by Paul Stewart
The spyglass had been given to him when he was seven years old, getting on for ten years ago, yet Nate Quarter had only returned from his final expedition two years earlier. It meant that, for whatever reason, his uncle could not have had his spyglass with him at the time.
What, Cade mused, had happened on that last descent?
· CHAPTER TWO ·
Four years after his first descent, Nate stood at the cliff edge once more. To his right, the mighty Edgewater River hurled itself down into the abyss; to his left, the great floating city of New Sanctaphrax was silhouetted against the bright sky. Nate didn’t look at either of them. His only concern was what lay far below the jutting rock.
Once again, Eudoxia hadn’t come to see him off. Nate hadn’t taken it personally. She was off doing her best to deal with the costly consequences of their third descent: Great Glade and Quove Lentis’s increasingly aggressive moves to bring the upstart city to heel.
Now there was even talk of a blockade …
With a thoughtful frown, Nate checked over his latest equipment, the way the Professor had taught all the Descenders of the Knights Academy to do. Pockets of his quarm-fur-lined cliffcoat equipped with drop-weights and spike-floats, flaps securely fastened. Check. Copperwood hoops threaded with spidersilk rope on both arms and upper jacket. Check. Lufwood hoversack, containing a month’s emergency rations of hard-tack, plus pots of wind salve and abrasion ointment. Check. The phraxchamber embedded in the side of the pack, steaming coldly; phrax-weighted boots cleat-cleaned and toecaps gleaming …
‘Ready, Nate?’ said a voice.
But where was his spyglass? It wasn’t attached to his cliffcoat. Then Nate remembered. He and Eudoxia had been at the top of the Knights Academy a week earlier and, fearing that a distant skycraft might be a spy vessel from Great Glade, she’d asked to borrow it. She hadn’t given it back …
‘Nate?’
It was too late to go back for it now. Not that it really mattered. Where they were headed – a place of permanent darkness – there would be precious little to see …
‘Nate!’
Nate looked round to see the Professor standing on the cliff edge, booted and kitted, a coil of spidersilk rope in his hand. The familiar feeling of fear and excitement churning in the pit of Nate’s stomach intensified. He took the ends of his Descender’s scarf and ran his fingers over the three knots tied along it, each one as hard and nubbed as a hull-weight on a skyship. He tied a fourth knot.
‘Ready, Professor,’ he said.
It was exhilarating, that first drop to Low Gantry. Nate and the Professor descended smoothly, the cliff face speeding and slowing before them as they controlled their descent, mooring ring to mooring ring. On reaching Low Gantry, with the cloud swirl closing in around them, they were met by a group of apprentice Descenders. And while the two of them drank the sweet hyleroot tea offered them, the apprentices checked over their equipment.
‘A fine drop, Nate,’ said the Professor. His face glowed with optimism. ‘Untold dangers may yet await us, but I’m confident that this fourth descent will lead to the big breakthrough.’
Nate nodded. The ‘big breakthrough’ was something the Professor was always talking about. It would lead to what he described as groundfall – where a Descender might finally set foot on land at the very bottom of the Edge cliff.
‘We will be able to establish a base there,’ he went on. ‘Then we can pour the full energies of the Knights Academy into constructing a permanent bastion from which future Descenders can set forth to … to …’ His eyes glazed over. ‘To who knows where?’
‘Ready?’ came a voice.
It was time for the two of them to press on. The apprentices had completed their checks, and the High Cliff sergeant was waiting to see them off.
‘Ready,’ said Nate, and turned to the Professor.
And the Professor, who had been staring into the mid-distance, abruptly focused. ‘Ready,’ he confirmed.
The second, third and fourth drops were longer than the first, each one taking an arduous day to complete. Sleeping on the rock ledges quarried into the cliff face at the end of each descent wasn’t easy either. The glister-rich rock face caused strange and terrible delusions. To protect themselves from their mind-warping effects, Descenders were advised to wear specially designed sleep-hoods.
And even these weren’t foolproof.
A week into the fourth descent, Nate woke suddenly on the ledge. A strange white figure, head bowed and shrouded in white gauze-like rags, was sitting opposite him. Nate flinched. He was staring into a ghostly, flickering face – or rather, a sequence of faces that flashed for a moment, then faded, one after the other. Nate knew them all. They were the faces of every Descender lost on the previous expeditions, coming and going in rapid succession as the figure reached towards him with bony hands. Lodespear, Perch, Sleet Henfur, Hitch, Hackbane, Fenebrule …
‘Nate! Wake up!’
Abrasion ointment made Nate’s nostrils sting and his eyes water as his sleep-hood was torn from his head, and he looked up to see the Professor staring back at him. His heart thumping fit to burst, Nate discovered that he was up on his feet, untethered from the spidersilk safety-rope and teetering on the lip of the narrow ledge. The Professor pulled him back to safety and returned the vial of pungent ointment to his pocket.
‘Your sleep-hood, Nate,’ he said matter-of-factly, handing him back the conical headpiece with the metal grid embedded in thick fabric. ‘The vent’s come loose. Repair it while you take next watch.’
The Professor checked that his tether was securely fastened, then pulled down his own hood. He lay down on the ledge, his back pressed against the wall.
‘Wake me in three pulses.’
‘Will do,’ said Nate.
With the Professor sleeping, Nate threaded his rope tether back through the hoops of his cliffcoat. Then he set the pulser and began repairing the vent on the sleep-hood. As he worked, he fretted over his carelessness – and what might happen if he wasn’t more careful in future.
In the event, the following day’s descent proved easier than Nate had feared. The drop was clean and swift and, though tiring, offered few problems. As he and the Professor reached the Cusp, a towering quarry trog by the name of Dendrock stepped out of the hanging-gantry there to greet them.
Swaying in the unpredictable winds, the gantry looked precarious, but it proved well stocked and neatly ordered inside. Nate and the Professor ate hard-tack and brewed tea, taking the water from the convex condensing shields that collected the swirling mists and spray and funnelled the water into vats that hung like swollen fruit from the underside of the gantry. Then they slept.
The next morning – as grey and misty as the one before – a pair of Mid Cliff class Descenders pulled themselves up onto the gantry. Their faces were drawn and haggard, but Nate recognized them at once. So did the Professor. They were the two who had survived that disastrous second descent, back down beneath the Edge once more: the Hive academics Tulkhusk and Hemp.
‘We provisioned the mooring hooks at the Overhang as best we could,’ said Tulkhusk, a rangy tusked goblin with one blue eye and one white.
‘But the way back up was difficult,’ his stocky flathead companion, Hemp, added.
Nate swallowed uneasily. If he thought it was difficult …
Nate and the Professor began their descent of the Fluted Decline an hour later. Carefully shielded inside their cliffcoats, hoods fastened shut, they descended for three days. Not that days or nights meant much in the pitch black. Time could only be measured in the pulses from their phraxglobes – each pulse the equivalent of two hours.
On the fourth day, they encountered what Descenders called ‘cliff-haze’. Notoriously disorientating, this rippling series of whistles and moans was caused by the swirling air currents passing through the ravines that fluted the cliff face. When the wind rose, the Professor speeded up, using the eerie sounds to mask their own. Their presence should not be given
away, either by light or by sound, for here, close to the Great Overhang, was the region of scuttling ravine demons and gliding Edge wraiths.
The first ravine demon they came across was small. Its long bony fingers, twice the length of its skeletal body, splayed out on the vertical rock surface on either side of the crevice it had emerged from. Two huge colourless eyes stared out from the blackness, illuminated by the glow of Nate’s phraxchamber. Suddenly its mouth sprang open and it spat an arc of pale venom at Nate.
Just below him, the Professor fired a percussion dart. It whistled over Nate’s head, struck the ravine demon’s shoulder and detonated with a painful high-pitched noise. The creature released its grip on the cliff face and, curling up into a tight ball, fell past the Descenders and down into the depths. In the darkness, other balled-up demons dropped past them, similarly dislodged by the destructive soundwaves the dart had emitted.
‘Phraxglow, Nate,’ the Professor whispered. ‘I think we’d best take this next stretch in full blackout.’
Nate nodded and, as the Professor disappeared below him, he snapped the cover over the phraxchamber on his backpack. Then, with the sound of his anxious breathing loud in his ears, Nate paid out his rope and slowly, silently, dropped through the darkness. The howls and moans of the cliff-haze grew louder as he passed by a deep vertical ravine opening and touched down on a jutting rock.
Click. Click. Click.
Nate started back, his senses on fire. It was another ravine demon. With slow, deliberate movements, he carefully removed a percussion dart.
Click. Click. Click. Click …
A huge bony claw scraped down his arm. This ravine demon was far bigger than the first. Nate braced himself.
‘Dead drop!’ he shouted down to the Professor, and released the rope-catch on his cliffcoat.
He fell just as the claws closed around his left arm, dragging their owner with him. Hurtling down through the blackness, Nate stabbed blindly with the percussion dart. At the third attempt it hit something bony and detonated. The noise was deafening. The hideous ravine demon crashed down into the yawning void.
Then, with a sound like a whipcrack, Nate’s rope went taut. His body jolted to a halt, leaving him hanging in the pitch-black air.
Looking up, he saw the glow of a phraxchamber and, illuminated in its pale fuzzy light, the Professor. He was just a short way above Nate, reaching out towards him from the mooring ring he’d tethered himself to. Nate grabbed the Professor’s outstretched hand and pulled himself back to the cliff face.
‘Excellent dead drop, Nate,’ the Professor told him. ‘All that practice on the academy tower certainly paid off.’ He smiled. ‘But let’s try not to do that too often, eh?’
They were about to resume their descent when Nate noticed something. Beside the ring, scratched into the rock face, were Descenders’ marks.
‘It’s a message from Tulkhusk,’ he said.
The Professor nodded, and proceeded to interpret the series of carved lines, dots and squiggles. ‘Ravine demons too numerous in the crevices below. Suggest rapid descent on the outer surface of the flute – with wraith precaution.’ He turned to Nate. ‘So, what’s it to be? Wraiths or demons?’
‘I’d prefer the crevices, but Tulkhusk is probably right,’ Nate whispered back. ‘If they’re crawling with ravine demons the size of that last one, we’d never get through.’
‘Rapid descent it is, then,’ said the Professor calmly.
As Nate twisted the dial to maximum, the phraxchamber on the side of his backpack whirred into life, the jet of steam suddenly rising up from the funnel illuminated by the chamber’s bright glow. Stepping back from the cliff, he released the lock on his rope spool – and dropped like a stone.
Toward the bottom of the crevice-pocked stretch of cliff, Nate pulled on the rope, rapidly slowing himself down. He landed on a fluted ledge and, having shut off the phraxchamber with his free hand, was plunged back into darkness.
Sometimes it was better not to be able to see.
Panting hard, Nate gave another tug on the spidersilk rope for the Professor to follow him down. He reached into a lower pocket of his cliffcoat, took out his phraxpistol and loaded it. Just in case.
‘Dead drop!’ came the Professor’s warning shout from above him.
Nate braced himself. In the blackness, he felt the rush of air as the Professor fell past him. The next moment, feeling the rope spool tighten, he twisted the dial to maximum for a second time. The pack jumped at his back, exerting a counterbalancing force against the rope’s pull. The Professor ended up a few strides below him, swinging at the end of the rope. He was smiling.
‘We’ve got to stop doing this,’ he muttered as he pulled himself up to where Nate was tethered.
Just then, looming up from the depths, a razor-fanged, skull-like face appeared, its jaws opening in a horrifying, dislocated yawn. The Edge wraith hovered close by, its breath fetid. Then, with a loud screech and a flash of white papery wings, it swooped back into the darkness and was gone. But around them now the black air was awash with the sounds of rustling wingbeats and sinister calls.
‘Now the wraiths have found us, darkness won’t help us,’ said the Professor grimly. He had his own phraxpistol in his hand. ‘Either we make a stand here, or we take our chances in the crevices.’
At the very edges of the light that radiated from their phraxchambers, Nate could make out skeletal shapes as they glided back and forth on the turbulent air currents. Meanwhile, from the cracks and crevices in the cliff face, the scratching sounds of the ravine demons grew louder. It was only a matter of time before one or other of the bloodthirsty creatures attacked.
‘There is one thing we could try,’ said Nate. ‘But you’re not going to like it—’
Just then, the shrieking face of yet another Edge wraith reared up. The Professor blasted it with both barrels of his phraxpistol. The wraith burst into flames, blinding them for an instant, then fell, a fiery torch, down into the black abyss – only for three ravine demons to appear from cracks in the rock face, attracted by the stench of burning flesh.
‘Try me,’ said the Professor, reloading.
‘We strap our packs together,’ said Nate. ‘Back to back. Then we freefall.’
‘What, no rope? No tether?’ said the Professor. ‘But that’s unbelievably dangerous, Nate.’
Another wraith dived at them. Nate swivelled round and shot. ‘No more dangerous than staying here, waiting to be picked off,’ he said. ‘And it might just work.’
The Professor nodded solemnly, then clapped Nate on the shoulder. ‘Whatever happens, it’s been an honour to descend with you, Nate Quarter,’ he said. He turned, and the two of them strapped their phraxpacks back to back. ‘And to call you my friend.’
‘The honour has been all mine,’ said Nate.
The wraiths were growing bolder. Ravine demons were emerging in increasing numbers; reaching out and grabbing with extended claws. It was as though they knew the two Descenders were out of ammunition.
‘Ready, Professor?’ said Nate.
‘Ready.’
Slowly, tentatively, Nate untied the spidersilk rope that bound him to the inert body of the Professor. Every part of his own body throbbed with pain. He checked himself over.
No cuts, no broken bones, he concluded.
Wherever they had landed, there seemed to be a light source of some kind that wasn’t coming from their two phraxchambers. They were both out of action. Nate squinted into the blue-tinged gloom. Where was that light coming from?
But first things first …
He turned and examined the Professor. His friend was still breathing but both legs were clearly broken. It occurred to Nate with a pang of guilt that although the two of them had been roped together, back to back, the Professor had come down first and cushioned his fall.
The Professor opened his eyes. ‘Nate? We’re still alive …’ He frowned. ‘It’s the strangest thing … I can’t feel my legs.’
> Nate sat back, trying to clear his head and piece together everything that had happened since they’d decided to freefall to escape the attacking ravine demons and wraiths. He remembered how his fingers had shaken as he released the rope – and then falling, falling …
Their phraxchambers had whirred, the buoyancy of the backpacks slowing their descent a little, with the steam from the funnels drawing a crazy interwoven trail behind them as they dropped, spinning round and round in the turbulent wind. At every moment he’d expected them to be slammed into the cliff face, their bodies smashed to a bloody pulp.
Yet, somehow, they had continued to fall.
As they’d fallen, though, so too had Nate’s spirits. This descent, their fourth, was pointless. A descent was only meaningful if you could chart your course down the cliff face, attaching mooring rings as you went. Then you could work your way back, scratching useful details of the climb into the rock; enabling others to follow in an endless relay. That was what true descending was.
This was the opposite.
They had tumbled through another glister storm, the tiny needle-sharp points of light plunging through every nerve ending. Nate opened his mouth to scream …
Then nothing. He must have lost consciousness – until just a moment ago.
‘The phraxchambers ruptured after we landed,’ the Professor was saying. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have survived. And all these rocks,’ he said, looking around. ‘It’s like … like some sort of immense scree field.’
Even after all this, Nate marvelled, despite being broken and unable to move, the Professor was still making detailed observations like the true Descender he was.
‘They’re covered in some sort of moss-like vegetation,’ he went on. ‘Dark blue, but luminescent. Dense. Sponge-like …’ He looked up. ‘It probably cushioned our fall.’