The Edge Chronicles 11: The Nameless One: First Book of Cade

by Paul Stewart

  Cade tugged at the broken wire. At first nothing happened. He placed the pliers aside, then pulled a little harder, using both hands. With a squelching sound and a gush of oozing pus that made him feel sick, the wire came free. Cade moved his hand round the leg until he felt the rope and the wooden stake, then slowly, gently, pulled them free as well.

  ‘Well done, Cade,’ Celestia told him. ‘Now, you keep rubbing the poultice in while I prepare the shriekroot.’

  ‘The shriekroot?’ said Cade.

  ‘The poultice is taking away the pain,’ said Celestia, removing the monstrous-looking root from her backpack, ‘but with an infection this bad, only shriekroot can save its life.’

  Celestia drew her knife from her belt, cut off one of the larger nodules of shriekroot, and carefully peeled its skin to reveal the fibrous pulp inside. Then, having removed the glass from the lantern, she took the pliers from Cade and used them to pick up the piece of glistening shriekroot, which she held over the naked flame.

  The root pulp began to sizzle, then glow a deep, pulsating red. It gave off wisps of rich aromatic smoke. Celestia reached out and stroked the underside of creature’s chin. The creature opened its mouth. Huge angular fangs glinted as Celestia placed the red smoking ember of shriekroot on the creature’s tongue and closed its mouth again.

  ‘That’s the way,’ she said, and kept stroking under its chin until it swallowed.

  Cade watched, fascinated, as the veins beneath the creature’s skin began to glow red, standing out in a spreading tracery against the grey pallor of its skin. The red lines coursed throughout the creature’s body until they reached the infected ankle, which glowed, first dark purple, then red, then a yellow tinged with white before fading. Beneath his fingers, Cade felt the heat leave the wound.

  The creature turned its monstrous head towards Cade, and he found himself looking into its small dark eyes. Its lips parted into a twisted grimace that seemed to pass for a smile, and a sound, grumbling and raw, emerged from the back of its throat.

  ‘Master.’

  · CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE ·

  THE CREATURE SLEPT for the rest of the day. Its soft snoring blended in with the gentle lapping of the lake water against the stone jetty.

  Before she’d left that morning, Celestia had helped Cade cut bundles of meadowgrass for the creature’s bedding, which they had laid down beneath the veranda, together with a bucket of lake water and a pot of gladebarley porridge. Until they could work out what sort of creature this was, she had thought it best to offer it only the simplest of food.

  Celestia had set off just before midday. Cade had waved her off, with Rumblix yelping and chittering mournfully from his perch on the veranda rail as he watched Burrlix and Calix gallop away. Then Cade had spent the afternoon scything weeds and digging up stones in the meadowland behind the cabin, in an attempt to clear a plot to begin planting a vegetable garden.

  Every so often, as he strained to move stubborn boulders embedded in the rich earth, he would glance back at the cabin. Beside him, Rumblix, his nostrils twitching, did the same. In the shadow beneath the veranda, nothing stirred.

  At last, having made painfully slow progress, Cade abandoned his stone-clearing efforts for the day and walked back to the cabin. The sun had set and a thin mist hung over the still lake. Now and again, at various points, Cade saw the lake dimple as the lakefish rose to feed. It was as though a pin had pricked the water, and circles spread out – circles that intersected with other circles before flattening out and disappearing.

  Cade propped up his tools – spade, pickaxe, rock-hammer and scythe – against one of the ironwood pillars of the veranda, then walked to the end of the rock jetty. It was quiet; that brief, peaceful moment before dusk when the creatures of the day had retired and the creatures of the night were yet to stir. Cade could hear the soft snoring of the creature behind him, and far in the distance, a yodelling cry that echoed from the forest ridges somewhere beyond the Five Falls. He sat down wearily on the edge of the jetty and closed his eyes.

  The call was melodious and resonant, and filled with a deep longing that, as he listened, made Cade feel inexplicably sad inside. It was the yodelling cry of a lonely banderbear calling out across the Deepwoods, though, it seemed to Cade, with little hope of a reply.

  He opened his eyes and gazed at the beautiful Five Falls in the distance, their waters glistening in the evening light. Then he climbed to his feet and turned back to the cabin, only to stop in his tracks.

  The creature had awoken and emerged from beneath the veranda. It was sitting on its haunches with its back to Cade. The bucket was empty and lying on its side next to an ironwood pillar, but the pot of porridge hadn’t been touched. Instead, the creature was hunched over a great bundle of meadowgrass, which it seemed to be munching its way through.

  At that moment, from overhead, Cade heard a soft, chugging sound and, looking up, he saw a familiar-looking vessel approaching through the evening sky. Steam billowing from its funnel, the small phraxlighter drew to a halt and hovered above Cade. Then Gart Ironside’s head appeared over the side, followed closely by the barrel of a phraxpistol, which was aimed over Cade’s shoulder at the veranda.

  ‘Need some help, neighbour?’ Gart Ironside called down to Cade.

  ‘No, no,’ said Cade hastily, keeping his voice down so as not to alarm the creature. ‘It’s all right, Gart. Everything’s fine . . .’ He glanced back at the creature, which was so intent on its banquet of meadowgrass that it hadn’t noticed the phraxlighter.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Gart replied.

  The phraxlighter hissed and hummed as Gart steered the vessel over the jetty and brought it down to hover above the veranda. Gart stepped down onto the boards, gripping the end of a tolley rope, which he tied to the veranda’s wooden rails.

  Cade walked back along the jetty and approached the steps of the veranda. The creature looked up and, as Cade passed, it flinched as though expecting a blow. Despite the fading light, up close, Cade could clearly see an array of welts and raised ridges on the creature’s back.

  ‘That’s an interesting guest you have there, Cade, my lad,’ said Gart Ironside, greeting him at the top of the veranda. ‘And it’s been many years since I’ve seen anything like it.’

  From behind Cade, Rumblix jumped up onto the veranda in one leap and landed on the balustrade, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth. Gart ruffled the prowlgrin pup’s fur with one hand, and Cade saw that he still held the phraxpistol in the other.

  Gart smiled apologetically. ‘Forgive me, Cade. But I always carry a loaded pistol in my hand when I’m down here, away from my platform – which, I don’t need to tell you, isn’t very often—’

  ‘You know what this creature is?’ interrupted Cade. ‘Celestia and I didn’t. She was going to ask her father.’

  Gart laughed. ‘So you’ve made friends with the old explorer’s daughter, have you?’ he said. ‘And built yourself a cabin, I see.’

  ‘Thorne Lammergyre helped me,’ Cade said.

  ‘The fisher goblin from the hive hut on the west shore,’ said Gart approvingly. ‘Well, you’ve certainly settled down nicely. I needn’t have worried about you, Cade, lad. And in answer to your question, yes, I do know what that creature is.’

  Gart looked down at the creature, which had turned back to the meadowgrass and was grazing contentedly.

  ‘It is a creature from the Nightwoods.’

  Cade frowned. He had heard of the Nightwoods. They lay far to the west, between the Deepwoods and the waif city of Riverrise. It was an area where the forests were in perpetual darkness and were roamed by telepathic waifs, red and black dwarves and strange, half-formed giants that had yet to be named.

  ‘That is a . . . a nameless one?’ said Cade, wide-eyed.

  Gart nodded. ‘Not very old, judging by its size,’ he said. ‘But it’ll grow bigger. How big is anyone’s guess. And as to what it’ll end up looking like, who knows?’ The pilot shrugged. �
��What you’ve got to understand, Cade, is that all life in the Edge comes from the Riverrise spring, but the life seeded by the spring in the Nightwoods is different to that which was seeded in the Deepwoods. Without light, those seeds grew in strange ways. Waifs. Dwarves. And giants like this nameless one – they live and die in the Nightwoods, and no Deepwoods scholars or librarians have ever categorized them. It was only when trade routes were opened up to Riverrise that they were even discovered.’

  Cade looked back down at the creature with its slumped shoulders, scarred back and mouth full of meadowgrass. Somehow, it seemed less monstrous to him now.

  ‘You’ve heard of the Forest of Thorns, and the tunnel that leads through it to the city of Riverrise, I suppose,’ Gart continued.

  ‘Yes. Thorn Harbour,’ said Cade. ‘It’s where the skytaverns dock, isn’t it?’

  Gart nodded. ‘But did you know that Thorn Harbour and the tunnel were built by the red and black dwarves, small, vicious, beak-mouthed goblins?’ He paused. ‘Or rather, by the nameless ones they enslaved.’

  Cade drew a sharp intake of breath and shook his head. ‘It spoke,’ he said quietly. ‘It called me “master”.’

  ‘The slavery of nameless ones was abolished when Riverrise became a free city,’ Gart went on. ‘But in parts of the Nightwoods, it still flourishes. I’m guessing that this one must have escaped from its captors and somehow found its way here . . .’

  ‘To me,’ said Cade.

  The nameless one finished the meadowgrass, then turned and retreated back into the shadows beneath the veranda. Cade smiled as the sound of soft snoring rose up through the boards beneath their feet.

  He had been lucky, he realized. Gart Ironside had lent him tools. Thorne Lammergyre had fed him lakefish and helped him build a cabin. And Celestia . . . She had tended to him when he’d fallen sick, and then befriended him and shown him the wonders of the Western Woods. His friends had helped, tended and looked out for him. Now Cade had the chance to do the same for this nameless one.

  ‘Thank you, Gart,’ said Cade, turning to the pilot.

  ‘What for?’ said Gart.

  ‘Everything you’ve done for me,’ Cade said warmly. ‘And now you’ve come for your tools and your musket . . . I’ve had them too long, but they’ve been so useful.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sure Celestia and Thorne can help me find more . . .’

  ‘No, no,’ laughed Gart, holstering his phraxpistol at last, and shaking Cade by the hand. ‘I haven’t come for those. In fact, keep them, Cade, and with my best wishes. No, I’ve come to say goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye?’ said Cade. ‘But why? Where are you going?’

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve chanced upon a bit of good fortune up there in the ridges above the falls.’ Gart grinned delightedly. ‘And I’m off to Great Glade to sell it to the highest bidder, pay off my debts . . . No more sky platform in the middle of nowhere for me. It’s back to the big steam. The phraxlighter’s packed and ready to go.’ His blue eyes gleamed. ‘Wish me luck, Cade.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Cade. ‘Good luck, Gart. But what is it? What have you found?’

  Gart looked around as if afraid they might be overheard and Cade saw his hand stray to the phraxpistol holstered at his belt. Then he smiled again.

  ‘Call me a cautious old fool, but until I get to Great Glade and shake a rich merchant by the hand, I’ll just call my discovery’ – he strolled over to the phraxlighter and climbed aboard – ‘the nameless thing.’

  · CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO ·

  CADE AWOKE SHORTLY after sunrise. He sat up and looked out of the window. The sky was cloudless and the sun shone down on the Farrow Lake, making its choppy waters glisten and glitter. In the distance the Five Falls stood out against the grey cliff face of the Farrow Ridge, stark white columns of water thundering down into the dark depths of the lake beneath.

  Cade stretched lazily. His shoulders and arms felt stiff from his exertions of the day before, shifting rocks from the plot in the meadowlands behind the cabin. Despite all his hard work, he realized, getting out of bed, the ground looked barely touched.

  But today was a new day, Cade told himself, and he would do better.

  Rumblix stirred as Cade washed and dressed, and watched him sleepily through one eye as he fried a couple of gladefowl eggs in a skillet over the fire, and ate them with a slice of barleybread he’d baked in his simple oven, cut out of the cliff-face wall beside the fireplace.

  Cade collected his tools from the storeroom – the spade, pickaxe and rockhammer – crossed the cabin and opened the door.

  ‘Coming, boy?’ he asked, pausing in the doorway.

  From his perch at the end of the hammock, Rumblix sighed, closed his eye and went back to sleep.

  Cade shrugged, smiled and stepped out of the cabin, leaving the door ajar, then descended the stairs to the rock jetty. At the bottom, he paused to glance underneath the veranda. The nameless one was awake and eating the last of its meadowgrass bedding. It looked up, and their eyes met.

  ‘Enjoying your breakfast, I see,’ said Cade.

  The nameless one lowered its gaze. It balled up another wad of grass and flowers and pushed it into its mouth. Cade pointed towards the meadowlands.

  ‘There’s plenty more where that came from just over there,’ he said.

  Around the rectangle of land he’d marked out by scything down the grass, thick lush meadow pasture shimmered in the breeze. If he could just get rid of the rocks that littered the rich dark earth, he could dig the soil and sow neat rows of vegetables. Blue cabbages and polderbeets. Ochre-beans and glimmer-onions . . .

  Taking the pickaxe in his hands, Cade strode across the meadowlands to his vegetable garden and started digging. He drove the sharp head of the pick into the ground next to a rock, levered it out, then tossed it to one side. He moved on, and did the same with another rock. Then another. He straightened up, leaned against the pickaxe and looked around. He had barely scratched the surface.

  With a sigh, Cade took up the pickaxe again. He removed a couple more rocks. The sun rose higher and he took off his jacket, then his shirt, and continued working.

  The next rock he came to looked manageable enough to start with, just a small nub of stone sticking up above the ground. But when he tried to lever it out of the earth, he discovered that it was much bigger, and went far deeper, than he’d thought. He dug down, gradually exposing more and more of the boulder. Sweat beaded his forehead; it coursed down his chest, his spine. He crouched and wrapped his arms around the rock.

  ‘Tug,’ he groaned. ‘Tug.’

  He strained and grunted. He cursed.

  All at once, a shadow fell across him, and Cade looked round to see the nameless one standing over him. Without making a sound, it stepped forward and gripped the boulder. Cade stepped back as, with its short but powerful legs braced, the nameless one pulled itself upright.

  ‘Tug,’ it grunted.

  Like a tooth being pulled from a gum, the rock creaked, then abruptly came free from the ground in a shower of earth.

  ‘Tug!’ the nameless one growled.

  Hugging the boulder to its chest, it crossed to the side of the plot, swaying as it went, then dropped the boulder on the ground. It turned and lumbered back to Cade.

  ‘Well done!’ Cade exclaimed. He reached out and patted the creature on the shoulder.

  The nameless one flinched and lowered its head. It stared down at the ground, its nostrils twitching, and Cade noticed the white scars that crisscrossed the skin around its nose and ears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Cade, his voice soft. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  The nameless one looked up. ‘Master,’ it said in its low rumble of a voice.

  Cade gestured to another boulder. ‘Tug?’ he said, tapping it with his rock hammer.

  With a throaty grunt, the great creature strode across to the rock. It was smaller than the other one and the nameless one pulled it out of the ground with its bare hands, muttering ‘Tug�
�� under its breath. It pulled up the rock next to it, and the one next to that. Then, squatting down, it picked up all three rocks, strode back across the plot and laid them down carefully next to the first boulder.

  ‘Good!’ said Cade. ‘Good! Lots more to tug!’ He tapped rocks and boulders to his left and his right.

  ‘Master,’ growled the nameless one, and set to work.

  For the rest of the morning the great lumbering creature worked tirelessly, removing the rocks and boulders from the earth and adding them to a growing line along the north, then the east and west sides of the plot of meadowland. It didn’t need Cade’s tools, but simply used its huge hands, scraping away the earth with its yellowed nails and yanking the boulders free with powerful spatula-like fingers.

  ‘Tug,’ it grunted as it worked. ‘Tug . . . Tug . . . Tug . . .’

  Cade laughed. ‘Tug,’ he said delightedly.

  He patted the great creature on his shoulders and this time it didn’t flinch, but regarded him with its deep-set eyes that seemed to sense Cade’s approval.

  ‘You’re a nameless one no longer,’ Cade told him. ‘Your name will be Tug. Tug!’ he repeated, tapping the creature in the middle of its barrel chest.

  The nameless one’s heavy brow knitted together in a frown, then raised to reveal his twinkling eyes. He tapped himself on the chest in imitation of Cade.

  ‘Tug,’ he growled. ‘Tug! Tug!’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Cade, then pointed to himself.

  ‘Master,’ the creature growled.

  ‘No, Cade. Cade,’ he said, jabbing a finger into his own chest.

  The nameless one that was now Tug spread his lips in what Cade could only describe as a crooked smile.

  ‘Cade,’ he growled.

  Just then, there was a yelping cry of excitement and Cade turned to see Rumblix, who must have woken up at last, come bounding across the meadow towards them. Looking up, Tug let out a cry of alarm as the prowlgrin pup bounced up to them. Tug reared up, teeth bared and small eyes rolling, and backed away.