The Descenders

by Paul Stewart

  Later, refreshed, but soaked to the skin with the spray blown in from the falls, the Professor inspected the jutting outcrop they’d come to more closely. He made the decision to spend the night there.

  ‘We don’t want to overdo it on our first day, Nate,’ he said. ‘And there’s no knowing when we’ll come to another suitable resting place.’

  They hammered hook spikes into the rock, then attached their tilder-hide bivouacs to them with ropes. It was their first attempt to pitch tent on the cliff face and, hampered by the capricious gusts of wind, took far longer than Nate had hoped. His fingers became numb with cold, and it was only the Professor’s quick reactions that prevented one of the groundsheets from flapping off into the void. The sunlight had begun to fade by the time they were finally ready to crawl into their cocoon-like sleepsacks. The Professor was soon snoring and, lulled by the deep regular noise, it wasn’t long before Nate too slipped into a deep, if troubled, sleep.

  The following morning, it all began again.

  That first descent lasted eight days in all – eight long days of hammering in new rock spikes and descending the ropes before setting up their meagre camp once more for another night. Nate found comfort in the routine of it all, but the cold and wet were unrelenting; their rations were fast diminishing and their strength began to ebb.

  They had got as far as the High Cliff cleft, a formation of weathered rocks that they immediately named ‘the Howler’ because of the eerie sound the wind made as it hit the rock face there, when the Professor proposed that they return.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Nate asked, looking back down into the seemingly bottomless void beneath them. ‘We haven’t really come that far.’

  ‘Given the rudimentary nature of our equipment, it has been a remarkable feat nevertheless,’ said the Professor. ‘And now that we understand the lay of the land down here a little better, we’ll be able to make suitable preparations for our next descent.’

  Our next descent. The words repeated in Nate’s head, setting his heart racing all over again.

  Using the ropes they’d left in place, the two of them made good progress as they clambered back up the cliff. As he hauled himself over the lip of rock at the top, Nate had never felt so exhausted – yet when he saw Eudoxia standing there before him, his tiredness instantly melted away.

  ‘How did you know?’ he asked, puzzled.

  ‘I’ve come here every day, Nate,’ Eudoxia explained, ‘hoping to be able to welcome you both back. And here you are!’ she added brightly.

  She was putting on a brave face, Nate could see that. And though she praised their efforts enthusiastically, Nate knew that Eudoxia still felt hurt and disappointed by his decision to descend with the Professor in the first place – and to leave her behind.

  ‘I couldn’t let him go on his own,’ Nate protested. ‘Besides, you …’

  He wanted to tell Eudoxia how much he appreciated her staying behind in New Sanctaphrax; that he understood how difficult it must be for someone who had had so many adventures to settle down; that her hard work organizing the restoration of the floating city was invaluable. But she never gave him a chance. She silenced him, her finger pressed against his lips. Then she stepped into his arms and sobbed uncontrollably, while the white ravens from the stone stacks wheeled overhead, cawing loudly.

  ‘And you’re going to descend again,’ she said, abruptly pulling away. ‘Aren’t you?’

  Nate did not reply.

  Placing the spyglass on the piece of cloth that lay on his lap, Cade reached down for the bowl of polish at his feet. He’d made it earlier, using a formula given to him by his fisher-goblin friend, Thorne Lammergyre. A heaped spoonful of salt dissolved in half a cup of sapwine vinegar, then thickened with flour. Taking the corner of the soft cloth, Cade dipped it in the bowl, then began wiping the paste carefully over the tarnished metal.

  When the entire spyglass was covered with the pungent polish, he leaned forward and snapped off a splinter of wood from a piece of kindling. Then, sitting back in his chair, he began working the point into the crevices of the initials and scraping away at the grime.

  ‘N,’ he murmured softly as he did so. ‘Nate. Nate … Uncle Nate.’ Then, a little while later, when the engraved N was clean and glinting, ‘And Q. Quarter. Nate Quarter. Nate Quarter …’

  Finally satisfied that both letters were spotless, Cade tossed the little splinter into the flames. It flared for a moment, then turned to ash.

  ‘Nate Quarter,’ he murmured softly. ‘Who are you?’

  As he walked across the rock pavement to the cliff edge, Nate tied a second knot in his Descender’s scarf. A year had passed since that first tentative exploration of the Edge cliff. Now it was time for him and the Professor – together with twelve other brave volunteers – to undertake a second descent.

  This time, Eudoxia was not there to see Nate off. It wasn’t that she was still upset – though of course she would miss him – but rather that she was busy supervising the building work in New Undertown and dealing with the flood of new arrivals. Phraxbarges of goods, along with tradesfolk and sympathetic academics from the other cities, arrived daily, bringing a vibrant and optimistic air to the floating city.

  She’d done well that first year, the fair-haired mine owner’s daughter. During that time her income from the Prade phraxmine and her skyship yard in Great Glade had paid for the restoration of the Knights Academy, as well as half the towers in the High Quarter of the city.

  In short, New Sanctaphrax was flourishing.

  As for the Professor, he was in his element. Encouraged by the interest shown by the newcomers in what lay beneath the jutting Edge rock, he had turned the refurbished Knights Academy into a centre for the study and pursuit of descending. New equipment had been designed. New descending techniques had been devised.

  But, as Nate stood waiting for the Professor to give the call to descend, he was all too well aware that the equipment was untested, while the techniques they were to use were theoretical and untried. Despite the warmth of his fur-lined cliffcoat, Nate shivered.

  From the moment the team of Descenders set off, it was clear that this second descent would not be easy. The main challenge they faced was operating the phraxpacks which, ironically, had been designed to make the expedition safer. Time and again as the descent continued, a phraxchamber would fail, sending a hapless Descender plunging down into the depths, or slamming them against the cliff face with fatal force.

  The Professor was distraught. After all, it had been his idea to use phrax crystals to stabilize the backpacks, making it – or so he thought – impossible for the climbers to fall.

  ‘We can harness the innate power of the lightning the crystals are made of,’ he’d proposed. ‘So long as they’re kept blazing inside a phraxchamber, they’ll remain buoyant.’

  The Professor would never have scheduled the descent if he hadn’t been confident that his idea would work and, back in the laboratory of the refurbished Knights Academy, everything had gone perfectly. But the harsh and unpredictable conditions on the cliffside were another matter.

  Gusts of turbulent wind kept causing the blazing shards to gutter and die, and since, in darkness, a crystal of phrax becomes immeasurably heavy, the Descenders wearing them on their backs never stood a chance. And there were other unforeseen problems too. Glister-refraction caused the crystals to pulsate, making the backpacks woefully unstable; while a lightning-ball that strayed too close destroyed two of the crystals completely.

  The result was always the same. A long, desperate scream that trailed off into a deathly silence as the ill-fated Descender plummeted down into the yawning void below. Three weeks into the descent, and only half the original team were still alive.

  But the survivors kept on, day and night. No one wanted to abandon the descent.

  On the twenty-third day, the remaining Descenders split into two groups, and a week after that, the Professor, Nate and two Hive academics – Tulkhusk and Hemp – m
ade it to the bottom of the High Cliff. They set up a temporary base there, and managed to secure mooring rings to the rock that marked the beginning of the Mid Cliff descent.

  It was the lowest they were to get on this second descent though. Weather-battered, sleep-deprived, and with their rations running low, they were considering their options for the next stretch when Nate heard something high above him. He grasped his spyglass, put it to his eye and looked up – only to wish that he hadn’t.

  For there, magnified by the lens, was the panic-stricken face of Perch – a pink-eyed goblin from the second group – as she tumbled, screaming, down through the air. It was a sight and sound that would haunt Nate’s nightmares for many years to come.

  As Perch’s voice faded and disappeared far below them, the Professor turned to the others.

  ‘We’d best head back,’ he said, his voice taut and trembling with emotion. ‘While we still can.’

  With the polish now dry, Cade took the soft cloth and began to rub the spyglass until it gleamed like burnished gold. Outside, the sky was darkening, and through the window he caught sight of the full moon rising over the horizon. He climbed to his feet, crossed the cabin and looked out.

  A blustery wind was blowing, and the low yellow moon cast shard-like fragments of light over the choppy waters of the Farrow Lake. A flock of snowbirds, keen to avoid the impending storm, was coming in to land, one after the other, their outstretched webbed feet scudding over the surface of the lake for a few seconds before they folded their wings and bobbed on towards the shallows.

  Cade raised the spyglass, admiring the way the polished metal glinted in the moonlight. He put it to his eye and trained it on the lake. Raising it higher, he focused in on the cascades of the Five Falls pouring into it. Then higher still, until he was staring into Open Sky and wondering what might be out there in its awesome, empty vastness.

  Catching a flash of light out of the corner of his eye, Cade turned to see a mighty skytavern, its lamps shining brightly as it approached the sky-platform of his friend Gart Ironside. Cade knew that the Xanth Filatine was bringing goods to be sold and traded, and maybe also new arrivals from the great cities to swell the swiftly growing population of the Farrow Ridges.

  What he didn’t yet know was that one of the passengers on board had come especially to see him …

  The third descent was the most exhilarating to date, but also the most costly. It took place eighteen months after the surviving Descenders of the previous expedition had returned, bone-tired and half starved, and the atmosphere among this new team – ten of New Sanctaphrax’s finest – was a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

  The floating city itself had continued to flourish, but its success – and particularly its reputation for being the centre of descending – was drawing unwanted attention. And Eudoxia Prade’s recent trip to Great Glade had confirmed everyone’s worst fears.

  ‘We’ve been given an ultimatum from Quove Lentis,’ she told Nate. ‘He wants descending to stop. At once.’

  ‘Or what?’ Nate had asked.

  ‘Or he’ll prevent the skytaverns visiting New Sanctaphrax,’ she’d said. ‘And if that isn’t enough, he’s vowed to put pressure on the merchants of Hive and Riverrise to stop trading with us completely.’

  ‘But why?’ Nate had demanded angrily. ‘There’s so much knowledge to be found down there. Invaluable knowledge. And if New Sanctaphrax stands for anything, it’s the pursuit of knowledge. Generations of Earth and Sky scholars have given their lives to acquire and protect learning. We cannot let Quove Lentis control what we are or are not allowed to do. Descending must continue.’

  And Eudoxia had smiled. ‘I knew you’d say that, Nate. Which is why I have begun making plans …’

  Eudoxia was as good as her word. She set up the ‘Friends of New Sanctaphrax’, a network of waifs, goblins and fourthlings in the three great cities, to counter the influence of Quove Lentis and his cronies. Shipping orders mysteriously started to go astray; requisitions were countermanded, and skytavern routes were subsidized to keep trade and travellers moving.

  And the work of the Descenders continued.

  Throughout all this, the Professor had also been making plans while waiting to depart on the third major descent. He researched in depth the observations of previous generations of scholars, poring over the barkscrolls of the Great Library. More importantly, he used the time to consolidate the stretch of cliff already explored.

  The High Cliff, once so difficult to navigate, had now been mastered, with carefully placed mooring rings and ledge posts hewn into the vertical rock face by teams of quarry trogs from the Northern Reaches. In addition, new spidersilk-rope techniques and phrax-weighted boots had revolutionized this initial part of the descent. Finally – despite the threats coming from Quove Lentis – the time had come for the Descenders to return to the depths, to explore the cliff face further down than anyone had ever gone before.

  ‘All set?’ the Professor called, his voice competing with the roar of the mighty Edgewater River as it hurled itself down into the abyss.

  A chorus of assent went around the group of intrepid Descenders. Nate fingered the third knot he’d tied on his scarf. His stomach was churning.

  ‘All set,’ he breathed.

  ‘Then let us descend,’ the Professor. ‘And may Earth and Sky protect us.’

  With their equipment now tried and tested, and the descending techniques honed through experience, the descent started well. The Descenders made their way down High Cliff quickly and efficiently. That upper section – which had taken a month to complete on the previous descents – was covered in under three days. The mood was optimistic. Spirits were high.

  Then they reached the second part of the descent.

  This was unknown territory, and any planning could only go so far. The Descenders soon discovered that the Mid Cliff held dangers that would suddenly reveal themselves without warning. Their only protection was vigilance and foresight.

  But this was not enough. Despite their experience – and the expertise and advice of the Professor – the climb down the dark, cloud-roiling Mid Cliff proved to be fraught with peril.

  Two Descenders were lost to a suspected ravine demon attack at the beginning of the Fluted Decline. A little further on, a young fourthling perished in a freak accident when a dislodged piece of rock struck his head. In spite of these tragic losses, the Professor still had high hopes that they would make it to the Great Overhang, the furthest point yet reached.

  But rations were soon starting to run low once again. Provisions were heavy and bulky, and it simply wasn’t possible to carry enough to sustain them throughout the slow, dangerous stretches of cliff. Long before their intended destination, most of the surviving Descenders had been forced to turn back.

  Nate and the Professor, however, were not about to give up so soon. Together with a waif called Fenebrule, Teep, a grey goblin, and a pair of cloddertrogs, Hackbane and Hitch, they pooled their meagre resources and kept going. Slowly and carefully, they descended in pitch darkness, their phraxlamps dimmed to avoid the attentions of Edge wraiths and ravine demons, until they reached a point where the cliff face curved back on itself in a great grooving arc.

  ‘This, I believe,’ the Professor said excitedly, ‘is the beginning of the Great Overhang.’

  The words had scarcely left his lips when the air around them suddenly filled with countless thousands of tiny pulsating flashes of light. They’d appeared out of nowhere and darted around the Descenders like a swarm of fiery woodmidges.

  ‘A glister storm,’ the Professor pronounced, raising his hood, lowering his goggles and fastening the front of his descending jacket.

  Nothing, however, was enough to deter the glisters. They had located prey, and now they were attacking it relentlessly. Each one was like a needle stabbing at the senses – the eyes, the ears, the surface of the skin.

  And the mind.

  Fenebrule was the first to go. Unable to bear th
is assault on his waif senses, he threw himself screaming into the void. Teep followed him moments later, losing his footing as he tried to protect himself from the vicious onslaught.

  With the two of them gone, the others decided to cut their losses and turn back. They set their phraxchambers to maximum, despite the dangers of being seen, and sped up through the darkness as fast as they could, their toecaps scouring the rock as they pressed their boots hard against the cliff to maintain contact.

  But then, no more than a hundred strides further up the rock face, a flock of Edge wraiths – attracted by the sparking trails of light and the bright glow from the phrax-lit backpacks – closed in on them. Nate would never forget the look on Hitch’s face as a cluster of the papery white creatures enfolded him in a hideous, rustling embrace. As he watched, the Descender was pulled back down into the darkness, to the sound of splintering bone and ripping flesh – and Hackbane, brave but foolish, followed as he tried and failed to help his friend.

  Nate and the Professor fled. Everyone else was dead. If they were to survive, they had to get out of there, and fast.

  They made good progress, soon leaving the glister storm behind them. But the wraiths proved more persistent. They would disappear for a while, their screeches fading to nothing, before returning in increased numbers. Halfway up the Fluted Decline, the Professor abruptly pulled Nate into a cleft in the rock where the two of them cloaked the light of their phraxglobes and crouched down in the darkness to wait for the creatures to give up the search.

  Time passed. Occasionally Nate would put his spyglass to his eye and scour the darkness for any trace of the wraiths, hoping the coast was clear. Each time he did so, his vision was filled with the monstrous creatures, with their claw-tipped wings and fang-filled jaws, seemingly staring straight back at him. Then, on the fourth day, there was nothing.

  ‘I think they’ve gone,’ he whispered.

  The Professor nodded, and the two of them began the long slow climb back.

  Cade turned away from the window. He crossed the cabin to the fireplace, where he set the polished spyglass down on the ironwood mantelpiece above the blazing fire. It was getting late; Cade was hungry, and thinking about preparing himself some supper, when something occurred to him.