Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  The librarian was eager to talk about Great Glade and clearly enjoyed Nate and Eudoxia’s recollections of the city, but for himself, he had no intention of ever returning. After an hour or so, the walkway began to rise higher in the air until they were almost at the height of the great bulbous trunks of the surrounding sumpwood trees. The boards snaked round to the right and, as the three of them rounded the bend, the logging stands came into view.

  To the accompaniment of the shrill rasping buzz of phraxsaws, a gang of timbersmiths was working on a sumpwood tree; some of them clustered around the swollen sumpwood boll, others in small phraxcraft which hovered around the top of the tree. With half a dozen neighbouring trees already missing their boll, upper tree and most of their roots, the timbersmiths had just turned their attention to this latest tree. They were working fast, responding to the shrill whistles of the gangmaster who was orchestrating the work.

  The phraxsaws they were using were long and thin, like serrated-edged sabres, three blades sandwiched together but moving independently, and a twist of steam emerging from the miniature phraxchambers at the saw’s handle. At the same time, a small group of timbersmiths – five or six in number – had climbed up into the top branches of the tree, to which they were securing the hooks that hung down on ropes from the phraxvessels hovering overhead.

  ‘Pfweep! Pfweep!’ the gangmaster’s short sharp whistles echoed through the air as, with his two index fingers lodged in his mouth, he blew twice.

  With all the hooks now attached, the woodtrolls up the tree shinned hastily down.

  ‘Pfweep!’

  In the air above, the three phraxvessels rose slowly upwards, and the ropes went taut.

  ‘Pfweep! Pfweep! Pfweep!’

  At the base of the swollen boll, three of the four timbersmiths pulled their phraxsaws clear of the wood and stepped back, while the fourth continued sawing, driving his buzzing phraxsaw further and further into the narrow cut until, with a splintering crack, the whole tree abruptly floated free. Maintaining their three-point positions in the sky, the phraxvessels flew off over the crest, the upper section of the mighty sumpwood tree dangling above the treetops.

  ‘Pfweep!’ The gangmaster now sent the timbersmiths down into the roots, where they set about slicing through the sinuous cascades with their phraxsaws.

  Beside him, Nate heard the librarian cursing quietly under his breath.

  ‘Sky curse them,’ Zelphyius Dax muttered, turning away.

  ‘Don’t they have the timber you need?’ asked Eudoxia as the librarian strode off along the walkway.

  He turned, his eyes blazing with anger. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘These are clearly pro-Hiver timbersmiths – one of Greeg Kleft’s gangs, most likely, and I won’t have any dealings with them. Look!’

  Zelphyius pointed at the timbersmiths, who were bundling the roots into great stacks ready for the returning phraxvessels.

  ‘In their greed, they take not only the upper tree and boll, but the roots as well, destroying the entire tree for ever, rather than allowing it to grow back. A sumpwood that has taken five hundred years to grow, destroyed in five minutes! I’m sorry, but I can’t stand the sight of it. I’ll find some free timbersmiths for the wood I need, or go without!’

  Turning on his heels, the librarian strode off, pulling the earflaps of his funnel hat down to drown out the sound of the phraxsaws.

  As Nate and Eudoxia stared after him, a huge raindrop hit the walkway with a thud, followed closely by another, then another. They looked up at the sky. Coming in from the north, a bank of black and purple clouds swept towards them like a huge carpet unrolling across the sky, plunging the forest into gloomy shadow. Beneath it, streaks of dark grey cutting down through the sky at an angle showed the driving rain already falling.

  ‘Come on,’ said Nate. ‘Let’s head back to the Midwood Decks – before we get soaked to the skin again.’

  • CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE •

  Nate and Eudoxia reached the timber tower an hour later – soaked to the skin – to find the Professor waiting for them by the front entrance. He looked them up and down and smiled ruefully.

  ‘Take a pair of oilskin capes next time,’ he advised them. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of packing for you. There’s a timber barge setting steam for Hive that’ll take us if we hurry.’

  Nate and Eudoxia quickly changed, grabbed their things and joined the others outside the swaying timber tower. It was raining steadily and they were all now wearing the distinctive oilskin capes – even Weelum, whose leg, Nate noticed, looked considerably better. Squall patted the banderbear on his huge shoulder and told Weelum to lean on him. But as they set off, Nate could tell it was the old sky pirate who was actually being supported.

  As they climbed higher and higher on the walkways, Slip and the Professor led the way, with Eudoxia looking round anxiously at any flathead goblins in oilskin capes who passed by. Nate could tell the memory of the phraxpistol fight was still fresh in her mind.

  ‘After what we’ve seen here,’ she whispered to Nate fiercely, her hand clutching her holstered phraxpistol, ‘I’m on the side of the free timbersmiths. I hope they do get help from Great Glade to stop the pro-Hivers!’

  ‘Even if it means war?’ asked Nate.

  Eudoxia didn’t answer.

  Half an hour later, the six travellers arrived at the mooring station, one of the highest of the great circular decks, dripping with rain and sweat, and short of breath. The steam klaxon had already sounded twice, announcing Old Glory’s imminent departure. From the wheelhouse, the captain of the phraxbarge – a swarthy woodtroll in a green jacket, tight breeches and with a brace of phraxpistols that hung at his hips – saw his passengers hurrying across the deck towards his vessel.

  ‘You’re just in time,’ he said. ‘Thought I was going to have to set steam without you.’

  The Professor smiled. ‘We’re grateful for your patience, Captain Barkscruff.’

  ‘Better late than never, I suppose,’ said the woodtroll captain as the third and final blast of the steam klaxon echoed around the decks. ‘Come aboard, and look lively. We’re about to depart.’

  One by one, the Professor leading the way, they climbed the gangplank from the mooring deck onto the phraxbarge and gathered around the wheelhouse.

  Typical of its kind, Old Glory was massive; some twenty strides across and at least sixty long. At its centre was a vast phraxchamber mounted on a scaffold of leadwood struts. Below it, towards the stern, was the wheelhouse, where the woodtroll captain stood. As his expert fingers worked the flight levers, clouds of steam abruptly billowed from the funnel as a jet of white-hot air blasted out from the back of the propulsion duct. It passed over the low-slung aft deck with its covered chamber and sleeping cabins. In contrast, the fore deck had been given over to cargo; a vast and valuable consignment of sumpwood timber that had been stacked in a towering mound of roughly-sawn beams, boards and laths.

  The woodtroll captain pulled hard down on one of the bone-handled levers, and the cumbersome phraxbarge slowly rose into the air. To Nate’s right, a mobgnome crewmember was pulling in the tolley rope and twisting it round and round to form a neat coil on the deck. Behind him, he could hear the scraping of metal on metal as a stocky pink-eyed goblin hacked at the icicles that had formed around the bottom of the phraxchamber when the cold rain struck the colder metal panels.

  ‘Sluice the hull brace!’ a flathead goblin deckhand barked. ‘Shackle them staves!’

  As they rose in the grey afternoon sky, Nate watched the Midwood Decks open up below him, each light and lamp surrounded with a fuzzy rain-drenched halo. The town had seemed large when he was down among its tangle of walkways and clusters of towering buildings. Now, from above, it revealed itself to be smaller than the smallest Great Glade district, a mere drop in the mighty Deepwoods ocean.

  The stockade that seemingly enclosed the town, he now saw, was in fact more of a timber wall of logs that ran along its western edge. In front of it l
ay open country of flat farmland, fields and pastures, with marsh lakes beyond that gleamed like mirrors. He saw the track the six of them had taken when they’d first approached the town, snaking its way over the rocky tree crest and down into the valley. On the other three sides of the Midwood Decks was the natural barrier of the great sumpwood stands through which he and Eudoxia had walked that morning. He could see that, with the walkway rolled up, the town would be well fortified.

  Soon, the bright haloed streetlamps had become little more than blurred smudges. Nate looked ahead at the endless forest they had yet to cross. When he looked back, the Midwood Decks had completely disappeared from view. From his post in the wheelhouse, Captain Barkscruff suggested they make their way to the passenger quarters below the aft deck.

  ‘You go,’ said Eudoxia to the others. ‘I want to stay out here for a while.’

  The Professor nodded, and Slip, Weelum and the old sky pirate clambered down the gangway from the wheelhouse and made their way towards the cabins. Nate hung back and crossed over to where Eudoxia stood at the starboard bow of the fore deck, staring out across the sky.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Eudoxia with a smile, though she looked sad and thoughtful.

  ‘You’re worrying about your father, aren’t you?’ said Nate softly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Eudoxia, turning her back on the view and leaning on the balustrade. In front of her, the great stacks of sumpwood timber gently strained against their tethers. ‘Though I was also worrying about all of you.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry about us,’ said Nate, turning to her. ‘We’re all right.’

  ‘But I can’t help feeling that you wouldn’t be going to Hive if it wasn’t for me,’ she said. ‘I have to find my father, but I don’t want to put the rest of you in danger …’ She bit her lip and looked down at her feet.

  ‘We’re here because we want to be,’ Nate reassured her. ‘Slip, Weelum, Squall and the Professor feel the same. We’re all in this together.’ He took her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘But I don’t like what we’ve been hearing,’ said Eudoxia, her eyes filling with tears. ‘The trouble brewing in the Midwood Decks, this talk of war – and now we’re going to Hive, the worst place for Great Gladers, because of me!’

  Nate looked into Eudoxia’s green eyes. ‘Together,’ he said.

  • CHAPTER FORTY-SIX •

  With a shrill hiss from the phraxchamber, and the rumbling sound of shifting cogs and grinding gears, Old Glory began its descent. Thick cloud buffeted the vessel, making it impossible to see further than a couple of strides and turning the phraxbarge’s landing into a series of disembodied barked commands and muffled cries of acknowledgement, as the captain and his crew prepared themselves for docking.

  Nate and his companions, dressed in their heavy oilskin capes with the hoods pulled up over their heads, stood on a gantry at the stern of the phraxbarge as Captain Barkscruff had instructed. He’d woken them an hour earlier, his heavy brow creased with concern.

  ‘We’re approaching Hive,’ he’d told the Professor. ‘And as you’re no doubt aware, Great Gladers aren’t too popular in Hive at the moment. So to avoid any unpleasantness,’ the captain had continued, ‘I suggest you disembark quietly at the stern, using the rudder rungs, while I keep the deck guards occupied.’

  The Professor had thanked him and held out a ten-glader note.

  ‘I’ll not take your money,’ the woodtroll had said. ‘They pay me three times the going rate for my sumpwood, but I’ve no love for Hive. I’m a free timbersmith who just wants the Midwood Decks and the sumpwood stands to flourish, with the support of Great Glade. So I wish you Great Gladers well, no questions asked.’

  Eudoxia had stepped forward and shaken the woodtroll’s hand warmly. ‘And I wish you and your magnificent forests well, Captain Barkscruff,’ she’d said.

  Now, standing on the gantry beside the great skybarnacle-encrusted rudder, Nate couldn’t help but feel nervous. As if sensing this, Weelum laid a paw on his shoulders.

  ‘Wuh-wurruh-wuh,’ he said, his tusks glinting from beneath his hood. Courage, Nate, keeper of light, Weelum shall walk at your side.

  As Old Glory came lower in the sky, the clouds grew wispier. All at once, the phraxbarge emerged from underneath the glowering blanket of grey. A sharp sour wind instantly gripped the vessel and set it listing to starboard. At the helm, the woodtroll captain, who had been humming tunelessly, corrected the tilt with a series of dextrous realignments of the flight levers.

  Spread out below them, Nate saw the great city of Hive. It was a magnificent sight. The city was built on three towering tree ridges, the first two lower than the third, and divided by a great gorge through which a torrent of shimmering water flowed. This river was fed by a vast lake that lay beyond the gorge at the foot of the highest ridge.

  ‘That’s Back Ridge,’ said the Professor, pointing towards the sprawling mass of closely packed buildings of typical goblin design; longhuts, hive towers, roundhouses and sprawling clusterhuts that perched on stilts at the lake’s edge. ‘It’s the oldest part of Hive, and absolutely fascinating. It’s home to grey, tufted and low-belly goblins, as well as the largest clan of webfoots this side of Four Lakes, or so I believe. Splendid head crests, they have, that glow in a kaleidoscope of colours when they talk.’

  He pointed to the two ridges in front.

  ‘The one on the left is West Ridge,’ he said, ‘where the goblin nobility live – the long-hairs, hammerheads, flatheads …’

  Nate stared down at the towering tree ridge to his left. At its top was a magnificent array of palaces and fine buildings, the equal of anything in the twelve districts of Great Glade. Below them, the hive towers and longhuts became increasingly jumbled and tightly packed the further down the ridge that Nate looked, until they ended in a chaotic sprawl of workshops, factory yards and forge sheds, crammed together beside the left bank of the torrential river.

  ‘And the one on the right is East Ridge,’ the Professor was saying. ‘Home to gyle goblins, underbiters, trogs, black and red dwarves, spindle-eyes, jag-ears, wormchins … In fact, the strangest, oddest-looking goblins from the furthest corners of the Deepwoods you could ever wish to meet!’ The Professor chuckled. ‘We had some wild nights at the gaming tables of the East Ridge taverns in the old days, I can tell you …’

  But Nate wasn’t listening. Instead, he was staring at East Ridge. Unlike West Ridge, East Ridge had fertile farmland and vineyards spreading out at its base, while the jumble of huts, houses and towers higher up had a familiar goblin look to them. What drew Nate’s gaze, though, was the astonishing cluster of buildings at the summit.

  He’d never seen anything like them. They comprised great glistening spires, arches and domes, dripping with spiralling rivulets, like melted wax on a tallow candle, and piled one upon another as the whole edifice towered up into the sky. The Professor followed Nate’s stare.

  ‘Ah, I see you’ve spotted the Gyle Palace, residence of Grossmother Meadowdew and her seven sisters,’ he said. ‘It’s one of the wonders of Hive, though I’ve never been inside … Magnificent, isn’t it?’

  Nate nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘but also terrible … like the palaces at the top of the other ridge.’ He frowned. ‘They seem all the more magnificent because of the contrast with the buildings below them. Look. The lower you go, the more run-down and ramshackle the city becomes. It’s almost as if …’

  ‘As if, what, Nate?’ said Eudoxia, turning to look at him.

  ‘As if the palaces were feeding on the city, sucking up all the wealth and beauty, and leaving nothing for those who live below.’ Nate shuddered.

  ‘Aye, lad,’ came the gruff voice of Squall Razortooth, the old sky pirate, from behind him on the gantry. ‘I’m with you on that. There’s something not quite right about this here city of Hive, and that’s a fact.’

  The phraxbarge swept down lower in the sky, passing over the
great gorge that divided the city and the gushing torrent of the Hive river. Looking down, Nate saw a huge bridge spanning the turbulent water and linking the two parts of the city, east with west. It was a massive construction with a complex maze of struts, interlocking in fan-like vaults, forming its arch, and a forest of spires, ornate cloisters and crenellated towers lining its sides. Built exclusively from the finest seasoned and varnished sumpwood, the bridge glowed a deep, resonating amber, even in the grey morning light.

  ‘Now, that is magnificent,’ breathed Eudoxia, awestruck.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ said the Professor with a smile. ‘The Sumpwood Bridge of Hive. It was built three hundred years ago from designs based on the legendary sewer library bridges of Old Undertown. A sight for sore eyes, if ever there was one …’

  Passing over the bridge, the phraxbarge now approached the angular cranes, gantries and docking platforms of the Hive docks in the crowded slums of lower West Ridge.

  ‘Crew to mooring positions!’ shouted the woodtroll captain.

  ‘Aye aye,’ half a dozen voices shouted back as the crew took to the tolley bollards, grappling mounts and chamber station.

  ‘Shank!’ bellowed the captain.

  ‘On my way, Cap’n,’ an anxious-looking slaughterer called across as he came running along the deck, the funnel of a burnished copperwood ship-hailer in his hand.

  Without stopping, he hurried past the wheelhouse and up onto the fore deck. From the stern, Nate turned and watched him as he skirted the high mounds of neatly stacked sumpwood logs and disappeared from view, only to re-emerge a moment later at the top of the phraxbarge’s beak-like prow.