by Paul Stewart
Approaching the middle of the bridge, Cade came to two huge archways, one opposite the other, on either side of the bridge, which served as entrances to narrow passageways between the magnificent buildings. Set upon fluted columns, each arch had a large carved eye at its centre.
Intrigued, Cade went through the arch on the south side of the bridge, and emerged from the shadows moments later onto a broad gantry that jutted out over the river. Leaning on the balustrade, he stared downstream, past the bustling and smoky lower reaches of Low Town and the Docks, where the great city gave way to lush farmland: meadows, orchards and fields peppered with grazing hammelhorn, truffling woodhogs and flocks of squabbling fowl.
He turned, crossed back over the bridge and went through the second great archway. This time, as he reached the north-facing gantry, the sound of rushing water became deafening. Looking down, he saw the turbulent river rushing between the bridge supports, while further upstream, roaring like a wild beast, the mighty torrent cascaded endlessly through the steep gorge that divided the city.
Cade shielded his eyes from the sun and gazed up at the top of the mountain, where the Edgewater River cascaded over the lip of rock at the top of the falls and came crashing down into the roiling pool at the bottom, spray billowing up in great white clouds. He pulled his spyglass from his pocket, put it to his eye and focused. Panning up the sides of the gorge, he made out the series of wooden beams, as broad as tree trunks, that had been hammered into crevices in the rock face and that zigzagged from side to side, from the top of the gorge to the bottom.
‘The “branches”,’ he murmured, remembering the name Tillman Spoke had given these wooden supports. He swallowed uneasily. Spaced wide apart and with water showering down onto them, they looked as if they would test even the most stout-hearted and sure-footed prowlgrin.
‘There you are,’ came a voice, and Cade felt a heavy hand clamp his shoulder.
He spun round to see Thorne and Gart standing behind him on the gantry. Thorne nodded towards the falls.
‘Checking out the high-jumping course, I see,’ he said approvingly. ‘It’s certainly an impressive sight.’
‘Daunting,’ Cade replied quietly. ‘I’m not sure Rumblix is ready for such a challenge.’
‘Remember why you’re here and do your best, Cade,’ said Gart, smiling. ‘It’s all you, or any of us, can do. Talking of which, let’s see how much we can raise with Celestia’s necklace.’
Thorne smoothed down the front of his old military tunic which, Cade observed, had been freshly laundered and pressed. ‘Let me do the talking,’ he told the other two.
The three of them returned to the central walkway, and after walking a little further, Thorne stopped and pointed to a building. It was tall and windowless, with numerous jutting turrets and roof-spires giving it a cluttered but imposing appearance. Standing atop fluted plinths on either side of the grand entrance were huge hexagonal ironwood phraxlanterns, bright with dazzling light, even now, at midday.
‘This is the one,’ he said. ‘The Academy of Phrax Studies.’
The glowing phraxlanterns warmed Cade’s ears as he passed between them, following Gart and Thorne up to the door. Thorne rapped on the darkwood panel. Before the echoing knock had faded away, the door opened slightly, and a gnokgoblin with small darting eyes peered out through the crack.
‘Tradethmen’th entranthe at the rear,’ he lisped.
Thorne steeped forward and wedged his foot in the door before the gnokgoblin could close it. ‘We’re here to see the Professor of Phrax Studies . . .’
‘There are many profethorth of phrakth thtudieth,’ the gnokgoblin responded irritably, glancing down at Thorne’s boot.
‘Professor Landris Bellwether,’ said Thorne amiably enough, though making no move to unblock the door.
‘You have an appointment?’ the gnokgoblin said, then sighed, and Cade sensed he knew he was beaten. ‘You’ll find Profethor Bellwether on the fourth floor,’ he said, and stepped back to allow them to enter the hallway.
Inside, Cade’s eyes widened in amazement. Although the academy had no windows, the interior of the building was ablaze with light. Phraxlanterns of every shape and size jutted out from the panelled walls on ornate ironwood sconces, all glowing brightly. And as the three of them headed for a spiral staircase at the back of the hall, Cade recognized the distinctive scent of toasted almonds that always accompanied the use of phrax crystals – as well as the mighty lightning storms that produced them.
He felt a hard lump in his throat. It was a scent he had grown up with: the scent that had pervaded his father’s academic robes back in the Cloud Quarter.
The entrance hall to the Academy of Phrax Studies was lined with glass cabinets filled with objects that had come into existence since the harnessing of the power of phrax crystals had ushered in the Third Age of Flight. There were, Cade noticed, models of stilthouse factories and foundries, and skycraft of various designs, from tiny phraxlighters to magnificent skytaverns, every intricate detail reproduced in miniature. Cade paused in front of the last cabinet he came to.
Inside it, the history of the darker side of the Third Age was on display. The weapons of war. There was a range of phraxmusket bullets, some long and pointed, some round, some snub-nosed, some grooved; there were phraxcannonballs; there were cluster-grenades and explosive mines. And, in pride of place, raised above the rest on a crystal stand, rested a single lightly rusting metal sphere.
A PHRAXFIRE GLOBE, the card before it announced. The first phrax-explosive device to be used in the Edge. Its inventor, ‘the Armourer’, developed these globes for use by the enemies of the Free Glades. Subsequently, laboratory work carried out on them by Xanth Filatine, High Master of the Knights Academy, ushered in the Third Age of Flight.
Cade shuddered.
How strange it was, he thought, that everything good that had ever come from phrax power had started off with this single weapon. He found himself thinking of the extraordinary phraxmachine that Thorne had constructed from his father’s blueprints, with its four glowing spheres spiralling in orbit around the phraxchamber.
Would his father’s invention herald a new age? he wondered. And if so, what wonders and terrors might it bring . . . ?
‘Come on, lad,’ Thorne called, and turning to see that he and Gart were already heading up the circular stairs, Cade hurried after them.
They climbed the staircase, which spiralled upwards, each flight interrupted by a landing off which long, high-ceilinged corridors ran. Everywhere Cade looked the air was bright – and fragrant – with the glowing phraxlamps. At the top of the stairs they came to a door. Thorne knocked, and it was opened by a gnokgoblin, identical to the one downstairs apart from a pair of half-moon spectacles, which he peered over questioningly.
‘We’re here to see Professor Landris Bellwether,’ said Thorne briskly. ‘He should be expecting us.’
The gnokgoblin frowned, and Cade could see that he too was going to challenge them, but at the same moment there came a voice from inside the study.
‘I am expecting visitors, Deeg,’ it said. ‘See them in.’
The gnokgoblin’s mouth opened and closed indignantly. Thorne brushed past him, and the three of them entered the professor’s study, a brightly lit chamber with sloping ceilings and a varnished wooden floor, where every piece of furniture – desk, chair, couch, chest, bookcase and cabinet – was floating at the end of chains.
A fourthling with slanting eyes, a sharp aquiline nose and a shock of grey hair was reclining on a broad sumpwood couch that hovered in the middle of the room. He was wearing a green velvet jacket and black breeches, but his feet were bare in traditional goblin fashion, while around his neck were several chains, each one with some kind of spectacles or magnifying eyepiece at its end. And lying open on his lap was a large leather-bound book of yellowed barkscrolls.
Smiling vaguely, he looked at each of his visitors in turn before his gaze came to rest on Thorne. ‘I take it you�
�re Rampton’s old militia comrade,’ he said, setting the book aside and climbing to his feet.
‘First Low Town Regiment,’ said Thorne, nodding. ‘We served together in the war.’
Suddenly there was a raucous screech from the corner of the study. Cade looked round to see a scraggy-looking bird of prey with a fiery crest and serrated hooked beak launch itself off a floating sumpwood desk and swoop towards them.
‘Thunderbolt!’ Landris Bellwether barked at the creature, and he tugged hard on the leash in his hand. A barely visible silver chain twanged taut, and Cade saw that it led from the leash to a ring secured around the creature’s scaly ankle.
Its dive interrupted, the bird flapped in mid-air for a moment, then landed on Landris Bellwether’s shoulder, where it eyed the three intruders malevolently.
‘Not the most amiable of pets, vulpoons,’ Landris commented. ‘Or the most obedient, come to that,’ and he pulled back the sleeve of his velvet jacket to reveal an angry-looking scar on his forearm. He tickled the creature under its beak. ‘But Thunderbolt and I have grown used to each other. Haven’t we, boy?’ He turned back to Thorne. ‘I understand from Rampton you have something that might interest me.’
‘A necklace,’ said Thorne.
Gart reached into the inside pocket of his jacket for the wallet, which he handed to Landris Bellwether – keeping a wary eye on the vulpoon as he did so.
Without saying a word, Landris shuffled across to his desk, the vulpoon flapping on his shoulder for balance as he did so, then laid the wallet down. He selected a stubby magnifying-lens from the range of eyewear dangling around his neck and put it to one eye, which he screwed up to keep the lens in place. Then he opened the wallet and removed Celestia’s necklace.
Cade, Gart and Thorne watched the professor intently – as intently as the professor himself was scrutinizing the necklace. Landris Bellwether was in no hurry. Slipping the necklace slowly through his fingers, he examined it pearl by pearl, mire-gem by mire-gem: he even spent time examining the gold clasp, lips pursed and brow creased.
Finally he looked up. Cade and the others waited.
‘It’s certainly a beautiful piece,’ he said, stroking the necklace, seemingly reluctant to give it back. He removed his eyepiece and his eyes narrowed. ‘First Age, I’d say. From the viaduct workshops of the ancient academies of Old Sanctaphrax. Normally, for such a piece, I would offer . . .’ He paused. ‘Two hundred hivers. Two twenty at a push . . .’
Cade’s heart sank. It was less than half the amount they’d been counting on.
‘In normal circumstances, that would be a fair price,’ said Landris, nodding earnestly at Gart. ‘Even for a historic piece like this.’ He frowned. ‘And yet for the famous Thorne Lammergyre, hero of the Glorious Revolution . . .’ He turned to Thorne, and the vulpoon on his shoulder squawked as he reached out with his hand. ‘Five hundred hivers,’ he said, and smiled. ‘And that’s my final offer.’
· CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE ·
THE MATTRESS WAS soft, the dorm was dark and quiet, Cade had eaten well – but he couldn’t get to sleep. Just could not. There was a constant chatter inside his head.
‘Balance. Keep your feet in the stirrups. Shorten the rein and pull back into the leap. Avoid the topple . . . Avoid the topple . . . Avoid the topple . . .’
He tried blocking the words out. He tried counting hammelhorns. He tried to hum the lullaby his mother used to sing to him.
But it was no good. Nothing worked.
‘Avoid the topple . . .’
Cade’s stomach lurched as the image of Rumblix galloping down the falls played out in his head, leaping from ledge to jutting wooden ledge down the sides of the great gorge as Cade clung helplessly to his back. First the stirrups went, then the reins whiplashed from his grasp, and Cade was losing his balance, toppling over as Rumblix and he fell down towards the thundering white torrent below . . .
Cade shuddered, wide awake again. He was clammy with cold sweat. He rolled over, then back again.
It was just no good.
Throwing back the covers, Cade pushed open the double doors and climbed down the ladder from the sleeping closet. It was one of six, set into the copper-wood-panelled walls. Behind three of the other doors, the gyle-goblin grooms – Grint, Grub and Glitch – were snoring rhythmically. Cade padded across the floor to the window, his bare feet feeling the warmth of the stove in the kitchen below coming up through the floorboards.
He looked out of the window at the courtyard below him, where the light of the waning moon was edging the store sheds and cobblestones with silver, and throwing blurred shadows from the prowlgrin practice-wheels. With the very existence of Farrow Lake depending on him, the pressure he felt was almost unbearable.
He had to stay calm, he told himself. Calm and focused.
He stared anxiously at the now familiar wooden contraption, with its water tank and three horizontal wagon wheels. He’d spent hours in the saddle on Rumblix’s back over the previous two days, getting both of them used to leaping from spoke to spoke as the wheels spun and the water poured down onto them.
But had it been enough?
Tillman’s voice, together with those of the gyle-goblin grooms, echoed once more inside his head.
‘Balance! Balance! Keep those feet in the stirrups. Shorten the rein – no, not too much! . . .’
They were trying to be helpful, trying to prepare him for what was about to come, but more than once their instructions had served only to confuse him and send him toppling from Rumblix’s back into the water tank below. And more than once, as he broke the surface, spluttering and coughing, he’d looked up to see Whisp, the head groom, looking down at him, her head tilted to one side.
What was that expression he saw in her clear grey eyes? he wondered. It wasn’t amusement, or sympathy. Was it surprise? Or even disappointment? Cade couldn’t tell. She had barely said two words to him since he’d arrived.
Pulling on his jacket and boots, Cade abandoned the sleeping chamber and descended the staircase to the large kitchen below. The lufwood blazing in the central stove bathed the saddles, harnesses, reins and halters hanging from the ceiling in a purple glow. Cade crossed the kitchen to the door, opened it quietly, stepped outside and set off across the courtyard.
The air was cold and crisp, and smelled of the rain that had only recently stopped falling. The straw was slippery beneath his feet. As he passed the practice-wheels, he trailed his fingers over the surface of the water in the tank, and shivered. Pausing in front of the open-fronted roost-house, he looked up to see Rumblix hunkered down on his perch on the second storey, eyes shut, and snoring softly.
At least one of us is getting a good night’s sleep, Cade thought, and was about to return to the stable quarters when he noticed the lantern glow coming from one of the upper perches. He climbed the zigzag stairs, and found Whisp crouched down beside the old white prowlgrin, carefully oiling his paws.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, looking up. ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’
Cade shook his head as he knelt down next to her. ‘Can’t stop thinking about tomorrow,’ he said.
‘The high-jumping race,’ Whisp said softly, turning her attention back to the old white’s feet. ‘You do realize that nobody’s expecting us to win. Either you or me.’ She glanced back at Cade and he saw a glint in her grey eyes. ‘But we might just surprise a few people tomorrow.’
‘You think so?’ said Cade. He watched Whisp kneading Dominix’s toes with expert fingers.
‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘Dominix here is old. My father hatched him out himself in the Gyle Palace stables. Grint, Grub and Glitch were with him too. They took Dominix with them when the revolution came. Settled down here in Low Town.’ She stroked the white prowlgrin’s flank and smiled. ‘We were raised, Dominix and me, side by side in a sapwine hovel in Barrel-Makers Yard. We understand each other, don’t we?’
Dominix gave a deep growling purr, and swivelled his blue eyes to look
into hers.
‘Which is why we’re going to surprise them in the race.’
‘And what about Rumblix and me?’ said Cade ruefully. ‘You’ve seen me on the practice-wheels, toppling from the saddle enough times.’
Whisp looked up at him, and Cade saw that look again. Surprise? Disbelief?
‘You really have no idea, do you?’ she said, then smiled as she saw Cade’s bewilderment. ‘No idea how good Rumblix is. He’s the finest pedigree grey I’ve ever seen. He has allowed you to ride him, and now your job is that of any good rider: to accept that gift fully.’ Her eyes were bright with passion. ‘You were at his hatching, Cade. The two of you have a bond and you must trust that bond when you ride.’
‘But the practice-wheels,’ Cade protested.
Whisp shrugged. ‘They’re to build up stamina. Dominix needs them at his age, but Rumblix . . .’ She shook her head, her eyes wide with wonder. ‘I’ve never seen a more gifted jumper. And you, Cade Quarter, you understand him. You’re just like Dominix and me.’
Whisp flexed her prowlgrin’s toes, one by one, and rubbed the minty burberry oil in between them, while Dominix purred all the louder.
‘So why do I keep toppling?’ said Cade miserably.
The high-jumping race was tomorrow. Thorne had entered Rumblix and Cade in the scroll of jumpers and riders that morning; Gart had gone to check the best odds at the betting benches, the five hundred hivers tucked away in a concealed pocket of his topcoat.
Everything was riding on Cade and Rumblix’s performance. There was no going back.
And yet, however talented Rumblix might be, Cade still worried that his own inexperience might let them both down.
Cade stared out across the courtyard, over the rooftops of Low Town and towards the distant sound of the thundering gorge. Whisp stood up and leaned towards him, and he felt her breath on his cheek.