by Fahy, James
After a short while, Karya stopped screaming. It was a very long way down and you can only keep a scream up for so long. The ground may indeed be rushing up to greet them, but it was still a long way off, features hazy and indistinct as they plummeted towards it.
“We’re … going … to … die!” Karya yelled to Robin, her voice almost entirely whipped away by the wind. She sounded more angry than afraid. The boat lurched, spun in an eddy, throwing Robin clear of the lever. Luckily he rolled along the floor and managed to grab the edge of the leather seating, keeping his body pressed flat to the boards.
“I know!” he yelled back.
“I don’t want to die!” Woad bellowed, opening his eyes wide.
“None of us want to bloody well die!” Robin screamed. “Bloody … insane … gorgon!” He stared at Karya, still wedged in her spot, gripping the sides of the craft for dear life. “Can’t you do something?!” he yelled, bellowing to be heard over the rush of the wind.
“Well,” she seemed to consider this for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I can cover about half a square mile like jam when we hit the ground!” she shouted back. “Don’t see how helpful that will be though!”
She forced herself into a standing position and peered over the edge of the boat. The wind whipped her hair straight up from her head so that for a moment she looked like the bride of Frankenstein.
“About a minute before we meet the ground!” she screamed to the others.
The boat lurched and pitched again as it plunged through the alarmingly empty air. A minute is a long time when you’re falling to your death.
Robin dragging himself along the side of the boat until he reached the helm. He gripped the console with steely determination, his eyes streaming from the wind, roving over the countless dials, lever and buttons. He began to pull them and push them indiscriminately.
“What are you doing?” Karya yelled in panic. “Don’t just pull things at random! You’ll make things worse!”
Robin stared at her over his shoulder in amazement. “How?!” he bellowed.
She stared back at him blankly for a moment in silence. He had a point.
“Hurry!” Woad gibbered.
Robin turned back to the console, trying various levers once more. Many seemed rusted beyond use, refusing to budge even the slightest inch under his sweaty grasp. Others pinged and twanged as he pulled them, to no clear effect. He jabbed buttons and dials urgently, but nothing happened. The little clock hands in the displays were spinning wildly, as though they were panicking as well.
“Nothing’s working!” he shouted back to the others. Karya looked almost as pale as Mr Strife.
He tried to turn, wondering if there was maybe something at the rear of the boat they had overlooked, anything that might help, but his belt snagged on something and he found himself stuck fast.
Looking down, he was surprised to see that Phorbas’ dagger had jammed between two cogs under the main console. Gripping the hilt, Robin tugged, trying to free it. Nothing happened. Cursing under his breath with some very inventive words which would almost certainly have had Aunt Irene chasing him with a fireside poker, he wriggled it to and fro violently, trying to loosen it. It was no good, the rusted teeth of the cogs held it fast in their jaws.
“It’s jammed! Bloody thing!” He pulled with all his might and for a moment, it felt as though the blade shuddered under his fingertips. For one horrible moment he thought it was going to snap, but then the garnet mana stone in the pommel flashed once, whether with inner power or simply because it caught the sun he wasn’t sure.
The dagger sprang free, knocking Robin backwards off his feet. He fell heavily, scooting along the tilting floor. The two cogs shook furiously, and then, remarkably, began to turn, slowly at first but then faster and faster until they were whizzing round at lose-your-finger speeds.
There was a lurch and a creak. The copper pipes which lined the bottom of the craft rattled and clanked against one another with alarming vigour, making Robin leap up off them quickly. They had gotten very hot in seconds.
“What’s happening?” Karya yelled, grabbing his arm before he was unbalanced and pitched over the side. Dials everywhere on the console began to whir. There was a series of clicks, and with a loud bang, like a car backfiring, a huge belch of steam erupted from the bellows at the back of the boat, causing Woad to let go with a shriek. They began pumping of their own accord, emitting a ludicrous wheeze and creak, throwing out great puffs of steam. With a deafening whir, the uselessly fluttering wings flexed and straightened themselves, unfurling in resistance to the wind. They levelled out with a resounding and triumphant whoosh and began to flap, in slow, sweeping movements, cutting through the air like oars through water. The boat was no longer in freefall, Robin’s stomach no longer felt as though it were trying to work its way up through his ribcage. They had begun, against all odds and reason, to slow down.
“It’s working!” Robin whooped, hardly daring to believe it.
“We’ve … we’ve stopped falling?” Woad said, staring at the wings as they beat rhythmically at the air.
“It’s true,” Karya said in wonder, looking over the side. The distant landscape below stayed reassuringly distant. In fact, as she watched, it seemed to be receding. An uncharacteristic laugh escaped her, sounding just this side of hysterical. She turned it into a hasty clearing of her throat. “We’re climbing. You did it, Scion!”
Robin was too breathless to speak. He half-sat, half-lay on the leather bench, gripping the side of the boat and waiting for his heart to stop hammering, simply enjoying the sensation of not plummeting towards his death.
“Bloody hell,” he said eventually.
They were soaring away from the mountains now, leaving them far behind. Rivers and lakes passed below them, tiny and twinkling far below. Broken hills studded with menhirs stretched out to the horizon. Small forests and woods dotted the valleys below. The shadows of the clouds sailed over the landscape like enormous sweeping ghosts.
“I can’t believe this thing is actually flying!” Robin said. “We’re making good distance as well. It must be going pretty fast.” He moved back to the front of the craft, his legs still a little shaky, and examined the dials spinning wildly on the console. “I haven’t got a clue what any of this means, though,” he admitted, after frowning at it for a moment or two.
Karya stood up and made her way over to him, also wobbling slightly. “Do we have any method of steering this thing?” she asked. “I’ve never been in a boat before, let alone a boat that flies.”
Woad was poking the wheezing bellows at the back of the craft. “This thing moves around,” he announced, pulling the bellows to the left. The angle of the long feathered wings suddenly changed and the boat swung alarmingly to the left, banking steeply and almost throwing Robin and Karya off their feet. Amidst their yells, Woad righted the craft with a sheepish grin. “Sorry,” he said.
“Well, we know how to steer it then,” Karya said. She looked out over the wide horizon ahead of them. “Now all we need to know is where to steer it to.”
They were still rising sharply like a balloon, the clouds above them getting closer.
“Up, I imagine,” Robin said. “This island’s supposed to be an uprooted mountain after all. If you’re going to hide a whole mountain in the air where no one’s going to see it, it would have to be pretty high up.”
“Hold on to your hamstrings then,” Woad grinned, and twisted the bellows. They belched puffs of noisy steam downwards, the wings soared and rustled in the breeze, and with a giggling shout of glee from the faun, the Auroracraft soared like a rocket towards the clouds.
Chapter Twenty Two –
Dawn Sailing
Soon they were sailing majestically high above the clouds, the craft clanking like an old boiler, belching copious amounts of hissing steam.
It was a strange, serene landscape full of slow-moving grace, the ground hidden by a fluffy white sea. The rolling waves of snowy cloud
were broken here and there through which they occasionally glimpsed the world below. The terrain was becoming less mountainous and after a few hours of peaceful cruising, the cloud gaps revealed moorland and plains. When next they passed out of a cloud bank, a vast forest spread out far below them, stretching in every direction like a green spiky carpet. Robin wondered what the sprawling forest was called, but neither Karya nor Woad had any idea.
After enjoying the views for a while, and revelling in the novelty and luxury of travelling while sitting comfortably, they settled down and divided up the remaining food they carried.
The day wore on and for want of a better plan, they held a straight course, on the lookout for any vast flying lumps of mountainous rock.
Woad settled down in the stern of their craft and was soon asleep, leaving Robin and Karya alone in the clouds.
“So…” Robin said after a while. She had joined him at the helm and they had both watched the landscape far below slide by for some time.
She looked at him sidelong. “What?”
“What’s your deal, then?” he asked. “Are you going to tell me who you are? Why you’re on the run from Eris? Or are you planning on being stubborn and mysterious forever?”
“The less you know the better. You have your own problems right now, Scion. Enough to say, I have my own reasons for helping you. And plenty of reasons to hate Eris.”
Robin rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” Little else made sense in the Netherworlde. Why should she? “Just one thing. You said you ran away from home, right?”
Karya didn’t answer. She was snuggled in her furs against the cold, hair whipping in the breeze.
“Mr Strife’s been chasing you. I’m guessing to bring you … home.”
“I’ve never had a home.” Karya replied flatly. “Home is where the heart is. I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Robin glanced at her, but her face was inscrutable. He didn’t know what else to say.
“Get some sleep, Scion,” she said, nudging him with her shoulder playfully. “I’ll wake you up the next time we’re about to die.”
* * *
The light of sunrise hit Robin’s face, waking him from deep sleep. He was curled on the floor, and was surprised to find himself beneath what felt like a large, shaggy brown blanket. He sat up, even more surprised to find that it was Karya’s huge coat covering him. She was standing at the rear of the boat, steering with the bellows. Without the bulky coat, she looked tiny.
“What?” she said defensively, noting his expression, as he dug himself out from under the warm coat. “It got cold in the night. You were shivering in your sleep.” She sniffed. “It was quite irritating to listen to.”
Robin sat up stiffly, looking around at the rising dawn.
“Thanks … I think,” he said. “Any sign of the Isle of Winds?”
Karya shook her head, walking over and taking the coat from him. She shrugged her way back into it, looking instantly less small and vulnerable, and more like a bad-tempered bear cub. She nodded ahead. “Nothing as far as I can see,” she said. “Nothing island or mountain-shaped, anyway, although it’s good that you’re awake. There is something I think we should be concerned about.”
Robin stared ahead. They had cleared the immense forest sometime in the night while he had slept. The ground below them now was grassy and calm. Up ahead, on the very edge of the horizon, the land stopped in a jagged tear. Beyond, there was nothing but a blueish haze.
“I suspect it may be the edge of the world,” Karya said, in rather unconcerned tones. “I wonder if we’ll fall off?”
Robin grinned at her.
“That’s not the end of the world,” he said. “Just the end of the land. You better go and wake up Woad. He’ll want to see this. It’s the ocean.”
With some difficulty, Woad was roused, and they huddled at the front of the Auroracraft as it made its way towards the coastline. The sea became clearer as they approached. Rolling and swelling before them endlessly in great dark waves.
“That’s an ocean?” Woad blearily rubbed sleep from his eyes. “It looks very big … and wet.”
“Poetic, Woad,” Karya said drolly, though she was staring at it too, her eyes wide. “I’ve never seen anything so big. The Silver Sea.”
Seagulls wheeled around below them, caught in the updrafts.
“We appear to be heading over it,” Karya said pointedly. “Are we certain that’s wise? I mean, there’s no land out there. What happens if we run out of fuel? We would fall right into the water.”
Robin raised an eyebrow at her. “Karya,” he said. “We’re in a boat.”
“Ah, yes,” she conceded after a moment. “Boats. They are good at water, aren’t they?”
“Traditionally, yeah,” Robin assured her. “Better at water than say, crashing from a height onto dry land at least. Come to think of it, it seems a likely place to keep an island hidden, offshore where there’s no one around.”
The Auroracraft slipped effortlessly over the cliff edge, passing across dry land to open water without any trouble. The wings continued to beat; the bellows punched commas of steam into the air behind them. Robin was quietly relieved.
“We could get lost out here,” Woad pointed out. “There aren’t any landmarks. It’s all just big and wet.”
“We’re already lost though, aren’t we?” Robin pointed out. “Maybe we can keep the cliffs in sight. I wish this thing had a compass or something. I don’t even know what direction we’re travelling in.”
Woad snorted with derision. “Forward, you numbskull. Anyone could tell you that.”
“There’s a Janus station down there,” Karya said, ignoring the others and looking back at the cliffs. The others followed her gaze. There was indeed a small sandy cove at the base of the cliffs. They could just make out a circle of tall stones planted in the sand.
“What?” Robin said aghast. “Are you telling me we could have just flipped right here from Knowl Hill?”
“No, Scion,” Karya said patiently. “It doesn’t work that way. We didn’t know this particular Janus station existed, did we?”
“You need to know where you’re going when you use a Janus station,” Woad explained. “Or you could end up anywhere.”
“So you can’t use Janus to get to a station you don’t know is there?” Robin asked.
Karya nodded.
“I’ll never get used to the Netherworlde,” Robin said.
They sailed on for a few hours, until the sun was high in the sky. The water below was vast and seemingly endless. They began to feel as though they were lodged between two vast blue bowls, paler above and darker below. The occasional high white streamer of cloud reflected below as in a rippling mirror.
Karya and Robin were hanging over the side of the boat, idly watching the shadow of the Auroracraft below them, when suddenly Woad gasped.
“Wow, that’s some cloud,” the faun said. Ahead of them, filling the sky was a towering cloud of goliath proportions. It stretched massively high, up perhaps to the edge of space, so that it seemed to be flattened on top.
Robin stared. It was hard to take the whole thing in with one look. He had heard in school about towering clouds like these. They were usually storms, great bruise-black thunderheads filling the sky. But in contrast, this titan was as white as a marshmallow. It was beautiful. It looked as large as a…
“Mountain,” he finished aloud, in awe, as they sailed towards the towering mass. “It’s as big as a mountain.”
He rushed to the front of the boat and grabbed Woad’s arm with excitement. “This is it! The Isle of Winds!”
Karya shaded her eyes against the sun, peering at the momentous cloud. “I just see a cloud,” she said flatly. “A big one, granted, but…”
“Camouflage,” Robin said. “It’s hiding the island.” He peered around. There were only a few other clouds, thin and wispy. “See? See? They’re moving in the wind, all the others. This one isn’t. It’s hiding the island. We�
��ve found it.” He was grinning from ear to ear.
“We need to fly into the cloud,” he said decisively, looking at Karya.
“Is that the cleverest plan, I wonder?” the girl replied, looking quizzical. “Flying blind into what is effectively a heck of a lot of fog, when we suspect, indeed hope, there is a very large mountain inside?”
“Boss has a point,” Woad said, scratching his head. “That way lies splintered wood and bones.”
“We’ll be fine,” Robin said dismissively.
Karya gave him a rueful look and opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak, she was knocked to the floor.
Something large and dark hammered into the side of the boat with a tearing crash. Woad shouted something unintelligible, his voice high and filled with panic as he struggled to stay on his feet. He had seen more than the others.
A second dark shape appeared, as large as the first. It swooped from above, raking the deck with a splintering of wood and smashing off through one of the rainbow-feathered wings. It was gone as swiftly as it came, speeding beneath the craft and away out of sight, an alarming flurry of feathers trailing in its wake.
Robin, with Woad’s help, scrambled to his feet, staring in shock and disbelief at the wreckage of the floor. A noise came through the fresh ocean air from behind them. A long low mournful howl which sent shivers of dread through Robin’s spine. His nose was filled with the smell of musky fur.
“Skrikers!” he yelled, staring at Karya and Woad. “… How?!? How are they flying? Why did no one tell me skrikers can fly?!”
Some distance behind them, gaining fast, were three dark masses. They were only barely clinging to the idea of a dog-shape. From their huge, matted shoulders, each skriker sprouted a pair of long and ragged wings, great in span and as hazy and smoky as the rest of them. Worst of all, Robin saw, the central nightmare held a rider.
Even from some distance, there was no mistaking the long-limbed skeletal silhouette and the glint of luminous green hair.
“Strife!” Karya cried.