‘This one’s for my father,’ he said as he unfastened his lightbox and slipped his crystal into the twilight glow inside. ‘And this one’s for Rudd,’ he added, sliding the second crystal in beside the first.
Now, there was one final thing to do, he thought, returning his attention to the phraxlamp inside the wooden lightchest.
Just then, from the room below, there came sounds of movement. Nate froze. Had Grint Grayle returned? Had he pulled the mirror door shut behind him … ?
• CHAPTER EIGHT •
‘Stop, thief!’ The anguished bellow, like the howl of a wounded tilder, echoed up the staircase and filled the attic.
Nate looked round. Apart from the stairs, the only way out was the window with the shutters. He leaned forward and grasped the lid of the lightchest. Then, in one smooth movement, he turned the oilflow pin of the phraxlamp half a turn to the right and realigned the feed valve. He quickly closed the lid. The bellowing grew louder.
It was Grint Grayle.
He was already on the bottom stair and heading up. Nate could hear him cursing under his breath. Turning on his heels, he dashed across to the window. He slipped the bolts, pulled the shutters open and crawled out onto the ledge.
Jutting out into the air beyond was a stout wooden beam, at the end of which was a rope and pulley. Arms outstretched, Nate walked along the great beam, trying hard not to look down. He crouched and reached for the rope. It had a hook on one end and, far below, a counterweight at the other. This must be how the lightchests were lifted from the ground up to the attic, Nate realized. Now it was his means of escape.
‘Whoever you are, you’re making a big mistake! Nobody robs Grint Grayle and gets away with it …’
Nate grasped the hook and swung down. For a moment he hung there. Then, with a rusty squeak from the pulley, he began to descend. Above him, he heard the mine sergeant stomping across the attic floor. A moment later, looking up, he saw Grint Grayle’s furious face appear at the window. His eyes were blazing, his bony cheeks bloodless with rage, his whole face contorted as he bellowed down at the fleeing lamplighter.
‘Nate Quarter! I might have known!’ He cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Guards! Guards!’
Nate glanced down, half expecting to see the hammerheads waiting to grasp him the moment he set foot upon the ground. But there was no one there. No one in the sergeants’ mess had heard Grint Grayle above the din they were making.
‘Guards! Guards!’ he screeched again, his voice high-pitched and cracking with frustration. ‘Don’t let him get away!’
Nate looked up. The mine sergeant had his knife out but, though he had dared to climb out onto the jutting wooden beam, he didn’t seem to have the nerve to continue to the end. The counterweight passed Nate as he descended to the ground.
He looked up again. Grint Grayle shook a furious fist at him from the window, before disappearing abruptly back inside. Nate let go of the hook as his feet touched the ground and ran full-pelt towards the wheelhouse, and on to the zigzag staircase that led up to the docking gantry.
Taking the stairs three at a time, Nate clambered up. Higher than the shuddering light funnel disgorging clouds of dust he went; higher than its rubble-laden wheel, and up above the wheelhouse, its chimney belching steam. He reached the docking gantry with his lungs about to explode and dawn breaking in the sky overhead, and paused. Slip was there, waiting for him.
‘Did you get it?’ Nate panted.
Slip nodded and climbed to his feet. Nate looked at what the grey goblin had been sitting on. His ironwood box of memories. Beside it was the empty knapsack and Slip’s bedroll.
‘Oh, thank you, Slip!’ he said, clapping the former scuttler warmly on his shoulder. ‘Well done!’ He patted the lightbox hanging from his shoulder. ‘I’ve got something useful for our travels too,’ he said.
‘Travels,’ Slip repeated.
Nate slipped both the box of memories and his lightbox inside the scuffed leather knapsack and looked up. There, right on time, was the early-morning phraxbarge on its weekly visit to the mining stockade to collect the stormphrax they’d mined for shipment back to Great Glade. The sleepy guards, who’d been up all night waiting for the barge, loaded it with three sealed lightchests, then traipsed past the lamplighter and his companion, oblivious to the wildly gesticulating mine sergeant far below. As the guards disappeared down the staircase, Nate hurried across the gantry and pressed ten crisp gladers into the bargemaster’s hand.
The bargemaster looked at the money, then looked at Nate. ‘Welcome aboard,’ he smiled.
Just then, with a distant crash, the great doors of the blockhouse burst open and a dozen hammerhead goblins raced out, each one armed with a phraxpistol or musket. Behind them, the mine sergeant was bellowing loudly and flapping his arms, urging them on.
The hammerheads stormed down the wooden stairs of the blockhouse, only to trip and go flying head over heels. A phraxpistol went off with a bang and a flash of light. Then another. And another. There were screams and anguished cries as more of the goblins tumbled out of the blockhouse and down the steps on top of the others.
At the top of the docking gantry, the grey goblin chuckled. ‘Slip did that,’ he said quietly.
‘You?’ said Nate.
‘Slip uses wire to make rat snares down in the mine galleries,’ he said. ‘Same stuff makes excellent tripwire, it does.’
‘Slip!’ Nate burst out laughing. ‘You’re full of surprises. Come on, we’d better get aboard.’
Ahead of them, the great spherical phraxchamber mounted at the top of the small upper deck hissed and creaked as the phraxbarge prepared to depart. Steam billowed from the high funnel and a metallic clanking sound filled the air as the anchor chain was raised.
Nate seized the bow of the phraxship and swung his knapsack across onto the deck. Slip did the same, and the two of them jumped on board. At the same moment, the sky pink with the dawn light, the steam klaxons went off, booming loudly all around the stockade as they woke the day shift miners sleeping in their cabins.
Nate and Slip stood at the starboard bow, hands resting on the balustrade as they looked back down. Far below them, the scene on the steps of the blockhouse was one of chaos. It was like, Nate thought, the panic of woodtermites whose nest mound had been breached. Some of the hammerheads, tiny from up above, were scurrying about. Others lay stunned in the dust. In amongst them, the head of the colony – Grint Grayle – was leaping up and down.
‘Get them!’ he shouted. ‘They’re on the phrax—’
The klaxon sounded again, drowning out his braying commands. The vessel slipped anchor and rose steadily into the pink-tinged air. Grint bellowed all the louder, waving at the phraxship, trying desperately to get the bargemaster’s attention – only to groan with a mixture of frustration and rage as, oblivious to the meaning of the commotion, the bargemaster waved back at him.
And from the deck below, as the phraxbarge gathered speed, Slip the goblin scuttler and Nate Quarter did the same.
When the third klaxon call had faded away, Slip turned to Nate. ‘We’ve escaped,’ he said.
Nate didn’t answer. He was staring intently at the blockhouse.
Below them, Grint was pointing up at the departing vessel and shouting at the hammerheads. They, in turn, aimed their phraxmuskets at the ship’s phraxchamber. Grint Grayle did the same. Nate swallowed. He knew well enough that if a leadwood bullet struck the centre of one of the curved panels, it might penetrate the outer shell of the chamber. And if that happened, the explosion would reduce the phraxship to splinters and dust in the blink of an eye.
The mine sergeant, Nate realized, was even prepared to destroy the barge if it meant killing him …
But the order to fire never came. Instead, Grint Grayle, the hammerheads, the drunken visiting mine sergeants and pit drivers who had staggered from the mess, and bleary-eyed miners stumbling to the wash troughs, all looked round at the blockhouse. There was a mixture of expressions on
their faces. Horror, bewilderment, bemusement …
Slip turned to Nate. ‘What’s happening?’ he said.
‘You’ll see,’ said Nate, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
As they watched, the blockhouse began to tremble. The sound of splintering and creaking filled the air. The trembling became a shaking, which grew more and more violent. Pieces of guttering, gargoyles and all, tumbled down through the air; a balcony crashed to the ground.
The crowd of onlookers shuffled backwards, then stood stock-still again, gawping, their heads craning upwards. Only Grint Grayle – looking smaller by the second as the phraxbarge flew higher and further away – was moving. Dashing this way and that, he was flapping his arms about wildly; at the blockhouse, at the phraxbarge …
All at once, there was a series of almighty crashes as the floors of the mine barracks buckled and gave way, one after the other, as an unimaginable weight fell through them. The walls crumpled and collapsed, sending huge logs thudding down to the ground and a dense cloud of clogging, choking dust billowing up into the air.
As the dust settled, all that remained of the packed storerooms that Grint Grayle had created inside the blockhouse was a pile of splintered timber, broken boxes and shattered crates. Slip turned to Nate, his eyes glistening with amazement.
‘Slip doesn’t understand,’ he said softly. ‘What happened?’
Nate grinned back at him. ‘Just an accident with a phraxlamp,’ he said.
• CHAPTER NINE •
‘Professor Lentis,’ whispered the dean of the School of Edge Cliff Studies. ‘Just the fellow I was hoping to meet.’ His brow furrowed with concern. ‘Any news?’
Quove Lentis, High Professor of Flight, pursed his lips. ‘Yes, Lodestone. Yes, there is news …’ He smiled wryly as the dean’s usual lugubrious expression brightened optimistically. ‘Which would you like first?’ he said in a low voice. ‘The good news or the bad?’
The dean’s face slumped. ‘The good,’ he said. ‘No, no, the bad … No, wait a moment …’
It had been touch and go whether he would catch the High Professor of Flight at all. Now the dean was beginning to wonder whether it had been worth the effort.
He had sat through a particularly long Founder’s Day debate. It had been noon when proceedings had got under way, but the view through the huge round windows of the debating chamber of the Great Glade Academy had turned from bright sunlight to a twilight glow, and then darkened to the star-studded blanket of night as the speeches had continued. Seated up amongst the other academics on the second of the three huge floating benches, Dean Lodestone had let his mind wander often and far away. It was only the sound of thunderous knocking that had roused him from his reveries.
Looking about him, he saw that his neighbours, and all the other assembled academics on the floating benches, had risen to their feet and were pounding their seat cushions on the bench backs in front of them in ritual applause. At the floating lectern in the centre of the chamber, the Most High Academe of the Great Glade Academy, Malleus Durvilix, bowed low, his jewel-encrusted mitre of office wobbling precariously on his shaven head. The applause grew louder.
Cassix Lodestone, dean of the School of Edge Cliff Studies, sighed and stroked his neck beard thoughtfully. He was a small fourthling with a long pointed nose and bright deep-set eyes that twinkled from beneath bushy eyebrows, giving him the air of an inquisitive quarm in search of a thousandfoot grub.
Unlike the other ‘cushion-holders’ on the benches around him, Cassix Lodestone took no interest in the long, complicated speeches – speeches designed to impress the other academics and enhance the speakers’ reputations. No, the only reason he had taken his seat on the cushion reserved for him on the great floating benches that afternoon was to get a better view of the wide-tiled floor far below.
Not for nothing was the debating chamber of the Great Glade Academy known as ‘the Hall of Whispers’. While the academics made windy speeches in the air, beneath them the high professors of the academy moved from tile to tile on the floor below, making deals, giving out favours and confirming appointments – all in hushed whispers.
Like an intricate board game, the tiled floor of the Hall of Whispers had its rules. Only two academics could occupy the same tile at once, and an academic hoping to approach a high professor could do so only by walking over unoccupied tiles.
Cassix Lodestone’s bushy eyebrows quivered as he scanned the floor and saw his quarry. There wasn’t a moment to lose. Gathering his papers together and hitching up his grey robes, Cassix barged his way unceremoniously past his fellow academics and down the central aisle that ran between the rows of benches.
From below, there came the sound of creaking ropes and grinding gears as the bench-tenders reeled in the three great benches. Standing at the gate of the second bench, at the front of a lengthening queue of jostling academics, Cassix waited tensely.
‘Come on, come on,’ he muttered impatiently. The benches seemed to be taking an age to descend to the tiled floor.
Inches from the bottom, Cassix threw open the gate and jumped down. To the right and left of him, the two other benches reached the ground and their occupants spilled out across the tiles. The dean of the School of Edge Cliff Studies surveyed the hall with a cool eye. He was an old hand at this game.
The high professors stood in the distance, each on their chosen tile, as eager academics approached at the prescribed slow walk, for it was forbidden to run, on pain of expulsion from the debating chamber. Cassix checked over his shoulder and stepped onto a tile, cutting off three academics from the School of Twilight Studies. With a thin smile, he set off at a diagonal, past a red-faced under-professor in green robes, then back round three tiles.
‘Almost there …’ he muttered as he neared the unmistakeable figure of the High Professor of Flight pacing back and forth on his chosen tile. Tall, stooped and with that curious forward-stabbing motion of his head, he looked like one of the pied herons that would stride across the shallows of the Great Glade lake.
‘Professor Lentis!’ Cassix Lodestone whispered as loudly as he dared, and broke into a rather undignified shuffle, just in time to step onto the tile ahead of the red-faced under-professor. ‘Any news?’
The High Professor of Flight had not seemed overjoyed to see him, Cassix had to admit. His eyes narrowed and his small, thin-lipped mouth became even smaller and thinner-lipped. And when he spoke, his voice made it clear that he had better things to do than waste his time with a dean from one of the minor schools.
‘Well? What’s it to be, Lodestone?’ Lentis snapped. ‘The good news? Or the bad news?’
Cassix shrugged. ‘The good news,’ he decided.
‘Very well,’ said Lentis, nodding. ‘The good news is the Archemax has returned …’
‘Sky be praised!’ Cassix said, his drooping features suddenly perking up. ‘When did it arrive?’
‘Last night,’ said Lentis, plucking a piece of lint from the front of his robes and letting it float to the floor. ‘She docked in the workshops down at the Ledges some time after midnight – and is still there. Apparently, she sustained structural damage over the Mire. Struck full on by a blowhole.’ He shook his head. ‘That wretched captain had her flying too low, by all accounts …’
‘And the bad news?’ said Cassix, hardly daring to breathe.
‘I’m afraid that neither Ifflix Hentadile nor any of his party were on board.’
‘None of them?’ said Cassix. He looked down at the floor, crestfallen, his slack jowls trembling as he shook his head back and forth. ‘Was there any sign of … ?’
‘None,’ said Quove Lentis. ‘Not a trace. The phraxship moored at the Edgewater waterfall as agreed, and waited almost two months for the expedition’s return.’ He paused. ‘In vain.’
‘But … but couldn’t they have waited a little longer?’ asked Cassix.
‘Just how long is “a little longer”, eh, Lodestone?’ asked Lentis, his voice querul
ous as he tilted his head back and stared down his thin aquiline nose at the agitated dean of the School of Edge Cliff Studies. ‘Another month? Six? A year?’
‘I don’t know, but—’
‘It was difficult enough persuading the Great Glade council to lend us the Archemax for that amount of time. Trade doesn’t stop just because your little expedition seems to have disappeared.’ He laughed humourlessly. ‘And what with the current difficulties with Hive, I don’t have to remind you, Lodestone, the council has more important matters to consider …’
‘I know, I know,’ said Cassix Lodestone hurriedly. ‘And I’m grateful for your support, High Professor.’ He shuffled through his papers, before unfolding a creased chart, covered in annotations. ‘But as you can see, we have made great progress in the field of cliff studies, and this expedition showed every sign of making an extraordinary breakthrough …’
Lentis casually reached out an arm and dusted his sleeve. Then the other. ‘Yes, so you said before,’ he muttered, ‘which is why I secured a phraxship for your expedition – and at great personal cost to my own reputation, I might add. Unfortunately, it seems this gamble of yours hasn’t paid off …’
‘But all exploration is a gamble!’ Cassix blustered. ‘Our scholarship depends on our understanding of the world – and that understanding is growing the whole time. Why, up until recently, it was believed that anyone falling off the Edge would fall for ever. Yet, if our theories are correct, we may well be able to prove that this is not the case; that the Edge cliff does in fact come to an end somewhere down there, far beneath the clouds.’ His dark eyes glittered with excitement. ‘And it is the descenders, Lentis, those brave explorers, venturing where no one has dared venture before, who are testing these theories …’
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 6