Midnight Over Sanctaphrax Read online

  • INTRODUCTION •

  Far far away, jutting out into the emptiness beyond, like the figurehead of a mighty stone ship, is the Edge. A great torrent once poured over this overhanging lip of rock. Now, however, the Edgewater River is shallow and sluggish. Its source, known in myths as Riverrise, is drying up, and the streams and tributaries which used to feed it are dwindling.

  Straddling the river's broad and increasingly marshy estuary, is Undertown, a sprawling warren of ramshackle hovels and rundown slums. Its population is made up of strange peoples, creatures and tribes from the Edge, all crammed together into its narrow alleys.

  Dirty, over-crowded and often violent, Undertown is also the centre of all economic activity - both above board and underhand. It buzzes, it bustles, it vibrates with energy. Everyone who lives there has a particular trade, with its attendant league and clearly defined district. This leads to intrigue, plotting, bitter competition and perpetual disputes - district with district, league with rival league. Yet there is one matter which binds them all together: their freedom.

  Everyone who dwells in Undertown is free. Born out of the second Great Migration, Undertown developed as a haven for those who had escaped a life of servitude and tyrannical bondage in the Deepwoods. Its founding fathers enshrined the principle of free status for all in the constitution. Today, that principle is still guarded fiercely. The punishment for anyone who attempts to enslave an Undertowner is death.

  In the centre of Undertown is a great iron ring to which a long and heavy chain extends up into the sky. At its end is an immense floating rock.

  Like all the other buoyant rocks of the Edge, it started out in the Stone Gardens - poking up out of the ground, growing, being pushed up further by new rocks growing beneath it, and becoming bigger still. The chain was attached when the rock became large and light enough to rise up into the sky Upon it, the magnificent floating city of Sanctaphrax has been constructed.

  With its elegant schools and colleges, Sanctaphrax is a seat of learning, home to academics, alchemists and their apprentices. The subjects studied there are as obscure as they are jealously guarded and, despite the apparent air of fusty, bookish benevolence, the city is a seething cauldron of rivalries and rancorous faction-fighting. For all that, however, the citizens of Sanctaphrax have a common aim: to understand the weather.

  To this end the academics - from mist sifters and fog-probers, to windtouchers and cloudwatchers - observe and examine, calibrate and catalogue every minute feature of the ever-changing climatic conditions which roll in from open sky, far beyond the Edge.

  It is out there - in that vast, uncharted void where few have ventured and none returned - that the weather is brewed up by the Mother Storm herself. White storms and mind storms, she concocts: rains which bring sadness, winds which cause madness, and dense, sulphurous fogs which steal the senses and play tricks with the mind.

  Long ago, the ancient scholar, Archemax, wrote in his introduction to the Thousand Luminescent Aphorisms that ‘To know the weather is to know the Edge.’ The current academics of Sanctaphrax would do well to heed his words for, cut off in their floating city, they are in danger of forgetting the link between the two.

  The Deepwoods, the Stone Gardens, the Edgewater River. Undertown and Sanctaphrax. Names on a map.

  Yet behind each name lie a thousand tales - tales that have been recorded in ancient scrolls, tales that have been passed down the generations by word of mouth -tales which even now are being told.

  What follows is but one of those tales.

  • CHAPTER ONE •

  OPEN SKY

  Out in the vast cloudscape, a lone sky ship in full sail cut through the thin air. Ahead, at the end of a rope-tether, a gigantic bird flapped its mighty black and white wings as it led the ship ever further into that place of terror for all the creatures from the Edge - open sky

  ‘Weather vortex straight ahead,’ the small oakelf shouted from the caternest at the top of the main-mast. His voice was shrill with fear. ‘And it's a monster!’

  Down at the helm of the Edgedancer, a young sky pirate captain in a hammelhornskin waistcoat raised his telescope to his eye with shaking hands. As he focused in on the dark, swirling air, his heart missed a beat. The approaching vortex was indeed monstrous. It was as if the great milky clouds were curdling and falling in on themselves, swirling into a great blood-red throat at the centre of which was an inky blackness that threatened to swallow the tiny sky ship whole.

  ‘I see it, Spooler,’ the young captain called to the oakelf. It's coming in at a rate of about a hundred strides per second, Captain Twig, sir,’ Spooler shouted, panic plain in his voice. ‘We've precious little time till impact.’

  Twig nodded grimly. Already the currents of air around them were beginning to spin unpredictably. They were passing in and out of great banks of cloud; plummeting as they went in, soaring up again as they emerged on the other side. With the binding tether taut, the caterbird continued its steady, relentless flight.

  ‘Surely this is madness!’ complained the wiry weasel-faced quartermaster in the gaudy brocaded coat. He pulled the large tricorn hat from his head and wiped his sweaty brow. ‘It's heading straight for the vortex.’

  ‘We must follow where the caterbird leads, Sleet,’ Twig shouted back.

  ‘B … but…’ stuttered Wingnut Sleet, his voice a thin whine.

  ‘Sleet!’ Twig called back. ‘We are all in this together. Just make sure those tolley-ropes are securely cleated.’

  Muttering under his breath, the quartermaster went to do the young captain's bidding. On the lower deck, he found a heavy flat-head goblin clinging to the rigging, its eyes white with fear.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, Bogwitt,’ Sleet said through gritted teeth. ‘If our young captain really does believe that that great scraggy bird can lead us to his long-lost father rather than to certain death in the heart of the vortex, then who are we to argue?’

  ‘Who indeed!’ shouted a stocky figure with the telltale flame-red skin and hair of a Deepwoods slaughterer. ‘You signed on with Captain Twig, just like the rest of us. And I reckon, just like the rest of us, you saw something special in him - like he saw something special in each of us. We're the chosen few, we are, and we'll see this through to the end.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ replied Sleet uncertainly. ‘The end seems rather closer than I'd expected.’

  ‘Vortex, a hundred thousand strides and closing,’ came the nerve-racked voice of Spooler from the caternest.

  ‘It's all right to be afraid, Sleet,’ murmured a soft, hissing voice from the shadows behind them.

  Sleet dropped the tolley-rope and turned. ‘Reading my thoughts again, were you, Woodfish?’ he said.

  Woodfish recoiled. He was a slight, reptilian individual with webbed hands and feet and enormous fanned ears which were constantly aquiver.

  ‘I can't help it,’ he apologized. ‘It's what we water-waifs do. And I can tell you this, too. The young captain knows this caterbird well. He was there at its hatching, and for that the creature is bound to watch over him as long as they both shall live. It was the caterbird who discovered Twig's father marooned in a wreck of a ship in open sky. It enlisted Captain Twig's help, and he enlisted ours. We are behind him all the way. Besides,’ he added, ‘the caterbird knows what it's doing - even though its thoughts are a bit tricky to read.’

  ‘Oh, well, that makes me feel much better,’ Wingnut Sleet replied sarcastically.

  ‘I know,’ said Woodfish quietly. ‘I can read your thoughts quite clearly’

  Sleet's smile froze, and his sallow cheeks reddened.

  ‘The tolley-ropes, Sleet!’ shouted Twig.

  The young captain stared ahead i
nto the great open void. The Stormchaser, his father's sky pirate ship was out there somewhere, deeper in open sky than any sky ship had ever sailed before, and he would find it, whatever it took.

  They had already travelled for twenty days and twenty nights, with the caterbird out ahead, leading them on unfalteringly into the treacherous void. Now, as the pink light from the rising sun spread out across the sky on that twenty-first morning, the seemingly tireless creature was taking them still further. And all the while, the winds were becoming more and more unpredictable as the dominant south-westerlies collided with the tunnel of air coming in from the east.

  ‘Take the helm, Goom,’ Twig said to the great shaggy mountain of hair and tusks standing behind him. Every sky pirate captain needed a faithful lieutenant, and Goom the banderbear was Twig's. ‘Hold a steady course. We've got to keep on after the caterbird.’

  Goom grunted, his feathery ears fluttering.

  Twig turned his attention to the two rows of bone-handled levers that controlled the sky ship. With dextrous expertise, his hands played over them - raising the stern-weight and lowering the prow-weight; lowering the starboard hull-weights, small, medium and large, as far as they would go, while raising their counterparts on the port side completely

  The sky ship dipped and listed sharply to starboard as Twig attempted to follow the caterbird's erratic path. Cries of alarm went up from the lower decks. Twig gritted his teeth and concentrated. Flying a sky ship was a difficult skill at the best of times, but with a vortex looming in from open sky, Twig was being tested to the limit.

  With one hand, he positioned the neben- and klute-hull-weights. With the other, he adjusted the angles of the sails - tilting the staysail, slackening off the mainsail, bringing the jib gently round … Easy does it…

  ‘Angle, speed and balance,’ Twig muttered to himself. They were the three fundamentals of skysailing. Yet as the wind became more turbulent with every passing minute, it was difficult to maintain any of them.

  ‘Harder to starboard, Goom!’ Twig bellowed, as he realigned the hull-weights. ‘We've got to maintain the angle of …’

  All at once a fearsome juddering went through the sky ship. The hull creaked, the masts trembled. Abruptly it flipped up and listed to the other side.

  ‘Tether down!’ Twig bellowed at his crew. At any moment, the Edgedancer could turn turvey - and, with no land below them, anyone who fell would fall for ever.

  Spooler, the oakelf, disappeared into the caternest. Wingnut Sleet grabbed a tolley-rope and lashed himself to the fore-mast. Tarp Hammelherd the slaughterer and Woodfish the waterwaif clung to the bowsprit, while Bogwitt the flat-head goblin simply threw back his head and howled.

  At the centre of the ship, on a platform above the flight-rock, a figure in a great pointed hood and coat stood, calm and still and silent. This was the last member of Twig's crew - the Stone Pilot.

  The wind buffeted the sky ship violently: now on the port bow, now on the starboard. Twig raised the prow-weight completely and held his breath.

  For a moment, the Edgedancer juddered more violently than ever. But it remained upright. Heartened by this, Twig made fine adjustments to the mainsail and jib. The sky ship listed slightly to port and leapt forwards. The tether slackened off. In the distance, the caterbird flapped towards the great gaping chasm of the vortex.

  ‘Seventy-five thousand strides and closing,’ Spooler shouted out.

  ‘Stay tethered!’ Twig cautioned his crew loudly. ‘I don't want to lose anybody overboard.’

  ‘Anybody?’ Sleet mumbled. ‘More like everybody! We're all doomed if we pursue this foolish course.’

  Tarp Hammelherd glared round at him. ‘Sleet!’ he warned.

  Sleet stared back at him defiantly. ‘Someone's got to tell him,’ he said. ‘He's going to get us all killed.’

  ‘The captain knows what he's doing,’ said Tarp. ‘Besides, we've come too far to turn back now.’

  Hearing the developing dispute, Twig looked round. He saw his crew, each one now tethered securely to the tolley-ropes. The fear in ‘ their eyes was unmistakable. His gaze fell on Tarp.

  ‘What's going on down there?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing, cap'n,’ said Tarp, with a shake of his shaggy red head. ‘Just Sleet here got a touch of the jitters.’

  Wingnut Sleet turned and looked up. ‘So far as I'm aware,’ he said, ‘no captain has ever steered his sky ship into a weather vortex and lived to tell the tale.’

  The others listened but remained silent. They were all too loyal - and grateful - to the captain to question his commands, yet their fear of the approaching weather storm kept them from leaping to his defence. Twig looked at them sadly.

  How different the scene before him was now compared with the night the Edgedancer had set off on its long journey. Then, under a bright full moon, the entire crew had sat down together on the lower deck to a hearty supper of roast snowbird, wood pumpkin and blackbread. Their spirits were high, the woodale loosened their tongues, and they regaled one another with stories of their lives before Twig had signed them up to sail with him.

  For the crew of the Edgedancer, this was their first voyage together. There was Spooler the oakelf - small, wary, but with vision so sharp he could spot a white raven in the mire at a thousand strides.

  Goorn, the young banderbear, was already a giant, his tusks newly grown; a single blow from one of his massive paws could kill a ham-melhorn. And then Woodfish, the reptilian creature from the black depths of the Deepwoods whose fan-like ears heard everything, spoken or unspoken. Twig had rescued all three from the clutches of Flabsweat, an unsavoury retailer in exotic pets, and earned their lifelong gratitude in the process.

  Tarp Hammelherd, the slaughterer, was a Deep-woods dweller who had been lost to the taverns of Undertown.

  Bogwitt, a flat-head goblin and fierce warrior, had once been a Sanctaphrax guard. Both had been treated harshly by capricious fate; both had been offered succour and a second chance on board the Edgedancer. Neither would ever forget the young captain's kindness.

  And then there was Wingnut Sleet - who owed nothing to him - a clever, yet sly, quartermaster on whom Twig had taken a chance. Only the silent Stone Pilot had been known to Twig - and had sailed with him before.

  To our first adventure together!’ Tarp had said, and raised his glass. ‘And may the caterbird guide us quickly to the cap'n's father, and bring us all safely back to the Edge.’

  A ripple of assent had greeted his words.

  ‘To our first adventure,’ the sky pirates had cried.

  Now, three weeks later, that adventure was reaching its climax.

  ‘Vortex, fifty thousand strides,’ Spooler shouted above the roar of the approaching vortex.

  ‘Listen up, all of you,’ Twig called loudly. He turned to the banderbear at the helm, still holding a steady course despite the treacherous battering from the wind. ‘You too, Goom,’ he said. ‘Can you all hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ came the chorus of voices and the crew, as one, turned to look up at their captain.

  All round them, the clouds writhed and squirmed, yellow and grey, with flashes of electric blue. The wind gusted treacherously as the weather vortex - with the gaping opening to the spinning tunnel face-on - drew closer. Twig looked up nervously, his hammelhornskin waistcoat bristling. The caterbird was still heading straight for it.

  ‘I did not force any of you to come,’ said Twig. ‘Yet come, you did. And I am grateful for that - more grateful than you could imagine.’

  Woodfish nodded his head knowingly.

  ‘I thought I had lost my father for ever. Now I have been given a chance to find him. I shall never forget that it is you who have made this possible.’

  ‘I would follow you to the end of open sky, cap'n!’ Tarp Hammelherd shouted back.

  ‘Wuh-wuh!’ Goom agreed.

  Wingnut Sleet lowered his head and shuffled around awkwardly.

  ‘We have already come a long way together,’ Twi
g continued. ‘Now we are about to be tested to the limit. Sky willing, we will find Cloud Wolf and return to the Edge,’ he said. ‘But if …’ He paused. ‘If we fail, then I swear that so long as you are members of my crew, come what may, I will never abandon you. Never! As captain of the Edgedancer, I give you my word.’

  Tarp Hammelherd looked up. ‘I can't speak for the others,’ he said, ‘but I'm with you, cap'n, all the way.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Woodfish.

  A rumble of agreement echoed round the deck. Even Wingnut Sleet nodded.

  ‘Though I still don't see why we have to make things so difficult for ourselves by sailing straight into the mouth of a weather vortex,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Have faith in the caterbird,’ Twig replied. ‘It knows what it's doing …’

  ‘Vortex at twenty-five thousand strides,’ cried Spooler. ‘Approximately four minutes to impact.’

  The Edgedancer flew into a bank of grey, sticky cloud. The gale-force gusts of wind tipped it this way, that way. While Goom gripped the helm, Twig ran his fingers over the bone-handled levers in a frantic effort to keep the sky ship steady. All round them, blue lightning forked and flashed. The cloud was so dense that the sky pirates could barely see their hands before their faces.

  ‘Angle, speed and balance,’ Twig muttered. For once the words offered no comfort. With the thick air in his eyes, his nose, his mouth, he felt his nerve beginning to

  At that moment, the Edgedancer burst through the bank of cloud. To a crew-member, the sky pirates started back in horror. Twig gasped. Even the caterbird seemed surprised by the sight which confronted them. The swirling entrance to the vortex was suddenly there, directly in front of them. Its great blood-red mouth gaped so vast, it took up most of the sky.

  ‘V … v … vortex, ten thousand strides and c … closing,’ Spooler stammered.

  ‘A little higher, Twig,’ the caterbird's voice floated back to them as it soared upwards, pulling the tether taut once again. ‘We must enter the vortex at the still point in the very centre of the spinning tunnel of air.’