The Last of the Sky Pirates Read online

  Rook shivered.

  ‘We’re going to be fine,’ Magda whispered, and squeezed his hand reassuringly. ‘If we all stick together. We must head for the Central Market.’

  Rook nodded. It wasn’t only his sense of smell which had become so acute. After the sensory deprivation and confusion of the Twilight Woods, his senses were blazing. The air felt greasy, dirty. He could taste it in his mouth. His ears heard every screech, every squeal; every barked order and crack of the whip – every heartrending cry of despair. And as for his eyes …

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Rook muttered, as they started along one of a series of walkways strung out between the trees, which led deeper and deeper into the thronging city.

  Lights. Colour. Faces. Movement … Everywhere he looked, Rook was bombarded by a confusing mass of strange and disturbing sights. It was like a great patchwork quilt which, as he passed through it, threw up image after individual image.

  A caged banderbear. A chained vulpoon. Tethered rotsuckers. Betting posts and gambling tables. Itinerants hawking lucky charms. A pair of shrykes, their flails clacking. Two more – one armed with a great studded club. An animated argument between a gnokgoblin and a cloddertrog. A lost woodtroll, screaming for its mother. Leather dealers, paper merchants, chandlers and coopers. Refreshment stalls selling snacks and beverages that Rook didn’t even know existed. What was a wood-toad shake? Or a hot-bod? And what in Sky’s name might gloamglozer tea taste of?

  ‘It’s this way,’ he heard Stob saying, pointing up at a painted sign above their heads.

  They descended three flights of rickety steps, zigzagging downwards until they arrived at a bustling walkway in the trees. Burdened with its heavy load of merchants and marketeers, goblins, trogs and trolls streaming in both directions, the walkway dipped and bounced, creaking ominously as it swayed. Rook gripped the safety-rail anxiously.

  ‘Don’t look down,’ Magda whispered, sensing Rook’s nervousness.

  But Rook couldn’t help himself. He peered down into the depths below. Three levels beneath him, in the dark, acrid gloom, was the forest floor. It shimmered and writhed as if the earth itself were somehow alive. With a jolt, Rook realized that that was precisely what it was – for the forest floor was a living mass of tiny orange creatures.

  ‘Wig-wigs,’ he muttered uneasily.

  Although he’d never seen one before, Rook had read about them in Varis Lodd’s treatise on banderbears. They hunted in huge packs and could devour a creature as big as a banderbear in an instant – flesh, hair, bones, tusks; everything. Rook shuddered as it occurred to him that this vast city in the trees – the Eastern Roost – must provide an abundance of food for so many bloodthirsty scavengers to have congregated underneath. Giddy with foreboding, he gripped the rail tightly.

  ‘Come on, knife-grinder,’ said Stob nastily. ‘We don’t have time for sightseeing.’

  He pushed Rook roughly in the back and strode off along the walkway. Magda and a trembling Rook followed.

  As the Central Market drew closer, the walkway grew broader – though no less congested. It became louder than ever and, with all the constant coming and going and general milling about, the three librarian apprentices were hard pushed to fight their way through.

  ‘Stick together,’ Stob called back as he reached the narrow entrance to the market.

  ‘Easier said than done,’ Magda grumbled, as the surging crowd threatened to separate them. ‘Hold my hand, Stob,’ she said. ‘And you, too, Rook.’

  With Stob in front, the three of them forged onwards. The gateway came closer. They were shuffling now, with bodies all round them, pressing in tightly. Through the archway and … inside.

  Rook took a deep breath as the crowd released its grip. He looked round at the others and smiled. They had made it to the Central Market.

  Built on a platform which was supported by a scaffolding of trees, sawn off where they stood, the Central Market was open to the elements. The starry canopy looked almost close enough to touch as the stars shimmered in the heat thrown off by the braziers and spits.

  Rook took out the scrap of barkpaper the shryke had given them and examined it.

  ‘Now what?’ said Stob, looking around.

  ‘We find the cart,’ said Magda, ‘and then …’

  ‘Yes?’ said Stob meanly.

  ‘One thing at a time,’ said Magda, frowning and looking around. ‘Over there, I think.’

  They made their way across the bustling Central Market. There was everything there, and more – stuffed, pickled, roasted and tanned; woven, gilded and carved. They passed slaughterers with their hammelhorn enclosures and overflowing displays of leatherwear; woodtrolls at their timber stalls and goblin tinkers and ironmongers, all bargaining, bartering and hawking their wares. And as they got close to the Holding Pens, they became aware also of the constant flow of shryke-driven carts and heavy wagons arriving from the Twilight Woods. The drivers waved flaming torches to ward off the wig-wigs before climbing the swaying ramp that snaked up to the Central Market platform where the wagon owners waited anxiously by the stalls.

  Rook stared in amazement at the sprawling Holding Pens before him. The atmosphere was urgent – and smelly. A vast sea of carts and wagons, and pack-animals tugging on their leashes, guarded by burly, sullen shrykes, was waiting to be reclaimed. The air resounded with discordant cries and voices raised in protest.

  ‘But half my cargo has been stolen!’ shouted a gnokgoblin.

  ‘I’ve lost two hammelhorns!’ a cloddertrog complained.

  ‘Shryke tax!’ laughed one of the guards. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take your wagon through the Twilight Woods yourself next time? No? Didn’t think so!’ She cackled unpleasantly.

  ‘Typical shryke robbery,’ moaned a goblin as he barged past Rook. ‘Just ’cause they’re not affected by the Twilight Woods, they think they can rob us blind!’

  Magda matched a sign above one of the pens with the scrawl on the barkpaper. ‘Here!’ she shouted excitedly to the other two. ‘Over here!’

  Stob and Rook joined her as she presented the paper to a scruffy, bored-looking shryke leaning against a fencepost.

  ‘Over there,’ said the shryke, waving a talon.

  In the corner of the pen was a small, broken-down cart with a thin, ill-looking prowlgrin in harness.

  ‘But that’s not our cart,’ Magda protested. ‘Ours was a four-seater, pulled by a hammelhorn …’

  ‘Take it or leave it,’ sneered the shryke. She yawned and inspected her talons.

  ‘They’ll take it, mistress. A thousand thank-yous,’ came a squeaky voice. A small, tatty shryke-mate stepped forward and took Magda by the arm.

  ‘But—’ said Magda.

  ‘No buts, my child,’ squeaked the shryke-mate. ‘We have urgent business, and we mustn’t take up any more of the generous mistress’s valuable time.’

  He bowed low to the shryke guard and ushered Magda away. The other two followed.

  ‘What’s the big idea?’ said Stob, grabbing the shryke-mate’s puny wing and pulling the grasping talons from Magda’s arm.

  The shryke-mate cringed. ‘A thousand apologies,’ he whispered. ‘But we can’t speak here. It’s too dangerous. Follow me.’

  He reached inside his filthy tunic and flashed a bloodoak-tooth pendant at Stob, before turning and hurrying into the crowd.

  ‘Wait for us!’ said Stob. ‘Come on, you two. Stop dithering! You heard what the shryke said.’

  Magda and Rook exchanged quizzical glances before following Stob as he pushed through the crowd after the small, scruffy figure of the shryke-mate.

  They caught up with him by a stall in the slaughterers area. Everything – from tooled amulets, breast-plates and leather gauntlets, to great hanging carcases of hammelhorn, woodhog and tilder – was on offer. Stob stood at the middle of it all, scratching his head and looking round.

  ‘He was here one second and gone the next,’ he muttered angrily. ‘Hey, yo
u there!’ he said, turning to a short, flame-haired slaughterer who was laying out smoked tilder hams on a nearby table. ‘Did you see him? A mangy little shryke-mate …’

  The slaughterer turned his back on Stob and looked right and left furtively.

  ‘I said—’ Stob’s voice was raised in anger.

  ‘I heard what you said,’ the slaughterer replied softly, without turning. ‘You’ll find Hekkle round the back, behind the curtain. And don’t let appearances deceive you.’

  Stob pushed rudely past the slaughterer and pulled aside the leather curtain at the back of the stall to reveal a small concealed chamber behind. Magda and Rook went with him.

  ‘Thank you,’ whispered Rook as they passed the slaughterer.

  ‘Good luck,’ came the gruff reply.

  Sitting by a small lufwood stove on a tilderskin rug was the shryke-mate. As the curtain fell back into place, the flames of the burning lufwood bathed everything in a soft purple glow.

  ‘Please, my brave and intrepid friends,’ said the shryke, ‘be seated. We must hurry, for every moment you spend here in the Eastern Roost your lives are in danger.’

  ‘Well, this place of yours looks nice and cosy,’ said Stob, casually reaching out to stroke a hammelhornskin wall-hanging. As his fingers touched the fur, it instantly bristled, becoming as sharp as needles to the touch. ‘Ouch!’ he cried out in alarm.

  ‘Don’t be fooled,’ said the shryke. ‘There are shryke guards all around us, and they raid the lower roosts constantly on the look-out for contraband or …’ He hesitated. ‘Spies.’

  Rook gulped. Was that what they were to these terrifying feathered creatures? He remembered the terrible cages on the Mire road and suddenly felt very weak.

  ‘Are you the guide we were told would meet us?’ asked Magda.

  Stob, sucking his finger, looked at the shryke-mate with open contempt.

  ‘Indeed I am, most merciful mistress, indeed I am,’ trilled the shryke-mate. ‘My name is Hekkle, and you do me a thousand honours to allow me to serve you.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Stob. ‘But if we’re in danger, why are we standing around here?’

  ‘Patience, brave master,’ said Hekkle, rummaging in a large trunk in the corner, ‘and I will explain everything.’

  Rook dropped to his knees. His head felt strangely light, and the lufwood glow was making him sleepy.

  ‘The Eastern Roost is a closed city, my brave friends,’ said Hekkle, pulling a bundle of dark robes from the trunk and laying them out. ‘For visitors, there is only one way in and one way out and that, as you have seen, is by the eastern Lufwood Gate. The Undertown merchants – such as you pretend to be – arrive, sell their wares and return on the Great Mire Road back to Undertown, bearing the goods from the Deepwoods they have bought in the Central Market.’

  ‘So, how do we get out of this accursed city and into the Deepwoods?’ asked Stob impatiently.

  ‘Only shrykes may leave or enter the Eastern Roost on the Deepwoods side of the city,’ Hekkle continued. ‘That way merciful master, the Shryke Sisterhood controls all the trade between Undertown and the Deepwoods settlements. It’s beautifully simple. The shrykes buy goods from the Deepwoods and bring them into the Roost, where they trade them for Undertown goods, which they use to buy more Deepwoods goods – thus making a profit from Undertowners and Deepwooders alike. That is why there is no way through the Eastern Roost for anyone who isn’t a shryke.’

  ‘So, you’re saying we’re trapped here?’ said Magda, a hint of panic in her voice. ‘That the only way out is back to Undertown the way we came?’

  ‘No, not quite, merciful mistress,’ said Hekkle, returning to the trunk.

  ‘Then how do we get out of the Roost and into the Deepwoods?’ Stob persisted.

  ‘Simple,’ said Hekkle, turning round. ‘If only shrykes are permitted to leave by the western Deepwoods Gate, then you shall become shrykes!’

  He held up three crude feathered masks, each with a curved, serrated beak and black staring eye-sockets.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ scoffed Stob. ‘It’ll never work!’

  ‘Oh, but it has before,’ said Hekkle, his voice suddenly serious and with a brittle, harsh edge to it. ‘And it will again.’ Looking at the three earnest faces in front of him, he suddenly laughed. ‘You, my fine brave friends, will be sooth-sisters – the venerated priestesses of the Golden Nest. Here are your robes.’ He held up the heavy black garments, plain and drab compared to the gaudy costumes most shrykes loved. ‘And here are your masks.’ He handed them each a feathered head-dress. ‘Hurry now. Time is short.’

  They put Hekkle’s costumes on over their merchants’ clothes, fastening up the robes at the front and securing the masks on their heads. Hekkle slipped out of the room, returning a moment later with a burnished milk-wood mirror.

  Rook turned and looked at himself. In the heavy robes and ornate mask he looked the part – but for one thing. ‘But, Hekkle,’ he began, his voice muffled beneath the beaked mask. ‘The eyes. Surely our eyes will give us away. I mean, look. They’re not yellow, or fierce-looking, or—’

  ‘Silly me, oh merciful master,’ laughed Hekkle. ‘I was forgetting. Here, take these. No self-respecting sooth-sister would dream of appearing in public without them.’ He handed Rook a pair of spectacles with thick, black lenses. Rook put them on over his mask with difficulty, and clipped the nose-piece onto the false beak.

  ‘But I can’t see a thing!’ he protested. ‘Of course not,’ chuckled Hekkle indulgently. ‘Sooth-sisters only permit themselves to look upon the clutch of eggs in the Golden Nest, laid by the Roost Mother herself. The rest of the time, they wear spectacles of coal-glass to blot out impure sights.’

  ‘But if we can’t see—’ began Rook.

  ‘That’s what I’m here for,’ said Hekkle, bowing low. ‘I shall be your guide. All sooth-sisters have them – at the end of a golden chain. But I must warn you.’ Hekkle was suddenly solemn again, the harsh edge back in his voice. ‘On no account are you to remove the spectacles. Just keep silent, and trust me. For if we are caught, the penalty for impersonating a shryke – and a sooth-sister at that – is terrible indeed, brave friends.’

  ‘What is it?’ Stob asked, trying to hide the nervousness in his voice.

  ‘Roasting,’ said Hekkle simply. ‘Roasting alive, on a spit in the Central Market. Now, let’s go.’

  When Rook thought back to the ensuing journey to the Deepwoods Gate of the Eastern Roost, he could scarcely believe he had survived the terrifying experience. The sound of his own breathing inside the mask, the inky blackness of the coal-glass spectacles and the noises of the upper roosts – unfamiliar, and all the more sinister for that – haunted him in dreams for months afterwards. They were climbing, climbing, constantly climbing. Even inside the mask, Rook sensed the air becoming fresher the higher they went. The cacophony of the lower roosts receded, to be replaced with the strange disturbing calls of the shrykes promenading along the upper walkways. There were coos, shrieks, and odd staccato throat-throbbings which built up to a sudden hooting scream.

  ‘Steady,’ whispered Hekkle, leading them on the end of his golden chain, like a tame lemkin. ‘The sisters are just singing to one another. Nothing to worry about.’

  But the sounds made Rook’s blood run cold. How long had they been walking? In his growing panic it seemed like hours – although it could only have been minutes; half an hour at the most. He wanted to ask Hekkle, but he knew that it would be madness to utter so much as a single word. Behind him, Stob trod on the backs of his heels, and Rook bit his lip hard.

  ‘Steady, your gracious holinesses,’ cooed Hekkle, then, in a louder voice, ‘Make way for the sooth-sisters! Make way!’

  Rook was aware of the clattering of claws on the wooden walkway as respectful shryke-matrons moved aside.

  ‘Give our blessings to the Golden Nest,’ came a harsh shryke voice.

  ‘May the egg-clutch prosper, sisters,’ came anothe
r.

  ‘Fruitful hatching!’

  The calls sounded all round them. Rook’s heart was thumping like a hammer. He battled to control his churning stomach and the panic rising in his throat.

  ‘The sooth-sisters bless you,’ called Hekkle in his singsong voice. ‘The sooth-sisters bless you.’ He whispered urgently out of the side of his beak, ‘We’re nearly there. Keep together. One more walkway and we’ll be at the prowlgrin corral beside the Deepwoods Gate.’

  Stob stepped on the back of Rook’s heel again. Rook stumbled heavily, the jolt almost dislodging his heavy coal-black spectacles. He screwed up his left eye as daylight flooded through a gap that had opened up between the mask and the lens. He felt the spectacles wobble on the beak.

  ‘Careful, sister!’ came a piercing voice.

  Out of the corner of his eye Rook glimpsed a tall, imposing shryke-matron bedecked in finery, sitting on a raised bench and flanked on either side by smaller, but no less gaudy, companions. He was suddenly aware of a familiar overpowering stench. The shryke-matron’s plumage ruffled and she let out a contented squawk as an acrid white shryke-dropping fell through the hole beneath her and down onto the lower roosts below.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said, turning to her companion. ‘Now, you were saying, Talonclaw …’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the shryke next to her, also letting a sour-smelling spurt of droppings go. ‘The sky pirate cut off her head with one blow. Leastways, that’s what I heard.’

  ‘Come now, sisters.’ Hekkle’s voice had that hard edge back in it. He pulled at Rook’s robes. ‘We must get to the prowlgrin corrals. We have nesting materials to gather in the Deepwoods, remember.’

  Rook forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. He hunched his shoulders, convinced that the piercing yellow eyes of the shryke-matron seated on the ornate latrine would unmask him at any moment.

  ‘Wait!’ The matron’s raucous cry rang out.