Edge Chronicles 6: Vox Read online

  Ploughing on through the hot, turgid air, Rook circled the tall, cracked towers of the Palace of Statues and swooped back down over the squalor and degradation of Undertown. He noted the dilapidated stores and rundown workshops opening up for business, the factories and foundries belching smoke, and on every street, the columns of chained slaves being driven by goblin guards from one part of town to the other as the night-shift was replaced by the day-shift.

  ‘Poor creatures, Rook whispered, his stomach churning.

  The whole stinking place sickened him. And yet, as he swooped by unnoticed, Rook saw no sign that the goblins’ behaviour was any more atrocious than normal. Nor, when he reached the jumbled framework of beams and pillars that formed the Sanctaphrax Forest, could he detect any hint of a recent uprising. It all looked like business as usual, with the slaves toiling and the goblins keeping them at their backbreaking work with random acts of casual brutality.

  Away from the work gangs, the Sanctaphrax Forest was eerily quiet. Only the constant soft creaking of the wood broke the silence. Rook flitted in and out of the shadowy scaffolding uneasily. He'd never liked it here. Ever since the forest had first been erected it had become colonized by numerous unpleasant creatures: flocks of ratbirds, colonies of rabid fromps, weezits, razorflits …

  Suddenly, from his right, he heard a sucking, slurping noise. He glanced round to see a dwarf-rotsucker on a broad horizontal beam crouched down next to a small egg-like cocoon. It had already drilled a hole in the side with its probing snout, and was now sucking out the putrid soup of a recent victim, now fully decomposed.

  The rank stench of death filled the air. The rotsucker looked up from its meal, its glowing eyes boring into the shadows suspiciously. Rook glided on.

  Swooping down lower in the sky, letting the light breeze do the work for him as he crossed the Edgewater River, Rook found himself thinking about the underground library - and how glad he was not to be there now.

  All those years he'd spent down in the dark, dripping sewers had left him with a fierce hunger for the world outside. He loved the freedom, and the space, and the wind in his hair and the sun in his face - and each time he soared up high on the Stormhornet, he was overwhelmed by the wonder of the endless expanse of sky all round him.

  He looked down, and swallowed uneasily. Screetown.

  Rook surveyed the scene of desolation below him. The debris, the destruction, the dark fissures that had opened up in the ground. He shuddered. Everywhere, there were shifting shadows sliding between the rocks, and curious glinting lights that were like eyes glaring back at him; widening greedily, sizing him up. Rook felt the evil of the place weighing him down. He tugged sharply on the sail ropes and the skycraft rose up in the sky.

  Higher he flew, past the Sanctaphrax rock and on up above the Tower of Night. Far to his left, the Stone Gardens came into view. Pulling hard on the loftsail, Rook brought the Stormhornet about in the sky and prepared for the long swooping descent round the stacks of broken boulders at the furthest tip of the Edge.

  His spirits lifted as he left Screetown behind him. It felt good to be high in the sky once more, the whole world spread out below him like a vast intricate map. This was where he belonged, up in wide open air. Not trapped below the ground like a piebald rat.

  All at once, a sound broke into his thoughts: a great roaring, wailing sound that was coming up fast behind him. The next instant everything was a confusion of noise and heat and light. The Stormhornet reared beneath him and spun round. Rook couldn't see a thing. The wind was rushing all round him, tossing him about like a scrap of parchment. The acrid smell of burning spider-silk and toasted wood-almonds filled his nostrils.

  ‘Sky save me, he murmured, his words whipped away on the rushing air.

  The fragile craft had gone into a plummeting tailspin, and together, the pair of them were tumbling out of the sky faster than a stricken flight-rock.

  • CHAPTER TWO •

  SCREETOWN

  Clinging on grimly, Rook fought hard to control the Stormhornet's steep dive. He leaned back in the stirrups and tried desperately to keep her nose up. But it was no good. The skycraft wasn't responding. The ground - a mosaic of rock stacks and ravines - hurtled up to meet them.

  The last thing Rook remembered was making himself relax his muscles in preparation for the crash, just as he'd been taught to do in flight training. He released the carved wooden neck, pulled his feet out of the stirrups, and felt the Stormhornet slip away from beneath him.

  For a moment, everything seemed to be sweeping past him in a smudged blur. There was a roaring of air and a flashing of light - then blackness.

  Rook opened his eyes. His head was throbbing, there was something heavy pressing down on his chest, and his mouth was full of foul-tasting dust. But he was alive.

  Above him, the chaotic silhouettes of rubble crags stood out against the muddy sky like brooding giants. Where was he? he wondered. Where was the Stormhornet? And what in Sky's name had happened? One moment he'd been swooping high in the sky beyond the great rock, the next he was …

  Screetown¡

  An icy shiver ran through him. The treacherous winds had driven him back across the sky. Now he was inside that desolate wasteland of wrecked buildings and sprawling rockfalls, home to rubble ghouls and muglumps - and worse. From far above him came the raucous cawing of a lone white raven as it sliced across the dusty sky.

  The important thing, he knew, was not to panic. He must stay calm. He must remember his training. After all, he was a librarian knight, he told himself; one of Varis Lodd's finest. He would survive. He had to survive. Varis would expect nothing less of him.

  First of all, he must check for any injuries. Gingerly, he felt his head, his neck, and his chest… The pressure on his ribs, he discovered, came from a large piece of rubble that was making it hard to breathe. With a grunt, Rook gripped the boulder, slowly eased it off his chest and dropped it beside him. It disappeared into nothingness.

  With a gasp, Rook turned to find himself staring down into a deep, dark chasm. He was lying on the very edge of a huge canyon. Far below, he could hear the boulder's clattering descent. Its muffled thuds echoed back - first loud, then softer, and then softer still - as it bounced from rock to rock. And from the depths of the canyon, there came an answering call; a mewling cry which grew louder and louder, until the air echoed with sinister howls.

  Anxiously, Rook rose to his feet and stepped back from the canyon's edge. Whatever lurked down there in those infernal depths, he had clearly awoken it. The cries grew louder, and he thought he heard the sound of shifting scree as something scrabbled closer.

  He didn't wait to see what it was. Turning away, Rook began to pick his way through the piles of rubble as quickly as he dared. The treacherous rubble below his feet slipped and slid. The air was thick with choking dust.

  ‘Find shelter,’ a voice inside his head whispered. “Somewhere to hide.’

  Rook clambered over the angular rock-scape, grazing his fingers and scraping his shins. There were great mountains of rubble looming up everywhere he looked; a chaos of cracked arches, fallen walls and leaning pillars, with jutting roofbeams silhouetted against the sepia-stained sky like the ribs of giant creatures.

  The wind, though little more than a hot, malodorous draught, whistled softly between the rocks like an ancient goblin matron sucking air between her gappy teeth. The sun was low behind the cloudcover, with the sky already growing darker, yet the air beneath was hotter than ever. Rook wiped the sweat from his forehead; he was still finding it difficult to breathe. His head ached, and every jarred bone in his body throbbed with pain - but Rook dared not stop, not even for a moment.

  The howls were getting closer, and whatever was making them, it was clearly no longer alone. Others had joined it in a chorus of yelps and shrieks. He had to find a hiding-place, and quickly.

  Some way ahead a ruined archway poked up from the scree. Beneath it, Rook could see a crevice that looked just large
enough for him to crawl through. He only hoped it didn't already have an occupant. He checked his equipment - water-bottle, grappling-hook, notebook, hover tincture, knife …

  The cries seemed just behind him now; keening, high-pitched, and accompanied by a strange leathery rustling. Rook swallowed anxiously.

  He was being hunted.

  Drawing his knife, Rook made for the crevice. He crouched down, thrust his head into the entrance and listened. There was nothing. He sniffed. If some creature was using the place as a sanctuary, he should be able to smell its musty bedding or pungent droppings. Again, there was nothing; only the dry, sour odour of the crumbled rock itself.

  Behind him, the howls rose up in a swirling discord.

  ‘Earth guard and Sky protect me, he murmured as he disappeared into the small opening.

  It was narrower than he'd first thought and grew narrower still the further he scrambled into the dark, dusty crevice. Soon he was down on his front and wriggling between the great slabs of fallen rock. The gaps between them closed in, pressing into him from both sides, squeezing him tightly.

  He snatched short, shallow breaths, his body trembling, sweating, aching … He only hoped he'd be able to get out again. Had he escaped the howling creatures, only to bury himself in his own grave? The thing was, he had to get far enough in to avoid a probing claw or tentacle.

  ‘Just a few strides more,’ he urged himself. ‘Just…’ Rook could go no further. Ahead, the rubble was packed tight. He shifted himself awkwardly round, cracking his knee against a jutting rock. Ignoring the intense pain, he reached out and hurriedly grasped handful after handful of the sour dust, which he rubbed over his clothes, his face, and his hair. It stuck to the sweat, coating every inch of him and should, according to his training, obscure his own smell - at least, that was the theory.

  All at once, there came a snuffling, sniffing sound from the opening to the crevice. Rook froze. The sniffing grew louder. Then there was a rough scratching noise, followed by the sound of falling debris. Something - a snout, a claw, a tentacle - was working its way into the crevice, searching for its elusive prey. Rook bit nervously into his lower lip.

  The scratching stopped. The sniffing resumed - then it, too, stopped. Rook heard the leathery rustling as something big scuffled off heavily, howling with rage and frustration as it searched elsewhere. A dozen others answered its call. The leathery rustle grew more distant; the howls receded. The hunt seemed to be moving on.

  When he was sure they'd gone, Rook began the arduous crawl back out of the crevice. At the end, he pushed aside the rocks that the creature had dislodged, and emerged, dust-covered and shaking. He wiped the sour particles from his lips and breathed in the evening air greedily. Then he peered about him, ready at the first sign of danger to disappear back into the hole.

  The ground gave a little tremor - causing the rubble to shift and more dust to rise.

  Must get my bearings, Rook thought grimly as he climbed to his feet. He had to get out of this place as soon as he could.

  The Sanctaphrax rock loomed in the sky behind him and he could just make out the cracked towers of Undertown's northern heights far ahead. To his left and right, the skeletons of buildings rose up out of the debris like disfigured hands. Before him, a vast mound of stone blocks extended into the distance. Walking was impossible. He would have to clamber up the precariously balanced rocks on his hands and knees.

  Rook knew the drill, of course. Test each foothold before committing your whole weight. And if you need to leap, then look carefully first.

  By the time he reached the top of the first rubble mound, Rook was sweating heavily and panting like a shryke-sister's prowlgrin after a long patrol. He paused and straightened up. The towers of the northern heights were still in front of him - but by his reckoning it was already late afternoon. At this rate, he faced the very real prospect of having to survive a night in Screetown. He swallowed uneasily.

  All at once, a colossal tremor knocked Rook off his feet. The rubble beneath him seemed to boil; great clouds of dust blacked out the evening sky, stinging his eyes and filling his mouth. Rook curled up into a ball and waited for the shaking to stop.

  Slowly, the rubble settled and the rattle of shifting pebbles died away. The thick dust still hung in the hot, humid air but, as Rook wiped his eyes, it too began to clear. When he was sure it was over, he climbed shakily to his feet once more and looked around.

  The rubble mounds just behind him had been flattened to reveal a line of splintered beams from some long-buried building. Beside them, only half-uncovered, the statue of a great Undertown artisan - long since forgotten - stood at a drunken angle, one arm, broken at the wrist, reaching up to the sky. And in the middle of it all - like a huge clenched fist - lay a massive chunk of rock. Rook looked up at the towering shape of the Sanctaphrax rock above him, propped up on its forest of wooden pillars, like some huge diseased oak-apple.

  Despite the neverending work carried out on the Sanctaphrax Forest, crumbling pieces of the great rock were always falling. Most were small and insignificant, but every so often a great slab would break free and come crashing down onto Screetown.

  Rook shuddered. That was close, he murmured. Too close.’

  He turned to go - then froze in his tracks. A hand of ice seemed to grip his heart.

  ‘No, he whispered. ‘No, it can't be.’

  But it was. Lying on the ground not half a dozen strides away was the Stormhornet - or what was left of it. The mast was blackened and in two pieces. A charred scrap of spidersilk and a twist of rope were all that remained of the sails. And as for the prow … Rook picked his way over the uneven ground and, crouching down beside the sky craft, reached out tentatively.

  His fingers confirmed what he hoped his eyes had only imagined. The neck of the Stormhornet was broken almost in two. Jagged splinters at the top of the stump glinted in the weak sunlight while the angular head -barely attached by a couple of thin, woody fibres - lolled forward.

  A painful lump formed in Rook's throat. The sails and ropes could have been replaced; so could the mast. But with the neck of the craft broken, he knew that its spirit had been released. The Stormhornet would never fly again.

  Rook fell to his knees. He raised the wooden head, held it gently in place, and hugged the prow tightly. Memories from the Free Glades came flooding back: Oakley Gruffbark, the woodtroll master-carver who had helped him find the stormhornet - his stormhornet - concealed within the slab of wood he had to carve; varnish-making in the Gardens of Light; sail-setting and ropecraft. Bit by bit, he'd worked on her, and learned to fly her …

  ‘I … I carved you, he whispered, his voice faltering. ‘I named you. Together we rode the sky, you and 1, He sniffed. ‘Farewell… His chest felt tight, as though the boulder was back there, pressing down and making it difficult to breathe. ‘Stormhornet…

  Rook knew that his beloved skycraft was now just a piece of wood again. Her spirit had departed. With a heavy heart, he stood up and set off.

  He did not look back.

  Progress was slow as Rook struggled on. Navigating the jagged, uneven rubble became increasingly difficult and his throat was soon as parched as the rocky landscape he was crossing. Time and again he came to vast craters which took an age to cross. Down he would go, into the echoing bowl of boulders and up the other side, hoping and praying each time that when he emerged at the top, the towers of Undertown would look nearer.

  ‘This time, he whispered, the sound of his own voice oddly reassuring as he climbed the far side of a particularly large depression. ‘This time, they'll look closer, they've got to …’

  Once again, he was disappointed. The towers appeared as far away as ever. What was more, it was growing darker.

  Must keep my head, he reminded himself. I can survive a night in Screetown if I just follow my training and don't lose my nerve - Earth and Sky willing, he thought anxiously as a raucous shriek echoed round the desolation. The night-creatures were stirring.
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br />   He reached for his water-bottle and had it to his lips before remembering that it was empty.

  ‘Stupid, he muttered to himself, clipping the empty flask back into place. Varis would be disappointed in him for failing to conserve his meagre rations. He shook his head miserably. Perhaps he'd discover some more water and be able to refill it. But until then …

  He picked up a smooth round pebble and popped it into his mouth. It was supposed to make his mouth water, to provide enough moisture to soothe his burning throat. But it didn't work. Rook spat the claggy stone out in disgust, and as he drove himself on, his thirst nagged at him constantly now that there was no means to slake it.

  It was so hot. So humid. He wiped his hand gently across his brow and sucked the sweat from his fingertips. The salty droplets only made him greedy for more.

  Of course, there was water here in Screetown, dry and dusty though it appeared. Rook knew that it was just a matter of finding it. Ruptured pipes and broken fountains continued to flow; wells where, long ago, Undertowners had gathered to draw water and gossip, still tapped into the underground water-table. What he had to do was look out for moss, for grass, and scrubby bushes, whose roots, reaching down through the cracks in the rubble, were a sure sign of the presence of water - that and the evidence of the Screetown creatures which drank it.

  As he forged his way on, their shrieks and cries echoed through the sultry twilight air. Past a cracked tower he went, a great section of its once magnificent dome missing, like a bite from a giant woodsap. To his left, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of movement and turned to see something slither into the shadows. Rook moved quickly on.

  He made his way over fallen pillars forming makeshift bridges; beneath a crumbling viaduct, its two rows of supports in various stages of collapse; through the lower window of a tall, unsteady facade, and on across a jagged carpet of slates - once a roof, now a treacherous floor. One slip and he would end up tumbling down into the cracks that gaped on either side of him. If he did, he knew that no-one would ever find him - until the scavengers came to pick his bones.