Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Read online

  ‘Look like a couple of itinerant phraxminers to me,’ he sneered, then turned back to his father. ‘Come on, Father,’ he said, his voice wheedling. ‘If I don’t come up with the cash, I’ll lose the launch. And she really is a beauty …’

  Shaking his head, Friston Drew pulled a wad of notes from his pocket. He peeled off half a dozen.

  ‘Then there’s the shipwright’s commission,’ said Branxford. ‘And the small matter of the berthing costs …’

  Drew pulled off a dozen more of the notes and thrust the whole lot into his son’s outstretched hand.

  ‘This is the last time, Branxford,’ he said grimly. He nodded across to Nate. ‘This young chap’s father taught him everything he knows, whereas it seems that I—’

  ‘Spare me the lecture,’ said Branxford, slipping the folded notes into his waistcoat pocket. He turned on his heels and marched back across the room, his topcoat flapping. Dropping his shoulder, he brushed against Nate as he passed him, making the young phraxminer grip hold of the lamp protectively. The door slammed as Branxford disappeared from view down the spiral staircase. Nate placed the lamp down on the floating lectern, lit the wick and lowered the cowl. The chamber was filled with a bright yellow glow.

  ‘There,’ he said.

  Friston Drew crossed the room towards him, his smiling face gleaming in the light. ‘Very impressive,’ he said. ‘I think we can use your skills here at Glemlop and Drew’s. How does sixty gladers a week and comfortable lodging sound?’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Nate, noticing Slip’s delighted gasp. ‘We won’t let you down.’

  • CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX •

  Nate stepped out of the apothecary’s shop into the busy main square of Copperwood. Around the statue of Mangobey Cartshank, the stalls of the market traders groaned beneath the weight of produce; huge violet-tinged glade cabbages, stacks of corncobs a stride long, and great steaming mountains of freshly pickled tripweed.

  In the steam-nourished gardens and allotments that filled every available space beneath the cabin rows of Copperwood, vegetables grew fast and enormous and kept the stiltshop workers well fed. Between the shifts at the phraxchamber works, Nate’s own allotment was lovingly tended by Slip, and was awash with magnificent blue pumpkins of fantastic size.

  Had it really only been six months since they’d arrived in Copperwood? Nate could scarcely believe it. What with the ever-changing demands of the job, evenings in the town and excursions to Waif Glen and Old Forest, Nate felt he had lived all his life in Great Glade. And as if he didn’t have enough to do, he’d even taken up the city’s favourite sport, the exhilarating game of thousandsticks … Though, to be honest, he was now beginning to regret it.

  Nate stretched, and then grimaced at the painful twinge in his back.

  ‘Serves me right for getting in the way of a hill charge,’ he muttered, patting the glass phial he’d just purchased, which nestled safely in his heavy work jacket.

  He’d had a long and arduous day at work. The morning had been taken up with an emergency on the foundry deck, caused by a clumsy hammerhead who had accidently driven a stave through a lamp cowl, shattering the glass and snuffing out the light. The phraxhammer had threatened to go critical, and it was only Nate’s quick thinking – improvising with one of the glassworker’s blowtorches while he replaced the cowl – that had averted a full-scale catastrophe.

  Then all afternoon it had been Nate’s job to supervise the loading of finished phraxchambers on board the visiting phraxbarge. Twenty lamps he’d had to keep fuelled and perfectly calibrated, to prevent the intricately tooled chambers with their shards of stormphrax from losing buoyancy and crashing down to earth. It had been a perfect loading, and the foreman, Clemp Sprake, had thanked Nate and Slip personally and given them a ten-glader bonus.

  Just as well, thought Nate, otherwise he could not have afforded the tiny phial of finest Riverrise water, which had come from the aqueduct of the far-off City of Night. A few drops of the crystal-clear liquid and his aching back would be no more than a distant memory.

  Nate turned out of the square and made his way down a broad avenue lined with stiltshops, each one wreathed in clouds of steam. At the far end, he turned left and climbed onto a timbered walkway that snaked its way through luxuriantly sprouting garden plots until he reached the cabin rows. Built on low stilts, three cabins high and fifty long, with each tier connected by ladders and boasting a generous balcony, the cabin rows were where the workers of Copperwood made their homes. Like everywhere else in the district, they bustled with life – cloddertrog matrons hanging out their laundry; goblin and mobgnome young’uns playing skittles while their mothers boiled lake gourd and snowleaf stew in huge cauldrons on the balconies above.

  Nate loved it, and so did Slip. Reaching the cabin row where they lodged, Nate glanced up to see his friend up on the second-tier balcony, reclining on a sumpwood cradle and hollowing out a blue pumpkin twice his size.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Nate called up, ‘pumpkin stew for supper. Or is it pumpkin pie?’

  ‘Neither, friend Nate,’ Slip laughed, waving a large ladle covered in seeds. ‘It’s pumpkin fritters. Old Ma Pantin from below-door showed Slip how …’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ chuckled Nate as he climbed the ladder to the second-tier balcony. He’d just have time for a quick bite before thousandsticks practice – if he was quick, that is.

  He stepped onto the polished copperwood of the balcony, with its rich smell of resin oil, and was about to make his way along to the tenth cabin, when a sound from above made him pause. It was a low rumbling groan – the sound of someone, or something, in pain. And it was coming from the third tier. Nate walked back to the ladder and began to climb.

  The cabins on the third tier of the cabin row were mostly empty, a clan of gnokgoblins having moved out in the middle of the night a month earlier without telling anyone they were leaving. There were a couple of hammerhead foundry workers at the far end, and the mysterious gatekeeper from Glemlop and Drew’s, who had a cabin just above Nate and Slip. He kept himself to himself, and neither Nate nor Slip – nor anyone else for that matter – had ever seen him without his heavy cloak and hood.

  Nate reached the third-tier balcony and heard the groan again. If it was the gatekeeper, he sounded in a bad way. He approached the tenth cabin and gently knocked on the door. A low growl, rising to a strangulated howl, sounded from inside the cabin.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Nate called. ‘Do you need help?’

  From the other side of the door there came a thud, followed by a scratching sound – then silence. Carefully, Nate tried the handle. The door was unlocked. Slowly, he pushed it open and stepped gingerly inside. The cabin was dark, but even in the gloom Nate was surprised to see that it was almost completely devoid of furniture. In one corner, the heavy cloak and hood hung from a hook; in the other …

  Nate stopped stock-still and felt his heart hammering in his chest. There was a large circular nest of finely woven gladegrass, looking like a great cocoon, which filled the corner of the cabin. Within it, the huge figure of the gatekeeper, dressed in what at first glance seemed to Nate to be a heavy fur coat, lay slumped.

  ‘Hello … ?’ Nate approached the figure. ‘Can I help?’

  With another groan of pain, the gatekeeper rolled over and Nate found himself face to face with a huge and hairy mountain of a beast. When their eyes met, the creature threw back its head, bared its teeth and groaned at the ceiling.

  ‘You’re … you’re …’ Nate trembled, hardly daring to move. ‘A banderbear!’

  ‘Wuh,’ the gatekeeper groaned softly, and raised a giant paw to its cheek. ‘Wuu-uh?’

  The creature was truly enormous – even down on its broad haunches it was taller than Nate – and built like a vast pyramid. It had great tree-trunk legs and long powerful arms. Every one of the four claws at the end of each limb were as long as Nate’s forearms, while the two tusks that curved up from its jutting lower jaw were longer
still. Only the creature’s ears – delicate and fluttering – did not look as though they had been hewn from solid rock.

  Nate had heard stories about these amazing creatures, looked at pictures of them in faded barkscrolls, but he’d never before seen one in the flesh. These solitary giants had long ago abandoned the polluted forests of the Eastern Roosts and the busy trade routes around Great Glade. Even in far-off Hive, their yodels were seldom heard these days. Who could have guessed, then, that beneath the heavy cloak and hood there was a banderbear living in the very heart of the city?

  The creature fixed Nate with its sad eyes. ‘Wuu-uh?’ it groaned again.

  Despite its size, the banderbear struck Nate as looking oddly vulnerable. He swallowed nervously.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

  The banderbear opened its mouth wide, grimacing with pain as it did so. It prodded around clumsily inside with a single claw.

  ‘Uh-uuh!’ it moaned.

  Nate drew closer and found himself staring into the creature’s cavernous mouth, over the rows of savage yellowed teeth and down the dark gaping tunnel of its throat … And then he saw it. At the back of the mouth, on the left, was an angry abscess, red raw and flecked with pus, deep in the gum.

  ‘Looks nasty,’ Nate muttered. ‘No wonder you’re in pain.’

  ‘Wuh-wuh! Wu-uuuh!’ the banderbear groaned, and a large tear rolled down its furry face from the corner of each eye.

  Without thinking twice, Nate reached into the pocket of his work coat and pulled out the phial of expensive Riverrise water. He uncorked it.

  ‘Here,’ Nate whispered. ‘I’ve got something that’ll help.’

  Gently, he poured the contents – all thirty gladers’ worth – onto the red and swollen gum. The banderbear flinched but held its great head still.

  The effect was almost instant, for Nate just had time to withdraw his hand from the creature’s mouth before it was up on its feet, paws held out wide to its side. A moment later, the banderbear fell upon him, and Nate felt those great powerful arms wrap themselves warmly around his body. He breathed deep the sweet odour of dry gladegrass as he was crushed against the creature’s belly in a delighted embrace …

  ‘Wuh-wuh,’ said the banderbear at last and released its grip. It pointed to the phial in Nate’s hand and scratched its head questioningly.

  ‘This?’ said Nate. ‘It’s Riverrise water. I bought it from a gabtroll apothecaress for a knock I picked up at thousandsticks.’ He smiled. ‘But you needed it more than me.’

  The banderbear shook its head in wonderment, its eyes twinkling. It clearly understood just how expensive the medicine was. It raised a giant paw to its chest and tapped on it lightly.

  ‘Weelum,’ he said.

  Nate held out his hand. ‘Nate,’ he replied. ‘Pleased to meet you, Weelum.’

  The banderbear’s eyes twinkled and his tiny ears fluttered.

  ‘Weelum, Nate,’ he said, his voice a deep rumbling growl as he took Nate’s hand and shook it solemnly. ‘Fr-wuh-iends.’

  • CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN •

  ‘The gatekeeper?’ said Slip, his eyes wide with astonishment. ‘A banderbear? And living up the ladder from Slip and friend Nate all this time? Why, who’d have thought it?’ He shovelled another pumpkin fritter onto Nate’s platter and joined him at the small cabin table. ‘This city is full of wonders,’ he said. ‘A cosy cabin and a fine job. Great big vegetables springing out of the ground, just asking to be eaten. Bucketloads of fish in the streams, just waiting to be caught. And now … now, banderbears!’

  Slip shook his head at these marvels, unheard of in the grim mining camps of the Eastern Woods.

  ‘Not forgetting the best pumpkin fritters I’ve ever tasted!’ said Nate, clearing the last morsel from his plate. ‘Give my compliments to Ma Pantin, Slip. I’m off to thousandsticks practice.’

  He climbed to his feet, only to wince with pain at the twinge in his back.

  ‘Thousandsticks practice?’ Slip queried, clearing the table and picking up a trowel and spade. ‘Why doesn’t friend Nate help Slip down at the allotment. Give his back a rest?’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ smiled Nate, crossing the cabin to the bunks in the far corner, where a jumble of equipment lay next to his box of memories. ‘I’ll take the thousandsticks hills any day over that pumpkin patch of yours, Slip.’

  Bending down stiffly, Nate picked up heavy padded breast- and backplates and slipped them over his shoulders. Next he strapped on the thick boots with their iron cleats, before pulling a wide spatula-like glove – his shoving glove – onto his left hand and picking up the long thousandstick, with its heavy club at one end and splayed wicker ‘claw’ at the other, from where it was propped against the wall. Scooping up the padded helmet next to it in his gloved hand, he made for the door and onto the copperwood balcony, the iron boot cleats clattering underfoot.

  ‘Take care, friend Nate,’ Slip called after him.

  ‘I’ll try,’ Nate called back as he clambered down the ladders to the ground below, though even as he spoke, he knew it would be a tall order.

  The citizens of Great Glade took their favourite sport seriously, and none more so than the team from Copperwood – especially now, with the annual Reckoning almost upon them. With only three months to go, the hundred-strong team from the Copperwood district was training ferociously.

  In the Reckoning, they would be playing against teams from the eleven other districts on the Great Glade field out in the Silver Pastures. The field consisted of an outer track, which surrounded six low hills connected to each other by a series of paths or ‘inner tracks’, with a single high hill at the centre.

  Having marched for a minute or so round the outer track, the crack of the phraxpistol would signal that the teams could enter the field. At this time, tactics took over, as each team tried to dominate the inner tracks, blocking opponents while giving their team mates a clear run at the ‘high pine’ – a tall pole atop the central hill.

  The aim of the game was for a player to climb to the platform at the top of the pole and claim victory for his team. It sounded simple enough, yet a Reckoning match could take a long time. The previous year, six hours had passed before New Lake had finally won, by which time the total number of players on the field had dwindled to less than half.

  Any player who fell, set foot, or was shoved, onto one of the gravel beds between the inner tracks was out of the match. Using their gloves and thousandsticks, players endeavoured to do just that to their opponents. Pushing, prodding and lifting were all allowed, with any number of players joining in what was termed a ‘great shove’. Tripping, hitting or kicking, however, were not allowed – and nor, on pain of expulsion from the game, was the use of the thousandstick as a weapon. In the fever of a close match, rules were of course broken, but with six hill marshals on prowlgrinback and a seventh sky marshal hovering above in a phraxcraft, few got away with it.

  Nate was running late after his encounter with the gatekeeper and, curiosity awoken, his head was still buzzing with thoughts of the banderbear living just overhead. Where had he come from? he wondered. Who had hired him at the phraxchamber works? And why did he wear the cloak and heavy hood whenever he went out?

  Cramming his helmet onto his head, he clattered down the walkway and out onto the avenue which led to Mangobey Cartshank Square. It was probably this that saved him, for at that moment a two-seater phraxlaunch came hurtling round the corner, a jet of phraxflame blasting out behind it and thick clouds of ice-cold steam leaving a trail of frost on the roofs, windows and walls of the buildings it passed.

  Nate didn’t see it coming. With a sickening crunch, the jutting foil on the portside of the vessel struck him a glancing blow on the back of the head, spinning him round and sending him sprawling.

  The pilot brought the sleek craft to an abrupt halt, then flew back round to hover above him. Nate’s padded armour and helmet had saved him from injury, but his expensive thousandstick had
been snapped in two. Getting slowly to his feet – the pain in his back more intense than ever – Nate looked up at the elegant phraxlaunch, its low funnel pumping out clouds of steam into the golden lamplit night as it hung in the air above him.

  There was a low-slung burnished metal canopy over the padded seats, casting the two occupants into dark shadow. The figure at the wheel leaned forward and, as he stared down, his face twisted into a sneer of contempt.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.

  Nate stared back at Branxford Drew evenly, aware that it might not be wise to argue with his boss’s son. Ever since their first meeting, Nate had been aware that the pampered factory owner’s son disliked him, and as Nate had grown more successful in the phraxchamber works, that dislike had turned to something bordering on hate.

  ‘You really ought to watch where you’re going, lamplighter,’ he snarled. ‘Could have been a nasty accident.’

  Nate nodded. Branxford glanced down at the shattered thousandstick beside him and smiled unpleasantly. He reached into his elegant waistcoat and drew out a ten-glader note, which he let flutter down to the ground below. It came to rest at Nate’s feet.

  ‘Buy yourself a new stick, lamplighter,’ Branxford sneered. ‘When we New Lakers run into you at the Reckoning,’ he snorted, ‘you’re going to need it!’

  His lips curled into a scornful smile, and there was hatred in his eyes. But Nate ignored it. The factory owner’s spoilt son no longer interested him, for he was staring into the eyes of the phraxlaunch’s passenger, who had leaned forward and was gazing down at him – the clear green eyes of Eudoxia Prade.

  • CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT •

  The low afternoon sun streamed in through the upper windows of the Long Gallery of Lake Landing. It made the polished floor gleam like liquid gold, and bathed the portraits and statues that hung from the walls and stood on pedestals in a warm glow that seemed almost to bring them to life.