Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  It felt, he thought, almost as though he was walking through a dream.

  Even as that thought formed in his head, he noticed how the ears of the waifs he passed trembled and flexed; how some of them turned their heads towards him, looks of wry amusement on their flat wide-eyed faces. And Nate knew that they could hear his thoughts as clearly as if he’d shouted them from the lamp-lined rooftops.

  The four travellers skirted round the foot of a vast building constructed of hundreds of stone pillars and vaulted arches. Nate looked up to see a twisting thread of water, seemingly emerging out of the darkness far above his head and splashing down into the long causeway which the stone pillars supported. Spouts branched out from this ornately carved trough at regular intervals, channelling the precious water into vast stone vats beneath, with shining brass taps in the form of grinning flitterwaif heads at the base. By each of these taps, surveying the long queues, stood a diminutive waif custodian in dark shimmering robes, clutching a long blowpipe.

  ‘The great aqueduct gets crowded at highflow,’ whispered Gomber as they hurried past.

  Everywhere, there were lamps and, Nate realized, it wasn’t only light they were giving off, but also warmth – soft comforting warmth which gradually dispelled the chill that had set into his bones in the cold dank Nightwoods.

  Shortly after the aqueduct, the gabtrolls turned left. Nate found himself on a steep path that wound its way up the mountainside between glowing lamphouses – tall spacious mansions of glass held together by a pale tracery of timber struts and arches. Each one glowed from within, lit by clusters of lamps, like bunches of sparkling sapgrapes.

  ‘This is … slurp … Kobold’s Mount,’ said Gilmora, panting slightly as she turned to Nate, her lampstaff raised. She gestured towards the buildings all round them. ‘It is home to the gabtroll apothecaries, and is where the finest medicines of Riverrise are … slurp … concocted. Potions and tonics. Slurp slurp. Unguents, balms …’

  ‘Have gabtrolls always lived in the Nightwoods?’ asked Nate, staring at the pathways full of the stooped and stalk-eyed trolls, carrying covered baskets and lampstaffs.

  ‘No, no,’ said Gomber, nodding in greeting to a young gabtroll as she passed them by, a basket overflowing with herbs hanging from the crook of her arm. ‘We were daylighters originally, but we settled here once the Waif Trail was completed.’

  ‘We gabtrolls have always understood the art of healing,’ Gilmora told him. ‘Our apothecaries and … slurp … apothecaresses once travelled the Deepwoods in prowlgrindrawn wagons, dispensing medicaments to all who needed them. When the route to Riverrise was created, however, my ancestors … slurp slurp … made a permanent home here – and, thanks to the restorative waters, the medicines and cures they produce here are … slurp … ten times more efficacious. Or rather,’ she added under her breath, slurping as she spoke, ‘they were, before that Custodian General, Golderayce One-Eye, began to limit the supply …’

  ‘Gilmora,’ Gomber chided his wife, his eyestalks swinging round warily as he looked to see whether any waifs might have overheard her seditious thoughts.

  ‘Well!’ she muttered, and slurped indignantly. ‘It’s a disgrace, so it is …’

  ‘The name … slurp … of the district has an interesting origin,’ Gomber broke in a second time, anxious to move the subject on to something less contentious. ‘You may have heard of … slurp … Kobold the Wise,’ he ventured.

  Nate shook his head.

  ‘I must say, you surprise me, lad,’ said Gomber, shaking his own head in turn. ‘Kobold the Wise was the legendary leader who united the Deepwoods into “the thousand tribes” and, or so the story goes, discovered the Riverrise spring and built the original Garden of Life around it. That was long before even the First Age of Flight, but it was a time, according to fireside tales, of peace and harmony …’

  ‘Not like these days,’ muttered Gilmora, ‘when Golderayce claims the spring as his own …’

  Tutting softly under his breath at his wife’s indiscretion, Gomber raised his lampstaff and pointed to a mansion just up ahead. Unlike all those surrounding it, it was dark inside.

  ‘Here we are,’ he announced, stepping forward to open the circular door of pale, polished wood and ushering Nate inside. ‘Welcome to our humble lamphouse.’

  ‘I’ll just see to the lamps,’ said Gilmora, following them in and closing the door behind her.

  Letting go of the stretcher tether, Nate watched as the gabtroll scuttled round the magnificent lamphouse, firing up the clusters of globe phraxlamps, setting the huge central darkelm oil lamps ablaze and lighting the forest of tall tallow candles that ringed the upper gallery.

  Supported on a series of thin elegant pillars, the lamphouse was tall and hexagonal. Each of its six walls was glazed with a tall arched window, the angled walls between them lined with cupboards and ledges. A spiral staircase was set into the centre of the spacious timber floor.

  As Gilmora slowly climbed the wooden steps, she lit the jutting lamps that clung to its central column, one by one, illuminating the intricate joinery of the turning stairs, the circular upper gallery and the complex fan vaulting in the ceiling high above. The whole building – as well as the simple furniture that filled it – had been constructed from the same timber, gathered from the surrounding Nightwoods. Clearwood, Gomber called it. It was hard and, Nate saw as the light caught it, almost translucent.

  Behind him, Gomber had removed his and his wife’s sumpwood backpacks from the stretcher and placed them on a low table. Then, taking up the tether, he had pulled the stretcher to the far side of the great six-sided chamber, where a pot-bellied stove nestled in a shallow hollow in the floor. Gomber tied the stretcher to a curved hook on the wall beneath a large glowing lamp and stood gazing down at Eudoxia. Despite the lamp glow, she didn’t stir from her deep sleep and, Nate saw with a renewed pang of unease, she looked thinner and paler than ever.

  ‘I’ve prepared a sleeping chamber … slurp … for young Nate,’ Gilmora announced as, with one hand gripping the sweeping banister, she headed back down the stairs. ‘I’ll get the stove lit … slurp … and see about something to refresh us all.’ She turned to Gomber. ‘Why don’t you go and call on the healer. It’s late,’ she added, ‘but … slurp slurp … if you tell him we have urgent need of his help …’

  ‘I’m already on my way,’ said Gomber, slurping noisily as he crossed the floor.

  As the gabtroll old’un closed the door behind him, Gilmora turned to Nate.

  ‘How’s … slurp … our patient doing?’ she asked.

  Nate shrugged. ‘It’s hard to tell,’ he said wearily.

  ‘A nice cup of bristleweed tea, that’s what we need,’ said the gabtroll.

  Nate nodded – but suddenly found himself yawning, long and deep. He rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Oh, but you must be exhausted, Nate,’ Gilmora said. ‘Why don’t you go and lie down.’ She smiled. ‘You’ve proven yourself to be a true and loyal friend, Nate, but really there’s nothing more you can do until the healer’s looked at her.’

  Nate made no argument. Crossing the room, he said goodnight to Gilmora, who laughed.

  ‘There’s no day or night to mark the passing of the hours here,’ she chuckled. ‘In the old days, we used the burning down of a tallow candle, but now it’s the Riverrise spring we set store by … I’ll wake you at highflow!’

  Too tired to reply, Nate dragged himself up the circular stairs. All round him, the multitude of lamps hissed and fizzed, and the air was laced with the smells they gave off – the sweet aromatic fragrance of burning darkelm oil and the tang of toasting almonds from the phraxlamps. It was so bright that, as he climbed those last few steps to the circular balcony, with the light streaming out of the arched windows round him, Nate felt as though he was inside a giant lantern.

  ‘Your sleeping chamber’s to the right,’ Gilmora called up to him. ‘Good sleep, Nate Quarter, and pleasant dreams …’

  The cha
mber was in an alcove off the landing of the upper gallery, and had hooks behind the circular door to hang his clothes on. Nate pulled off his boots, his breeches and the green tilderleather jacket that Zelphyius Dax had let him keep, and hung them up, before climbing into the low sumpwood cot that hovered above the floor. On the soft patchwork quilt, he found a black sleeping cap, which he placed on his head and, pulling it down over his eyes to shut out the lamp glow, Nate let his head sink down into the pillow. Stuffed with woodduck down and dried herbs, whose heady aroma was released as the fragments of leaf and seed were crushed beneath his head, it was sweet and fragrant and soft; so very, very soft …

  When Nate awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep, he felt refreshed and clear-headed. Leaning up on one elbow, he looked out of the arched upper windows of the lamphouse at the glittering lights of Riverrise outside. High overhead, beyond the glow of the city, was the blackness of the unending night.

  He became aware of whispers coming from downstairs, urgent and sibilant.

  ‘Eudoxia,’ he breathed.

  Getting up, Nate dressed quickly and hurried down the stairs into the brightly lit chamber below. Eudoxia was lying on the sumpwood stretcher over by the pot-bellied stove, which was now softly glowing, a large cauldron of steaming water bubbling on its top. Clustered round her were three stooped figures; Gilmora and Gomber, the old gabtrolls, and a third individual, who Nate had not seen before, who was wrapping a length of bandage around Eudoxia’s head.

  ‘Ah, Nate,’ said Gilmora, looking up. ‘You were sleeping so peacefully, I didn’t have the heart to wake you.’

  ‘How is Eudoxia?’ Nate asked.

  Gilmora took his arm and patted it reassuringly. ‘Healer Barkscale is one of our city’s most respected metaphysicians,’ she said. ‘He has done all he can for your young friend …’

  On hearing his name, the healer straightened up and turned, and Nate found himself looking at a short stout waterwaif with scaly green skin, huge fanned ears and pale orange eyes that were magnified by the wire-rimmed spectacles perched at the end of his stubby upturned nose. Beneath his bloodstained apron, Nate saw that he was wearing neatly pressed calf-length trousers and a black waistcoat. A long gold chain attached to one of the waistcoat’s bone buttons disappeared into an upper pocket.

  ‘This is … slurp … the visitor I was telling you about, Healer Barkscale,’ said Gilmora. ‘Nate. Slurp. Nate Quarter.’

  Barkscale nodded, the lamplight glinting on the glass of his spectacles. ‘You have travelled far to bring young Eudoxia here,’ he said, the voice in Nate’s head soft and soothing. He wiped his hands on his apron.

  Nate nodded.

  ‘And you have tended to her diligently and tirelessly on the journey,’ the healer acknowledged, the barbels at the corners of his mouth twitching, ‘keeping the wound clean and well bandaged,’ he added. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Nate, Eudoxia would not have survived the Battle of the Midwood marshes.’ The waif healer shook his head. ‘As it is, it’s still touch and go.’

  Nate swallowed hard. This was not what he had wanted to hear.

  ‘I have removed the leadwood bullet,’ Healer Barkscale’s whispering voice continued, ‘that was slowly taking her life.’

  He reached round for a small bowl perched on the jutting ledge behind him, and held it out. Nate looked down at the gleaming piece of metal, its pointed end blunted and its casing still bearing traces of blood – Eudoxia’s blood – and his stomach churned.

  ‘But it has caused much damage,’ the healer was saying, removing his spectacles and polishing them thoughtfully on a corner of his waistcoat, before returning them. ‘Damage which will not be easy to heal,’ he added. ‘I have looked deep into Eudoxia’s mind,’ he said, tugging at the gold chain and pulling a round timepiece from his waistcoat pocket, which he squinted at short-sightedly, ‘where her spirit – her life force – has retreated from the terrible pain, like a forest creature seeking refuge from a raging storm …’

  ‘She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?’ Nate interrupted.

  ‘Only time will tell,’ said the healer, glancing down at his patient, before looking back at Nate. ‘Her life force is very weak, but if the healing powers of the medicines here in Riverrise ease the pain, Eudoxia might return to us.’

  ‘I’ll do anything,’ said Nate. ‘Just tell me …’

  ‘It’s all right, Nate,’ Gilmora reassured him. She pulled a small piece of barkscroll from her apron and held it up in the lamplight. ‘Healer Barkscale here has already suggested a course of treatment.’ She frowned and squinted at the list. ‘Hylesalve,’ she read out. ‘Tincture of nightoil. Bitter woodaloes – for her fever. And of course,’ she added, looking up, ‘a vial of spring water from the aqueduct.’

  ‘I’m afraid such things are expensive,’ said the healer, the dark green barbels twitching uncomfortably, ‘but these days, all medicaments requiring spring water are increasingly costly …’

  ‘I’ll pay, whatever the cost,’ said Nate stoutly. He reached into the pocket of his dark grey military breeches and pulled out a thin folded bundle of notes, the last of his gladers.

  ‘Now you put that away at once, Nate Quarter!’ said Gilmora indignantly. ‘After the kindness you showed to me and Gomber on the Waif Trail, we wouldn’t dream of letting you pay so much as a single brass glimmer.’

  ‘But … but what about Healer Barkscale’s services?’ Nate protested. ‘I can’t expect you to—’

  ‘The healer’s fee has already been taken care of,’ said Gomber, and at his side the waterwaif nodded earnestly as he patted the lower pocket of his waistcoat.

  ‘Besides,’ Gilmora added, ‘Healer Barkscale, like all the best metaphysicians in Riverrise, charges only what he senses his patients can afford for his services – unlike those custodians … So you put that money of yours back in your pocket, and let’s the pair of us go into the city and see about these medicines Eudoxia needs.’

  She seized a thick shawl from the back of a straight-backed chair and wrapped it round her shoulders, picked up a basket with a tilderleather cover from the floor and a glass vial from the shelf, then strode purposefully across the pillared chamber to the door. Nate held back a moment, stealing one last look at his sleeping friend. Her face seemed to have more colour in it now, and her breathing was low and even. He turned and, reaching out, shook the waterwaif healer’s hand, surprised by how warm and dry it felt.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  The healer smiled, his pale orange eyes glistening. ‘I’ve done all I can,’ he said. Reaching round behind his back, he untied the strings and pulled the bloodstained apron up over his head. ‘The rest,’ he said, looking at Nate, ‘is up to your friend.’

  Nate nodded, trying not to let the worry show on his face, then turning on his heel he crossed the floor and followed Gilmora out of the lamphouse and onto the bustling pathway outside. As he turned to shut the door behind him, he heard Gomber calling to him from the other side of the room.

  ‘And mind what you’re thinking out there in the city, Nate Quarter,’ he said, and slurped. ‘As we say here in Riverrise, “thoughts speak louder than words”.’

  With Gilmora the gabtroll bustling along by Nate’s side, the basket swinging from her arm, the pair of them made their way down the winding lamplit path through Kobold’s Mount. All round, the pathways were busy with waif healers, gabtroll apothecaries and others; lugtroll porters, gnokgoblin merchants, grey trog traders, all going about their business.

  ‘We should head to the aqueduct first,’ said Gilmora. ‘Before … slurp … the queues get too long.’

  They turned right at the bottom of the mount, then, after a short way, right again and began climbing a series of wide, yet shallow, steps. On one side, Nate saw clusters of tall elegant lamphouses with covered balconies – and as he climbed higher, he soon found himself drawing level with their rooftops, the huge globes of dazzling light mounted upon the ridge tiles and gables too bright to
look at directly. On the other side of the steps, the arched pillars of the vast water channel he had seen before rose up and towered over them. A rusting plaque high above Nate’s head bore the words,

  Erected by the Grateful Engineers of Great Glade and Hive, in Thanks to the Healers of Riverrise, in this, the 247th Year of the Third Age.

  Beneath the channel, on a vast terrace, long queues had formed in front of the stone vats that collected the water. Grabbing Nate by the arm, the gabtroll chose a queue seemingly at random and joined the end of it.

  ‘Once, the Riverrise spring flowed freely down the mountain,’ whispered Gilmora sadly. ‘These days, though …’ She shook her head. ‘The water is strictly rationed by the custodians, and,’ the gabtroll said, her voice low and hushed, ‘Golderayce One-Eye. Sky love and protect him,’ she added loudly.

  Nate stood on his tiptoes and looked over the heads of the waifs, trogs, goblins and trolls who were standing patiently in line before them. ‘This is a short queue, is it?’ he said.

  ‘As short as it ever gets these days,’ said Gilmora with a sigh. ‘Sometimes it extends all the way down the steps and back along the road halfway to the amphitheatre …’

  Slowly – painfully slowly – the two of them shuffled forward as newcomers joined the line behind them. Gilmora reached out and took Nate’s hand in her own, and squeezed it. She peered into his face, her eyes trembling at the end of their stalks.

  ‘Your friend, Eudoxia, is strong, Nate,’ she said gently. ‘She must be to have stayed alive so long. She won’t leave us without a fight.’

  Nate nodded, hoping that the gabtroll was right. They shuffled forward another half stride …