Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals

by Paul Stewart;Chris Riddell

  Tall globe lamps, their stanchions richly ornamented with fluted struts and twisting curlicues, lined the wall of the aqueduct, testifying to a grander past. Now, as they shone down on the paltry flow of water that trickled from the spouts into the vats, they served only as a reminder of all that had changed.

  All at once, the still and brittle air exploded with squabbling voices, and Nate peered over the heads in front to see two gabtrolls squaring up to one another.

  ‘It’s not too big … slurp …’ one of them was complaining. ‘My little pot is … slurp … exactly the right size.’

  ‘Little pot!’ the other exclaimed. ‘It’s … slurp … twice the size of mine – which holds precisely the amount of water we’re … slurp … allowed …’

  ‘Silence!’ hissed a furious voice inside Nate’s head – and everyone else’s – and he saw a waif custodian striding towards the bickering gabtrolls, his long shimmering robes sweeping over the stone flags, a blowpipe in one hand and a lampstaff in the other.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ muttered Gilmora. ‘Slurp … Watch your thoughts!’

  The custodian thrust his glowing lampstaff into the terrified faces of the two gabtrolls. He looked at one of them, then the other, their eyestalks retracting as he did so.

  ‘How dare you raise your voices!’ he demanded.

  ‘It was her!’ one of them squawked. ‘Her pot’s too big …’

  ‘Me? She’s just jealous because I know the rules …’

  ‘SILENCE!’ The cry was so loud it left Nate’s head spinning. ‘To the back of the queue,’ the waif custodian told them. ‘Go, the pair of you!’ he said to the distraught-looking gabtrolls. ‘In silence!’

  The pair turned and Nate watched them, their faces downcast as they shuffled past him and Gilmora on their way to the back of the line.

  Finally, half an hour later, Gilmora and Nate reached the front of the now completely silent line. The gabtroll knew the procedure, and Nate stood back as she pulled a wad of waifmarks from beneath the folds of her shawl, peeled off ten and placed them in the outstretched palm of the waif custodian who sat on a low stool beside the stone vat. The waif kept his hand out. Gilmora counted off more notes, adding a further three, four, five waifmarks before the custodian was satisfied. Then, crouching down, she removed the glass vial from her basket, placed the neck of it under the lip of the grinning waif head that jutted out from the bottom of the vat, and the custodian pulled down on a brass barbel at the mouth.

  A thin trickle of water poured down into the vial, the tinkling sound rising in pitch as it slowly filled. Nate watched, holding his breath as the precious healing water rose to the top. When it was full, the custodian turned off the barbel-shaped spigot. Gilmora put a cork stopper in the vial and straightened up.

  ‘Come, Nate,’ she whispered, beaming happily as she returned the small glass bottle to her basket and pulled the tilderleather cover back in place. ‘May the custodians … slurp … be praised for their generosity.’

  The waif dismissed them with a wave of his thin pale hand, barely tolerating Gilmora’s whispered blessing. Seemingly oblivious to this, the gabtroll strode onto the end of the aqueduct terrace and, where the path divided, took the right-hand fork.

  Narrow and all but deserted, this track, hewn from the solid stone below, took them over a massive bluff of rock so sheer that nothing had been built upon it. Below them were the glowing roof lamps and gable lanterns of Kobold’s Mount, while far above their heads, Nate noticed a huge beacon of light blazing from the top of a tall, round windowless fortress, an adjoining tower behind it.

  ‘That’s the keep,’ said Gilmora, following Nate’s gaze. ‘It’s slurp … where Gomber and I work.’

  Her eyestalks swung round in different directions as she looked to see if they were being observed.

  ‘Golderayce One-Eye, our … slurp … beloved master, lives up there,’ she announced in a brittle bright-sounding voice. ‘From the keep, he rules our great city as wisely as the legendary Kobold himself, allowing … slurp slurp … no one to pass beyond it to the Garden of Life, on pain of death.’ Satisfied there were no waifs in sight, Gilmora added in a whisper, ‘Keeps the most potent water – from the lake’s edge – strictly for … slurp … himself.’

  ‘But the aqueduct water is good, isn’t it?’ said Nate with a frown.

  ‘Just what the healer ordered,’ said Gilmora, taking Nate by the arm and smiling reassuringly.

  On the far side of the bluff, the narrow track fanned out into a series of broader paths, some leading up to the left, where lamphouses and rambleshacks clung to the steep sides of the mountain; some returning down to Kobold’s Mount – while some continued into a bustling area of stepped terraces, each one clustered with buildings with pointed arch windows and broad sweeping roofs, and ablaze with huge globelamps.

  Gilmora took Nate’s hand and led him up a narrow staircase from one terrace to another, and then up to the next. At the fifth terrace they came to, she paused and looked round, her eyestalks quivering inquisitively as they swung this way, then that – before focusing in on Nate’s face.

  ‘This is the one,’ she said. ‘Some of the markets … slurp … sell only goods brought into Riverrise by merchants and traders from the Deepwoods,’ she explained. ‘This one, the Waif Terrace Market, is devoted solely to those waifs … slurp … who have produce to sell.’

  Nate looked up – and his jaw dropped open in surprise.

  Fringing the bustling market square were lines of highstalls, each one mounted precariously upon clearwood timber stilts, and with a narrow wooden flight of translucent stairs leading up to their individual wooden shelves. Glistening canopies fluttered in the light breeze above the highstalls, their shelves full of merchandise.

  The air was heavy with pungent aromas – from the acrid tar-like odour of pine resin to the overpowering fragrance of moonflowers, sooty toadflax and mossy feverfew, bristleweed and soapwort, and the intense peppery smell of firenettle; all of them mixing together in ever-shifting combinations …

  Yet it wasn’t the sights that bewildered Nate, nor the swirling array of smells, but the din! A hundred different waif voices filled Nate’s head.

  ‘Finest healing balm!’

  ‘Soothing cough syrups, second to none!’

  ‘Tonics, cordials and herbal infusions! Tonics, cordials and herbal infusions!’

  ‘Patent ague embrocation!’

  Nate clamped his hands over his ears, only for the insistent voices inside his head to grow even louder.

  ‘This way,’ said Gilmora, shouting above the cacophony of voices. She pointed to a highstall in the far corner. ‘We’ll find just … slurp … what we need there.’

  They crossed the market square, pushing their way through the crowds of goblins and trogs who were, themselves, struggling to hear one another above the waif voices in their heads. Nate looked up as they reached the highstall, to find himself behind several gnokgoblins, a mobgnome and a portly cloddertrog matron. Trying to ignore the cacophony in his head, Nate hummed tunelessly to himself as they waited to be served.

  ‘Gilmora.’ The voice of the ghostwaif stallholder sounded in both their heads when their turn came. ‘I haven’t seen you for an age! You’ve brought a friend, I see.’

  ‘I’ve been in the daylight, Garrafuce,’ Gilmora replied. ‘Visiting … slurp … relatives in the Deepwoods. This is Nate. He is a visitor with a sick friend,’ she said, slurping twice as she pulled the healer’s barkscroll note from her apron and handed it to the ghostwaif.

  He blinked at it once, then smiled.

  ‘Healer Barkscale,’ he said to Nate. ‘Your friend is in good hands, daylighter.’

  Quickly and efficiently, his long thin fingers darting up to the shelves around him, the ghostwaif assembled the items on the list.

  ‘Tincture of nightoil, hylesalve, bitter woodaloes …’ his sibilant voice sounded in Nate’s mind. ‘Of course, you have water from the spring?’

  Na
te nodded, and Gilmora pressed a handful of waifmarks into the ghostwaif’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Golderayce One-Eye and the custodians be praised!’ the ghost waif’s voice sounded in Nate’s head, together with an underthought, low but distinct. May he choke on the chine that preserves him!

  Nate and Gilmora climbed down the ladder, their places taken by a couple of pink-eye goblin parents, the husband clutching a young’un, nothing but skin and bones, tightly to his chest.

  ‘It’s our Tallis,’ he heard the mother saying. ‘He won’t eat …’

  Nate turned to Gilmora. ‘What is chine?’ he asked as they hurried back in the direction of Kobold’s Mount.

  ‘Chine is the sparkling sediment found on the shore of the Riverrise lake,’ said Gilmora, clutching the basket tightly. ‘It’s what makes the water gathered there so potent …’

  ‘And this potent water,’ Nate continued, his eyes glistening, ‘could it cure Eudoxia?’

  Gilmora stopped in her tracks and seized Nate by the shoulders, her eyes on the end of their stalks staring at him intently from both sides.

  ‘Water from the Riverrise lake could save Eudoxia’s life,’ she whispered. ‘But getting it would cost you yours!’

  • CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO •

  Nate hurried through the crowded streets at the foot of Kobold’s Mount. They were as eerily quiet and brightly lit as all the other parts of this strange city, but because this was a district given over to visitors, or ‘daylighters’, there were few waif whispers to invade his thoughts.

  So different, Nate realized, from the constant clamour that filled his head in the Market Ledges high above, or at times in the queues at the aqueduct.

  Though few in the great city ever spoke louder than a whisper, the waif voices that filled Nate’s head in the other districts of Riverrise proved far more tiring than the clatter of the Copperwood stiltshops of Great Glade, or the cries of the market traders of Hive.

  ‘You’ll get used to it, my dear,’ Gilmora had reassured Nate.

  But he didn’t think he ever would. Though, in recent highflows, he’d had plenty of practice as he queued for the Riverrise water and haggled for medicaments in the Market Ledges.

  That was another thing Nate had struggled with. The fact that there were no days or nights in Riverrise, where the constant darkness was kept permanently at bay by a million lamps. Instead, there were ‘highflows’ when the waterfall flowed down into the aqueduct at a higher rate, and ‘lowflows’ when it slowed to the merest trickle, as the custodians of the Riverrise spring opened and closed the sluice gates, high up above the city. At lowflow the Riverrisers tended to sleep, while at highflow – such as it was – the streets filled with the strangely quiet crowds and the constant chatter of waif whispers. Nate had endured a week of this endless brightly lit night as Eudoxia’s condition remained as unchanging as the lamp glow.

  ‘No better,’ said Gilmora, sending Nate out once more into the streets to collect water and medicine, ‘but thank Sky and Earth, no worse.’

  Nate bobbed and weaved in and out of the crowds in the lamplit streets. They came from all four corners of the Edgelands. There were strange mobgnomes from the Northern Reaches with coils of purple-tinged hair plaited and piled high on their heads; bark gyles from the Edgeriver swamps, their faces as gnarled and grainy as waterlogged timber; curious long-faced tree trolls from the distant west, with their huge spider-like fingers and intricately knotted shawls; and a thousand more …

  Some took their cures and returned to their far-off homes, while others stayed and settled in this strange city for reasons Nate could only guess at. They congregated in the Under Mount and Low Ledge districts, which lay closest to the Nightwoods, and so were less popular with the waifs and gabtrolls who formed the majority of Riverrise’s population. Their lamphouses and clearwood cabins were shabby by comparison with the buildings on Kobold’s Mount and the Higher Ledges, but at least here there was a respite from the intrusive waif whispers.

  Nate reached the end of Low Ledge, and was about to climb the steep path that led up towards Kobold’s Mount when he paused. On the other side of the paved street, steps led down to the great bowl of the amphitheatre which, Nate saw, was now illuminated by thousands of shimmering, swaying lampstaffs.

  Nate had passed the amphitheatre regularly on his way back to Kobold’s Mount at the end of highflow, but the ancient gathering place – where, before the tightening power grip of Golderayce One-Eye and his feared custodians, the waifs and daylighters of Riverrise had met in the forum to discuss and debate – had always been dark and empty. Now it was as if the great open-air auditorium had been invaded by a swarm of fireflies. Intrigued, Nate raised the lampstaff he carried – Gomber’s second best – and descended the steps.

  The eight stone tiers of the enormous amphitheatre were bustling with waifs from all over the city, their huge feathery ears fluttering, whiplash barbels quivering and enormous eyes flitting from face to face. Apart from the swishing of robes and the agitated tapping of lampstaffs, the whole place was silent. Nate found a place next to several gabtrolls and a hunched creature with tiny eyes and vivid black and white blotches covering his face and hands.

  Unlike the Market Ledges, where the waifs broke into the thoughts of passers-by to sell their potions, here in the amphitheatre, the situation was quite different. The waifs seemed intent on reading only each other’s thoughts, speaking directly, yet secretively, one to another, in what they called ‘waif whispers’. Daylighters were excluded from this, and had to rely on friendly waifs to keep them informed of how the meeting was progressing. Every so often, in the silence, ripples of light would shimmer through the crowd as the waifs shook their lampstaffs, either in agreement or dissent – though Nate couldn’t tell which.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Nate whispered to the blotch-faced individual next to him, and noticed the gold collar and chain round his neck. The other end of the chain was being held by a tiny ghostwaif with the biggest eyes Nate had ever seen.

  ‘He can’t talk. He’s a nameless one,’ a light musical whisper sounded in Nate’s head. ‘Though I call him Gelve.’

  Nate glanced back at the blotchy creature. The waif’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘A daylighter I see, seeking a cure – and none too successfully,’ she said, reading the depths of Nate’s mind swiftly and efficiently. Nate shuddered involuntarily as he felt the waif’s thoughts inside his head. ‘You have been through much and travelled far …’ She nodded thoughtfully, her ears fluttering as she looked into his face. ‘But you are honourable, and have a good heart … And you are a lamplighter!’

  Nate smiled weakly.

  ‘We are discussing the provision of new lamps for the Higher Ledges.’ Her eyes narrowed. We are discussing the custodians and their grip on power in the city, added the ghostwaif, revealing her underthoughts to Nate quietly.

  Nate turned to her, wondering why this waif stranger was telling him so much.

  Because, Nate Quarter, I have seen that I can trust you – and, more importantly, because this is something you need to know …

  Nate frowned, puzzled, but the ghostwaif continued.

  ‘We have so much to be thankful for,’ she said, ‘not least the generous glow of the larger lamps that have been fitted.’ Golderayce One-Eye is cutting the highflow by another two hours, and there are many who resent his high-handed actions!

  Below, at the centre of the amphitheatre, a tall waif with shimmering black scales and long barbels curling from his brow and lower jaw strode out and raised his lampstaff high. Around Nate, a shiver of excitement rippled through the seated waifs.

  ‘I shall not underthink,’ the blackwaif whispered in spoken words of shocking clarity. ‘I shall speak out, so that waif and daylighter alike may hear – and yes, even Golderayce One-Eye and his spies!’

  The lampstaffs throughout the amphitheatre bobbed and dipped like glowworms in a gale.

  ‘The cutting of the highflow means one th
ing and one thing only. More shall die through lack of the healing water! The Riverrise spring should benefit all – not just the custodians, who treat the sacred water as if it is a commodity to buy and sell. It should be free to all on the basis of need!’

  The lampstaffs signalled their agreement.

  ‘If we stand together,’ the blackwaif said, ‘we have nothing to fear but—’

  Suddenly, the blackwaif staggered back, his large eyes rolling alarmingly in his head and a hand clutching at the thorn dart embedded in his throat. With a soft sigh, he toppled forward and his lampstaff shattered on the stone paved floor of the amphitheatre and went out.

  ‘Waif assassin!’ the ghostwaif’s voice sounded in Nate’s head, panic-stricken and shrill, no longer a concealed underthought.

  Everyone looked around and listened, scanning the gathering of waifs and daylighters for the individual who had been responsible for taking the blackwaif’s life. There was not a sign. The next moment, like an unfurling luminous thousandfoot, the bobbing trail of lampstaffs began flowing quickly from the tiers of the amphitheatre and out into the streets as the terrified waifs fled.

  Shocked, Nate went with the crowd – though not before glancing over his shoulder to see a small black-hooded figure dart out into the centre of the amphitheatre below and crouch down beside the body of the blackwaif. In its hand, the cloaked individual clutched a long clearwood blowpipe, the chosen weapon of the waif assassin.

  High above, four waifs dressed in the luminous white silk robes of the custodians stood beside the entrance to the amphitheatre as the frightened crowd streamed out. Their ears fluttered as they probed the thoughts of the minds that passed them.

  ‘Enjoy the new lamps on the High Ledges,’ they sneered wordlessly, ‘with the compliments of the Custodian General, Golderayce One-Eye!’

  • CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE •

  By the time he’d climbed the steps up to Kobold’s Mount and was approaching the gabtroll’s lamphouse, Nate was bitterly regretting his impulsive decision to visit the amphitheatre. It was two hours into lowflow, he was hot and tired, but worse than that, he had yet to deliver the precious Riverrise water he’d been sent out to collect – and Nate knew that Eudoxia was in desperate need of it.