Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  Nate looked over his shoulder at Eudoxia. She was still asleep, beads of sweat lining her feverish brow.

  ‘That’s it,’ he told her softly. ‘You rest, Eudoxia. It’ll do you good. I’ll wake you when we reach Riverrise …’

  ‘Her condition appears to be … slurp … serious,’ came a concerned voice at Nate’s shoulder, and he turned to see the old gabtroll couple he’d noticed as they’d approached the Thorn Gate.

  ‘It looks like … slurp … a fever to me, Gilmora,’ said one of the gabtrolls, and his eyestalks, sticking out of two holes in his funnel hat, swung round. He raised the lampstaff clasped in his hand, bathing Eudoxia’s glistening face in light.

  ‘And wet lung … slurp slurp, Gomber,’ his wife replied, her pointed bonnet wobbling on her head as she leaned forward. ‘Listen to how her breathing rasps …’

  ‘It’s a leadwood bullet,’ Nate said, interrupting their musings, ‘lodged behind her ear.’

  The two gabtrolls gasped, slurping loudly as their long tongues licked their startled eyeballs.

  ‘A leadwood bullet,’ Gilmora repeated, her hand shooting up to the tangle of talismans and charms clustered at her neck. ‘Sky above,’ she murmured. ‘But … but how … slurp … did it happen?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Nate, shaking his head. ‘In short, we were at the battle of the Midwood marshes,’ he told her, ‘and Eudoxia was wounded …’

  ‘A battle? But … slurp … that’s terrible,’ said Gilmora, tutting sympathetically as she fell into step with Nate. ‘Absolutely terrible.’ She leaned across and fussed with the topcoat that lay across Eudoxia’s sleeping body. ‘The poor little mite …’ She peered up at Nate with her stalk-like eyes. ‘You’re taking her to the right place,’ she said. ‘The City of Night is justifiably famous for its gifted physicians and apothecaries – not to mention the healing properties of the sacred water from the Riverrise spring.’

  Her husband tapped Nate on the arm. ‘Do you mind if we walk with you?’ he asked. ‘You’re setting a good pace.’

  Felderforth must have said something, for the old gabtroll nodded.

  ‘Much obliged,’ he said, and smiled, his eyestalks quivering as the small group continued their march deeper into the thorn forests.

  The tunnel through the thorns was broad, straight and cavernous. The sides had been crudely created by hacking away at the thorn trees, leaving the ends of the chopped branches ragged and splintered. Droplets of water clung to the sharpened tip of every thorn, glittering like a treasure trove of black diamonds. The air was heavy and still, laden with a sweet peppery odour – and, given the hundreds, possibly thousands, of travellers making their way in both directions, oddly quiet.

  Tearing his gaze away from the tangled depths of the thorn forests, Nate noticed that Felderforth was looking at him, a smile playing on his thin barbelled lips. He guessed that the guide had been listening to his thoughts. The waif smiled apologetically and flapped a thin bony hand before him.

  ‘It is always fascinating to experience the thorn forests through the senses of someone experiencing them for the first time,’ he said softly. ‘I confess, we waifs have always found it a dark and terrifying place …’

  ‘It is … beautiful,’ Nate breathed as the thorns gathered around them.

  ‘Yes,’ said the waif, his large black eyes looking around as if seeing it all for the first time, ‘I suppose it is.’

  For hours they marched on, the trail beneath their feet now hard and stony, now soft and marshy, rising and falling as they trudged down shallow valleys and heaved themselves up over low hills. Whatever the terrain below, the cavernous tunnel continued unbroken, its lofty arch far above their heads looking, to Nate at least, like a great vaulted ceiling.

  ‘We waifs contend that the Thorn Tunnel is every bit as mighty a construction as the bridges and buildings of Great Glade or Hive,’ the waif told him.

  Nate nodded. How long, he wondered, had it been here?

  ‘It was first constructed almost five hundred years ago,’ the waif responded, reading his thoughts, ‘though of course it has to be constantly tended. The thorn forest is tenacious and grows fast, forever trying to heal the rift running through its heart …’

  But the tunnel was huge and the waifs seemingly so small and frail, Nate thought.

  ‘We waifs did not build it,’ Felderforth’s voice sounded in his head. ‘It was built by the red and black dwarves and their slaves, the nameless ones.’

  Nameless ones, Nate thought. Those strange creatures of the Nightwoods, uncategorized by the librarian scholars and seldom seen in the sunlit Deepwoods. What must they be like?

  ‘If you look over there, you’ll see,’ said Felderforth, nodding to his left as they marched on at a steady pace.

  Following his gaze, Nate found himself staring at three gigantic lumpen individuals up ahead, who were standing high up on broad sumpwood ladders propped against the side of the tunnel. They each had huge pairs of shears in their hands, and were busy trimming back the encroaching twigs and branches, while a fourth gargantuan individual gathered the cuttings together in piles beneath them. As they drew closer, Nate looked more closely at the four enormous, lumbering creatures.

  So these were the nameless ones …

  ‘Yes, they are,’ he heard Felderforth confirming in his mind.

  Nate was shocked. One was broad-shouldered, its leathery grey skin crisscrossed with scars, and it had a long, jutting lower jaw set with serrated tusks. Another was tall and curiously gangly, its spine crooked and head misshapen. Both of them were draped in tattered rags of what once must have been rudimentary garments, now torn and shredded beyond recognition by the savage thorns. Nate’s gaze fell on the third nameless one – a low-browed, earless creature with a barrel chest and squat bowed legs – and what looked like a stubby tail sticking out from the seams of the threadbare breeches it wore.

  On the ground, the fourth nameless one grunted and growled miserably as it raked the thorny clippings together in piles with its chipped claws. It had a bulbous neck, twice the thickness of its head, while its arms were so long that, even when it bent them at the elbows, its knuckles still grazed along the ground. It turned to reveal a monstrous face, tiny eyes sunk deep in cratered sockets and gaping nostrils set into a broad ridge of bone. Beneath them was a lipless mouth, the lower fangs so large and irregular that its jaw hung open, strands of dripping drool glinting in the yellow lamplight.

  As Nate watched, he saw the nameless one’s brutal features convulse with spasms of pain. It was only when he looked more closely that he realized why.

  Perched on the creature’s shoulder was a tiny red dwarf – a diminutive beaked goblin from the depths of the Nightwoods, a glinting spike in its grasp. This one was typical of its kind, with blistered red skin and a bloated body set upon spindly legs. Between small wide-set eyes, its beak-like nose jutted out over its protruding jaw, while its tufted ears twitched every time it stabbed with casual brutality at the hapless nameless one in its charge.

  ‘They have to be harsh,’ said Felderforth in answer to Nate’s thoughts, ‘to keep the nameless ones working.’

  Nate looked up at the others, still ceaselessly chopping at the thorny twigs and branches which had encroached into the tunnel, and he realized that each of them, too, had one of the tiny red or black dwarves clinging to them. Every time the great lumbering creatures paused in their efforts, even for a moment, the dwarves would jab them with their vicious spikes in those soft sensitive places behind their ears or in the delicate membrane inside their noses, until they started working once more.

  ‘I sense you find this brutal,’ the waif whispered in his head. ‘But …’ He hesitated, and for an instant, Nate thought he felt an element of doubt in the words inside his head. ‘But how else can we waifs ensure the tunnel is kept open for visitors to our great city; visitors such as yourself?’

  Nate turned from the enslaved nameless ones and increased his pace to keep
up with the waif guide, suddenly aware of how weary he had become. Here, in the constant gloom of the Thorn Tunnel, it was impossible to tell the time of day, and Nate had no idea how long they had been marching. Certainly, it felt like hours.

  ‘We have marched through what you call the night,’ the waif told him. ‘But there are still many hours left to journey. We must maintain our pace, for we cannot get to Riverrise too soon for your friend, Nate.’

  Head down, his hand grasping the stretcher’s tether rope, Nate pressed on, urging his legs forward, one step after another after another. His eyelids became heavy and, as his head began to swim with tiredness, he wondered once again how Zelphyius Dax had managed to keep going with so little sleep.

  A while later, Nate was stirred from his waking reveries as he heard loud cries and the sound of shouting voices – both inside and outside his head – coming from up ahead. Felderforth’s pace didn’t slacken for a moment, and as Nate and the gabtrolls struggled to keep up, he saw two large bowers had come to a halt beside the trail. They each had purple velvet curtains and tasselled canopies, and were surmounted with a golden spike carved in the shape of the Riverrise mountain itself. Long lufwood hefting staves stuck out back and front. Beside the bowers, in white uniformed topcoats, a group of heavy-set brogtrolls – who had been carrying the curtained chairs – gathered round a cowering waif guide.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Nate asked directly, and in his head he heard the sound of Felderforth sighing.

  Nate turned to see him stricken with fear. His trembling ears hung limply down, while his face had drained of all colour.

  ‘They are the custodians,’ he said without breaking step, ‘and their guards.’

  As they approached the bowers, Felderforth quickened his pace.

  ‘The custodians are our wise and venerable leaders,’ Felderforth told Nate, though even as he heard the waif’s sibilant words, he was aware of a second, deeper voice underlying it. They rule Riverrise with an iron fist, allowing neither disobedience nor dissent. Any who think of opposing them are dealt with without mercy.

  Nate turned and looked at the waif, his eyes wide with confusion.

  The waif continued. ‘And the Custodian General, Golderayce One-Eye, is the most wise and venerable of them all,’ Nate heard. I am communicating my underthoughts to you, Nate Quarter … Yes, underthoughts. From birth, every waif learns to conceal his true thoughts by underthinking. But on occasions, a waif – particularly the young and foolish – will forget, and inadvertently reveal their true feelings …

  ‘I … I don’t understand,’ Nate said.

  The custodians caught one of their retinue – a waif guide – harbouring negative thoughts about them …

  All at once the distant-sounding cacophony of voices inside Nate’s head fell still. The waif shook his head.

  And he has been dealt with.

  ‘Dealt with?’ said Nate.

  ‘Long live the wise custodians!’ Felderforth nodded grimly. Without mercy.

  As they passed the two bowers and the uniformed brogtroll guards, Nate glanced over at them and swallowed hard. Impaled upon the vicious wall of thorns was the body of the young waif guide, blood dripping down onto the ground below him. He had clearly been thrown at it violently, remaining fixed to the spot where he’d landed, his body twisted and arms and legs akimbo. Sharp spikes stuck out at all angles from his body, the thorns piercing his ribs, a knee, an eye …

  ‘Without mercy,’ Nate repeated, his voice low and tremulous.

  ‘Our custodian leaders are indeed venerable and wise,’ he heard Felderforth saying, followed by a low shudder. Their brutality knows no bounds.

  They continued their march at an unvarying pace, Nate glad that his growing exhaustion distracted his mind from thoughts of what he’d just seen. Far above his head, through the tangle of terrible thorns, the glowering sky seemed to be a shade lighter, and he wondered for a moment whether this was what passed for daylight in the Thorn Tunnel.

  If it was, then was this the second day of their endless march? he wondered. The third? He shrugged. Since his head was reeling with tiredness, the apparent lightness in the stormy sky beyond the upper reaches of the thorny tunnel might be no more than a figment of his imagination. He returned his attention to the seemingly endless Waif Trail before him, the lamp glow spilling out across the uneven ground and, as he did so, he heard Felderforth penetrating his thoughts once more.

  ‘There,’ the waif guide told him, nodding ahead, ‘is the Night Gate – the end of the Thorn Tunnel.’

  Nate peered ahead, to see the dark arch give way to an area of even denser darkness beyond. A broad smile spread across his face.

  ‘The end of the Thorn Tunnel,’ he repeated. ‘At last …’

  ‘Yes,’ said the waif. ‘Now our journey becomes more difficult.’

  They emerged from the Night Gate into a cold dank forest, so dark that the gnarled trees – each one encrusted with thick shaggy moss and glistening clumps of wormy fungus – disappeared into endless blackness beyond the range of the lamps. Nate turned to Felderforth.

  ‘These are the Nightwoods,’ he heard him say. ‘The beginning of the Waiflands. Wild waifs still inhabit the forest,’ he said. ‘Leechwaifs, copperwaifs, bloodwaifs, waterwaifs and ghostwaifs who would like nothing better than to lure travellers from the trail and to their deaths. But fear not, Nate Quarter, as a waif guide I am sworn to protect you until you reach our great city …’

  As he spoke, Nate suddenly became aware of something flapping round his head. He swatted at the air, his fingers grazing the tips of leathery wings. Beside him, he felt the stretcher tilt and sway and, looking round, saw to his horror that four leathery winged creatures with flat faces and tiny fangs were perched on Eudoxia’s sleeping body.

  ‘Felderforth!’ he gasped.

  But the waif had already noticed and, his eyes blazing and barbels at his mouth quivering, he stared at the tiny creatures. Whatever his thoughts, the waif guide certainly had an effect for, as Nate watched, the creatures let out rasping screams and instantly scattered, flapping off into the pitch black of the surrounding Nightwoods.

  ‘Flitterwaifs,’ Felderforth said. ‘Some in Riverrise keep them as pets,’ he added, the voice in Nate’s head laced with disgust. ‘But out here, they are untamed – and always hungry.’

  They continued walking, with Felderforth in front setting the pace, Nate behind pulling the floating stretcher, and the old gabtroll couple tramping doggedly after. Underfoot, the going was soft and marshy, and the air smelled stagnant and rank. Up ahead, silhouetted in the lamp glow, Nate saw others defending themselves against the flitterwaifs. Their arms waved frantically as they used clubs and cudgels to beat the creatures off, and the dank air hissed with the sound of the furious flitterwaifs as their ferocious attacks were thwarted.

  Nate glanced at Felderforth, grateful to have the services of such an attentive waif. Time after time, he had leaped forward – often before Nate was even aware of any danger – and scattered the attacking flitterwaifs with the power of his thoughts. As they travelled still further into the dark forest, though, their numbers increased, gliding through the shadows and alighting on the knobbly branches, where they hissed and squealed.

  Nate stared into the oppressive gloom, trying to make out the shifting forms in the shadows. The trees seemed to squirm and writhe, their trunks and branches dripping with thick viscous liquid which oozed from the bark. Dense skeins of cobwebs spanned the bone-like twigs, each one beaded with droplets of condensed mist that seemed to stare back at him like eyes – until with a sudden jolt he realized that, in amongst the tangle of branches, there were eyes there.

  Large and small eyes. Red eyes. Yellow eyes. Eyes that were narrowed to razor-like slits; wide, round eyes that never seemed to blink. They were all around the steady stream of travellers on the Waif Trail, menacing and predatory, waiting for one of the old or weak to stumble and slip unnoticed, so that they might pounce. Occasionally
, Nate would see more than just their eyes reflected in the light. Once, the lamp glow glinted on the green scales of a thin creature with a broad mask-like face; once he caught a glimpse of the dripping fangs of a tall emaciated-looking creature that, even as he was watching, slipped silently behind the moss-encrusted trunk of a crumbling tree and disappeared.

  ‘The denizens of the waiflands are many,’ he heard Felderforth saying, and was comforted to hear the familiar voice. ‘Bark demons, slime steppers, gulpers and snatchers … And all with the gift of reading your thoughts.’

  Nate stumbled on. His feet were blistered; his body felt as though it had been stretched on a rack. And all the while his tiredness intensified, blunting his senses and filling his head with strange unsettling thoughts.

  ‘Come this way,’ they seemed to be hissing. ‘The path over here is easier, quicker. We can show you …’

  ‘Don’t listen to them,’ Felderforth’s voice told him.

  ‘I’ll try not to … But I’m so tired …’ said Nate.

  ‘Concentrate on the trail,’ the waif told him. ‘And on my voice – and no others …’

  The waif guide scanned the forest about him, his barbels quivering violently. All around, unseen creatures squeaked and squealed as they flapped away or scuttled off, retreating in alarm from the waif guide’s threatening thoughts.

  Nate had no idea how long he’d been walking when he first heard the trickling water far ahead. Hours? Days? Time had lost all meaning in the Nightwoods. The tiredness had reached such a pitch that his head felt foggy and numb, while his body felt almost as though it belonged to someone else.