Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Squall Razortooth. ‘Let’s see if we can’t breathe life into the old girl.’

  Slip looked up and nodded, before completing the short climb up the scaffolding supports of the phraxchamber, joining the old sky pirate on a narrow platform. He looked inside the open chamber, his eyes wide with amazement.

  ‘It all looks very complicated,’ he said.

  ‘Not to an old engineer like me,’ said Squall. His gnarled hands reached inside the innards of the chamber, touching the various parts, one after the other. ‘It’s a beautiful bit of machinery. Just look at the workmanship in these buoyancy rods,’ he said, his fingertips trailing over the metal struts. ‘They’re hollow and are fixed in position between the cooling plates outside and the explosion chamber at the centre. A thing of beauty … This pipe leads to the propulsion duct,’ he said, ‘and that one to the funnel. And just there is the finest, most delicately tooled phraxlamp you’ll ever see,’ he said, pointing to a small glowing light screwed into place beside the explosion chamber. ‘It ensures that the chamber remains buoyant. And that,’ he added, ‘is the piston, without which there would be no thrust …’

  ‘And where do the phraxcrystals go?’ asked Slip.

  ‘Inside the explosion chamber, of course,’ said Squall Razortooth.

  He pushed his right hand deep inside the chamber and unscrewed a couple of bolts on the side of a round globe. A moment later, with a soft click, the whole globe came away. He pulled it out into the light and, with Slip peering down at it in wonder, Squall pointed out the different parts.

  ‘This side is solid metal,’ he explained, ‘with this hole here leading to the thrust pipe. The other side is, as you can see, perforated with tiny holes so that the phraxlamp can shine through, keeping the crystals in a permanent glow …’ He looked up. ‘Shall we put them into place?’

  Slip nodded, as excited as a young’un. He held up the knapsack and, with clumsy fingers, undid the buckles. He pulled out the small lightbox, the light of the lamp within glowing through the crack at the closed lid. With trembling fingers, Slip released the catch of the box.

  Klug and Togtuft, Cirrus and the Professor looked up from the deck. Far below them all, Weelum yodelled questioningly.

  ‘Patience, old friend,’ Squall called down to him.

  Slowly, hardly daring to breathe, Slip opened the lid of the lightbox. As he did so, the bright sun glinted on the shining crystals and, for a moment, the lightbox became all but weightless in Slip’s hands. Squall Razortooth removed his hat and held it over the crystals which nestled at the bottom of the box like two chiselled spear tips, casting them in shadow, and Slip felt the phraxcrystals grow heavier. Squall peered down to inspect the crystals more clearly.

  ‘They’re magnificent,’ he breathed. ‘The finest phraxcrystals I’ve ever seen …’

  ‘You think they’ll do, then?’ the Professor called up from the deck.

  ‘Do?’ said Squall Razortooth. ‘They’ll more than do. These two beauties have enough power in them to give the Archemax speed and manoeuvrability such as she has never known before – and will easily last for a hundred years!’

  ‘So, what are we waiting for?’ cried Cirrus Gladehawk, barely able to contain his excitement. ‘Let’s try them out.’

  Squall Razortooth smiled. Reaching forward, he carefully picked up the first of the phraxcrystals and placed it in the metal globe. Then he placed the second crystal beside it and, tilting the whole globe so that the perforated metal pointed upwards, secured the other half into place and tightened the bolts. Satisfied, he reached back inside the phraxchamber and attached the globe firmly to the central framework. He bent down and retrieved the first of the curved pieces of burnished metal that lay at his feet, and after ensuring that the buoyancy rods were positioned over the holding slots, bolted it into place – then reached down for the second piece …

  With a grunt of exertion, Squall tightened the last bolt on the final section of the outer casing. Then, having given the duct and funnel, the cooling gears and cooling plates, and everything else one final inspection, he looked down at the others.

  ‘Let’s fire her up,’ Cirrus Gladehawk said as Squall and Slip climbed down from the phraxchamber.

  He turned his attention to the flight levers mounted at the bottom of a series of pipes directly beneath the phraxchamber. It felt good to be standing back at the helm of his phraxship once more. He pulled the left-hand lever towards him. As he did so, there was a muffled explosion from deep inside the great metal globe. A moment later, that single explosion had become a thousand, and the sound a low and sonorous hum. Pushing his funnel hat back on his head, Cirrus seized the central lever …

  Frowning with concentration, he bit his top lip as he eased the lever slowly back. Steam began to billow from the upper funnel and the hum grew louder. The Professor held his breath. Togtuft and Klug exchanged nervous glances, while Slip – his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and excitement – gripped the side of the bow as the Archemax began to tremble and lurch. All at once, there was the sound of creaking wood on wood, and the Professor looked across to see that the top of the great ironwood pine was beginning to disappear through the deck beside him.

  ‘We’re rising,’ he said.

  The ironwood trunk and branches continued to disappear through the shattered boards of the deck as the Archemax, quivering and juddering, slowly rose.

  ‘Easy does it,’ murmured Squall, his head wreathed in the steam billowing from the funnel.

  All at once, with a soft grating sound, the upper needles of the towering trunk grazed the underboards of the hull, the flight weights swung free, and the phraxship finally cast off the tree that had skewered it for so long and soared up into the sky where it belonged.

  ‘She’s skyworthy,’ Cirrus Gladehawk, captain of the Archemax breathed, ‘but our work is only just beginning …’

  • CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE •

  Felftis Brack sat back in the padded sumpwood chair with a contented sigh. Through the high arched doors of the elegant sitting room, he gazed out across the shimmering waters of New Lake. The old Prade Mansion – or rather, the new Brack Mansion – had the most magnificent views.

  Hardly surprising, thought Felftis, when you considered that the luxurious villa, with its twenty rooms, lakeside jetty, stables and extensive grounds, was situated in the most sought after location in the whole of the New Lake district. How considerate of his former employer, Galston Prade, to sign this magnificent mansion over to his most faithful chief clerk, together with the phraxmine in the Eastern Woods.

  After all, as Felftis had so carefully explained to the Great Glade Council, Galston Prade had no need of the mine or the mansion after his sudden retirement to the Gyle Palace of Hive. A smile played over his green-tinged features as he remembered his persuasive words. Why, everyone knew that the restorative powers of gyle honey could work wonders for chronic phraxlung – that and absolute rest, away from the pressures of running the richest phraxmine in the Eastern Woods.

  Felftis stretched and yawned extravagantly, his snailskin topcoat creaking as he did so.

  What a pity poor Galston Prade’s retirement would prove to be so brief, he thought. Any day now, he expected his close associate, Grossmother Meadowdew, to send word confirming that the eminent mine owner had passed away ‘peacefully in his sleep’ as arranged. Why else had Felftis gone behind his employer’s back, fiddled the accounts and supplied the grossmother with phraxcrystals, despite the Great Glade embargo? Now, in return, she would have disposed of the mine owner in that peculiar way they had in the city of Hive, by pushing him over that waterfall of theirs.

  What did they call it? Ah, yes … Felftis smiled. ‘Barrelling’, that was it.

  ‘Why, Felftis Brack, you sly old lake snail!’ He chuckled to himself. ‘He never saw it coming …’

  And why should he? Felftis had worked hard to avoid attention, to fade into the background while making himself indispens
able through his administrative skills and attention to detail. Inch by inch, year by year, he’d plotted and schemed and slowly accumulated wealth and power, like a lake snail grazing the silt for mudworms.

  And those years of scheming had paid off. First organizing the smuggling of phraxcrystals in the Prade mine, then gaining promotion to chief clerk and making excellent contacts in Hive. Not that he hadn’t been busy here in Great Glade. He smiled. Taking that young fool, Branxford Drew, under his wing had proved unexpectedly profitable.

  The spoilt brat had sold his birthright to Felftis for a thick wedge of gladers, and one unfortunate accident later, Felftis was the proud owner of a phraxchamber works in the Copperwood district. And now, he thought triumphantly, he also owned the Prade mine – and this beautiful mansion. What was more, he had it all to himself, for Galston Prade’s troublesome daughter had done him the favour of disappearing with the young lamplighter that Branxford had been so anxious to frame for his father’s murder.

  Things couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.

  Why, even this latest dispute with Hive over the Midwood Decks looked as if it would be good for business. With the defeat of the Hive Militia, Grossmother Meadowdew and the other clan chiefs would be desperate for more phraxcrystals to re-arm their forces. Felftis could name his price and, with his smuggling operation set up, the fools in the Great Glade Council would be none the wiser.

  Felftis tweaked the tuft of hair that rose like a spike from his forehead with his right hand, and folded his left arm behind his head as he gazed out over New Lake. Yes, life was good …

  Suddenly, a large cloddertrog appeared in the arched doorway, blocking Felftis’s view. He wore the low peaked cap and sapgreen topcoat of a cloddertrog constable and was carrying a stout phraxpistol in one massive hand and a barkscroll in the other.

  ‘Felftis Brack?’ the constable enquired.

  The chief clerk composed his pale features into a look of polite concern.

  ‘I’m Felftis Brack,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘What can I do for you, Constable?’

  Behind the cloddertrog were two more in constabulary uniform, together with a tall, thin fourthling in the tilderleather topcoat of a librarian scholar.

  ‘I have a warrant for your arrest issued by the Great Glade Council,’ the cloddertrog announced, stepping into the sitting room.

  ‘Arrest?’ said Felftis coolly, backing away. ‘On what charges?’

  ‘Charges of fraud, embezzlement, blackmail, smuggling, false imprisonment, conspiracy to commit murder …’ the cloddertrog read from the barkscroll in his hand.

  ‘I … I don’t understand …’ said Felftis, edging towards the door opposite. ‘Galston Prade signed everything over to me. I have the documents signed in his own hand, just before his sad death in Hive—’

  ‘Galston Prade,’ said the librarian scholar, stepping into the room, followed by the other two constables, ‘is very much alive, and has asked me to inform you that your services as chief clerk are no longer required.’

  Felftis’s hand closed round the door handle. In an instant, he pulled it open and darted out of the room and down the broad hallway. With the tails of his snailskin topcoat flapping wildly behind him, Felftis Brack, former chief clerk, burst from the front door of the old Prade Mansion and clattered down the white lakestone steps – only to run into a phalanx of burly flathead goblins, thousandsticks in hand.

  Seizing the former chief clerk, they hoisted him high above their heads and pounded down the mooring deck which jutted out over the waters of New Lake. At the end of the wooden jetty, with a mighty roar, they threw Felftis Brack high in the air and out over the lake. Moments later, he plunged into the clear waters of New Lake with a resounding splash. When he surfaced, coughing and spluttering, his tuft of hair plastered flat across his green-tinged face, Felftis looked up to see the cloddertrog constable approaching the end of the jetty through the throng of cheering flatheads. The constable raised the arrest warrant.

  ‘… And non-payment of the New Lake thousandsticks team,’ he read.

  • CHAPTER SEVENTY •

  ‘Is somebody there?’ came a cracked and ancient voice, and the gaunt figure who had uttered the words paused on the rocky slope rising up from the fringes of the Garden of Life at Riverrise, and looked stiffly around him.

  He was sure he’d heard someone. Or something. What was more, it had sounded familiar, cutting through the centuries and stirring long-forgotten memories. He reached up, pushing aside the white beard that hung down over his bony chest, and rubbed his shoulder, which would twinge with pain whenever something reminded him of the past, so long ago and far away.

  ‘I said, is somebody—’

  All at once there was a great flurry of wings, and as he looked up, a mighty caterbird swooped over the crest of rock ahead and landed on one of the circle of pointed pinnacles that surrounded the turquoise lake below. He stepped forward, his limpid green eyes gleaming brighter than they had for hundreds of years.

  ‘You,’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, it is I,’ the caterbird replied. It folded its vast wings, the black feathers gleaming blue and purple in the bright sunlight, as its long tail feathers – striped black and white – balanced its perch. It turned its head till the hooked bill and ridged crest were silhouetted against the bright sky, a single beady eye staring.

  ‘You have come back,’ the figure stated.

  ‘I have come back,’ said the caterbird, nodding. ‘You were at my hatching, and I have watched over you always …’

  • CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE •

  The City of Night it may have been called, but though it was enfolded in the permanent darkness of the surrounding Nightwoods, the constellations of brightly shining lamps that covered the Riverrise mountain ensured that the inky blackness was kept at bay.

  Huge globes mounted on tall, elegantly carved posts lined every street and walkway and formed serpentine ribbons of brightness that meandered through the city’s crowded ledges. Countless more lamps – vast opalescent glass spheres, glowing with the intensity of miniature suns – crowned the roofs and gables of every building, while the spaces between them were festooned with yet more, dangling from thick vinerope cables. And from the buildings themselves still more light streamed out from the tall arched windows, each one lit up by the multitude of lamps blazing inside.

  High up at the mountain’s peak, obscured from view by dark, swirling clouds, was the fabled Riverrise spring, situated in the Garden of Life. Kobold’s Steps, an ancient winding staircase hewn from the rock, led up to this forbidden place, its lower reaches guarded by the massive fortress known simply as the keep.

  Below, on the rock ledges and lower slopes, the twinkling clusters of lamps marked out the various districts of this, the third of the three great cities of the Edge. There was Kobold’s Mount, home to the gabtrolls, with its magnificent lamphouses; the Market Ledges, with their bustling shops and candlelit stalls; the waif districts of North and South Cliff, each of them decked out with forests of lantern posts; and the bustling cosmopolitan districts of Under Mount and the Low Ledges, their streets lined with guesthouses and hospices, and home to the city’s most diverse communities. These lower districts fringed the Nightwoods on the mountain’s western slopes below Kobold’s Mount, with the vast bowl of the stone amphitheatre nearby.

  For centuries, in this huge open-air auditorium, it had been the custom for the waifs, gabtrolls and other Riverrisers to congregate. Here, grievances had been aired, disputes settled and issues debated. But today this was the one place in the great lamp-filled city that lay unlit and empty, such was the all-pervasive power of Golderayce One-Eye and the custodians of Riverrise.

  But it wasn’t the tall lantern posts, the magnificent lamphouses or even the great dark amphitheatre that commanded the attention of the visitor to Riverrise. The most extraordinary sight in this most extraordinary of the three great cities was the Riverrise waterfall, which flowed down out of the d
arkness like a glistening strand of spidersilk. Falling from the lip of the lake that was fed by the Riverrise spring far above the dark clouds, this glowing column of water cascaded down the east face of the mountain into the aqueduct below.

  Of all the strange and magnificent buildings in the City of Night, the aqueduct was the most important, for it was here that the life-giving waters were collected and dispensed to the inhabitants of Riverrise. Once, the waterfall had flowed in a constant steady stream, and the city had grown and prospered with the arrival of visitors desperate to avail themselves of its healing properties. But Golderayce One-Eye had not been slow to grasp the power that control of the waters could give him and, with his feared custodians, had strictly regulated the flow.

  After all, the Custodian General reasoned, the Riverrise spring was his to do with as he saw fit, and any Riverriser who didn’t like this fact could leave. And if they didn’t, well, then there were other ways to deal with troublemakers: Golderayce’s hand-picked waif assassins, for example …

  The latest visitors to Riverrise, a small party consisting of two gabtrolls, two fourthlings – one lying on a sumpwood stretcher – and a waif guide, passed through the towering Nightwood Arch and entered the city. The waif guide bowed low and, bidding his charges a soundless farewell, hurried off, back the way he’d come. With the two gabtrolls leading, and one of the fourthlings – the tether of the buoyant stretcher still tightly clasped in his hand – following close behind, the four weary travellers left the great illuminated archway behind them and headed along the lamp-lined road into the City of Night.

  Nate Quarter was more tired than he had ever been in his life. His legs felt as heavy as leadwood; his head, lighter than sumpwood.

  The streets were thronging. There were waterwaifs, ghostwaifs, mottled and grey waifs, blackwaifs and bloodwaifs scurrying silently past, lamps glowing from the ends of stout staffs or dangling from their belts, or sometimes strapped to their chests. Despite the crowds, it was eerily quiet for a non-waif visitor. For though the waifs clustered together round stalls, in doorways, or walked side by side in twos and threes, their heads nodding as if deep in conversation, Nate heard not a single word.