The Descenders

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The Descenders Page 12

by Paul Stewart


  Brock pulled forward in the stirrups as the boulder careered past them, creating a powerful shock wave which sent the Rock Demon tumbling away across the sky. Cade shifted his balance, while Grent clung on for dear life, his eyes clamped shut once more. The next moment, he heard the young skymarshal chuckling to himself as they regained their balance and sped off after the glowing trail left behind by the boulder.

  ‘You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?’ shouted Grent from behind him.

  ‘Nothing like storm-stone spotting to get the blood coursing through your veins,’ Brock shouted back.

  Gripping his stubby leadwood pencil in one hand, and holding tightly to Brock’s shoulder with the other, Grent made a couple of hurried notes in the scroll cluster that hung from his neck. For his part, Cade stared at the spinning blue boulder in amazement. It was exactly as Nate had described it, though how his uncle had managed to ride the thing without being hurled off into Open Sky he couldn’t imagine.

  The skymarshal pursued the storm-stone across the sky and down towards Undergarden. For a moment, they lost sight of it, but then, as they got closer to the tangle of dense vegetation, Grent spotted it once more.

  ‘There! There!’ he shouted, pointing at the boulder as it crashed harmlessly into an empty pasture, a short distance from one of the ancient sluice gates.

  Brock brought the Rock Demon down to land beside it, just as the boulder – twice the size of a full-grown hammelhorn – began to sink beneath the sprouting gladegrass. With a cry of dismay, Grent leaped from the saddle and hurried towards it, determined to make whatever observations he could before the mysterious storm-stone vanished into the ground.

  But he was too late. Just as he got to it, the boulder disappeared beneath the grassy pasture – only for a trembling thump to vibrate back through the ground as it struck a sewer directly below, halting its descent and sending up a great plume of glittering dust.

  Standing at the edge of the crater, Grent and Cade peered down into the darkness. They could just make out the outline of the glowing storm-stone, now wedged firmly against the shattered wall of the ancient sluice tunnel.

  ‘Looks like this is one storm-stone you’ll be able to study at your leisure, Grent,’ said Brock cheerfully as he crouched down beside the pair of them.

  The passing fettle-legger botanist was less impressed. Cade looked up as she came sprinting towards them on her scaly, bird-like feet and trotted around the edge of the hole. He’d heard of the curious folk who lived in the grasslands of course, but this was the first fettle-legger he’d ever encountered.

  ‘Absolutely ruined!’ she exclaimed, tugging at the lapels of her blue-grey robes. ‘But then what does it matter if Earth scholarship suffers, so long as Sky scholars get their excitement.’

  ‘Grent One-Tusk of the Loftus Observatory,’ said Grent politely. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met.’

  The fettle-legger took a few steps backwards with an angry little snort, then advanced and held out a hand for him to shake.

  ‘Fenda Fulefane, School of Moss,’ she said, then turned to Cade. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Cade Quarter,’ he told her.

  ‘Ah, nephew of the High Academe,’ she said, and laughed at the look of surprise on his face. ‘News travels fast in New Sanctaphrax,’ she observed. ‘And do forgive me, all of you,’ she said, looking around. ‘It’s just so frustrating when something falls from the sky and ruins a perfectly good laboratory.’

  ‘Laboratory?’ said Grent, peering back down into the sluice tunnel. He saw the instruments and clusters of specimen jars hanging from the dank walls below. ‘Oh yes, I see … most unfortunate.’

  Brock pulled his skycraft towards him with the tether. ‘Time for a late breakfast in the academy refectory, I think,’ he said, climbing back into the saddle.

  Cade joined him, keen to get the barkscrolls to his contact in the Armoury without any further delay. But Grent One-Tusk remained where he was.

  ‘If it’s all the same to you,’ he said, stroking a well-oiled beard plait thoughtfully, ‘I think I might stay here in Undergarden for a little while longer.’

  · CHAPTER ELEVEN ·

  Quove Lentis stood in the Purple Hall of the Palace of Phrax, a self-satisfied smile on his bloated features. The hall had been decorated with chandeliers of purple crystal, a gleaming tiled floor of purple marble; purple curtains, purple upholstery and purple rugs – while in the elegant amethyst-encrusted stove, only lufwood was ever burned, its flames bathing the room with deep purple light.

  The Purple Hall was every bit as grandiloquent as Quove had imagined it would be – as was the entire Palace of Phrax. When Quove Lentis first ordered the building of the palace, that was the word he’d used to all those involved in its construction: the architects and interior designers, the seamstresses, stone masons and furniture makers … Grandiloquent.

  Something worthy of his own grandiloquence.

  Although maybe, he thought, on this particular afternoon he might have done better to wait for his phrax commander, Lennius Grex, in the Green Room. Or maybe the Blue Room. Purple was such a passionate colour and Quove Lentis needed to remain cool, calm and collected.

  ‘Is he here yet?’ he asked, turning to his personal bodyguard.

  Felicia Adereth straightened up. For the last half hour she’d been standing by the door, hands clasped behind her back, with precisely that piece of information. Phrax Commander Lennius Grex was in the High Hall, waiting.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she answered. ‘I was told he arrived an hour ago.’

  Quove nodded, then took a tiny sip from the flask the waifs had sent him as a gift. Water of life, they called it. Uncertain of its efficacy, Quove nevertheless made sure to take a couple of drops every day. After all, he reasoned, it might work …

  ‘Shall I bring him in, sir?’ Felicia asked.

  ‘No, leave him a while longer,’ came the reply as Quove stepped out onto the balcony. ‘Let him sweat.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Felicia, and she clicked the heels of her highly polished boots together.

  Felicia Adereth had been the High Professor of Flight’s personal bodyguard for more than ten years now. Born in a slum and raised in a hovel, she had been drafted into the Freeglade Lancers at the age of thirteen and risen slowly through the ranks.

  A fourthling with waif and cloddertrog blood in her veins, Felicia was both intuitive and prodigiously strong. At the age of twenty she was made mission-sergeant of an assault unit and sent to the district of East Glade to quell a minor uprising. It was there that her particular skills came to the fore: ruthlessness, loyalty and a willingness to shed blood whenever necessary.

  She had the ringleaders strung up and executed, and on her return to the Cloud Quarter, Quove Lentis was waiting for her. He pinned a Medal of Valour – Great Glade’s highest honour – to her chest. And, meeting her that first time in person, he was so impressed that he took her on as his personal bodyguard. His ‘security escort’, as he had put it.

  A decade later, Felicia Adereth was still in the same post. Her rivals claimed that it was because Quove Lentis saw females as less of a threat to his own power. Felicia couldn’t say. Certainly, she’d lasted longer than any of her male predecessors. Certainly, too, she had done better than that wastrel older brother of hers, Drax. Far better. And as she watched Quove Lentis pacing to and fro on the balcony, she wondered what her brother was up to now.

  Coincidentally, Drax had also been employed by Quove Lentis for a while. Holed up in the bowels of a skytavern – the Xanth Filatine, if she remembered correctly – he was a gangmaster, getting his band of lackeys to rob, blackmail or swindle the wealthy travellers lodged in the upper decks, as well as dealing with anyone on board whom Quove Lentis wished to see dead.

  He’d done well enough, Felicia supposed. But then he’d been arrested for something or other and ended up in a Hive jail for three months, at which point Quove Lentis had cut all links with him.

  Felicia
couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him, nor did she care. Spiteful and hot-headed, Drax was his own worst enemy – and besides, she’d always hated the horrible habit he had of cutting off the fingers of those who crossed him.

  Felicia Adereth was not sentimental. She could not have remained in Quove Lentis’s service for so long if she were. But some things were just wrong.

  Drax Adereth was doing wrong at that very moment, though that wasn’t the way he saw it. So far as Drax was concerned, there was something he wanted to know, and if the individual with the information now roped to the cliff wall in front of him was too stupid to offer it up, then he was asking for everything he got.

  ‘Where is he?’ Drax asked for the third time, his voice soft and menacing.

  ‘I … I told you,’ came the faltering reply. ‘I don’t know.’

  Drax sighed and drew his knife from his belt. ‘You’re really not doing yourself any favours, Lope,’ he purred. He reached up and ran the blade slowly over the goblin’s thumb. ‘Where is he?’

  Lemulis Lope had been grading a consignment of freshly mined streakstone when the pale-faced fourthling with the shock of white hair had appeared on the narrow ravine ledge beside him. He’d seemed friendly at first: introduced himself, admired the patterns on the rock, enquired after the price – then, almost as an afterthought, had asked after Cade Quarter.

  At first, Lemulis was genuinely puzzled. But then he remembered the youth travelling with Eudoxia. She hadn’t said much about him, but Lemulis had gathered that Quove Lentis and his cronies were after him. Maybe the two were unconnected – but there was something about this waif-like fourthling that he didn’t trust.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ Lemulis Lope said, and turned away, which was when Drax Adereth pounced.

  Considerably stronger than he looked, Drax got the wiry goblin in an arm lock. Before he knew it, Lemulis Lope found himself roped to the ironwood rings in the cliff face where, as a rule, scuttlebrigs were tethered. Now, with his arms raised high above his head and his feet dangling over the steep drop, he was totally at the mercy of this pale-eyed villain.

  ‘Let’s take this step by step,’ Drax said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘I am looking for my old friend, Cade Quarter. I caught sight of him at the Farrow Lake a while back, from the deck of a passing skytavern, but by the time I got back there, he was gone. I asked around. Nobody there seemed to know him either,’ he said. ‘At first.’ He smiled. ‘But then a webfoot I came across suddenly remembered that he did know him after all …’

  Drax’s smile grew wider as he played with the necklace of brown, twig-like fingers that hung from a cord around his neck.

  ‘It’s amazing how much can be remembered,’ he murmured. ‘With the proper encouragement.’

  Lemulis felt the blade of the knife press hard against the base of his thumb.

  ‘What the webfoot told me was that Cade Quarter had left for New Sanctaphrax,’ Drax continued. ‘Then, during my journey there, and quite by chance, I came across a woodtroll in the Midwood Decks who informed me that he’d changed his plans and come to Gorgetown instead.’ He pushed his face closer into the goblin’s. ‘So where is he?’

  Lemulis swallowed. Betray Eudoxia? As a loyal Friend of New Sanctaphrax, he would not. Could not. The knife dug deeper – but then was suddenly removed.

  ‘Fingers no threat, eh?’ Drax chuckled, his head cocked to one side. ‘How about your eyes, Lope?’ he said, and the stone-master felt the point of the knife softly trace his drooping eyelids …

  ‘New Sanctaphrax!’ he blurted out. ‘He and three companions. Yes, they were here. Briefly. But then they continued their journey to New Sanctaphrax. In a scuttlebrig convoy. They set off two weeks ago.’ He shuddered, ashamed by his own weakness. ‘That’s all I know. Believe me.’

  Drax Adereth pulled back. ‘There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?’ he said. ‘Thank you, Lemulis Lope. I appreciate your honesty.’

  He reached up and sliced through the ropes that held the goblin in place. First the left wrist, then the right. Lemulis Lope fell forward, off the narrow ledge, and tumbled down the cliff face to the bottom of the gorge – and certain death.

  Drax looked down at the broken body below him, and at the long bloodstained fingers splayed out on the rock.

  ‘Such a terrible waste,’ he murmured.

  In the High Hall of the Palace of Phrax, two nightprowls sat grooming themselves in the shadows. Their sleek velvety fur, the deepest darkest shade of blue, gleamed in the dim light. They were purring loudly, their throaty rumble like the thrum of a phraxchamber.

  Suddenly the click-clack of boots on the polished marble floor caused the great cats to look up. They fell silent, and their pale blue eyes, marsh-gem bright, fixed on the figure that had started pacing back and forward. And, hearing the low grumble of irritation, they growled back menacingly.

  Phrax Commander Lennius Grex paused. Maybe it would be best to stay put, after all.

  He was dressed for the occasion. His crushed funnel cap was brocaded with plaited gold thread, as was the front of his admiral’s frockcoat. Rows of mire-pearl buttons fastened his extravagantly embroidered triple-breasted waistcoat, adding to the air of opulence appropriate for the commander-in-chief of the Great Glade fleet. By contrast, the hooded oilskin storm-cape at his shoulders, from which a cloudmeter and a small phraxlamp hung, was unadorned. It added that all-important common touch, Lennius Grex thought.

  ‘Three hours I’ve been waiting,’ he muttered to himself as a distant bell tolled. ‘Three accursed hours!’

  He clutched his spyglass tightly in his hand. If he wasn’t summoned soon, then the reason for his visit would pass, and the whole afternoon would have been wasted.

  If nothing else, the long wait had given him time to reflect on the situation regarding Great Glade and New Sanctaphrax. The blockade of the floating city was not going as well as Lennius Grex had hoped. The Knights Academy was proving to be a resourceful and stubborn opponent. Its skymarshals on their single-seater phraxcraft had taken a high toll on the Great Glade fleet, targeting both the wheelhouses and their crews with those long-barrelled phraxmuskets of theirs. For now at least, his own attacking fleet had been forced back to the relative safety of the grasslands.

  The good news was that the blockade was stopping anything getting in or out of the floating city. Supplies there were running low. Lennius could tell that by the way the skymarshals were increasingly careful with their phraxbullets.

  It was only a matter of time …

  The phrax commander grunted angrily. These days it seemed as though he spent his whole life waiting.

  Well, he wasn’t having it. He’d waited here in this oppressive hall for long enough. Maybe he’d been forgotten. Maybe that idiot gabtroll on the door had neglected to pass on the message that he’d arrived.

  Whatever, he thought angrily. He would not be treated like this – even by the High Professor of Flight. No. He would go and find Quove Lentis for himself.

  Decision made, Lennius Grex hurried past the nightprowls, ignoring their vicious snarls. As he stepped out onto the grand balcony that ran around the palace, he trembled with unease. The Palace of Phrax had always unnerved him. But then, as Lennius Grex knew, that was precisely the point.

  Quove Lentis had designed the place as an expression of his own power. Having taken over the other academies, one by one, he had absorbed them into the Academy of Flight, then set about turning the entire academy into a military force. The laboratories and workshops became armouries, developing weapons and phraxships; the academics exchanged their robes for uniforms; while the phraxfleet and city guard were, in rapid succession, also taken over by the now all-powerful Academy of Flight.

  Then that Descender Nate Quarter had returned. It had given Quove Lentis the chance to make his power absolute. Lennius remembered it all so well.

  The last of the Great Glade academics who had opposed Quove were rounded up by his unit of elite
bodyguards, and had not been seen or heard from since. Soon afterwards, the blockade of New Sanctaphrax began – just as the finishing touches were being added to the opulent new Palace of Phrax.

  Lennius Grex strode along the grand balcony. He passed the entrances to the various halls, each one decorated with a different colour. Yellow. Green. Blue. Purple … Lining the back wall of the balcony were numerous marble statues of the High Professor in various poses – and there, just up ahead, was the High Professor of Flight himself.

  He was reclining on a carved sumpwood couch, the tether held by a couple of burly flathead goblins of the phraxmarine. A small albino quarm sat on Quove Lentis’s lap, trilling softly as its owner’s plump fingers stroked its snow-white fur.

  Lennius came to a halt in front of him. He raised a clenched fist, then opening his hand in a crisp movement, gave the academy salute. Quove Lentis eyed him coolly through lowered lids, his small fleshy lips twitching beneath his carefully oiled moustache.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said Quove Lentis. ‘I wondered what had happened to you.’ Lennius fought the urge to complain about his being abandoned in the High Hall. ‘What have you to report, Phrax Commander Grex?’

  Lennius swallowed uneasily. The High Professor of the Academy of Flight’s voice was smooth and calm, but his form of address was icily formal. It was not a good sign.

  ‘Report? Erm, well …’ Lennius Grex was suddenly flustered. ‘I haven’t come here to report as such. I came for the … erm …’

  The phrax commander nodded towards the edge of the grand balcony. Quove Lentis turned, following his gaze.

  The Palace of Phrax towered over the city of Great Glade, and the view from the grand balcony was unrivalled. All twelve districts could be seen, including the oldest district of all, the Free Glades. Here, the ancient Lake Landing Academy still stood, its tower and deck no longer a working academy but a monument to the city’s glorious past.

 

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