‘I’d forgotten how beautiful Lake Landing is,’ the tall figure in the stylish, though slightly shabby, clothes of a skytavern gambler commented, his dour expression softening as he stared at the ancient lufwood panel painting before him.
‘It’s been a long time since you were last here, Ambris, old friend,’ noted his companion, who was dressed in the flowing robes of an academic. He stroked his neck beard thoughtfully. ‘Too long – and with so many disappearing these days, I was beginning to fear that you too might have gone missing.’
‘Not missing, just plying my trade, Cassix,’ the tall figure replied, ‘aboard countless skytaverns, from the Blue Lemkin out of the Northern Reaches to the Deadbolt Vulpoon from the Eastern Woods.’
Brow furrowed, he adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles and, stooping forward, peered closely at the intricate brush strokes. The portrait was of a stout gnokgoblin with wise hooded eyes, a crumpled brow and wearing the robes and chains of high office.
‘By the look of his clothes,’ said the curator, adjusting the embroidered sleeves of his long dark robes, ‘this is a portrait of a High Master of the Lake Landing Academy in the First Age of Flight …’
‘Parsimmon, I think you’ll find, old friend,’ interrupted Ambris, pushing back the peak of his crushed funnel hat as he stood up straight.
The old curator turned to him, a single bushy eyebrow raised. ‘Parsimmon?’
‘The first High Master of Lake Landing was a gnokgoblin by the name of Parsimmon,’ the tall figure explained, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his breeches. ‘He started out as a lowly assistant librarian and worked his way up, serving as High Master for approaching seven decades.’ He smiled, his thin lips stretching across his uneven teeth, and added, ‘If I’m not very much mistaken, that is.’
The curator sighed and shook his head. ‘The Professor, mistaken?’ he said, his gnarled fingers interlaced. ‘I don’t think so.’
Ambris turned to him, a look of surprise on his face. ‘How did you know they call me that on the skytaverns?’ he said.
Curator Cassix Lodestone smiled. ‘Oh, I keep one ear to the ground and the other to the sky, Ambris. Your skill at the gaming tables is the talk of the Twelve Districts – equalled only by your encyclopaedic knowledge of the past. After all, you were always my most promising student.’
Ambris smiled in turn and shook his head ruefully. ‘Ah, yes, the good old days,’ he said. His face hardened. ‘Before the Academy got cold feet …’
A decade had passed since the original Society of Descenders – a division of the School of Edge Cliff Studies – had been forced to close through lack of funds. Its laboratories and stone-polishing chambers had been cleared; its staff and members told to disperse. Some had found posts in the other colleges and schools, but their dean, Professor Cassix Lodestone, had been so steeped in cliff studies that no other institution would have taken him in, even had he chosen to seek a position with them. Six months or so ago, after years of struggling for support and the more recent controversy after the failed voyage of the Archemax, he had left the School and accepted the job of curator in the Long Gallery of the Lake Landing Academy, although his knowledge of painting and sculpture was limited, to say the least. As for his talented deputy, Ambris Hentadile, robbed of his academic apprenticeship when the Society was closed, he had left the Cloud Quarter for ever ten years earlier, using – some would say, misusing – his sharp intellect that had once singled him out for academic greatness, to prosper at the gaming tables of the skytaverns that crisscrossed the Edge skies.
‘Now the School of Edge Cliff Studies itself is threatened,’ Cassix Lodestone was saying, turning away and continuing along the gallery, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Their funding has been cut. Various academics have been lured away … I’m telling you, Ambris, now that Quove Lentis, High Professor of Flight, has withdrawn his support for Edge Cliff Studies, there’ll be no more expeditions over the Edge …’
He fell still, aware that a grizzled woodtroll was standing within earshot. The old fellow was probably a gallery visitor, there to admire the paintings, but Cassix Lodestone knew that it was always as well to be careful. He waited until the woodtroll had crossed the gallery to the opposite wall before returning to his theme.
‘It’s all so short-sighted,’ he said, shaking his head wearily. ‘Who knows what fascinating – not to say, crucial – academic discoveries could be made?’
The Professor nodded as the pair of them made their way slowly along the row of portraits. He paused before a painting which represented the historic moment when New Undertown’s Council of Three had become the famous Council of Eight, early in the Second Age of Flight. Cassix stopped beside him.
‘Cancaresse – the Keeper of Waif Glen. Parsimmon, again,’ said the Professor, pointing to the characters staring back at them from the painted wooden panel. ‘And that low-belly was mayor of New Undertown more than five centuries ago. Hebb Lub-drub, his name, I believe. And beside them are Fenbrus Lodd and his daughter, Varis; the Professors of Light and Darkness and …’
Ambris Hentadile fell still. He stared at the figure on the left – an old individual with a clipped beard, simple homespun robes and an expression of absolute calm in his grey-green eyes. Like Ambris himself, his academic apprenticeship had been cut short, and he had subsequently been imprisoned for decades. Yet he had emerged from his stinking cell to take up a position on the Council of Eight, from which he guided the Free Glades through war, and on to years of peace and harmony.
‘Cowlquape Pentephraxis,’ Ambris breathed. ‘The great scholar of Earth and Sky … He championed the pursuit of knowledge wherever it lay.’
‘Indeed,’ said the former dean sadly. ‘But High Professor of Flight, Quove Lentis, is no Cowlquape Pentephraxis. Unfortunately, our dear Lentis has decided that an alliance with the waifs of Riverrise – securing, as rumour has it, his own personal supplies of water from the sacred Riverrise spring – is more important than the quest for knowledge. And we all know the waifs’ views of Edge Cliff Studies. They consider it blasphemy of the worst kind.’
‘Then it’s true,’ Ambris Hentadile broke in. ‘There will be no attempt to rescue the last expedition. My brother …’
Cassix Lodestone took a sharp intake of breath and stared fixedly at the painting, ignoring his companion’s searching gaze. ‘Ifflix,’ he said. ‘Poor, dear Ifflix …’
‘Ifflix Hentadile,’ said Ambris, nodding. ‘My younger brother. He joined the School of Edge Cliff Studies because of me. He revived the Society of Descenders because of the stories I told him when he was a young’un. He led that expedition to make me proud. And now he has been shamefully abandoned …’
Cassix clasped his friend by the hands. ‘Oh, Ambris, I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes, well, I for one am not prepared to leave things as they are,’ said Ambris grimly, his brow knitted with resolve. ‘That’s why I’m here in Great Glade. I’m going to put together an expedition to go in search of my brother, and I’m looking for trained descenders to go with me.’
‘I’m afraid you won’t find any in Great Glade who’d admit to being descenders, let alone join an expedition,’ replied Cassix, shaking his head. ‘Even talking of it is likely to land you in the constabulary cells.’
‘But I’ve got to do something!’ Ambris Hentadile’s voice was raised, causing several visitors to the gallery to look in his direction and Cassix Lodestone to seize him by the arm.
‘There is somewhere you could try,’ he whispered urgently, his eyes darting round the gallery as he spoke. ‘The Sumpwood Bridge Academy in Hive …’
‘Hive?’ Ambris said.
At that moment, a jumble of excited voices and a clatter of footsteps echoed around the high vaulted ceiling of the gallery. Cassix, his lips pursed and cheeks flexing and unflexing as he gritted his teeth, turned to the front entrance to see a dozen noisy young’uns scurrying into the hall and come sliding across the polished floor. They
swept past the legs of the Professor and the old curator like water round lake reeds, heedless of the calls of the gabtroll matron with them to ‘slow down’.
Cassix Lodestone turned on his heel, his bright deep-set eyes blazing. ‘Be careful! Be careful!’ he cried out as they clustered round a huge glass statue, gleaming in the sunlight that streamed in at the far end of the hall. ‘No touching … I said, no touching!’ He glanced back at the Professor. ‘Excuse me one moment, Ambris, while I …’
He broke away and strode across the floor, the wooden soles of his clogs rapping against the varnished floorboards as he brushed past the other visitors to the gallery. His agitated voice floated back as he addressed the gabtroll.
‘Madame, you must keep the young’uns in your charge under control. Otherwise, I shall have to ask you to leave … No touching!’
Ambris Hentadile smiled to himself. Cassix Lodestone, it seemed, was as protective of the paintings and sculptures in the Long Gallery as he had once been of his students. How excited he must have been when Ambris’s younger brother had revived the Society of Descenders and gained support for an expedition. Now those hopes and dreams lay shattered. As Ambris watched, the old curator flapped protectively round the fragile statue of Tweezel the venerable spindlebug, companion of Mother Maris, founder of the Gardens of Light and inventor of the varnish that had made possible the Second Age of Flight.
Commissioned shortly after his death to commemorate his three hundred and fifty years of life, the statue was a work of art. It had been fashioned by teams of master glassworkers, who had spent long hours carefully blowing into the glowing balls of molten glass with long pipes to form its thorax, its abdomen and its curiously angular head, while others had teased out spindly legs and delicate feelers with their callipers, pincers and crimping knives. The statue of the glassy insect they had created was so life-like, it was as though the wise old creature was still there among them.
To live for three hundred and fifty years, Ambris Hentadile mused. How much the spindlebug must have seen in that time! Born in the untamed Deepwoods, educated in the streets of ancient Undertown, servant to Linius Pallitax, the greatest Most High Academe ever to have taken office in Old Sanctaphrax … Living through all three ages of flight!
While I … ?
Ambris Hentadile turned away. Suddenly, his own achievements seemed so very small – his brief academic career, brilliant but short-lived; the years of idle gambling, bar fights and lectures delivered in baskets suspended over the Deepwoods to bored goblin matrons.
‘Some “professor” I am,’ he murmured ruefully. But it’s all about to change, he told himself. There would be no more gambling. He would rescue Ifflix; he owed his little brother that much at least. And besides, the prospect of venturing over the Edge had begun to clear his head, drive away all the old bitterness, and give his life a new meaning. He liked the feeling.
Ambris turned from the picture and made his way down the hall in the direction of an increasingly flustered Cassix Lodestone. The curator’s arms were flapping and his voice had become shrill. Other visitors to the Long Gallery were looking at him askance – or rather, most of them. One young fourthling, Ambris noticed, was standing in front of a large portrait of a Commander of the Freeglade Lancers mounted upon prowlgrinback, oblivious to the disturbance.
What was more, Ambris suddenly realized, he recognized him. He came closer, clearing his throat as he did so.
The youth didn’t seem to notice. He was staring intently at a particular part of the painting, his attention gripped by a detail in the picture – a small medallion which hung from a leather cord round the commander’s neck.
It was a portrait miniature on a small round lufwood panel. In ancient times, in the Knights Academy of Old Sanctaphrax, such self-portraits were attached to the knights’ swords in a special ceremony. That was in the First Age of Flight. This portrait, though, was from early in the Third Age of Flight, if the Professor wasn’t mistaken.
It was of Commander Rook Barkwater of the Freeglade Lancers, hero of the war for the Free Glades and the countless skirmishes and raids in their defence afterwards. Later, he had travelled with the waif, Cancaresse, to Riverrise when that mysterious city was still half myth and little more than a rocky spire rising up from the terrifying Nightwoods. Commander Barkwater had never returned.
‘I wonder what ever became of him?’ the Professor mused.
Realizing that someone was talking to him, the youth looked round. In a flash, the expression on his face changed from one of mild puzzlement to sudden recognition.
‘Professor!’ he exclaimed, and thrust out his hand. ‘How good to see you!’ He frowned. ‘After the knife fight, I couldn’t find you. I wanted to thank you. For protecting me in the skytavern.’
‘You won that splinters game fair and square, lad,’ said Ambris Hentadile with a shrug. ‘Besides, I can’t abide the powerful picking on the weak.’ He nodded towards the portrait in front of them. ‘Any more than Rook Barkwater could.’
‘You know who he is?’
‘Of course,’ said the Professor, his face creasing up with amusement. ‘And from the way you were staring at the painting, I thought you did too.’
The youth shook his head. ‘No, I was just passing by when something in the painting caught my eye …’
‘The medallion round his neck?’ the Professor asked.
‘Yes,’ said the youth, blushing.
‘It’s a sword miniature by the look of it,’ said the Professor knowledgeably, ‘of an ancestor from the First Age of Flight. Probably a keepsake passed down the generations from—’
‘Father to son?’ whispered the youth, his eyes returning to the painting.
‘Yes, quite possibly,’ said the Professor with a smile. The lad would make an enthusiastic student of history. He paused. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘in all the excitement, we were never properly introduced. I’m Ambris Hentadile, otherwise known as the Professor. And you are?’
‘Nate,’ said the youth, his gaze still on the tiny portrait round the commander’s neck. ‘Nate Quarter.’
‘Quarter?’ said the Professor with a delighted smile. He pushed his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose. ‘By Earth and Sky, that’s a coincidence.’
‘Coincidence?’ said Nate.
‘Barkwater – Bar-kwater,’ said the Professor, pronouncing the second half of the name carefully. ‘Over the centuries, the Barkwater name became shortened to Quarter. It’s a common enough occurrence with the old Free Glades names. “Pentephraxis” to “Rackis”; “Pompolnius” to “Pulnix” – and so on. Who knows, you might even be distantly related to the great Rook Barkwater himself, Nate Quarter!’
The Professor laughed, but stopped when he saw the look of wide-eyed wonder in the youth’s eyes.
‘Are you all right, Nate? You’ve gone as white as a spidersilk sail.’
‘I’m fine, Professor … fine,’ said Nate, his hand slipping inside his underjacket and closing round the medallion beneath.
His father had always told him that they were descended from one of the oldest families in Great Glade, and it now seemed that he was right. Nate felt a great wave of pride surge within him, mixed with a sharp pang of sorrow that his father wasn’t here to see the portrait of their illustrious ancestor hanging here in this magnificent gallery. Standing next to the Professor, so knowledgeable and well informed, Nate felt suddenly shy. After all, no matter who he might be descended from, he was still just a humble lamplighter working in a stilthouse factory in Copperwood.
Just then, a cry of greeting echoed across the hall. The Professor turned to see a young fashionably dressed Great Glader striding towards them, her arms outstretched and a beautiful smile on her lips.
‘There you are, Nate,’ she said, tossing her hair away from her face. ‘I’ve been looking all over.’
‘Eudoxia,’ said Nate, excited to see his friend. Over the last few weeks the pair of them had spent more and more time in each
other’s company – despite Branxford’s mounting displeasure. ‘You remember the Professor I told you about – the one who helped me on board the Deadbolt Vulpoon?’
‘At the splinters table?’ said Eudoxia, her head tilted to one side.
‘That’s it,’ said Nate. ‘Well, this is him.’
‘Ambris Hentadile,’ said the Professor, extending his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Eudoxia.’
‘And I’m pleased to meet you, Professor,’ said Eudoxia sweetly. ‘Nate told me how disappointed he was that he couldn’t thank you for your kindness at the time,’ she added, a beguiling smile plucking at the corners of her mouth.
‘If there is any way I can repay your kindness …’ said Nate.
The Professor pushed his crushed funnel hat back on his head and scratched his temples. ‘As a matter of fact, there is something,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for lodgings while I attend to a few matters here in Great Glade. I don’t suppose you know of anywhere … ?’
‘Lodgings!’ said Nate, a broad grin spreading over his face. ‘Well, that’s easy. There are half a dozen rooms for the asking in the cabin row where I live.’ He exchanged smiles with his companion. ‘It’s not fashionable like New Lake or steeped in history like the Free Glades district, but in my humble opinion Copperwood is the friendliest, most welcoming district in the Big Steam.’
Ambris Hentadile glanced round at Cassix Lodestone. The old curator had finally managed to move the excitable young’uns to a corner of the gallery where they could do no harm and was returning, the silver threads of his embroidered sleeves glinting in the deepening sunlight. Ambris leaned forward and patted Nate warmly on the arm.
‘Thank you, Nate Quarter,’ he said. ‘It sounds perfect.’
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE •
‘What in all that is sacred is going on?’ said Togtuft Hegg, Hive archivist of the Sumpwood Bridge, looking up from the light magnifier, where everything had suddenly blurred. ‘I can’t see a thing.’
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 16
