The Descenders

by Paul Stewart

  ‘New Sanctaphrax to Great Glade in less than a day,’ Nate Quarter breathed. ‘This truly is the dawning of the Fourth Age of Flight.’

  The second cloudcruiser to launch from New Sanctaphrax had set steam the previous evening. The Spirit of Light. Already, only two days later, its crew could see the distant lights of Riverrise – the waifs’ city of night – twinkling in the eternal darkness.

  With Brock gone, Celestia herself had agreed to pilot the new vessel and, as they came closer to their destination, she eased down the phraxengines and dimmed the lamps in the flight pit. Beside the aft deck, Tug, who had been working at the phraxcannon, charging the barrels with leadwood bullets, stepped back. From the observation port in the bow came Eudoxia’s voice, clear and calm.

  ‘The Thorn Gate is directly below us,’ she reported. ‘I can see lamp trails and campfires.’

  ‘That’ll be their main camp,’ Tug replied with a shudder and, glancing across at him, Celestia could see the pain in her friend’s face. ‘The slave corrals will be in the darkness beyond,’ he said, ‘together with the nightwaif pens.’

  ‘Stand by,’ she called out. ‘We’re going in.’

  The cloudcruiser slowed, the phraxengines’ whine deepening to a familiar thrum as it did so. Celestia dropped the beaked prow down towards the dense forest of thorns below and squeezed the firing trigger.

  The twin phraxcannons sprang to life, spitting out a trail of glowing phraxbullets that burst into two dazzling lines of orange as they hit the thorns. At the end of the fiery trail, the phraxcannon ammunition hit a stockade of blackthorn wood, which exploded, disintegrating into a mass of blazing splinters.

  As the cloudcruiser swooped down lower still, tiny beaked creatures with wide startled eyes could be seen, leaping from the ornate lamphouses of the compound beyond the burning stockade and scuttling for safety on their thin claw-like feet. The cruiser sped past them, its rear phraxcannon swivelling round and drilling the lamphouses with further volleys of the explosive bullets.

  Celestia brought the cruiser about in a broad arc and came down to a low hover in the middle of the compound, where hundreds of the red and black dwarves were huddled close together in a terrified crowd. The light from the blazing lamphouses cast an eerie flickering glow on the thornwood pens and corrals beyond. There, shackled by yokes and chains, thousands of stooped nameless ones raised their heads and stared up from the muddy pits they were crouching in.

  ‘Oh, those poor wretched creatures,’ Celestia breathed.

  Beside her, Tug trembled as the dam broke inside his head, and memories – memories he didn’t even know he had – came flooding back.

  Tug’s earliest memory was of being cradled by his mother. Huge arms enfolding him; the warmth of her skin; the steady beating of her heart; and the soft lilting lullaby, wordless but comforting, that made him so drowsy he could never keep his eyes open.

  After that came memories of the Nightwoods. Moving, always moving, at the centre of a herd of mountainous bodies as they tramped through the forests of milkthorn and spike-briar.

  And then, in the darkness, there was also the memory of tastes. The bitterness of the pungent bark; the meaty flavour of succulent grubs, and those soft juicy berries whose sweetness exploded on the tongue. Also the biting cold, the mist that seemed to seep through his skin – and pausing to lap at the earthy water that had collected in pools between tree roots as they tramped on and on in the endless darkness …

  Where were they going?

  Back then, Tug didn’t have the words to ask his mother or the others. His mind was as dark and cloaked as the Nightwoods themselves. It was only later that he started to understand. They were moving towards the silence, away from the scritching, chattering voices of the nightwaifs.

  The waifs’ voices pierced his head, and the heads of the others, if they came too close. They hurt like ice-cold thorn barbs and drove the herd away in panic-filled stampedes.

  Tug still awoke some nights, his heart thundering in his chest at the memory of those headlong dashes into the darkness. It was in one such stampede that he lost his mother – for ever – her great clawed hand slipping from his grasp.

  He didn’t know it at the time, but it was a tactic of the black and red dwarves of the Nightwoods to use nightwaifs’ thoughts to scatter the nameless ones. It made the great lumbering creatures easier targets if they could be separated from the herd, especially the infants. Once netted, these vulnerable young ones would be shackled, then whipped and beaten into obedience.

  That was Tug’s fate. And those were the memories that were the hardest to bear. His master’s lacerating voice in his ear; the bitter sting of his whip, and the sharp glinting spikes that were jabbed so painfully into the soft sensitive places behind his ears and the tender membrane in his nose. There was no time to think, no time to order his thoughts or mourn the loss of his mother. Just the beatings and the endless hauling of thorn bundles out of the forest and into the embankments of the Thorn Gate.

  Beyond the Thorn Gate, Tug had glimpsed the flickering lights of Riverrise, and had even heard the distant whispers of the waifs who ruled there. But he had needed to be careful. The other nameless slaves of the red dwarf had been broken. They had no thoughts left, and simply responded to the whip of their brutal master, not even flinching any more.

  This, he told himself, would not be his fate.

  To spare himself extra beatings, Tug learned to conceal his intelligence. He copied the others, swaying back and forth dementedly like they did when at rest; grunting and moaning like they did when at work. And he waited, at the end of his shackles in the darkness of the slave camp, for the red dwarf with the shiny key at his belt, and the cruel whip, to make a mistake – to come one step too close when he dealt out the daily flogging.

  This was a memory that made Tug flinch, but it had needed to be done. He’d taken no joy in it, except perhaps for the quickness of the act.

  The red dwarf had stepped up to add force to his whiplash, only for Tug to trip him with an outstretched claw, then drag him into his grasp. Now, like everything else, the sound of the red dwarf’s spine snapping like a dead branch was just another memory that haunted Tug’s dreams.

  He’d taken the key from the red dwarf and unlocked his shackles, along with those of the other slaves, though they had been too cowed and broken to follow him as he made his escape …

  And now he was back at the Thorn Gate once again, and below him were more of the nameless ones, all of them as cowed and broken as the ones he’d left behind before. He would not make the same mistake again.

  With a deep mournful cry, Tug leaped down from the Spirit of Light, a phraxpistol gripped in each hand. He rounded on the dwarf slavers.

  ‘Release them!’ he roared.

  ‘On whose authority?’ a tiny crimson-skinned dwarf hooted, clacking its beak in agitation. ‘We are licensed by Great Glade to maintain the Thorn Gate, and to collect tolls. The Waif Council has agreed to this.’

  Tug levelled his pistols at the quaking creature. ‘Justice and freedom,’ he said, cocking each pistol in turn. ‘Unless, of course, you’d like to argue …’

  The Beacon of Hope powered down its phraxengine and slowed to a steady pace. It kept level with the Great Glade phraxfrigate that had been sent out to escort it. At the wheelhouse and along the fore and aft decks of the older vessel, green-tunicked phraxmarines trained their spyglasses on the remarkable streamlined skycraft that was flying alongside them.

  Next to the sleek cloudcruiser, the frigate looked squat and cumbersome, like an old hammelhorn following a fleet-footed tilder. The deck-mounted phraxcannons it carried were awkward and exposed in comparison with the cruiser’s embedded phraxcannon, while the great clouds of steam billowing from the frigate’s tall funnel looked almost comical beside the thin wisp streaking from the cloudcruiser’s elegantly sloping one.

  Up ahead, high above the teeming city of Great Glade itself, and getting steadily closer, was the magnif
icent Palace of Phrax. The cruiser eased ahead of the frigate, then dropped down until it was level with the upper balcony of the towering building, where it hovered next to the high pillars of its balustrade. With a click and a hiss, tolley-rope grappling harpoons shot out from the cloudcruiser, coiled round the pillars and secured the vessel smoothly and efficiently.

  Nate turned to Cade. ‘All set?’ he checked. ‘We’re only going to get one chance at this.’

  · CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE ·

  The hovering cloudcruiser trembled as the glass-panelled canopy over the flight pit slid back, and two figures emerged on deck. Cade Quarter adjusted the chinstrap of the helmet he wore and straightened his robes. It felt strange to be wearing the black uniform of a New Sanctaphrax Companion. He reached out, took his uncle by the arm and pushed him roughly ahead.

  ‘That’s the way,’ Nate muttered under his breath. ‘This has got to look real.’

  Stepping down onto the balcony, the two of them were greeted by a young female fourthling, dressed in the uniform of the Freeglade Lancers. A smile played on her lips as she reached for the long-barrelled phraxpistol at her belt.

  ‘Felicia Adereth,’ she said, addressing the young tallow-hat. ‘We received word that you were coming.’

  The tallow-hat merely nodded, then, head lowered, he shoved Nate forward. Felicia looked him up and down.

  ‘Paid for,’ she said, training her phraxpistol on Nate. ‘And now delivered. My compliments to your master.’

  The young tallow-hat nodded again. ‘Danton Clore doesn’t like to keep his customers waiting,’ he said.

  Felicia grunted appreciatively. ‘Danton Clore is clearly someone Great Glade can do business with,’ she commented, before grabbing Nate by the shoulder, twisting him round and shoving the phraxpistol into his back. ‘Move,’ she told him gruffly. ‘Quove Lentis has already waited far too long for this meeting.’ She glanced round at the tallow-hat. ‘You come too.’

  The three of them headed across the paved balcony, the marble slabs gleaming in the sunlight. As they passed a darkened chamber to their left, Nate glimpsed a pair of ferocious-looking nightprowls through the glass doors, their pale blue eyes shining as intensely as his own.

  ‘Keep going,’ said Felicia, her grip tightening on the handle of the phraxpistol. Her hands were sweating and she silently cursed this sign of her own anxiety.

  Felicia Adereth was painfully aware of how precarious her position had become. The defeat at the hands of the tallow-hats had been a great setback. Quove Lentis was notoriously unforgiving of failure, and now Felicia was living on borrowed time, her own life in danger. When he’d ordered her to deliver Nate Quarter into his clutches, she’d known she would have to come up with the goods.

  She had done well.

  She’d made direct contact with the new leader of the floating city. Danton Clore had named his terms and they had reached an agreement. Now, after their intricate secret dealings, here was this young tallow-hat handing over the great Nate Quarter to Quove Lentis, the ruler of Great Glade.

  Nate Quarter was valuable, though. Far too valuable for the fate that Felicia knew Quove Lentis had planned for him: sacrificed to the snaggletooths to satisfy his lust for blood. A more far-sighted leader would use such an eminent prisoner to unpick the secrets of the floating city, turn its strength against itself and conquer it once and for all. But Quove Lentis was not far-sighted. He was petty, vindictive and unpredictable.

  She was armed with her phraxpistol, but Felicia wasn’t about to take any chances …

  High above the lofty balcony, with its intricate mosaics, its glazed pots of topiaried woodbay and black-sage trees, and its ornately carved sumpwood furniture, puffs of white cloud scudded across the sky. A pair of caged lyre-doves cooed longingly as a skein of snowbirds flapped overhead, while curled up in one of the doorways at the end of a silver chain, a vulpoon was sleeping.

  At the far end of the balcony, reclining on his couch, Quove Lentis was also asleep. A rhythmic wheezing came from his moist flapping lips as his chest went up and down. Felicia smiled. This would make things that little bit easier.

  As Nate Quarter and the tallow-hat came to a halt beside the couch, Felicia stepped forward and, turning away, picked up the decanter of ruby-red sapwine and refilled the corpulent High Professor’s goblet. Turning back, she set the decanter down on the low table. Noisily.

  Quove Lentis gave a spluttered snort, and his small eyes snapped open. He barely acknowledged his captain standing beside him – but then this was nothing new.

  As Quove Lentis’s gaze fell on the two visitors to the Palace of Phrax, his eyebrows shot upwards and a smile plucked at the corners of his mouth. He swivelled round on the couch.

  ‘Is this who I think it is, Captain?’ he asked, his voice plummy but indistinct, as though he was talking with a mouthful of pebbles.

  ‘Indeed it is, sir,’ said Captain Felicia Adereth crisply. ‘Just as I promised.’

  Meanwhile, with the enslaved nameless ones now free, the Spirit of Light had left the Thorn Gate and continued over the Nightwoods to Riverrise. Before they returned to New Sanctaphrax, there was something that needed to be done if the floating city was to survive and prosper.

  With Eudoxia’s help, Celestia brought the cloudcruiser down near the bottom of the waifs’ city, and Tug tethered it securely to a mooring post. Then the three of them made their way to Kobold’s Steps, the ancient stairway cut into the rock that led all the way up the Riverrise mountain, out of the darkness and on to the Gardens of Life at the very top.

  ‘It’s so noisy,’ said Celestia as she and Tug followed Eudoxia. ‘In here,’ she added, tapping a finger to her temple.

  They were passing by the city of night itself, its glass houses festooned with lamps that turned the steep streets into glittering clusters of lights. Thousands of whispered thoughts created a constant babble of sound as the waif inhabitants read each other’s minds. Occasionally, a chorus of voices would rise up as an entire neighbourhood joined into a single unified thought, before ebbing away and returning to the soft feathery murmuring.

  Trying their best to ignore it, the three visitors climbed higher. And, as they finally left the city below them, it was a relief for them all to put some distance between themselves and the never-ending chatter.

  Peace and quiet, thought Celestia gratefully.

  Ahead of her, Eudoxia turned back and smiled, almost as though she herself had acquired a waif’s uncanny ability to mind-read. Tug, in contrast, was grim-faced. Sleeker, more upright, and able to articulate his thoughts clearly since their descent to groundrise, he was looking troubled.

  Of course, Celestia realized, despite the way things had turned out for her friend, this return to the region of his birth must be difficult for him. She reached out and took his hand, and squeezed it reassuringly.

  Big and muscular though it undoubtedly still was, even Tug’s hand now seemed less gnarled and claw-like than before. And in the robes of Sanctaphrax blue he was wearing, he could have passed for a prosperous cloddertrog, or perhaps a refined quarry trog from the Northern Reaches.

  They passed beneath a stone arch, then stepped out onto a wide escarpment. Celestia looked up, and gasped. So this was it. Nestling in a broad hollow below the Riverrise spring, the fabled Gardens of Life.

  Before them, towering high above the darkness, was the mighty stone spike, which incoming Mother Storms from Open Sky would strike, unleashing their life-giving power.

  Up here in these gardens of verdant vegetation and leafy trees, there was daylight; clouds swirling in a blue sky. Disconcerted to find herself so suddenly out of the permanent night, Celestia looked back down the steps they had ascended, to see that it was still pitch black below.

  ‘Welcome, emissaries from the floating city.’ Soft voices were speaking in unison in each of their heads. ‘We have had ample time to sift through your minds on your journey up the steps to the Gardens of Life …’

  Celestia t
urned. Three white-robed waifs were sitting side by side on a rock which jutted out over the curved bowl of the Riverrise lake. Two females and one male, they were; all with huge milky eyes – sightless and unfocused – and fluttering translucent ears that seemed to turn in towards Celestia, Tug and Eudoxia as they approached.

  ‘So you know everything,’ said Eudoxia simply, lowering the hood of her storm-grey cloak.

  The blind waif elders nodded.

  ‘You come in peace to offer friendship and support,’ the waifs’ voices sounded, though their lips remained still. ‘Tug and Celestia descended to a region hitherto unknown, and have returned with an understanding of its mysterious properties—’

  ‘But we believe that this place, groundrise, must be protected from any further intrusion,’ Tug broke in. ‘For nothing must risk interrupting the cycle of Earth to Sky and Sky to Earth.’

  The waifs nodded. ‘This we also believe.’

  One of the female waifs stood up and approached Tug directly.

  ‘Descending will go no further than the upper scree fields,’ Eudoxia promised. ‘And our two cities – one where the sky seeds life; the other where stones are born – will protect this cycle.’

  The waifs nodded again.

  ‘You, Tug, have done the city of Riverrise a special service,’ the female waif told him, staring up into his face with her milky white eyes. ‘You have broken the stranglehold the dwarf slavers held over our city through their control of the Thorn Gate. Great Glade was behind their efforts, holding Riverrise to ransom, but you and your skyvessel have put them to flight.’