nate reached out to tug the bell pull that hung from an iron chain suspended from the left-hand gatepost – but before he had a chance to pull it, the gates swung open. A hulking great figure, twice the size of even the heftiest cloddertrog miner Nate had ever seen, and dressed in a heavy cloak and hood, stepped out of the shadows. With little more than a low grunt, he motioned for them to enter.

  Once inside, the gatekeeper pushed the heavy gates shut with an effortless sweep of a gloved hand, before ushering them over to the baskets that hung from the towering stiltshop. Nate and Slip stepped into a large wickerwork construction, big enough to accommodate ten workers at a time, and grasped the handrail. The gatekeeper shuffled over to a thick rope and began to pull on it, hand over hand. Creaking, the basket rose swiftly in the air and ascended to the stiltshop high above.

  As he peered down over the edge of the basket at the great hooded figure tugging on the rope, Nate caught the fragrant smell of freshly mown gladegrass. Perhaps, he mused, the gatekeeper had slept under the stars at Waif Glen, just like he and Slip had.

  The basket reached the stiltshop and passed through a trapdoor into the cavernous heart of the factory itself. Stepping out, Nate and Slip found themselves staring up at five vast metal chambers suspended by chains from the roofbeams, each one in various stages of completion. On the scaffolding around them, an army of cloaked and hooded workers hammered, riveted and soldered curved sheets of metal, like the scales of a fish, into place. Beside them, on sumpwood workbenches, engineers and gear fitters worked on the intricate mechanisms that would connect the outer scales of the chamber to one another, while below, on vast anvils on the stiltshop floor, phrax-powered hammers beat out metal sheets, ready to be cut and shaped.

  It was to these huge contraptions with their glowing lamps that Nate’s gaze was instinctively drawn. Powered by phraxcrystals, the lamps of the machines needed to be calibrated and tended to at all times.

  Two figures turned from the first of the three great hammers and motioned for Nate and Slip to approach. Overhead, the cacophony of hammering and hissing made it impossible to speak or be heard. The two figures – like all the workers – wore heavy hoods and cloaks. They took Nate and Slip by the arm and led them up a spiral staircase at the centre of the stiltshop and into a large glazed latticework chamber high in the roof rafters.

  Nate and Slip looked around them as they entered, and the second of the two figures pulled the circular glass door shut behind him with a clang. Instantly, the din of the stiltshop was silenced, though Nate’s ears still rang for several moments afterwards. The two figures pulled off their hoods and cloaks. One was a heavy-set flathead goblin with one dark brown eye and one of piercing blue. The other was a tall, thin fourthling with braided side-whiskers and an aquiline nose.

  ‘I’m looking for Clemp Sprake,’ said Nate.

  ‘You’ve found him,’ said the flathead goblin, sitting down at a floating lectern on which the pieces of a lamp lay in a disordered heap. ‘I suppose you’ve come about the lamptending job.’

  Nate nodded. Ignoring the rest of them, the fourthling turned away and began examining a sheaf of blueprints which hung from a cord in the centre of the chamber. Clemp Sprake looked closely at Nate, then at Slip, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

  ‘Have you any experience of working in a stiltshop?’ he said, his voice gruff and abrupt.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Nate. ‘But I’m hardworking, diligent, and a very quick learner. And my apprentice here is—’

  ‘We at Glemlop and Drew’s require an experienced lamptender,’ Clemp Sprake said, cutting him short. ‘If you don’t have experience of stiltshops, you’re no use to me.’

  ‘But I do have experience of—’ Nate began.

  ‘I said, you’re no use to me,’ said the foreman irritably.

  Nate looked at Slip and shrugged, and the pair of them were about to leave when the tall figure of the fourthling turned from the blueprints.

  ‘What exactly do you have experience of?’ he asked. He pushed back the folds of his short-sleeved topcoat and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his triple-fronted waistcoat. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘I’m a lamplighter,’ said Nate, ‘and this here is my apprentice, Slip. Back in the phraxmine in the Eastern Woods, it was my job to keep the lamps burning at precisely the right degree of light to ensure that the phraxcrystals—’

  ‘Lamplighter?’ Clemp Sprake interrupted. He shoved the various bits and pieces of the dismantled lamp towards him. ‘If you know about lamps, then fix this.’

  Nate stepped forward. The lamp was a rear-feed sumplamp. Although it was too cumbersome for use in the phraxmines, he had seen one before. The trick, he knew, when adjusting the wick, was to ensure that the cotter screw was aligned with the bevel crank …

  ‘My name is Friston Drew,’ said the fourthling, his eyes watching the youth’s nimble fingers. ‘Before he died, my partner and I built up the finest phraxchamber works in C
opperwood. We employ only the most skilled workers; the finest in their fields …’

  ‘I was the best lamplighter in the Prade phraxmine, sir,’ Nate broke in, glancing up as he cocked the oil spigot and screwed the reservoir to the base. ‘My father taught me everything he knew …’

  Just then, the door burst open. A tall, expensively dressed youth strode into the chamber, twirling a bone-handled cane. ‘Evening, Father,’ he said cheerily.

  ‘Branxford,’ the older fourthling said, peering over the top of his steel-rimmed spectacles. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’

  ‘Can’t a son visit his father without there being a reason?’ said Branxford. He smiled. ‘Though since you’re asking, there is a little matter I’d like to raise …’

  Friston Drew shook his head wearily. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You need an advance on your allowance.’

  ‘There’s a phraxlaunch that’s just come onto the market,’ said Branxford, tapping the lectern with his cane. ‘An absolute beauty, Father! Its phraxchamber is a work of art …’

  The stilthouse owner snorted. ‘And you expect me to pay for it?’ he said. ‘Just like that! Have you no pride, Branxford? Eh? Don’t you think it’s time you started working for a living?’ He nodded across the room to Nate and Slip. ‘You could learn something from these two.’

  Slip handed Nate the cotter pin, and Nate buried his head in the lamp as he wound the wick through the complicated arrangement of tiny spigots and wheels. His ears burned bright red as he felt Branxford Drew’s gaze boring into his back.

  ‘Look at the skill this young lamplighter has at his fingertips,’ said Friston Drew. ‘The way he is able to re-calibrate this sumplamp in moments shows that he has spent years of patient study, which he is now passing on to an apprentice …’

  Nate glanced round to see Branxford glaring back at him and Slip, a look of barely concealed loathing on his face. His nostrils were flared; an eyebrow was arched.