‘Let go, spawn of Quintinius Verginix!’ the gloamglozer taunted Nate as it hovered above him, its yellow eyes glowing. ‘Your friends are dead! Why not follow them?’
Suddenly, far above the city, from within the swirling black vortex of cloud, there was a blinding flash of lightning and, as thunder cracked and rumbled, a beam of dazzling light cut through the air like a mighty lance. It hurtled down towards the great circular mosaic at the heart of Sanctaphrax and struck the ground with a sound like shattering crystal.
And there it remained, a circular pool of white light at the very centre of the chipped and shattered mosaic of lightning bolts, like a searchlight shining down from the clouds. Grasping the rusting stump of a wind funnel, his feet slipping on the last few remaining roof tiles, Nate noticed instantly the effect it had on the cackling flock of gloamglozers around him.
As the pool of light fizzed and sparkled in the mosaic quadrangle below, the hideous creatures turned towards it, their eyes wide and their tongues flicking greedily out as they tasted the air. Above him, the gloamglozer quivered and trembled, its yellow eyes fixed on the quadrangle and its own tongue whipping in and out of its twisted mouth.
What was it, this new intriguing taste, it wondered as it salivated, so much more intense than even the mouthwatering fear of imminent death that it loved so much?
The gloamglozer shot out its tongue once more.
Delicious, this strange emotion, it thought, its eyes narrowing. Not sadness, regret, loss or suffering, but an intense infusion of all these feelings, marinaded for untold centuries, until now. It was irresistible …
The gloamglozer brushed past Nate without so much as a glance, and sped down through the air towards the intoxicating light, followed by its screeching cackling cohorts. As Nate watched from high up on the roof of the Loftus Observatory, the black-robed gloamglozers gathered round the mosaic quadrangle in a seething mass, their mouths gaping open in an ecstasy of greed.
Suddenly the light faded, like a mine lamp running out of darkelm oil, and there, at the centre of the ancient mosaic with its tiled lightning bolts spreading out like the intricate spokes of a wheel, stood three figures.
Nate gasped, almost letting go of the wind funnel as his heart missed a beat.
‘The Immortals,’ he murmured.
Standing there, looking at the writhing army of hideous gloamglozers which surrounded them, were Quint, Twig and Rook – father, son and great-grandson. They were not stooped and old, but in the first flush of youth, their faces shining.
Twig stood tall and proud, his dark hair plaited into the familiar tufts of the woodtrolls, hammelhornskin waistcoat bristling on his back. Standing shoulder to shoulder with him was the young Rook Barkwater, with his chequerboard collar and Freeglade Lancer tunic emblazoned with the red banderbear badge. And next to them, stepping forward, was the figure from Nate’s lufwood portrait miniature, in ill-fitting knight academic’s armour and oversized gauntlets.
It was Quintinius Verginix himself.
‘I didn’t imagine it,’ Nate told himself. ‘They were there in the Garden of Life …’
Hovering in front of Quint, unable to tear itself away, the gloamglozer gave a strange gurgling whimper, its yellow eyes transfixed by the sight of its ancient enemy. Holding the creature’s gaze, the young knight academic thrust out a gauntleted hand and buried it deep within the folds of the gloamglozer’s black robes.
The creature stared down at the arm embedded in its chest. Its yellow eyes rolled in their sockets and its horned head jerked back in a series of convulsive shudders.
Around it, the other gloamglozers shrank back, their hideous faces seemingly melting into grey featureless smudges with wide frightened eyes staring out from them.
Quint pulled back his hand to reveal a glowing red-tinged glister, no larger than a marsh gem. Slowly, he closed his gauntleted fist tight, and as he did so the gloamglozer shrivelled – horns, talons, black robes and all – and disintegrated into a pile of dry grey dust on the battered mosaic tiles.
With a wail of terror, the other gloamglozers launched themselves into the air – only for Twig and Rook to leap forward, the fingers of their hands outstretched.
Nate watched open-mouthed from the top of the ruined tower as tendrils of lightning fizzed from their fingertips and skewered the black flapping creatures in mid-flight. As if the ancient mosaic makers had created the mosaic as a prophecy, the pure white lightning shot out in all directions from the three Immortals standing at its centre.
All round, the gloam-glozers’ faces contorted for the briefest of moments into spasms of shock, rage and pain, before exploding like hideous overripe seed heads. They disintegrated into spiralling showers of red glisters and grey dust, which blew away on the stiffening breeze. One after the other, the shrieking creatures, now increasingly tattered and bedraggled, were speared by the lightning bolts that spiralled out from the Immortals’ fingers, and destroyed.
From far above him came the sound of the caterbird’s mighty wings, and Nate felt himself being lifted once more by its powerful talons. The great bird swooped down to the mosaic quadrangle as the last gloamglozer exploded, its agonized cries dying on its lips. It set Nate down in front of the Immortals.
‘You are real!’ he breathed, his heart pounding as he gazed into their shining faces.
Quint lowered his hand and stepped towards him.
‘We were once real,’ he said quietly. ‘As real as you, Nate Quarter.’ He held the youth’s gaze. ‘Once, not far from this very spot, I sat for my portrait in one of the viaduct schools during the terrible winter of the cloudeater …’
He reached out and placed the portrait miniature back in Nate’s hand.
‘And I once voyaged aboard a sky pirate ship into Open Sky …’ said Twig.
‘While I,’ said Rook, touching the banderbear badge on his tunic, ‘once fought the goblin armies at the Battle of the Barley Fields …’
‘All so long ago now,’ Quint said. ‘But none of us was granted a natural death. I faded into the white storm, while both Rook and Twig were kept alive at Riverrise. And so our stories had no end – until I returned in the storm to be united with them. What you see before you, Nate, is the memory of what we used to be. But behind these echoes of youth are the suffering, sadness and regrets of our long, long lives.
‘It is what the gloamglozers found so irresistible.’
Quint smiled, and Nate recognized the expression on the knight academic’s face from his beloved portrait miniature.
‘Now it is time for us to fade into the past,’ he said, gazing up at the dark clouds swirling overhead, ‘for the story of our lives is finally at an end. For ever.’
Heavy raindrops began to fall, and as they increased, pattering on the mosaic tiles, so Quint, Twig and Rook began to fade away in front of Nate’s eyes.
‘While the story of your life, Nate Quarter,’ Quint’s voice sounded as the curtain of rain shrouded the Immortals from view, ‘is just beginning.’
• CHAPTER NINETY-NINE •
Far above Nate’s head, from the vortex of dark swirling cloud, the torrential rain came pouring down. Lightning flickered from cloud to spiralling cloud, illuminating the air between and below and, as it did so, the rain sparkled. Inside each raindrop, the tiny fragments of chine that had been swept up from the shores of the Riverrise lake glittered like marsh gems in the dazzling white light.
The rain pelted down, cascading through the broken roofs and over the crumbling stairs of the towers and palaces; it filled the squares, splashing back on itself in the pools it had created. It formed streams and rivulets that sluiced down the streets and alleyways, coursed into the sewers and seeped through into the honeycomb of the mighty floating Sanctaphrax rock itself.
Filling the tunnels, and swirling ever deeper through the mighty rock, it penetrated to the very heartrock at the centre of the stonecomb. It sought out cracks and fissures in the dead rock, and trickled down into the laborato
ry deep at its heart. And, from the pile of shattered glass that lay across the floor, there came a tiny whimpered moan as the small shapeless body of the last gloamglozer hissed and fizzed, and died.
Stable, but moving slowly, the Archemax steamed past the rock, water now cascading from every crack and crevice. At the helm, Squall Razortooth craned his neck, looking over the heads of the multitude of fettle-leggers, at the surface of the floating rock itself.
It was changing, he realized.
The crumbling patches of dull grey were beginning to harden and glitter brightly in the darkness; the cavities and cracks lost their raw and wounded appearance, seeming almost to heal. And from deep within, there came a soft throbbing red glow as the heart of the mighty floating rock began once more to beat within it.
At the foot of the Gantry Tower, Slip emerged, carrying Eudoxia in his arms, and picked his way through the rubble, followed by Galston Prade and Cirrus Gladehawk. Around them, the air was thick with clouds of skyworms and mist barnacles, releasing their grip on the ruins and fleeing from the cleansing rain. As they stepped through a gaping hole in the east wall of the Knights Academy and made their way towards the mosaic quadrangle, they spotted a hand gripping a phraxpistol, sticking up from a pile of rubble and dust.
‘Professor!’ shouted Eudoxia, jumping out of Slip’s arms and hobbling over.
‘Careful, Miss Eudoxia,’ Slip cautioned. ‘Try not to put too much weight on that ankle.’
He joined her as she began to claw at the rubble, Cirrus and Galston pitching in beside them. A short while later, the Professor’s head poked up out of the rubble, his spectacles coated in a thick layer of dust and his crushed funnel hat looking more battered than ever.
‘Did I hit the hideous creature?’ he asked with a bemused smile as the rain continued to fall, before taking off his hat and rubbing his head ruefully. ‘It’s strange,’ he laughed. ‘My head feels like a tower’s just fallen on it!’
At that moment, from down the tiled street, there came the sound of cantering feet and a joyful cry rang out through the rain.
‘Miss Eudoxia!’ cried Tentermist the fettle-legger, rushing into her arms. ‘Your friends, the sky pirate and the banderbear, saved us and the evil gloamglozers are all dead!’ she spluttered, tripping over the words in her eagerness, before pausing, a look of concern on her face. ‘But Miss Eudoxia, what happened to your face?’
Eudoxia raised a hand to her cheek, where the angry wound from the gloamglozer’s talon stood out, red and bleeding.
‘It’s just a scratch,’ she said uncertainly.
Rainwater fell into her upturned face, soaking her hair and running down her skin. The little fettle-legger gasped. As she watched, the wound on Eudoxia’s cheek closed, became a thin red line, then disappeared completely as the sparkling rain ran over it and dripped down from her chin.
‘All better,’ Tentermist smiled.
‘Me too,’ said the Professor, struggling to his feet, aided by Cirrus and Slip, as the Archemax’s steam klaxon sounded from the East Landing and more fettle-leggers appeared in the rain-soaked street. He looked round. ‘Now where’s Nate Quarter got to?’
• CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED •
‘At the dawn of time,’ said the caterbird, fixing Nate with a dark purple eye, ‘there were three ancient ones, of Sky, Earth and Water. I, the caterbird, am of the Sky. The mighty Sanctaphrax rock is of the Earth. And the Great Blueshell Clam is of the Water. We three are the oldest living things in the Edgelands, and were among the first seeds of life from Open Sky to be delivered to Riverrise by the Mother Storm.
‘First, there came the Sanctaphrax rock. A tiny glister at Riverrise, it travelled down the Edgewater River and seeded itself in what was to become the Stone Gardens. In the second appearance of the Mother Storm, there came the Great Blueshell Clam, along with the seeds of life that were to grow into the mighty forests of the Deepwoods. It seeded itself in the lake known as the Mirror of the Sky.’
The creature nodded solemnly.
‘I came down at the Riverrise spring when the Mother Storm visited for a third time. In my glister form, I found shelter in the lullabee groves. It was there that I wove the first of my many cocoons, and emerged as a creature of the Sky.’
The great caterbird shifted on the stone balustrade, its lustrous black feathers gleaming in the early evening light. It raised its head.
‘The Mother Storm, on her endless progress through Open Sky, has visited the Riverrise spring countless times since, and on each occasion it has brought glisters to seed its sacred waters with new life. From Riverrise, that life has spread forth into the Edgelands and developed into the myriad different forms that inhabit this world …’
The caterbird ruffled its long black and white tail feathers in the light breeze.
‘All life has come into being this way,’ it said, turning its great curved beak towards Nate. ‘All life, that is, except …’
‘The gloamglozer,’ breathed Nate.
‘The gloamglozer,’ confirmed the caterbird. ‘It was created in the ancient laboratory, far from the sacred waters of the Riverrise spring. And with its creation came the disease known as stone sickness. When the gloamglozer escaped into the world, it spread the contagion to the Stone Gardens, where slowly, unnoticed for years, stone sickness poisoned the floating rocks. Then came the fateful day when the Mother Storm returned and the great floating rock was released from its anchor chain. A new rock was born, but this only bloomed for a short while before the signs of disease became unmistakeable.’
The great bird shook its head.
‘Those were dark times in the Edgelands,’ it remembered. ‘I, who have lived a thousand lifetimes – hatching, flying and then returning to glister form to weave a cocoon once more – had never known anything like them. I wished for nothing more than to return to the lullabee groves and begin my renewal. But I could not, for I was trapped …’
‘Trapped?’ echoed Nate.
‘Twig had been at my hatching, and I had vowed to watch over him always,’ the caterbird replied. ‘I carried him, mortally wounded, to the Riverrise spring, where the waters revived him – only for Golderayce the waif to imprison him there. Drinking only of the water of life, Twig became an Immortal. And while he lived, so did I, bound to watch over him, but powerless to intervene unless his life was threatened, until after long, long centuries of waiting, a storm like no other arrived at Riverrise. Twig, Rook and Quint had all been stormtouched. Now they were united, and their stories could come to an end. That left but one thing for me to do; follow Twig and the Immortals back here to the mighty Sanctaphrax rock and witness its healing …’
‘So now you’re free?’ said Nate.
The caterbird turned its purple gaze back from the horizon and onto Nate.
‘The story of Twig, Rook and Quint is over,’ it said simply. ‘They have returned to Open Sky as glisters, just as all things do one day. Even the ancient ones.’
The mighty bird spread its massive wings and launched itself off into the twilight sky.
‘I gladly leave this age of phraxflight and great cities to you, Nate Quarter,’ it called as it flew out into the immensity of Open Sky beyond the jutting lip of the Edge cliff. ‘Farewell!’
• CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND ONE •
‘But why, Nate?’ asked Eudoxia, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Tell me why?’
The early-morning mist had cleared and bright sunshine now filled the Stone Gardens, their rocky pavement studded with tiny budding stones. At the jutting lip of the Edge cliff, which stood out against the blue sky like the figurehead of a mighty stone ship, the Edgewater River tumbled down into the abyss below.
A little way off, standing beside a great spike of metal, driven into the edge of the cliff, stood the Professor. He wore the heavy padded jacket and breeches of a descender, phraxlamps fitted to the side of his leather helmet. Strapped to his shoulders was a descender’s backpack, bristling with crampons, rock picks and supplies, a
nd with two gently steaming phraxglobes mounted at the top.
‘It’s hard to explain,’ Nate began, taking her by the hand.
‘Try, Nate,’ Eudoxia said, her green eyes defiant, despite the tears. ‘Explain to me in a way that I can understand …’
Nate gazed back at the beautiful mine owner’s daughter standing before him. How could he explain? he wondered.
The others seemed so certain of where their futures lay. Weelum the banderbear and Squall the old sky pirate, inseparable for ever, saw theirs in the Archemax phraxship works in Great Glade, with Galston Prade and Cirrus Gladehawk masterminding the whole operation, determined to open up the skies to all. Then there was Slip the scuttler – dear Slip, who had shared Nate’s many hardships ever since those dark days down in the mine. The grey goblin had decided that his future lay with Miss Eudoxia and the fettle-leggers, building a new life here in Sanctaphrax.
Already, Cirrus and Squall had anchored the chain in the middle of the ruins of old Undertown, and Galston had promised that the Archemax would bring more settlers as soon as the phraxship works were up and running.
They all seemed to know exactly what they must do. Even the Professor, the former skytavern gambler and itinerant traveller, had discovered his true calling – which just left Nate.
The words Quintinius Verginix had spoken to him in the mosaic quadrangle had kept going round and round in his mind ever since.
‘The story of your life, Nate Quarter, is just beginning.’
This wasn’t the end, Nate now knew. His future didn’t lie back in Great Glade, or any of the other cities or settlements of the Deepwoods, but in another direction entirely, he had decided.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 55