by Paul Stewart
The two logworms wheezed by no more than two strides away, the ring of eyes around their mouths heavy and lidded as they went past. Cade and Phineal watched them disappear into the undergrowth.
All at once, from just behind him, Cade heard a noise – a muffled footfall, followed by a sudden movement, and a blow to the side of his head that was so hard Cade saw a rush of shooting stars.
Then everything went black.
· CHAPTER NINETEEN ·
CADE AWOKE TO find himself swaying from side to side. He felt giddy and sick, and his head throbbed painfully at a point just above his right ear. He went to rub it with his fingertips – which is when he discovered that he couldn’t move his arms.
He opened his eyes, looked around blearily. Then tried to cry out, but couldn’t do that either.
He was gagged and hanging upside down, suspended from a length of bark-stripped branch to which he’d been bound by the ankles and wrists. Two hefty hammerhead goblins were carrying him, one behind and one in front, the ends of the branch resting on their shoulders. Ahead of him, two more hammerheads were carrying Phineal, who had been trussed up just the same. And when Cade craned his neck and looked back, there too was Tug, strapped down to the deck of the Caterbird, which was being towed by four more hammerheads.
Cade’s head slumped back. There was nothing he could do. Nothing any of them could do.
As the goblins continued through the forest, Cade stared upwards. The sun had set and the patches of sky behind the interlocking fretwork of branches had turned to deepest indigo. Halter bats, with their pointed ears and stalk-eyes, glided from tree to tree on broad leathery wings. And some while later, he spotted a woodcat crouched on an overhead branch.
The creature looked up from the lemkin it had just killed and hissed at the line of goblins passing beneath it – a mistake, as the next moment it fell, its neck pierced by a barbed hammerhead arrow. The woodcat toppled down to the forest floor, the lemkin still clutched in its claws. Just in front of Cade, a hammerhead bent down and proceeded to stuff both creatures into his bulging forage-sack.
Cade sighed. He had no idea how long he’d been tied up like this – although if the numbness of his feet and hands was anything to go by, it had been a considerable time.
It was growing darker by the minute, yet the hammerheads lit no lanterns or lamps. Instead, without easing their pace, they marched on, their keen eyesight and keener sense of smell guiding them through the forest.
They had distinctive brow tattoos, Cade noticed. Dark, jagged blocks of black that resembled tree-lined ridges, and tunics festooned with animal bones and teeth, each stitched firmly into place to form a kind of eerie ivory-coloured body armour. And they were heavily armed too, with serrated broadswords, double-headed axes and blackwood bows, together with quivers full of white-feathered arrows.
The smell of acrid woodsmoke was the first sign that they were nearing their destination. Then there were sounds. Chopping. Hammering. The murmur of voices. And then, as they left the dense forest and entered a clearing, the yellow glow of lamps hanging at the entrance to a tall hive-tower.
As they approached, the tilder hide at the doorway swung back, and dozens of goblin young’uns came running out to greet the returning warriors. Laughing and grimacing, they egged one another onto poke the three prisoners with sticks – until they were chased away by the goblin matrons who had emerged from the hive-tower to see what the hunting party had brought back to eat. Those with bulging forage-sacks handed them over to the females, who scuttled back inside to turn the animals they’d killed into diced meat for the stew pot and skinned pelts for coats, blankets and rugs.
The hammerheads carrying Phineal entered the tower first, and, glancing back, Cade saw the four hammerheads towing the Caterbird tie the skycraft to one of the ironwood staves that secured the base of the hive-tower. Strapped to the foredeck, Tug was sound asleep, and the hammerheads didn’t disturb him. Then the hammerheads carrying Cade pushed aside the tilder hides and stepped into the hive-tower.
Cade looked around him as he was carried inside. With its wicker framework, raffia-mat walls and central fire, the place was familiar. So was the smell – a mixture of woodsmoke and hammelhorn grease.
He had been a guest in a hive-tower very similar to this one once before. That tower had belonged to the Shadow Clan of the High Valley Nation. He and Celestia had rescued one of the clan’s young’uns from a bloodoak and been rewarded by the elders with hammerhead hospitality and bronze rings that marked them out as honorary clan members.
‘Put them down over there,’ barked a tall, ancient-looking goblin with leathery skin that was almost completely covered in blurred tattoos. He wore a feathered cloak with a collar of snowbird beaks that radiated out from his neck in a spiked ruff. In his hand he carried the carved copperwood staff of a clan chief.
Cade was lowered to the ground beside the central fire, his head throbbing worse than ever. Phineal was set down next to him. The two of them lay on their sides, arms and legs still pulled up above their heads. No one came to unbind them, and some kind of argument was in progress on the far side of the fire. The clan chief stood at the centre of the ring of warriors as each spoke in turn.
‘They don’t look like the skyfarers . . .’ one ventured.
‘Looks can deceive. The Stone Clan of the Low Valley Nation warned us to be wary of wanderers . . .’
‘I say we make a fire of them – tie them to flametrees and watch them fly . . .’
‘The Nightwoods creature too . . .’
‘And their skycraft.’
Voices were raised in agreement, only for the clan chief to silence them by pounding the foot of his staff on the ground.
‘Enough!’ he said. ‘We cannot take any chances – not after what the skyfarers did to the Stone Clan.’ The clan chief turned and looked across the tower to where Phineal and Cade lay, bound and gagged, helpless. ‘But we are not savages like the skyfarers,’ he snarled. ‘We will tie them to flametrees, but we will kill them first.’
The clan chief pointed his staff at two of his warriors, who pulled out daggers from their belts.
‘Make it quick and painless,’ he instructed. ‘Baahl, chief of the Bone Clan of the High Valley Nation, has spoken.’
The two warriors approached Cade and Phineal from the other side of the fire. Cade could see the firelight glinting on their bone armour, and on the blades of the daggers in their hands. He wanted to scream, to lash out with his fists and feet, but he could hardly move.
The first hammerhead knelt down and roughly rolled Cade over onto his back. Then, raising the dagger in one hand, the hammerhead reached down and tore Cade’s tunic open, his forefinger locating Cade’s rapidly beating heart.
Cade screwed his eyes shut and tense as he waited for the blow to fall.
And waited . . .
Nothing. Just the crackle of the central fire in the hushed hive-tower. He felt a tug at his throat and opened his eyes. The warrior had lowered his dagger and was examining the brass ring on the tilderleather cord that Cade wore around his neck.
‘A clan ring,’ he said, looking back over his shoulder at his chief. ‘This is no skyfarer . . . Unless he stole it.’
Cade desperately shook his head from side to side, and beside him, Phineal’s crest glowed red then purple, then red again.
‘Let them speak,’ said the clan chief, approaching.
The hammerhead warrior raised his blade and cut through first Cade’s gag, then Phineal’s.
‘I didn’t steal the ring!’ Cade blurted out. ‘I was given it! I am a friend of the Shadow Clan of the High Valley Nation,’ he went on, hardly pausing for breath. ‘I rescued the clan chief’s son from the tarry vine . . . I mean the strangle vine,’ he corrected himself, remembering the hammerhead name for the deadly creeper. ‘The strangle vine and the tree of blood.’
‘We are from the Farrow Lake,’ Phineal added. ‘The skyfarers of which you speak are no friends of ours. M
y webfoot brothers were ambushed by them in the Grey Gorges beyond the ridges to the south-west . . .’
‘That is the territory of the Stone Clan of the Low Valley Nation,’ said the clan chief. ‘They have suffered much at the hands of the skyfarers since they invaded their lands.’ He nodded to the hammerhead warrior, who proceeded to cut the tilderleather straps binding Cade and Phineal.
His arms free now, Cade rubbed life back into his numbed hands and legs. Phineal did the same.
The clan chief ushered them to sit down on tilder rugs by the fire. The clan formed a circle around them, while the chief called for food and drink for the ‘friend of Shadow Clan and his companion’. He could not apologize enough . . .
‘Shadow Clan are eyes and ears of the two nations,’ he explained. ‘They roam the farthest of all the clans, and they have told us of you Farrow Lakers. I am sorry we did not recognize you as such.’
‘We webfoots have only recently arrived,’ Phineal said with a shrug as the food and drink arrived – platters of broiled meat, bowls of fried gladebeet, flagons of woodale and water. ‘But we intend to stay and, like you, defend our home from the mire-pearlers.’
‘Mire-pearlers?’ said the chief, exchanging looks with his warriors. ‘So it’s pearls that these skyfarers are after.’
‘They made slaves of the Stone Clan warriors they captured,’ said one of the hammerheads, ‘and are holding them in their great phraxship. But we knew such a vessel was too large for mere slavers.’
‘A phraxship?’ said Phineal, his crest glowing with alarm. ‘My webfoot brothers reported being attacked by phraxsloops, maybe three or four in number, but nothing larger.’
‘Those are their scout ships,’ explained the clan chief. ‘Hoverworms compared to the mighty logworm that is their phraxship. It has powerful weapons from the great city of the glades. Shadow Clan reported that it had turned away from the gorges and was steaming to the east . . .’
Phineal’s crest turned a colour Cade had never seen before – a shade of dark, storm-cloud grey. The webfoot shuddered.
‘Towards the Farrow Lake,’ he said. ‘This is worse than I feared. With a phraxship that size, they’ll be carrying weapons, phraxengineers and more than enough slaves to rip every last pearl from the clam beds and leave the lake in ruins. We’re not facing a skirmish with a few mire-pearlers,’ said Phineal grimly. ‘We’re facing an invasion.’
· CHAPTER TWENTY ·
GART IRONSIDE’S PHRAXLIGHTER hovered in the misty midday air. Its phraxchamber hummed softly, and a thin wisp of steam rose from its funnel and wound its way round the carving of the hoverworm at the prow. Below the vessel, a sliver of glowing red nestling among the jumble of boulders on the High Farrow Ridge was the only sign of the great network of caverns that lay beneath.
A rope ladder unfurled over the side of the phraxlighter and dropped down into the darkness. Locking the flight levers into position, Gart emerged from the small wheelhouse and climbed down onto the rope ladder, then descended carefully, rung after swaying rung. He was followed by Thorne the fisher goblin, then Blatch Helmstoft, and finally, Cade. Each of them had sturdy packs strapped to their backs.
Stepping onto the ladder, Cade glanced beneath him. His stomach lurched.
Easy does it, he told himself. One rung at a time.
As Cade climbed down into the narrow fissure in the rock, he passed through a shaft of daylight that penetrated the cavern below. Anchored to the cavern roof above, and descending just to his right, was a long, pale yellow stalactite, its pitted surface glinting and, at its tapered end, a large red jewel set into the encrusted rock. As the shaft of daylight hit it, the jewel refracted the light into a deep red glow, which gave the cave below its name.
The Cavern of Blood.
That was what the white trogs who inhabited the subterranean system of tunnels and caves called it. For them, this was a place of reverence, where they would gather each dawn to witness the miraculous transformation of this, the highest of their many caverns.
It was this cavern that Gart Ironside had stumbled upon a little over a year ago now, and from which he had removed the sacred jewel in the hope of selling it for a fortune in Great Glade. But the phraxpilot had had a change of heart and replaced the jewel – and just in the nick of time, saving Cade, Celestia, Blatch and Thorne from gruesome sacrifice at the hands of the secretive and superstitious white trogs and their all-powerful queen.
Yet from that first inauspicious encounter an unlikely relationship had begun to grow between the Farrow Lakers and the trogs. And the reason for it was Celestia’s cave-cake – a sweet slab of granulated woodwasp honey and mint charlock, perfect for staving off hunger on long cavern explorations. She had put some in her father’s pack, wrapped up in oiled paper. When he was captured, the white trogs had found and eaten the cave-cake – and were astounded.
Down in the subterranean caverns, they had tasted nothing quite like it before. And they were desperate for more. In return for slabs of cave-cake, the white trogs were prepared to trade crystals of outstanding beauty and an array of aromatic cave mosses and lichen. And so, once a month, Gart would lower the rope ladder and descend into the glowing red light of the Cavern of Blood with a bulging pack on his back, and trade the cave-cake that Celestia had taught him to make.
It was the first connection with the outside world the white trogs had had for centuries. How fortunate it was, Blatch Helmstoft had observed, that the white trog queen had a sweet tooth.
As Cade climbed past the jewel, he felt the rope ladder tense and jolt beneath him, and he looked down to see that Gart had reached the cavern floor and stepped off the bottom rung. And as he continued to descend, there was another jolt, and then another, as Thorne and Blatch did the same.
Translucent air shrimps with bulbous bodies and multi-eyed heads drifted towards Cade, their long thin feelers trailing over his skin as he continued his shaky descent. Slime snails moved sedately over the surface of the surrounding walls, up and down, leaving iridescent trails behind them.
Stepping down to the floor of the cavern at last, Cade looked around. It was dark and gloomy, the air chill and dank. The red light was much dimmer now than the blood-like glow of dawn, but soon his eyes grew accustomed to the shadows. Gart, Thorne and Blatch had taken off their packs and were removing slabs of cave-cake from them. As Cade did the same, he remembered Celestia’s parting words to him. She had taken Tug back to the tree-cabin in the Western Woods to recover, while Phineal had returned to Fifth Lake Village to organize a webfoot skycraft patrol.
‘With or without the white trogs,’ she had said, her green eyes flashing, ‘I am staying to fight for the Farrow Lake.’
His backpack empty, Gart turned and crossed to a low arch on the far side of the cavern, where he picked up an opalescent snail shell that lay at its base. He put the opening of the shell to his mouth and blew hard. The air filled with a deep sonorous sound that echoed down the tunnel beyond. It was answered, moments later, by a similar sound from somewhere far below.
Gart placed the shell back on the ground and returned to the others. ‘If the hammerhead tribes are to be believed,’ he said, ‘we don’t have much time to organize our defences.’ He eyed the stacks of cave-cake at their feet. ‘I only hope we can convince the trog queen to support us.’
Thorne nodded. ‘If the mire-pearlers are as strong as I fear, we need all the help we can get.’
Just then, there was a flurry of movement at the entrance to the cavern. The four Farrow Lakers turned to see one, then two, then a dozen more immense white cave-spiders emerge through the archway with white trog riders perched upon the curved saddles on their backs.
Another blast on a shell sounded from somewhere beyond the cavern, and moments later the largest spider of all emerged through the entrance. Seated on the tall latticed saddle that rested on its thorax, plaited silver thongs securing it round the abdomen and to each of the creature’s eight legs, was the queen of the white trogs.
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She sat tall and upright, her crystal-shard necklace and spiked crown glinting. Around her shoulders was a long snailskin cloak, clusters of shells emitting flutelike sounds, while beneath it, flowing spidersilk robes glowed in the muted red light.
The white trog queen eyed them imperiously, as did the cave-bat which had swooped in and perched on her arm. She flicked the reins and her spider stepped forward. As it did so, the cave-bat let out a high-pitched whistling cry and flapped its papery wings to regain its balance. The queen raised a hand and stroked it gently until it folded its wings and fell still. She turned to her guards and made a clicking sound with her tongue. The guards lowered their crystal spears, and the queen blinked twice, her painted red eyelids flashing as she did so. Then she cleared her throat.
‘You bring much sky sweetness from the upper world,’ she observed, eyeing the slabs of cave-cake on the cavern floor. ‘Fortunately, we have ample crystal to trade for it.’
‘This time we have a different price, your majesty,’ said Blatch, stepping forward – only to be stopped by one of the guards, who lowered the jagged shard of crystal in his hands and jabbed the pointed end into the professor’s chest. ‘I . . . that is, we,’ he said, looking back and gesturing with a sweep of his arm to the others, ‘have need of your help.’
‘There are evil-doers in the upper world who are heading to the Farrow Lake,’ Thorne broke in. ‘They are called mire-pearlers,’ he said grimly. ‘And they mean to destroy the Farrow Lake.’
The trog queen’s lips pursed, turning her mouth to two thin white lines.
‘It was the hammerhead tribes of the Western Woods who alerted us to the danger, your majesty,’ said Cade. ‘Many hammerheads have been taken and are being held as slaves.’
The queen reached for the cave-bat on her arm and tickled its ears, then stroked under its chin, her eyes fixed on the top of its little skull-like head. Then she lifted her gaze and surveyed them one by one, her expression impassive. All around her, the mounted guards gripped their crystal-shard lances, waiting for a clicked command.