Doombringer Page 8

  Then Cade noticed the music change again, and with it, the song. It became hopeful, lyrical, and even more beautiful, with Phineal, and then Firth, singing about the Farrow Lake and the Blueshell Clam in its waters. He realized that they were making up a new song as they went along, the words fitting in seamlessly with the music. He heard his name, and then Celestia’s, and his heart swelled with pride. And when he looked across at Celestia, she too was smiling. The two of them were friends of the lake and forests, the webfoots sang; they had entered for ever into this song of the clans.

  The beautiful music turned to a soft lullaby. Phineal and Firth sat down with the others around the firepit and gazed dreamily into the glowing embers.

  Lost in the soothing melody, Cade’s eyelids grew heavy. And when he looked round at Celestia again, he saw that his friend was fast asleep, curled up on a snail-skin cloak. He lay back, his arm crooked behind his head, and watched the stars that seemed to glitter in the sky like marsh-gems and mire-pearls stitched onto a gown of black silk . . .

  It was only when he woke up that Cade realized he’d been asleep. He sat up. It was early morning. Someone had laid a second snailskin over him, and it was wet with dew. He looked around.

  Celestia was gone, and so was Calix. Most of the webfoots were up and about. Embers smouldered in the firepit. Phineal was staring down at him.

  ‘Good morning, Cade Quarter,’ he said. ‘Celestia said to tell you she had to get back to her father. She also said that she’s fed your prowlgrin.’

  Cade smiled. Rumblix was always hungry, and constantly after as much food as he could get.

  Memories of the previous night came flooding back: the eating and drinking, the music and the singing. Cade watched the webfoots as they busied themselves with their daily chores – setting their fishing nets, sharpening their tools, mending their clothes, tending to their skycraft – and Cade recalled the beautiful song of the clans. He felt honoured to have been a part of it.

  ‘There’s some honeybroth left if you’re hungry,’ said Phineal. ‘I can—’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Cade, shaking his head as he climbed to his feet. ‘I’m not at all hungry.’ He frowned. ‘Phineal, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ he said. He nodded towards the twelve skycraft bobbing about above the surface of the lake. ‘Where is your skycraft?’

  Phineal smiled. ‘I wondered when you’d ask,’ he said. ‘Would you like to see it?’

  Cade nodded.

  ‘Good,’ said Phineal, his crest darkening. ‘It’ll give me the opportunity to see whether or not my brother clam-tenders were followed. We can only hope those so-called Deepwoods traders were not mire-pearlers after all . . .’

  The pair of them made their way back up the meadow. As they passed by Cade’s cabin, Rumblix came bounding out from beneath the veranda, barking excitedly, his tongue out and slurping, as though he hadn’t had anything to eat in a week.

  ‘Nice try,’ Cade laughed. ‘Now, stay!’ he commanded. Rumblix obediently hopped up onto his perch on the veranda railing. ‘Good boy,’ he said. ‘I’ll feed you at noon.’

  Cade turned and followed Phineal across the meadow towards the treeline. Inside the woods, the webfoot paused for a moment and, eyes narrowed, inspected the ground. Then he took a narrow track that wound its way through the dense undergrowth. When the track forked, he paused again, and this time Cade noticed the marker that the webfoot must have left before to indicate which way to go.

  ‘Knotted grass,’ he said, and Phineal laughed.

  ‘Simple but effective,’ he said. ‘Well spotted.’

  Some five hundred strides – and half a dozen more knotted tufts of grass – later, they came to the foot of a tall ironwood pine. The small pebble positioned in the middle of a flat rock at its base confirmed to Phineal that this was indeed the right tree.

  The webfoot started to climb.

  For a goblin adapted to being underwater, Phineal proved an agile tree climber. He gripped the rough bark with his hands, while his feet seemed to find the best purchase almost instinctively. Cade followed him up the mighty ironwood, trying his best to take exactly the same route.

  Gradually, as they climbed higher, it became lighter, until they emerged above the upper canopy of the surrounding lufwoods and lullabees. And still they climbed, past giant pine-cones and clusters of dark green rapier-like needles.

  Then Cade saw it . . .

  Phineal’s skycraft. It was bobbing in the air at the top of the tree, tethered by a plaited rope to one of the ironwood pine’s knotty spurs.

  The main part of the vessel was made up of two intersected sumpwood beams; silvery grey, covered in decking, and with feather-like patterns carved along their sides. The motif was continued at the stern, with the jutting rudder resembling splayed tail feathers. The prow was fashioned like the head of a mighty bird, with a massive horned bill and a curved ridge that swept back from its bony head. Two eyes, gleaming with purple varnish, seemed almost to stare back at him.

  ‘A caterbird,’ Cade breathed.

  Phineal nodded. He looked almost embarrassed, Cade thought, and his crest had started to glow a shade of pinky-yellow he had not seen before.

  ‘I had no choice in the matter,’ Phineal told Cade. ‘When I started carving the block of sumpwood for my prow, I had no idea what I was about to create. Yet it soon became clear.’ He smiled modestly. ‘It was in my heart.’

  Cade nodded. Phineal Glyfphith’s calling was to tend to the Ancient One of Water, the Great Blueshell Clam. So when he had created a skycraft to set out in search of it, of course he had carved another of the Ancient Ones – the Ancient One of Air. The caterbird. Water and air. It seemed to Cade a good balance.

  ‘Climb aboard,’ Phineal told him.

  Cade did so, stepping onto the sumpwood crossbeams and sitting down on one of the two seats fixed below the twin masts. He examined the workmanship of the vessel. There were no obvious joints. No screws or rivets. And it occurred to him just how the skycraft had been built.

  Unlike a modern sky vessel, assembled from a thousand different parts, this skycraft had been made from a single sumpwood log. The decking, the crossbeams, the prow and the masts all seemed to flow together, with the grain of the buoyant wood running unbroken from one part to the next in beautiful patterns beneath the silver glow of the varnish.

  Close up, it seemed to Cade that the skycraft wasn’t a construction at all. It was a carving.

  There was a gentle lurch as Phineal untethered the rope, slung it aboard and jumped onto the skycraft, which began to rise slowly through the air. A tingling thrill of excitement passed through Cade’s body.

  He was riding a skycraft from the Second Age, just like those brave librarian knights centuries before.

  When the little vessel had cleared the uppermost branches of the ironwood pine, Phineal, who was standing near the prow, reached up and tugged the slipknots of first one furling rope, then the other. The sails tumbled down and billowed. Phineal seized the ropes that dangled from their corners as the wind filled the sails, and the Caterbird leaped forward at such a speed that Cade was thrown back in his seat.

  Phineal sat down on the other seat, his hands playing with the bunch of ropes he was holding. He altered the heights of the dangling flight weights. He aligned the sails. The skycraft reacted to each minor adjustment and soared ahead, faster than ever.

  ‘This one affects lift,’ said Phineal, flicking one of the ten flight ropes in his grasp. ‘These control direction. These help stability in high winds . . .’

  ‘It all looks very complicated,’ Cade observed.

  Phineal smiled. ‘Twin masts, eight sails, fore and aft flight weights – but after a while, you get a feel for it.’ He shot a glance over at Cade. ‘Unlike the phraxengineers doing battle with the sky with their fire and steam, we skycrafters ride the winds.’

  They continued over the forest, and Cade kept his eyes on Phineal’s hands as he adjusted the sails and fl
ight weights. Little by little, it started to make sense to him. Each of the ropes had a purpose: one operated the rudder, one the hull-weights, while four operated the mast sails and four the undersails below the craft. Banking. Soaring. Dipping. Turning. Everything was possible with a tiny tweak of a rope, or a combination of two or more.

  With all eight sails set, they wheeled to starboard and headed south. Far below him, Cade made out a tall platform towering above the forest canopy.

  ‘That’s where my friend Gart Ironside lives,’ he told Phineal. ‘He loads supplies onto the passing skytaverns . . .’

  ‘A phraxpilot,’ said Phineal, glancing down, unable to keep the dismissive tone from his voice.

  Cade nodded.

  Gart’s phraxlighter was tethered to the mooring ring of the platform. Compared to Phineal’s swift, agile skycraft, so sensitive to every delicate adjustment, it suddenly looked, Cade thought, cumbersome and slow.

  They continued on past the Needles and the High Farrow and above the high forest beyond. Looking over the side, Cade saw stands of ironwood pines, groves of lullabees. Scree-slopes and streams. Jewel-like mountain pools . . .

  ‘Untouched,’ Cade heard Phineal whisper. ‘So, so beautiful. And let us hope by Earth and Sky that it’ll stay that way.’ The webfoot brought the skycraft round in a broad arc and headed back in a northerly direction.

  ‘There are caverns behind the falls there,’ said Cade shortly after, pointing down at the cave entrances from which the five glistening cascades emerged. ‘They’re where the white trogs live. They keep themselves to themselves.’

  ‘The best way,’ said Phineal.

  He brought the skycraft down lower in the sky, taking in the undersails, then skimmed over the surface of the Farrow Lake. To his right, Cade glimpsed Thorne on the shore and waved, but the fisher goblin was too engrossed in his nets to see him. Moments later, they sped past the webfoots – who did wave back. Then, as Phineal adjusted the mast sails, they were up in the air again and speeding high over the Western Woods.

  ‘That’s Celestia’s house,’ said Cade, pointing down at the hanging tree-cabin. ‘She lives there with her father. He built it himself.’

  ‘Fine workmanship,’ Phineal observed as they passed high over the mighty ironwood pine.

  A little further on, Cade pointed again. ‘Look,’ he said, his voice hushed but urgent. ‘Over there, Phineal, in that clearing . . .’

  ‘A hammerhead hive-tower,’ Phineal breathed. ‘I didn’t realize there were any of the ancient tribes remaining.’ He shook his head, then took the skycraft higher still. ‘This is truly a remarkable place, Cade Quarter.’

  The tiny figures moving around the tall wicker tower at the centre of the clearing didn’t appear to notice them. For unlike the phrax-driven vessels, with their billowing steam, roaring jet of fire and mechanical hum, the skycraft was as silent as it was stealthy and swift. And with its pale varnish and iridescent spidersilk sails, it was also almost invisible against the bright backdrop of the sky.

  For a second time, Phineal brought the small craft round and they headed south-west. Below them, cast by the high midday sun, their own shadow swept across the green canopy of leaves.

  ‘Would you like to take over?’ Phineal asked.

  Cade’s stomach lurched. Even though he’d been watching Phineal so closely, the thought of actually taking control of the skycraft was daunting – not that he was about to let on that he was nervous.

  ‘I’ll give it a go,’ he said.

  Phineal passed him the cluster of ropes. ‘Hold her steady,’ he said. ‘That’s the way.’

  The sumpwood Caterbird continued her flight over the Western Woods.

  ‘Watch the sails. See how they take the wind. Keep them billowing,’ Phineal directed. ‘Now use the rudder . . .’

  Cade pulled on the rudder rope and to his delight the skycraft came round in the sky – only to be caught by a crosswind, and sent into a downward spiral.

  ‘Ease down the aft flight weight,’ Phineal commanded, his voice calm but firm. ‘Fill the port sails.’

  Cade adjusted the ropes and saw the sails billow out once more. To his relief the skycraft levelled out. Feeling in control at last, a smile spread across his face. All eight sails strained at their ropes and the skycraft sped across the sky. It was so exhilarating it made his stomach churn and his head spin.

  The edge of the Western Woods was coming close. Cade knew that when they left the forest, the up currents would change again, and he would have to deal with the new conditions. He gripped the ropes grimly and hoped for the best.

  Moments later, it happened.

  Suddenly, the forest was behind them. Cade breathed in the warm, tangy odour of the swampy flatlands below them as they flew out over the Levels. At the same moment, the currents of air did change. The wind switched direction. And for a second time the skycraft pitched and went into a spiral.

  This time, however, Cade knew what to do, and managed not only to steady the vessel, but also to increase its speed once more. Delighted with himself, he looked across at Phineal, to see that the webfoot was peering down over the side of the skycraft, his brow furrowed and crest flashing an excited crimson and orange.

  ‘What is it?’ Cade asked.

  Phineal pointed down at the thin strip of land that lay between the Farrow Lake and the swampy levels behind it. ‘It looks ideal,’ he said.

  ‘Ideal?’ said Cade. ‘Ideal for what?’

  Phineal’s crest flashed deep red. ‘Fifth Lake Village,’ he said.

  · CHAPTER FOURTEEN ·

  CADE STEPPED OUTSIDE onto his veranda. The morning was cool and overcast, with the ground blurred by a low covering of mist. Raising his spyglass to his eye, he looked out across the lake. It was a ritual he’d been performing every day since the webfoots had started to build their new settlement on the western shore.

  That was nearly three months ago.

  Now, during the hours of daylight – and occasionally into the night – the sounds of building work echoed across the lake: chopping, sawing, hammering, and the heavy thump-thump of great wooden piles being driven deep into the ground.

  Two stilthouses had already been completed. Both were tall rectangular buildings with scalloped walls, broad roofs, thatched with lake-reeds, and wooden jetties that stuck out over the lake. A third stilthouse – squatter and smaller than the others – was waiting to be thatched, while the foundations of a fourth were being worked on now, with planks of wood being nailed into position to form a platform.

  Cade was still watching the webfoots when there was a loud thud and the veranda shook. He lowered his spyglass and peered over the balustrade, to see Tug rubbing his forehead ruefully.

  ‘Tug hit head again – but Tug all right,’ he muttered bravely as he rubbed gingerly at the egg-sized bump that was already forming on his forehead. Cade frowned. His friend had grown at least half a stride taller in the last few months – and was still growing.

  ‘You’re just too big to sleep under the veranda any more,’ Cade told him. ‘So I’m going to build you your own room. On the side of the cabin. And you’ll help me,’ he added.

  Cade glanced back at the industrious webfoots hard at work on Fifth Lake Village. All that building had whetted his appetite for a project of his own.

  ‘I’ll get Rumblix harnessed up. You fetch the tools, Tug,’ Cade instructed, ‘and we’ll head up into the lufwood stands for the timber.’

  Beyond the treeline, the forest was bathed in shadow and pleasantly cool. A rich smell of pine and damp earth laced the air. But Cade was on his guard. As Tug and he, with Rumblix at his side, plunged deeper into the trees, Cade kept an eye out for any potential danger. Lurking halitoads or spitting quarms in the shadows; or innocent-looking fallen logs that could suddenly hiss into life. Every snapped twig, every rustle of leaves, every creaking branch made him stop in his tracks and peer around uneasily.

  Tug had no such concerns. With the sack of tools on
his back, he trudged fearlessly along behind Cade, Rumblix bounding close on his heels.

  A sudden stirring to Cade’s right set his senses jangling. He froze, and hissed at Tug to do the same.

  Something was there in the trees. He slipped his phrax-musket from his shoulder and raised it. A low branch trembled. There was a flash of movement.

  Cade crept forward, placing his boots down as lightly as he could, attempting to remain silent. He pulled a branch aside – and there in the middle of a clearing stood a small tilder fawn with gangly legs, dappled fur and large brown eyes that stared back at Cade with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. Its nose twitched. Its body quivered. Then, suddenly, kicking up the fallen leaves with its hoofs, it twisted round and bolted back into the shadows.

  Cade smiled. ‘I’ll be scared of my own shadow next,’ he said, shouldering his phraxmusket.

  Rumblix chased playfully after the fleeing fawn. Overhead, a troupe of lemkins screeched with surprise, and swung off through the branches.

  ‘Rumblix!’ Cade called.

  The prowlgrin stopped and returned to Cade’s side, purring loudly. They continued through the woods behind the cabin, past towering ironwood pines, lush groves of sallowdrop trees and clumps of tanglebriar and thorn shrub. Then, on the far side of a dappled glade, they came to the lufwood stands.

  Cade stopped in front of one of the lufwood trees. It was neither too big nor too small; it had a straight trunk and a minimum of branches he would have to strip, and timber that would be light to work, but durable.

  ‘This is the one,’ he told Tug.

  Tug nodded, dropped the sack of tools to the ground and removed an axe. Soon, chips of wood and the sound of chopping filled the air. Cade unpacked and assembled a makeshift sled he’d taken with him in his backpack and attached it to Rumblix’s harness at the back.