He fell still. Nate looked away. Behind him, the yellow sun was sinking down towards the horizon over the Twilight Woods. Below the Archemax, with its funnel billowing a steady trail of steam, the swaying blades of thick grass rippled like water as a low breeze played over it.
‘I’m grateful to you,’ the Professor said. ‘To all of you, for coming with me on this expedition to discover my brother’s fate. I know I’ve seemed distant and distracted at times, Nate, wanting us to press on when you would have preferred to stay longer in the places we’ve visited, but that is because I have made a decision.’
‘You have?’ said Nate.
‘Just like my brother, Ifflix,’ said the Professor, ‘I shall become a descender.’
• CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE •
‘I’m taking her down!’ Cirrus Gladehawk’s voice sounded from the helm. ‘This could be our last chance to take on water before the Edge.’
Eudoxia emerged from the aft cabins and hurried up to the prow to join Nate and the Professor.
‘I don’t want to miss this,’ she said excitedly as the three of them looked down at the vast sea of grassland below them.
Squall Razortooth climbed down from the phraxchamber to the deck, where Slip the goblin met him, pulling off the stew-stained apron he was wearing and wiping his hands on it.
‘Slip reckons supper can wait awhile, considering,’ he smiled.
Behind him, Galston Prade, cane in hand, nodded in agreement. ‘It’s not every day you get to set foot in a desolate wilderness reborn,’ he said.
‘Weelum, to the anchor winch,’ Cirrus commanded, sending the banderbear loping over to the ironwood capstan in the middle of the fore deck. ‘Squall, prepare the phraxanchor, if you please – the wide grapple, weighted for mud.’
‘Aye aye, Captain,’ the old sky pirate replied, joining Nate, Eudoxia and the Professor at the beaked brow.
Bending down, Squall lifted a hatch and stood back as a counterbalanced phraxcannon swung up into place. Hanging beneath it from the gun carriage was an array of anchors, from heavy-tipped barbs for rock anchorage and triple-pronged hooks for forest mooring, to the wide five-pronged grapple used when the ground was soft. As Nate and the others stepped back, Squall fitted the grapple with weights and threaded a thick chain through its shaft, before loading it into the muzzle of the phraxcannon.
Looking over the side, Nate saw what they were heading for: a circular pool of clear water, nestling in the lush swaying bladegrass of the Mire.
‘Prepare to fire the anchor!’ Cirrus bellowed. ‘Stand by to winch us in.’
‘Wuh-wuh!’ Weelum called back, checking that the chain running from the capstan to the phraxanchor was free of obstructions and gripping the spokes of the capstan in his powerful claws.
Slowly, the Archemax descended. As it did so, a vast flock of red and blue birds rose out of the grass and fanned off across the sky in a tumult of flapping wings and loud indignant squawks. At the helm, with a loud clank, Cirrus shut off the thrust lever completely and began the delicate manoeuvre of bringing the phraxship into a low hover. He raised the hull weights, then delicately aligned the flight levers.
‘Fire!’ he commanded.
Taking careful aim, Squall fired the phraxcannon. In a cloud of billowing steam, the phraxanchor shot out from the Archemax in an arcing flight, trailing the heavy chain behind it.
It landed with a heavy squelching thud, and lodged itself in the thick matted vegetation beside the pool. A moment later, the Archemax came to a halt, hovering above the Mire as the chain stretched taut, the phraxchamber now humming softly and the faintest ribbon of white steam trailing from the top of the funnel.
‘Winch us in, Weelum!’ Cirrus called from the helm, and with a grunt of effort, the great banderbear began to turn the capstan.
As the chain was winched in, the Archemax descended towards the Mire, until it hovered no more than a few feet above the lush grasslands.
‘Now let’s fill up that water tank,’ Cirrus called from the helm. He turned to the crew. ‘Slip,’ he said, ‘help me with the water pipe. Weelum, to the pumps if you please – and Squall, keep an eye on the tank valve.’
As the grey goblin, banderbear and sky pirate set about their various tasks, Galston Prade and the Professor lowered a sumpwood ladder from the port bow.
‘Don’t stray too far,’ called Cirrus as the two of them climbed down the ladder, followed by Nate and Eudoxia. ‘The Mire can be a treacherous place.’
‘That’s it,’ said Nate a moment later as he helped Eudoxia down the last rung and onto the ground.
He looked around, overwhelmed by the immensity of the endless grassland. Eudoxia took him by the hand and led him away from the phraxship and the pool, where Galston was now telling the Professor of his plans for a phraxship yard.
Nate and Eudoxia kept walking, going up and down as the ground rose and fell, for although it had looked flat from above, now that they were down below, they discovered that the grassy Mire was a series of low hills and shallow valleys. The ground beneath their feet was soft and springy, and sometimes, when they put their boots down, it bubbled up with muddy water.
They passed by the ancient skeleton of a muglump, a fearsome creature that had inhabited the Mire when it was a world of bleached mud. The muglump’s pitted carapace was set over barrelled ribs, with a sharp spike at the end of its whiplash tail and the bones of six stubby legs, each tipped with glinting rapier claws, splayed out and half buried in a grassy hillock. Nate and Eudoxia climbed to the top of the hillock, where they paused and looked back at the Archemax in the distance.
‘I think we’ve gone far enough,’ Eudoxia said, surveying the view.
Beside her, Nate turned slowly round. The grassland spread out in all directions, a seemingly unbroken expanse of green that, as the wind blew the long leaves this way and that, exposing first the dark tops of the blades, then the pale green underside a moment later, looked almost luminous in the setting sun. And birds! There were so many birds that had made their home in this unpopulated corner of the Edge. The flock of red and blue birds they had disturbed was only one species among many.
As the sun sank down towards the horizon, thousands more emerged. Small yellow and brown chattering birds that gripped the spears of grass and pecked at the seeds clustered on their sides; purple birds with gold crests and lyre-like tail feathers that skimmed the surface of the grass, snapping at the mire midges and glowflies that clustered there; and long lines of tall flightless birds – with stubby wings, angular orange legs and thick, fur-like plumage in gaudy shades of turquoise and magenta – that strutted over the soft ground, stabbing down into the earth with their long yellow bills, skewering sticklefish and marshsnails as they passed. And, with the sky slowly darkening, the air grew loud with a cacophony of chirrups, squawks, screeches and long keening cries that echoed across the grasslands.
‘Eudoxia,’ said Nate softly. ‘Do you remember what I told you about the Riverrise spring?’ he began.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Eudoxia, turning to Nate and noticing the strange troubled look on her friend’s face. ‘You said Golderayce tried to kill you, but that you pushed him and he fell to his death, and then you gathered the water of life and opened the sluice gates, so that all could benefit from the Riverrise spring …’
‘Well, that’s not the whole truth,’ said Nate hesitantly.
‘It isn’t?’ said Eudoxia, searching his face for clues as to what he was thinking.
‘No,’ said Nate. ‘I didn’t say anything at first, because it was so incredible I could hardly believe it myself. I’ve been going over and over the events in the Garden of Life, trying to make sense of them in my head – but it all seems like a dream to me now.’
‘What does, Nate?’ said Eudoxia. ‘What really happened up there?’
‘If I tell you,’ said Nate, ‘do you promise not to laugh at me or think I’m mad?’
Eudoxia stared at Nate, her eyes flashing. ‘I wou
ld never do that!’ she exclaimed hotly. ‘You are the best friend I’ve ever had, Nate Quarter, and I owe you my life. Whatever it is you tell me happened in the Garden of Life, I’ll believe you, I promise.’
‘Golderayce didn’t fall to his death,’ said Nate. ‘The truth is far stranger. A great caterbird swooped down out of the sky and deflected the dart that Golderayce had fired at me by flapping its wings and creating a back draft. The dart was turned back on Golderayce, and when it hit him, I saw him crumble to dust in front of my eyes. Then the caterbird flew away.’ He shook his head. ‘But that’s not all …’
‘Go on,’ said Eudoxia intently.
‘There were others up there besides Golderayce,’ said Nate.
‘Others?’ asked Eudoxia.
‘They called themselves “the Immortals”,’ Nate answered, a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Two ancient figures from the First and Second Ages. Golderayce had kept them imprisoned in the Garden of Life for centuries. One was the legendary sky pirate, Twig Verginix, who Squall sometimes talks about. The other was Rook Barkwater, the Freeglade Lancer the professor once mentioned. I saw them, Eudoxia, as plainly as I can see you now, and they talked to me. And then a great storm arrived at the Riverrise peak, and they rose up into it.’
‘Rose up?’ Eudoxia repeated, puzzled.
‘I know it sounds incredible,’ said Nate, ‘but they began to glow, and then they rose up into a ball of light in the centre of the storm, and became young again … And they weren’t alone. There was a third figure in the ball of light.’
‘A third figure? Who was it?’ asked Eudoxia.
Nate reached for the cord at his neck and pulled the portrait miniature from beneath his jacket.
‘It was him,’ he said, showing the portrait of Quintinius Verginix to his astonished friend.
‘But this is the portrait your father gave you, for your memory box. Handed down through generations of your family, a portrait from the First Age,’ said Eudoxia, ‘which means …’
‘I am related to Quintinius Verginix, knight academic,’ said Nate, his eyes glistening. ‘Unless, of course, I simply dreamed the whole thing.’
‘If you say this is who you saw in the storm,’ said Eudoxia, turning the portrait miniature over in her hand and letting it fall back on the cord around Nate’s neck, ‘then I believe you.’
‘Have you seen him?’
A voice sounded from out of the sea of grass close by. Nate and Eudoxia spun round to see two figures emerging from the grass at the foot of the hillock and staring up at them.
They were a female and a young’un, both carrying packs on their backs, festooned with bales of cloth, cooking pots, water jars and utensils of various sorts. They were thin-faced and gangly, their dark blue-tinged hair sprouting in matted tufts from their heads and interlaced with clumps of fragrant wood lavender and white stormferns. They wore leather jerkins and breeches, and each had a high ribbed collar and cloak of woven moss that reached down to their feet.
It was to these that Nate and Eudoxia’s eyes were drawn. They were thin and bird-like, with three long toes below a knobbly ankle that bent backwards, the shin rising to the knee like the hind leg of a tilder or gladebuck. As they approached, Nate could see how they both took quick springy strides on their curious legs. In addition to her other loads, the female carried a broad timber hand loom on her back, complete with loom weights and weaving combs.
‘Seen who?’ replied Eudoxia, shielding her eyes against the setting sun.
‘The guide,’ said the female simply, springing up the low hillock, followed by the young’un at her heels. ‘We’re fettle-leggers from the Northern Reaches, simple weavers by trade, and he is guiding us to a new life in the fabled city on the edge of the world. I’m Wyver, and this is my daughter, Tentermist …’ She reached out a bony long-fingered hand and touched the sleeve of Eudoxia’s underjacket. ‘Why, Sky bless you, miss, but you’re wearing barkcloth woven by fettle-leggers just like us. Riverrise tailoring, by the cut of it – though I don’t care for your topcoat. Very poor quality, if I might say so.’
‘I wear it for sentimental reasons,’ said Eudoxia, smoothing down the old Hive Militia topcoat. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t seen your guide, have we, Nate?’
Nate shook his head.
The fettle-legger young’un looked thin and exhausted. She was crouching at her mother’s feet and staring up at them, a frightened imploring expression on her face.
Tears filled Wyver’s eyes. ‘There are over three hundred of us, from all of the fettle-legger villages around the Northern Reaches,’ she said. ‘Times are hard for poor weavers, what with the coming of the fog mills, with their mistwheels to power the looms. They can spin nightspider silk, bark cloth and mossweave by the phraxshipful in less than a tenth of the time it takes us. We were starving when the guide came and promised us a new life …’
She slumped to the ground, Tentermist clutching her by the shoulders and joining in her sobs.
‘I couldn’t leave my hand loom behind, even though we were going to the city of shining spires, where no one goes hungry – but it slowed Tentermist and me down, and now we’re lost.’
‘We’re going to the Edge,’ said Eudoxia, bending down and stroking the distraught fettle-legger’s arm. ‘You can travel with us, if you like.’
• CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR •
A thick mist had risen up from the Mire during the night, and now swathed the grasslands in a dense white blanket. All around the Archemax, as the dawn broke, the strange cries of the birds echoed through the mist like waif whispers in the Nightwoods.
Nate shivered and did up the buttons of his green leather flight jacket, while beside him on the port deck, Eudoxia did the same to her grey topcoat. Their guests, the two fettle-leggers, crouched by the prow, surrounded by their belongings, their moss cloaks spread out from their high collars like small stiff tents. Despite the best efforts of Nate and the rest of the crew, they’d insisted on spending the night on the open deck.
‘It’s nothing more than a soft quilt of mist,’ Wyver commented, glancing up and seeing Nate and Eudoxia. ‘Not like the freezing fog storms of the Northern Reaches.’
‘The guide spoke of a city of shining spires where it is always warm and sunny,’ Tentermist chirped up. ‘No need for stickle collars and moss cloaks there, he said.’
‘This guide, did he tell you the name of the city you were travelling to?’ asked Eudoxia, crinkling up her nose and thrusting her cold hands into her pockets.
Wyver shook her head, drops of dew from her hair sprinkling the high collar at her neck as she did so.
‘Not exactly,’ she replied with a smile. ‘He just said that it was at the edge of the world, and that poor folks such as us would be welcomed there, no matter where we’d come from.’
When Nate and Eudoxia had turned up the night before with the two fettle-leggers in tow, Cirrus Gladehawk had been as intrigued as all the others by their story.
‘We wouldn’t want to put you out, sir,’ Wyver had said, ‘only we’re lost and have nowhere else to turn.’
‘Not at all,’ the captain had said. ‘Please, you and the young’un, make yourselves comfortable. City of shining spires, you say?’
He shot the Professor a quizzical look. The Professor shook his head in reply.
‘We’ll be happy to take you with us to the Edge,’ Cirrus had said. ‘We’ll raise steam at dawn. But as for this city of yours …’
Now, with the pale disc of the sun shining dimly through the thick mist, the phraxchamber of the Archemax began to hum and steam billowed out of its funnel. Slowly, as the phraxanchor at the prow was winched up, the phraxship rose in the air and set off towards the east.
As they continued across the sky, the fog brightened, then dulled, yet became no thinner. It was several hours later when Slip the grey goblin called out from the prow.
‘Row of lights,’ his voice echoed back along the phraxship. ‘Starboard bow.’
Squall
Razortooth, who was standing at the phraxchamber, tending to the cooling plates, looked across. Beside him, Weelum, a selection of tools ready and waiting to be passed to the sky pirate when he requested them, looked too.
‘It must be the rest of your party,’ said the Professor, his collar pulled up high against the cold damp air. ‘Though in these conditions, it’s hard to tell.’
Nate and Eudoxia looked down through the foggy air at the column of fuzzy yellow lights strung out in a line far below them. Tentermist giggled as they passed overhead, running round in excited circles on the fore deck, her strange feet tapping out a rhythmic dance on the planks.
‘It is them!’ she cried, her face beaming with delight. ‘And we’re going to get there first!’
A short while later, tall dark shapes began emerging out of the swirling fog below them – shapes which, as the Archemax came down lower in the sky, revealed themselves to be the remains of high walls and crumbling towers, all overgrown with lush vegetation, festooned with broad-fingered leaves and tangles of matted tendrils.
Standing beside the captain at the prow, the Professor gave a low rueful whistle through his teeth.
‘So this is Old Undertown,’ he said. ‘Or leastways, what’s left of it. So much for the shining spires …’
The Archemax steamed on over the strange mist-shrouded ruins with their sprouting ferns and towering clumps of vine, seemingly looking up towards them like the grey forms of giant nameless ones. As the mist thickened, Cirrus Gladehawk’s hands danced over the flight levers, easing the propulsion duct shut and bringing the phraxship into a low hover. At the stern, Squall fired the twin anchor hooks. Their curved spikes caught on the vegetation below and Weelum winched them in. With a soft wheezing sigh, the Archemax came to a halt several feet above what had once been a city square.
Now, the fine buildings that lined it were little more than ivy-clad rubble, while the paving slabs were covered in a thick carpet of moss. Cirrus called for the sumpwood ladder to be lowered, and the crew of the Archemax climbed down into the eerie ruins, followed by the heavily laden fettle-leggers.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 49
