by Paul Stewart
‘We tried to fight back. But the mire-pearlers had phraxmuskets and phraxcannon. With our throwing nets and harpoons, we didn’t stand a chance.’ He banged a fist down hard on the table. ‘Our finest warriors were defeated and the council had no choice but to sue for peace.’
He fell still, but his body was taut. And as for his crest, it was flashing so fast and furious now that the colours were a blur. Cade swallowed, uncertain what to say.
‘The mire-pearlers had brought phraxengineers with them,’ Phineal continued. ‘Professors from the Cloud Quarter of Great Glade.’
Cade reddened. His own father had been a professor at the Great Glade Academy – a phraxengineer. Cade had his father’s scrolls of working drawings pinned to the wall above the mantelpiece. They were all he had left to remember him by.
‘These engineers,’ Phineal went on. ‘They dammed our lakes, drained them of half their water, then used phrax-explosives to blast their way into the clam beds.’ Phineal’s voice choked. ‘Only when they had extracted every last pearl, and the Great Blueshell Clam was dead, did they finally leave for good.’
The webfoot breathed in. He surveyed Cade calmly, his anger seemingly spent.
‘Those were dark, dark days. Eventually, with work and care, we managed to repair the worst of the damage. But the clams have never returned,’ he added bleakly. ‘Nor will they. Instead of traders and mire-pearlers, the skytaverns now bring settlers. To Four Lakes. A name on a map. These days its shores are home to goblins, waifs, trogs and fourthlings from all over the Edge. It has become a bustling city in its own right.’ He sighed. ‘And yet . . . And yet . . . Without phrax and the so-called Third Age of Flight, the four lakes would still be . . .’ His crest trembled and turned a pulsating rosy-orange. ‘A paradise.’
He climbed to his feet and crossed to the door. He opened it and stood there, feet splayed and hands gripping the doorframe, as he looked out.
‘Just like here.’
Cade pushed back his chair and joined him. The pair of them stepped outside onto the veranda.
The wind had dropped, the clouds had cleared and the stars in the sky were like sparkling marsh-gems on a blanket of black satin. There was the whoop and chitter of night creatures, the gentle roar of the distant Five Falls, and the sound of soft snoring as Rumblix and Tug slept beneath the cabin in their nest of meadowgrass.
Phineal was right, Cade thought, as the pair of them stared out across the dark waters of the lake. The Farrow Ridges was a paradise.
Of course, with the wild hammerhead tribes in the surrounding forest, and the bloodthirsty white trogs in the caverns behind the falls, the Farrow Ridges had earned the reputation of being a dangerous and barbaric backwater – a reputation his friend, Gart Ironside, was only too happy to play up, embellishing the gruesome tales each time the Xanth Filatine docked at his sky-platform.
‘You love Farrow Lake, don’t you, Cade Quarter?’ said Phineal quietly.
As Cade looked across the still water, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the webfoot’s crest glowing a warm reddish-orange.
‘I do,’ said Cade.
‘Then tomorrow,’ said Phineal, ‘there is something I must show you.’
· CHAPTER FIVE ·
CADE SAT UP in his sumpwood bed. Beyond the window the new day was dawning. The stars were gone, and to the east the horizon was stained pink and orange with the first feathery blush of the coming sun.
Phineal was sitting at the end of the jetty, his webbed feet dangling in the water as he stared out across the lake. His conical snailskin tent was pitched at the water’s edge a little way off. Rumblix was sniffing at its hem, his tail trembling, while Tug, knee-deep in lakegrass, looked on.
Cade pulled on his homespun breeches and padded out onto the veranda. The ironwood planks were cold beneath his feet.
‘Morning, Phineal,’ he greeted the webfoot goblin. ‘Would you care for some breakfast?’
‘That sounds good,’ said Phineal, climbing to his feet and motioning to Cade to follow him to his tent. ‘But first, I propose we go for an early morning swim. As I said last night, there’s something I want to show you.’
The sun had risen above the jagged treeline of the Farrow Ridges and was glinting on the still waters of the lake. Yet as Cade went down the wooden steps and along the stone jetty, he shivered.
A swim? Yesterday he had almost been devoured by a snagtooth, and Phineal was proposing they go for a swim?
Cade jumped down from the end of the jetty onto the lakeshore. The sand was soft between his toes. Rumblix trotted over to him, whiplash tail a blur, and licked his outstretched hands. Tug lumbered over, his hands full of lakegrass, which he was stuffing into his mouth and slowly chewing. Phineal ducked inside his tent and, a few moments later, emerged with a forage-sack, which he emptied onto the ground.
‘A swim?’ said Cade. ‘I’m not sure . . .’
He looked at the items Phineal had spread out at his feet. Fish-hooks, barbed harpoons, a long rope, a small net, a stoppered copperwood pot, a leather gourd with a flexible tube attached to a mask that had glass eye-panels set into it; and a pair of mats that were triangular, made of plaited glade-grass, and had looped raffia straps attached to them. Then, almost as an afterthought, the webfoot untied the ring-shaped stone from his waist and laid it down next to the rest.
‘What are all these things?’ Cade asked.
‘Well, these are for you, Cade Quarter,’ said Phineal, picking up the copperwood pot and unscrewing the lid. ‘So you can accompany me on a swim to the bottom of the lake . . .’
‘The bottom of the lake!’ exclaimed Cade. ‘But how?’
Phineal tipped up the pot, counted out half a dozen shrivelled brown mushrooms into the palm of his hand and dropped them into the gourd.
‘We webfoots call these fenniths,’ said Phineal. ‘They’re a type of water mushroom that live in the shallows of the Shimmerer – the lake of the tusked webfoots, who harvest and trade them. They taste delicious.’ He smiled. ‘But they also have this strange property that makes them invaluable for any visiting outlakers who wish to swim with us. Watch this.’
Wading into the lake, Phineal scooped up a single handful of water and poured it into the gourd. From inside, there came a soft fizzing noise. Phineal rammed a cork stopper down the neck of the gourd and shook the whole lot vigorously.
Slowly, the creased leather began to smooth and go taut. The gourd was being inflated from inside. After a couple of moments, Phineal flicked it with a finger. The sound was hard and hollow, like a drum.
‘Trust me,’ the webfoot told Cade, who was looking at the gourd with a mixture of fascination and unease. He picked up the two glade-grass mats. ‘These go on your feet.’
Cade slipped his feet through the looped straps.
‘This goes on your back,’ Phineal continued and, adjusting the straps of the gourd, helped Cade slip it into place. Next, he picked up the heavy stone and used the tether line to secure it round Cade’s waist. ‘This is my anchor stone,’ he said. ‘Every webfoot has one. We use them to help us keep our bearings when lakes are muddy and visibility is low. But in your case . . . well, you’ll see.’ Then he took hold of the mask which, Cade saw, was attached to the end of the long thin pipe that stuck out of the front of the gourd. ‘And this,’ he said, giving it to Cade, ‘goes on your face.’
As Phineal secured the mask tightly to Cade’s head, Cade was astonished to find his mouth fill with cool, mint-scented air. He sucked it deep down into his lungs. It was the sweetest, freshest air he thought he’d ever breathed.
‘All right?’ said Phineal.
‘Think so,’ said Cade, his voice muffled inside the mask. ‘But what about the snagtooths?’
Phineal’s crest glowed a cool blue as he smiled. ‘Don’t worry about them, Cade Quarter,’ he said. ‘The sun’s up. They’ll be fast asleep. Now, follow me.’ He waded out into the lake. ‘And just keep breathing normally.’
Leaving Rumb
lix and Tug watching from the shore, Cade followed the webfoot goblin. And when, with the water up around his chest, the webfoot kicked off and disappeared down below the surface of the water, so did he.
For a moment, Cade felt disorientated. It didn’t feel right being under the water. He should be spluttering, gasping for breath, and he had to remind himself to do what the webfoot had told him. Keep breathing normally.
Breathe in . . . Breathe out . . . In. Out. Simple as that.
Phineal turned towards him and raised the palms of his hands questioningly. And Cade nodded back.
He was fine.
Phineal swam off again. Able to breathe water like air, the webfoot swam effortlessly, his body rippling up and down as his huge flat webbed feet propelled him forward. His arms trailed at his sides, hands acting as rudders.
Cade tried his best to keep up, but it wasn’t easy – and it certainly wasn’t effortless. The glade-grass flippers worked well enough, but compared to Phineal’s flipper-like feet, they were ungainly. Unlike the webfoot, Cade had to make use of his arms, pushing back the water with cupped hands as best he could. And as for Phineal’s rippling body motion, Cade was incapable of copying it.
Despite all this, as he followed the webfoot down deeper still, Cade began to enjoy the sensation of swimming underwater. Beneath him, the gentle incline dropped away and he found himself swimming over a great chasm. It was like flying. Kicking his legs and sweeping back his arms, he swooped down after Phineal through the crystal-clear water, the heavy stone around his middle helping to counter the buoyancy of the air-gourd on his back.
A cloud of tiny silver fish, thousands in number, swam from left to right, then, as one, switched direction, then switched direction again, like sheets of silk flapping in the wind. Gelatinous mushroom-shaped creatures with long, trailing tentacles glided past. A column of blotch-red henchpike with backspines and jutting lower jaws approached, then swerved away, their mouths opening and closing.
The deeper they went, the darker it became. The water was clear still, but it was as though it had been dyed blue-green, the colour growing more intense as they approached the lake bed. When Cade breathed out, tiny bubbles escaped from a valve in the mask and rose through the water like constellations of shimmering stars.
It was eerily silent down in the shadowy depths. The floor was covered with a jumble of rocks and boulders, their surfaces encrusted with lake-coral, feather-anemones and fire-crustacea that turned the drab stone into a riot of colour. Clumps of waterweed, from sleek tongue-like ribbons to iridescent turquoise fronds, swayed in the water’s ebb and flow.
Cade was spellbound. So many times he’d sat at the end of his jetty looking out across the lake, never for a moment imagining the splendour of what lay below. It was as though he’d entered a different world.
Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of two large sleek creatures with long snouts and leathery ridged backs, fringed with undulating paddle-like fins, lurking in among the watergrass on the lake bed. Cade’s heart missed a beat.
Snagtooths.
Terrified, he looked wildly around, only for Phineal to place a reassuring hand on his arm. The webfoot pointed at the snagtooths, and Cade saw that they were motionless, their heavy-lidded eyes closed.
Phineal beckoned, then turned and swam away, kicking out with his feet in slow, steady strokes. Cade followed him, not daring to look back. The water became colder and currents grew strong. They plucked at his legs and buffeted his side. And when Phineal, arms and legs splayed, came to a halt again, it was all Cade could do to remain hovering in the same spot beside him.
The webfoot pointed downwards with a scaly green finger. Cade frowned. He seemed to be drawing his attention to a shell.
Greyish blue, rooted to the rocks and the size of a two-glader coin, it didn’t look particularly impressive. Was this what Phineal had brought him down here to see? Cade looked more closely. The shell was deep ridged, he noted, and pitted, and in the slight gap between the two halves of the shell he could see the rippling orange frill of the creature inside.
He looked round at Phineal, who smiled and nodded, then pointed to a second shell. And a third. And then to a cluster of ten or twelve a little further on.
Cade peered through the glass panels of his facemask as he and Phineal swam forward. Ahead of them, he saw that the shells grew both in number and in size, until the entire floor of the lake was covered. And between the shells, joining all of them together, was a tracery of bright blue filaments that pulsed as they glowed.
These must be blueshell clams, Cade realized. Thousands of them.
He followed the glowing filaments, swimming beside Phineal over the crowded clam beds. The strands thickened and interlinked, converging on one point in the very centre of the lake, where a huge boulder loomed in the glowing blue light. Ten times the size of Cade’s cabin, it was encrusted with lake-whelks and barnacles, and festooned with fronds of lakeweed and ribbons of kelp.
As they drew closer, Cade saw that it wasn’t a boulder at all, but a colossal clam, bigger by far than all the others. The two huge halves of the shell were almost closed, the ridged line between them open just enough for the orange frill of the clam’s body to spill out and ripple up and down in the chill current.
Cade felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Phineal. He pointed to the gourd on Cade’s back, which was slack now, the air inside it almost all used up. Tearing his attention away from the glowing clam beds, Cade reluctantly followed the webfoot as he kicked for the surface.
As they rose, it got lighter, warmer. Then, with a splash, their heads burst through into the bright late-morning air far above.
Cade pulled the mask from his face and, treading water, turned to Phineal. ‘That clam,’ he said. ‘It was magnificent.’
Phineal nodded, his crest a dark brooding red. ‘The presence of such a blueshell clam in the Farrow Lake is a great gift, Cade Quarter,’ he said. ‘But also a great danger.’
· CHAPTER SIX ·
HOW DID IT go again? Cade went over the chant in his head – the chant that every young Great Glader who had gone through the junior academies of the Cloud Quarter had to recite before dawn class.
Caterbird, Sanctaphrax rock, Great Blueshell Clam,
From Sky and Earth and Water come;
First seeds of life; three Ancient Ones,
Brought from Open Sky by the Mother Storm.
Even now, Cade could hear the chirpy little voices of his classmates as they had chanted the words together. They knew that it was something to do with how life had started in the Edge, but at that time, none of them had really understood what they were saying.
Cade had never encountered a caterbird. The fabled creature began life as a glowing worm that fed on the leaves of lullabee trees, before spinning a cocoon and hatching out as a magnificent crested black and white bird – a bird which, it was said, shared the thoughts of all other caterbirds, both past and present.
The Sanctaphrax rock – that great floating stone, with the ancient city built upon it, and the mighty anchor chain fixing it to the ground – was a different matter. Though Cade hadn’t seen it either, he knew all about it, for the rise and fall of the great city of Sanctaphrax was a major part of the history of the Edge, and he had learned all about it in class.
Back in the First Age of Flight, the city had been the centre of science and learning. But when the Mother Storm had returned, threatening to destroy the rock, the chain that held it in place had been cut – and Sanctaphrax had sailed away. Lost. But not for ever.
For it had returned.
Rumours of the fabled floating rock’s reappearance had reached Great Glade decades earlier, together with stories of Sanctaphrax being resettled by the poor and the dispossessed from all over the Edgelands. And by descenders.
Descenders were intrepid explorers who climbed down the Edge cliff itself into the inky blackness that lay beneath. This scandalized the academics of Great Glade and was
condemned as heresy by the High Professor of Flight, Quove Lentis, who forbade all contact with the city and its new inhabitants. Yet, despite this, the city continued to attract those eager to descend.
Unfortunately for Cade’s father, Thadeus, the first and most famous of these descenders was his half-brother, Nate Quarter. He had disappeared into the darkness on his last epic descent before Cade was even born. Then, fourteen years later, news of his return had reached Great Glade, triggering a purge of the academy by Quove Lentis.
Thadeus Quarter’s name had been the first name on the high professor’s list. Cade’s had been the second. His father had never shared Nate’s views on descending.
Not that that had saved him . . .
Skytaverns didn’t go to Sanctaphrax, and the journey there by other means was treacherous. But even so, Cade dreamed of visiting the floating city one day and meeting the great Nate Quarter for himself.
The caterbird. The Sanctaphrax rock. And then there was the third Ancient One – the Great Blueshell Clam . . .
When Phineal had told him of the destruction of the blueshell clams in the four lakes, Cade was deeply saddened but not surprised. Clams had been gathered for the pearls they contained by Great Glade merchants for centuries, from the steam-pools of the Mire to the wind-canyons of the Northern Reaches, and with little thought to the effect that might have. Only now was Cade beginning to understand just how devastating this mire-pearl trade was to the communities of the Edgelands. His head buzzed with questions.
‘Phineal,’ he said, his brow furrowed and voice questioning. ‘About this clam. How . . .’
But Phineal raised a hand and his crest turned a shade of indigo that Cade was beginning to recognize was the webfoot’s response to potential danger. He was looking over Cade’s shoulder, his hooded eyes narrowed as he stared off along the shoreline.
Cade turned to see a distant figure approaching along the lakeside. It was his friend Celestia riding her prowlgrin, Calix. Cade smiled. Celestia lived with her explorer father, the former skyship-builder, Blatch Helmstoft, out in the Western Woods in what the pair of them called the ‘tree-cabin’ – a description totally inadequate for the magnificent three-storey mansion that was suspended from the branch of a mighty ironwood pine.