Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  The great bowl at the top of the Fountain House School was in pieces, a steady drip drip drip of water falling from twists of black slime into the stagnant moat surrounding it. The magnificent Great Hall – seemingly so sturdy and solid only moments earlier – showed itself to be no more than a ruin, its walls crumbling and the gleaming dome now riven with a great zigzag crack that had split it in two.

  Tall arches no longer spanned the streets, jagged stacks and strewn rubble marking where they’d tumbled centuries before. Windows were shattered, their decaying frames gaping like sightless eyes. The tiles that paved the streets were cracked or broken, and half the pieces of the coloured pottery and semi-precious stones that formed the vast complicated mosaics were missing. Fountains were dry, pillars stood at crazy angles, and bridges and walkways were broken. Stairways led nowhere …

  In the Upper Halls of the Knights Academy, the blackwood pulpits revealed themselves to be rotting stumps with split timbers and blistered varnish, rotten and riddled with worms. Above, light streamed in through the broken roof to expose the decaying wood tiles of the great hall below.

  Clocks had stopped, their cog and pulley mechanisms clogged with centuries of dust. Astrolabes and sextants, time gauges and weather meters no longer gleamed as if new, but now were caked in rust.

  Outside, the intricate pieces of paraphernalia that had graced the buildings had suffered the same fate. From the propeller-shaped twists of burnished metal, the silver mesh nets, the forged plumb weights and calibrated dials, to the weather vanes and wind socks, they had all rusted or disintegrated, and clung to the walls and rooftops like the empty skeletons of giant insects.

  At the hail-pitted, frost-blighted wall of the College of Rain, an unravelling cable of rusting wires dangled down; beneath it, a heap of shattered blue glass.

  And damage and decay was not all that had been laid bare. Like the ruins of its twin city, Undertown, which was overgrown with weeds and moss, tendrilled creepers and broad-leafed vines, so the floating city of Sanctaphrax was covered with growth. It was not, however, dense green vegetation which grew from its rocks and stones. Instead, during its long journey through the endless skies, the great floating rock and the city upon it had drawn the fungal growths and spectral creatures of the air to itself, like a vast logbait.

  Tall jagged ruffs of yellow and orange fungus sprouted from the cracks and crevices. Clusters of suppurating toadstools, luminous air lichens and great tongue-like fronds grew out of the fissures in the broken stonework; while every cornice and shattered gable was festooned in diaphanous folds of lustrous threads that flapped in the groaning wind like tattered swathes of silk.

  Clusters of transparent mist barnacles clung to the crumbling walls and roofs, their long hair-like tentacles swaying. Windsnappers with whiplash feelers and flat white shells clacked their curved claws. And oozing from every beam and joist and wooden tile were gelatinous skyworms with long slimy bodies that writhed and squirmed in great wriggling clumps, making the woodwork look like rotting flesh, riddled with ravenous maggots.

  It wasn’t only the ancient city that was a storm-blasted ruin, but also the mighty floating rock itself. The stone sickness that had afflicted the Stone Gardens centuries before, bringing the First Age of Flight to an abrupt end as it turned every flight rock to dust and destroyed the new Sanctaphrax rock, turned out also to have infected the great rock of old Sanctaphrax which had returned to the Edge. Its pitted surface no longer glistened in the sunlight. Instead, it was dull and rutted, pockmarked with great cavities that were eating into the stonecomb. Vast areas of the rock were drab grey and crumbling, while a thick dark liquid oozed from fissures and cracks and dripped down through the air like pus from gaping wounds.

  From the ruined avenue that led from the mosaic quadrangle to the East Landing, the screams of the fettle-leggers filled the air as they fled the pursuing gloamglozers. Snapping at their heels, the cackling demons swooped and dived, their talons and fangs glinting as their tongues flicked in and out of their lipless mouths, gorging on the fettle-leggers’ terror. With each gulp of fear-charged air, the demonic creatures seemed to grow larger and more terrifying.

  A shrieking young’un, her eyes rolling in her head, broke away from the stampeding herd and made a dash for a shadow-filled alleyway – only to be driven back as a gnarled and leering face, its bloodshot eyeballs dangling on glistening stalks, loomed up before it …

  On board the Archemax, Squall Razortooth gripped the helm.

  ‘Wuh-wuh wurrgh!’ Weelum the banderbear groaned, his delicate ears twitching as his eyes confirmed what his other senses had been telling him. This was indeed a dead city.

  Beside him, Squall hurriedly fired up the phraxchamber and pulled two of the bone-handled flight levers back. The funnel billowed thick clouds of steam as the propulsion duct roared. He shoved the third flight lever forward, and the Archemax rose sharply, then listed to one side, its hull creaking. A moment later, there came the sound of cracking and splintering as the tolley ropes bit into the rotten wood of the bollards on the dilapidated West Landing, snapping first one, then the other, and the phraxship soared into the air.

  Realigning the flight levers and hull weights with trembling fingers, Squall took the Archemax higher into the sky. With his hand gripping the rudder lever, he steered it round the diseased floating rock towards the sound of the terrified screams.

  And then, in amongst the ravaged buildings, he saw them – the fettle-leggers, stampeding down the long central avenue towards the ruined remains of the great East Landing …

  ‘Hold on tight, Weelum,’ Squall said grimly. ‘I’m taking her in!’

  He pushed the three flight levers back in one smooth movement, and the Archemax swooped down through the sky in a steep dive.

  Eudoxia froze, her green eyes wide with fear. She had reached the top of the stairs of the Gantry Tower when their polished treads and blackwood banister had seemingly melted away in front of her eyes. Now she saw that she was standing on a cracked wooden step, thin and worm-eaten, attached to the rotten timber walls of the leaning Gantry Tower.

  Below, at the foot of the stairs, Slip, Cirrus and her father stared up at her helplessly, not daring to follow in case they caused the whole rotten staircase to collapse.

  Eudoxia looked up. Through the crumbling doorway, at the end of a warped and splintered gantry platform, were two figures.

  ‘Nate!’

  At the sound of her voice, Nate’s head jerked round, his eyes filled with terror, and as he did so, there was a soft cracking sound from beneath his feet and a piece of rotten wood tumbled down to the ground below – and Nate with it.

  Instantly, the second figure lunged forward and seized him by the wrist. Then, with Nate wriggling helplessly as he dangled in mid-air, the figure slowly turned its face towards Eudoxia and fixed her with a malevolent gaze. Beneath its curling horns and blazing yellow eyes, its mouth opened and a black tongue flicked out and lapped at the air.

  ‘Fear,’ it breathed softly. ‘Such delicious fear.’

  Down below, alerted by Eudoxia’s cry, the Professor drew his phraxpistol, kicking away a soft white tentacled tendril that was snaking over his left boot. Beside him, the crumbling wall of the Knights Academy was festooned with wriggling skyworms and mist barnacles. He gazed up at Nate and the gloamglozer at the top of the Gantry Tower and took aim.

  ‘It’s over!’ the Professor shouted. ‘The ancient laboratory is destroyed. You cannot create any more of your kind in that foul place …’

  The gloamglozer’s tongue flicked in and out as it turned its yellow eyes from Nate, to Eudoxia, then down to the Professor. An evil smile played on its lips as it leaned forward and whispered in Nate’s ears.

  ‘Fascinating,’ it said, its voice low and rasping. It lapped greedily at the air. ‘The taste of their fear for you is even sweeter than their fear for themselves …’

  The gloamglozer raised its taloned fist until Nate’s face was level with its
own. Its yellow eyes flickered as they registered the terror in Nate’s face, and then narrowed as they spotted the small lufwood portrait which hung from a cord round his neck.

  ‘But what’s this?’ it hissed.

  ‘Jump!’ cried Squall Razortooth, his hands dancing over the flight levers as, battling against the turbulent wind, he brought the Archemax down as close as he dared to the East Landing.

  The fettle-leggers had reached the landing’s rotting boards and were stampeding over them towards the jagged timber edge. The leading fettle-legger didn’t need telling twice. Flexing his legs and pushing off with his three-toed feet, he launched himself off the broken boards and soared out across the yawning abyss in a magnificent leap, landing with a loud thud a moment later on the middle of the fore deck of the phraxship.

  He was followed a moment later by half a dozen more, who came down on the varnished boards at various points along the starboard deck. Soon the air was dark with leaping bodies as fettle-legger after terrified fettle-legger, young and old, sprang from the rotten platform towards the hovering phraxship in a great panic-stricken wave.

  As they landed, the fettle-leggers clung on for dear life. Clambering over the top of the cabins and helm, they clutched hold of the beak-like prow and gripped the bows, their legs dangling down over the side.

  At the helm, Squall pushed the central flight lever forward as far as it would go, causing the propulsion duct to roar and the great phraxchamber above his head to throb and pound.

  ‘Wuh-wuh,’ grunted the banderbear, fear in his eyes.

  ‘I know, friend,’ Squall murmured. ‘But we’re their only hope!’

  Gripping hold of the shaking flight levers with jaw-clenched determination, Squall eased the Archemax away from the rock. The phraxship lurched unsteadily in the sky, the propulsion duct screeching in protest, while the throb and hum of the phraxchamber began to falter ominously under the heavy load.

  ‘Come on, my beauty, you can do it,’ Squall urged the juddering Archemax. ‘We’re depending on you.’

  Suddenly, a terrified cry went up from the fettle-leggers. Squall glanced round to see that the gloamglozers had launched themselves from the East Landing in a mighty screeching flock and were now circling the Archemax, their ghastly leering faces rapt with delight as they plucked at the fingers that grasped so desperately to every inch of the struggling vessel.

  ‘Let go!’ they hissed, their tongues flicking in and out of their grotesque mouths. ‘You have nothing to live for!’

  * * *

  Up at the top of the Gantry Tower, the gloamglozer’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Can it really be?’ it said softly, the curved talon tapping the portrait that hung from Nate’s neck. ‘Quintinius Verginix …’

  ‘I … he … he’s one of … of my ancestors,’ Nate stammered, his voice low with terror as the creature’s grip on his wrist increased.

  The gloamglozer threw back its head and cackled with raucous laughter.

  ‘Is he now? But this just gets better and better!’ it exclaimed. It paused and, still gripping hold of Nate with one hand, reached up with the other and ran a long curved nail gently down its mutilated face. ‘Long, long ago in this floating city, Quintinius Verginix did this to me,’ it snarled. ‘As I fled, I cursed him and his descendants for all time.’ An evil smile spread across its features as it fixed Nate with a savage stare. ‘Now I have returned – and who should come to my realm, but one of his descendants! This is sweet indeed …’

  The gloamglozer’s talons bit into the flesh of Nate’s arm as its tongue flicked out into the air.

  ‘Please, please,’ Eudoxia sobbed helplessly.

  ‘Release him!’ the Professor shouted up from the street below.

  ‘Release him?’ purred the gloamglozer, glaring into Nate’s face. ‘Very well …’

  And, opening its taloned hand, the smiling gloamglozer dropped Nate from the Gantry Tower.

  • CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT •

  As Nate fell in a flurry of stomach-churning movement, his arms and legs flailing in mid-air, faces flashed before his eyes, one after the other in a flickering blur.

  His father, smiling back at him, his eyes full of love and concern. The simple features of his best friend, Rudd the cloddertrog. Friston Drew, staring at him, his kindly face lit by lamplight. Togtuft and Klug, the Sumpwood Bridge archivists, and Gomber and Gilmora, the gabtrolls who had welcomed him into their lamphouse. Rook and Twig, in the Garden of Life, and the young knight academic from the First Age, Quintinius Verginix …

  All at once, the air was filled with the sound of large beating wings and Nate felt his shoulders being seized in a vice-like grip. The next moment he was no longer falling, but rising up into the air, soaring high over the broken towers and dilapidated buildings.

  Nate looked down to see the nightmarish ruins grow small beneath his feet. Far below, the Professor was standing by the crumbling outer wall of the Knights Academy, looking up at him, his face a mask of astonishment behind his wire-framed spectacles.

  Hovering near the East Landing, the Archemax – weighed down by hundreds of terrified fettle-leggers who were clinging to every deck, every spur, every railing and roof, even the mighty phraxchamber itself – struggled through the air. The trail of billowing steam was stark against the black abyss below as the blazing propulsion duct roared in fits and starts. All around it, the demonic gloamglozers swooped in and lunged at the cowering fettle-leggers, greedily savouring their terror.

  At the top of the swaying Gantry Tower was Eudoxia, her face white with shock as she struggled to keep her balance on a single crumbling step. Below her, in the ruins of the tower, Galston Prade, Cirrus Gladehawk and Slip the scuttler were rooted to the spot as they gazed helplessly up at her.

  And there, staring straight at him, its hideous face contorted into a grimace of hatred, Nate saw the gloamglozer hovering above the gantry platform.

  Tearing his eyes away, Nate looked up to see that he was in the talons of the mighty caterbird. Its purple black plumage gleamed in the unearthly ochre light.

  ‘You …’ he gasped.

  Swooping round in a broad circle, the caterbird glided down through the air towards the top of the Loftus Observatory. The small flock of what Nate had mistaken for white ravens perched there launched off, revealing themselves to be bloated white wreck wraiths, which screeched furiously as they flapped into the darkening sky. The caterbird hovered above the shattered roof of this, the tallest tower of Sanctaphrax and, opening its claws, carefully placed Nate on a patch of unbroken tiles near the summit, where a cluster of rusted wind funnels and rain gauges sprouted.

  As Nate clung to the roof, the caterbird lowered its great curved beak and plucked the lufwood portrait from round his neck. Before Nate could stop it, the mighty bird flapped its powerful wings and soared up high into the curdled sky, taking Nate’s medallion with it.

  Shrieking with fury, the gloamglozer rose up from the Gantry Tower.

  ‘Leave them!’ it screeched at the gloamglozers still tormenting the petrified fettle-leggers aboard the juddering Archemax. ‘I want the spawn of the knight academic!’ It pointed a twisted claw at the roof of the Loftus Observatory.

  In answer, the demonic creatures abruptly abandoned the phraxship and, in a flapping mass of gleaming horns, glinting fangs and black ragged robes, they soared up towards Nate.

  With a cackle of laughter, the gloamglozer twisted round and swooped down towards where Eudoxia stood, frozen to the spot.

  ‘Delicious!’ it shrieked as it scraped her cheek with a razor-sharp talon, drawing an angry line, beaded with blood, as it hurtled past.

  With a terrified scream, Eudoxia toppled backwards, managing – at the last moment – to grasp a length of rotten banister to prevent herself falling headlong down the tower. Below her, the staircase crumbled into worm-eaten splinters and dust. She was left hanging precariously from the jutting length of creaking blackwood nailed to the timber wall of the crumbling
Gantry Tower, a thirty-stride drop to Squall, Cirrus and her father beneath.

  Oblivious to her plight, the gloamglozer soared high into the air once more, only for the flash and crack of a phraxpistol shot to ring out from the street far below. The angry whine of a woodwasp cut through the fetid air as a leadwood bullet passed through the gloamglozer’s body and disappeared into the slowly darkening sky beyond.

  ‘Fool!’ sneered the gloamglozer, glowering down at the figure of the Professor, steaming phraxpistol in hand. ‘You cannot destroy me with your puny weapons. I am glister born, from Open Sky!’

  It cackled raucously as it pressed its taloned hand gently against one of the thirteen tall, thin towers that surrounded the Knights Academy.

  ‘Unlike you, I am immortal!’

  With a low creaking sigh, the tower – once home to one of the academy’s legendary stormchasing knights – swayed, then toppled forward, collapsing into the street where the Professor stood, in a clatter of masonry and a billowing cloud of dust. Shrieking with triumph, the gloamglozer soared up towards the Loftus Observatory, its black tongue flicking greedily at the air.

  ‘Hold on, Miss Eudoxia!’ Slip’s voice rang out from the shadows at the bottom of the Gantry Tower. ‘Slip’s coming to get you. Seen worse gallery collapses in the mine, Slip has. Just don’t let go …’

  High above the Loftus Observatory, the caterbird had disappeared into the ochre-coloured curdling clouds, which were now turning darker and beginning to swirl like a vast whirlpool. Nate scrambled up to the tower’s pinnacle and clung to the rusting instruments clustered there. Around him, the nightmarish demons swooped and dived, their grotesque, half-rotted faces looming up at him through the gathering gloom, tongues lapping up his fear. With each passing dive, they raked the roof tiles with their talons, sending them crashing down into the ruins below, and increasing Nate’s terror as the area of undamaged roof steadily diminished.