by Paul Stewart
Oh, yes, that Vilnix Pompolnius was a strange one, all right …
But what was that?
Quint snapped out of his reverie. Below them, there came the sound of raised voices from the Central Landing. Quint recognized the loudest voice – deep, guttural, with a slight lisp …
It belonged to the leader-elect of the academics-at-arms, Dengreeve Yellowtusk. He was a tall, rangy tufted goblin; a swordmaster with a tunic covered in the red ‘duelling patches’ that showed his prowess with the sword. Dengreeve was a hero-figure to Phin, and Quint had seen him many times in the Eightways.
‘Has it come to this!’ The swordmaster's voice sailed up to Quint and Vilnix as they continued up the staircase. ‘Are the forges of the academy serving gatekeepers ahead of academics-at-arms now?’
‘My gatekeepers need more weapons!’ Daxiel Xaxis's voice rang out defiantly. ‘To defend the academy!’
‘Insolent fromp!’ Dengreeve barked. ‘The academics-at-arms defend all of Sanctaphrax, and what weapons the forges produce are ours, as of right!’
‘As the only remaining hall master, I am the authority here!’ Hax Vostillix's voice joined the argument.
Quint could see Vilnix's white-fanged smile out of the corner of his eye as they climbed on, but he kept his head up and his gaze forward.
‘The Elevation Ceremony is no place for such arguments!’ the hall master hissed. ‘But the gatekeepers must have what they require …’
‘This is outrageous!’ Dengreeve bellowed – but Hax must have raised his staff to dismiss the swordmaster, because the next thing Quint heard was the sound of angry footsteps clattering down the staircase to the Lower Halls.
He and Vilnix were now approaching the top of the staircase, and in the deep shadows ahead of him Quint looked up to see a magnificent blackwood arch. It was formed from two mighty carved banderbears who were positioned on either side of the staircase, their great arms raised above their heads and joined at the top. Every tusk, every claw, every tooth, every hair on their bodies, had been carved with such exquisite detail and accuracy that Quint had to look twice to convince himself that the great beasts weren't real.
This was it. With his heart in his mouth, Quint stepped through the archway and into the vast, echoey Common Hall of the Upper Halls.
The walls were lined with ornately patterned panels, from the wooden-tiled floor right up to the great vaulted beams that spanned the ceiling. The afternoon sun pierced the high shuttered windows, sending shafts of glittering light diagonally through the air. Ahead of them, sprouting from the floor like mighty lullabee trees in a Deepwoods grove were the Common Hall pulpits.
Raffix had told Quint about them, but nothing he'd said had quite prepared Quint for the sight before him. Each pulpit had been carved with unique patterns; a cornucopia of circles and spirals, whorls, wheels, flutes and volutes. Thirty strides tall, they stood, with dais-like platforms at the top, accessible only by flimsy ladders, where forty or so squires and professors could gather at a time.
It was here that the great theories of sky-flight had been hammered out, breakthroughs in stormchasing discussed, and fantastic notions dreamt up and put to the test. The hairs on the back of Quint's neck stood on end. This was the heart of the Knights Academy and it was every bit as magnificent as he had hoped it would be.
Just then, he felt a sharp dig in the ribs. It was Vilnix. He nodded towards the huge pulpit in front of them, which was illuminated by a glittering shaft of light. The pulpits on either side of it were crowded with squires all peering down at them, while the one in front held the thirteen knights academic-in-waiting and the thirteen high professors.
Quint recognized several of the high professors from their visits to lecture in the Lower Halls. There was grim-faced Graydle Flax and the smiling Fluvius Hume. Others, he knew only by reputation. Fabius Dydex, for example, was unmistakable.
The most brilliant scholar of his generation, Fabius would have been a great knight academic, but for a leg crippled in a riding accident. He used a silverwood cane, rumoured to contain a sword and – unusually for a high professor – wore upper body armour and had several duelling patches on his robes.
Everywhere he went, Fabius Dydex was accompanied by his two tame quarms, Squeak and Howler, who, even as Quint looked on, chattered from the high professor's shoulders. Many believed that Fabius was a new ‘Linius Pallitax’ and would one day become Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax. Quint, although a little nervous, couldn't wait to meet him.
The knights academic, on the other hand, were unfamiliar. All the old faces had long gone, to be replaced by nervous-looking senior squires, hastily knighted. They looked uncomfortable in their newly-minted armour which, despite the forge masters’ best endeavours, seemed too large for their bony frames. Their faces, too, Quint thought, looked pale and drawn from the strain of awaiting their ever more desperate stormchasing voyages.
From the pulpit, Graydle Flax motioned for Quint and Vilnix to approach.
‘Welcome, squires, to the Upper Halls, where all are equal in their service to Sanctaphrax,’ intoned the high professor in a soft yet sonorous voice as Quint and Vilnix reached the top of the ladder and stepped into the pulpit. ‘Please present your miniatures.’
Their hands shaking with nerves and excitement, the two squires reached for the tilderleather pouches at their belts, and removed their tiny lufwood portraits. They held them out to the high professors and knights academic, who gathered round.
In the palm of his hand, Quint's portrait seemed almost to glow as he looked down at it. How young he looked, despite the shiny armour; how optimistic and carefree, despite the dark intensity in his indigo eyes. Behind his head, the Loftus Observatory glinted against the snowy background.
Quint smiled. He had made it to the Upper Halls! And who knows, he thought, one day maybe he too could become a knight academic.
Next to him, Vilnix looked down at the portrait in his hand. The artist had captured the thin determined mouth with its hint of an upward curl. The eyes were dark and narrowed, as if against the light, and the lower jaw was thrust defiantly forward.
As he waited for the high professor to continue, Vilnix smirked. Now at last, he could really begin to show these haughty knights academic and high professors a thing or two. First as an apprentice high professor, then a high professor, and then …
‘Now present your swords,’ Graydle said in his calm, hushed voice.
Quint drew out the heavy, curved sky pirate sword that his father, Wind Jackal, had given him, and a wave of pride mixed with sadness washed over him. If only his father could be here to witness this, he thought.
Vilnix drew the thin rapier from the scabbard at his belt, the razor-sharp blade making hardly a sound as it slid out. An intense feeling of expectation mingled with delicious malice lit up his eyes.
He was hungry for power, and these fools were giving him the keys to the larder!
Two knights academic stepped forward carrying small glowing braziers suspended by silver chains in their gauntleted hands. Each contained a thimble of glowing ironwood sap, bubbling in the flames. Graydle took the lufwood miniatures and applied the ironwood sap to their un-painted sides, filling Quint's nostrils with the smell of toasting pine cones as he did so. Then, taking care to align them, the high professor pressed the portraits gently into place on the pommel of each sword.
‘Welcome, Quintinius Verginix, knight's squire,’ he smiled.
‘Welcome,’ the knights and high professors echoed his words.
‘Welcome, Vilnix Pomp-olnius, knight's squire.’ Graydle fixed the squire with a level, unblinking gaze.
Vilnix's smirk froze on his face.
Had he misheard? A knight's squire? But he was supposed to be an apprentice high professor …
‘Welcome,’ the knights and high professors’ voices sounded as one.
‘Y … you're mistaken … surely …’ stuttered Vilnix, his face turning ashen grey. ‘The Hall Master of High
Cloud promised me a high professor apprenticeship …’
‘There will be no high professor apprenticeships until further notice,’ said Graydle Flax gravely. ‘Sanctaphrax is sorely in need of knights academic and their squires.’
Around him, the pale faces of the knights academic-in-waiting nodded solemnly.
‘But Hax, he told me …’
‘The orders come from Hax Vostillix himself,’ said Graydle, turning to leave. ‘Here, we are all equal in our service to Sanctaphrax.’
A stunned Vilnix looked on as the knights and high professors left the pulpit one by one. His stomach knotted and a cold fury gripped him. What good was it becoming a knight's squire? That path led to a knighthood, stormchasing – and certain death. You just had to look at the faces of those stupid fools in their ill-fitting armour to see that.
Hax Vostillix had promised him a high professor apprenticeship for all the favours, all the information, all the little services he'd performed for him … Why, Vilnix hadn't even bothered to read his name on the graduation list because it was a foregone conclusion …
What a fool he'd been! He could see that now.
Next to him, that idiot Quint was grinning from ear to ear, actually pleased that they'd both received what amounted to a death sentence.
Well, if anyone was going to die, Vilnix thought, turning away from Quint, who was following the last of the knights down the pulpit ladder clutching that stupid ungainly sky pirate sword of his, it wasn't going to be Vilnix Pompolnius.
He narrowed his eyes as he stepped into the shaft of light that lit up the centre of the pulpit. A thin, wolfish smile spread across his face as a plan began to take shape in his mind … A brilliant plan. A plan worthy of that devious, lying old fraud Hax Vostillix himself!
•CHAPTER SIXTEEN•
THE CLOUDSLAYER
i
The Gantry Tower
Whumf! Whumf! Whumf! Whumf!
Quint looked up. High above him, the old sky ship strained at its tether as it circled the Gantry Tower. With each rotation, it bucked and lurched as the gusts of icy wind buffeted its ancient timbers.
Whumf! Whumf! Whumf!
The armoured figure of a knight academic-in-waiting stood on the bridge battling with the flight-levers as he struggled to control the vessel. As Quint watched, it suddenly listed to one side, and he could make out the chipped gold lettering on the old sky ship's prow: the Cloudslayer.
One day, thought Quint, that would be him up there training for a voyage. And, judging by the rate at which the academy was losing its knights, perhaps sooner than he imagined. Only yesterday, young Hemphix Root had been chosen as the next knight to depart, and was now waiting anxiously in his tower for Hax to confirm the arrival of the Great Storm by ringing the Great Hall bell.
Quint wondered which of the Upper Hall squires would take his place. It wouldn't be him, that much was certain, not if he couldn't even master a solo descent.
‘Move, Sky curse you,’ Quint grunted as he struggled with the frozen winch-lever. ‘Move!’
Beneath him, his prowlgrin – suspended in its harness from ropes which hung down from the gantry pole above – squirmed and kicked out. Tash was a fully-grown yearling now, set apart from the other Knights Academic mounts by its lustrous orange coat and magnificent chin-mane. When the gatekeepers had taken over the Hall of Grey Cloud, the Knights Academic had withdrawn their precious prowlgrins to the safety of temporary roosts in the wood stores beneath the Upper Halls. That oaf, Daxiel Xaxis, had protested but the knights and high professors had forced him to back down. Now Tash and his fellow prowlgrins were spared the punishing work on the great treadmills.
‘Easy, boy,’ Quint said, patting the creature reassuringly with his left hand as he continued to battle the stubborn lever with his right.
This wasn't the way it was meant to be, he thought bitterly. He'd listened intently to Fabius Dydex's lecture in the pulpit the evening before, not allowing himself to be distracted by the tame quarms that skittered and squeaked from the high professor's shoulders as he spoke.
A knight academic must harness and lower his prowlgrin and himself into the Twilight Woods, a skill mastered by long hours of practice in the Gantry Tower …
And so, bright and early the following morning, Quint had left his spacious study in the Upper Halls, collected Tash, and made his way to the top of the tall, wooden Gantry Tower, to do just that. He'd run through Dydex's instructions in his head, and then begun.
It had all gone well – at first.
To start with, while still on the gantry, he was to buckle his prowlgrin into the hanging-harness and attach it to a gantry pole – which he'd done. Next, he was to climb up into the saddle – which he'd done. Then, he was to spur his prowlgrin on, so that it leaped into the air from the gantry – which he'd also done. And now, hanging in the air from the projecting gantry pole, like an oozefish on the end of a fishing line, he was supposed to release the winch-lever and lower himself slowly and gracefully down the tower. But that he simply could not do.
Not that he had any intention of giving up … Quint twisted round and seized the lever.
‘One, two, three,’ he muttered grimly. ‘Pull!’
He tugged at it with every ounce of strength. There was a grinding noise and a loud crack as the lever shot across, followed by a sudden jolt, and the rope began to feed out at last. Slowly – though since Tash was still kicking out, not very gracefully – prowlgrin and rider descended through the air.
‘Easy, Tash. It's all right,’ said Quint, leaning down to stroke the snorting, bucking creature round its sensitive nostrils as he continued to let the rope slip round the pulley-wheels. ‘Easy there, boy.’
All at once, as the pair of them reached the halfway mark of the tall tower, the prowlgrin suddenly stopped struggling. Quint patted him warmly, realizing that his mount had been reacting neither to the dizzy height, nor to being suspended so precariously, but rather to his own agitation. Now that the winch was working and he had calmed down, Tash, too, was fine. And as he lowered himself still further, Quint could imagine the pair of them descending from his stormchasing sky ship, down into the Twilight Woods below …
Whumf! Whumf! Whumf!
Above him, the Cloudslayer juddered as it circled the Gantry Tower. Once it had been a proud sky pirate ship, soaring through the skies. But its days of plying a lucrative trade – anything from buoyant timber to illicit mire-pearls – between the Deepwoods and Undertown were long behind it. Now it was fit only to be a training vessel for young knights to perfect their skills while they awaited the delivery of their sleek new ‘stormchasers’ from the cradles of Undertown.
Below Quint, as the icy wind whistled through the ropes, the landing-platform at the bottom of the Gantry Tower came closer.
Now for the tricky part, thought Quint, going over the high professor's words in his head. Harness release must be smooth but quick, freeing the prowlgrin to land cleanly. Quint tugged on the harness release, once, twice … The worst fate that can befall a knight is to be caught in his harness, suspended above the forest floor. Dydex had paused for a moment before continuing. Suspended for all eternity!
Quint shuddered and pulled desperately at the catch. It clicked open and the harness fell away, just as the rope snapped taut. With a whinny, Tash dropped to the platform on powerful legs.
‘Good lad!’ Quint exclaimed, quickly dismounting. ‘Well done!’
He tickled the creature through its long, luxuriant mane. Tash gave a long, growling purr and rolled its eyes with pleasure.
‘Why, you're just a big, soppy pup, aren't you, boy?’ Quint laughed, and was about to lead the prowlgrin off the landing-platform when a high, metallic screech from above made him look up.
The Cloudslayer had flipped completely over and shot up directly above the Gantry Tower. The screech was coming from the chain which, now stretched almost to breaking-point, was only just managing to prevent it from disappearing into Open Sky.
As Quint anxiously watched, the knight academic tumbled down from the upturned helm, the black parawings strapped to his back billowing out like the wings of a giant ratbird. With his heavy armour accelerating the descent, it was all the knight could do to twist round and brace himself before he crashed into the landing-platform in a flurry of snow and splintered wood.
Quint raced over to the stricken figure. He crouched down, clicked back the collar fastenings and pulled the heavy helmet from the knight's head. A familiar face smiled up at him.
‘Raff?’ Quint said.
The young knight sat up. ‘Quint, old chap!’ he exclaimed. ‘Didn't see you there.’ He nodded across at the prowlgrin. ‘Getting in a bit of harness-practice, eh? Good show.’
‘Yes, I was,’ said Quint. ‘But … but you, Raff. You're in full armour …’
Raffix grinned lop-sidedly and pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘You noticed,’ he said with a laugh. ‘It's what all the best knights academic-in-waiting are wearing, I hear.’
‘You? A knight?’ Quint was taken by surprise.
‘That's right, old chap,’ said Raffix. ‘Well, almost, that is …’ He struggled to his feet and brushed the snow from his armour. ‘When old Hemphix sets off, they've chosen yours truly to take his place as a knight academic-in-waiting.’
‘But Raff—’ Quint began. His friend held up a gauntleted hand to silence him.
‘I know, I know,’ he said, looking up at the Gantry Tower, where a group of hall servants had emerged from the upper gantry and were busy winching the upturned Cloudslayer back down. ‘The prospects for stormchasing don't look too good, I'll concede …’