Stormchaser (24 page)

The crystal of stormphrax exploded with terrifying force, taking the hut with it. The roof flew off, the walls flew out and the floor became a massive crater. As the dust settled, two bodies could be seen, locked together in a fatal embrace.

iv
Outside the Bloodoak Tavern

‘What in Sky's name was that?’ the Professor of Darkness exclaimed.

Mother Horsefeather shook her head. ‘You academics,’ she chided. ‘Heads in the clouds in your castles in the air. You’ve got no idea, have you?’

The pair of them were taking an early evening stroll together. They had urgent business to discuss and, since the Bloodoak tavern had proved to be so open to eavesdropping, had taken their conversation outside.

‘So, tell me,’ he said. ‘What was that noise? It sounded like an explosion.’

‘It
was
an explosion,’ she said, her ruff of neck feathers bristling. ‘Every time some poor fool tries to turn stormphrax into phraxdust there is an explosion.’

The Professor of Darkness started with surprise. ‘But where do they get this stormphrax?’ he asked.

Mother Horsefeather clacked her beak impatiently. ‘The black-market is flooded with the stuff,’ she said. ‘Word has it the Most High Academe himself is authorizing it in the hope that someone, somewhere, will unlock the elusive secret to safe phraxdust production, though…’

‘But … but this is outrageous!’ the Professor of Darkness spluttered. ‘I had no idea … No wonder the treasury is so depleted.’ He shook his head. ‘I curse the
day I first laid eyes on that traitorous usurper, Vilnix Pompolnius.’

‘Yesterday is over,’ said Mother Horsefeather curtly. ‘Tomorrow is still to come.’

‘I know, I know,’ said the professor, ‘but what can we do? I’ve already told you that both Vilnix
and
the Leaguesmaster now know that Cloud Wolf has set off in search of stormphrax. Both await his return. Both have the means to confiscate his cargo – and if one fails, then the other will surely succeed.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Mother Horsefeather, her eyes twinkling. ‘Both will fail, you mark my words. I know Cloud Wolf for the wily old skycur that he is. While his two enemies are battling it out, he will slip between them and bring the cargo of stormphrax to me, just as we agreed.’ Suddenly, her eyes narrowed. She spun round. ‘Anyway, how do
you
know so much, eh?’ she said. ‘Are you now privy to the Most High Academe's thoughts?’

‘No, I …’ the professor began. ‘I see your ignorance of Sanctaphrax equals my own of Undertown. Intrigue, whispers, gossip – the black-market of our noble floating city is flooded with the stuff!’ he said, and smiled.

‘Forficule,’ said Mother Horsefeather, ‘was it…?’

‘Forficule told Vilnix everything,’ the professor said.

Mother Horsefeather hawked noisily and spat on the ground. ‘No wonder the little squit was too ashamed to show his face,’ she squawked.

‘Tortured, he was, until he did,’ the professor explained. ‘He had no choice. But no, I didn’t learn of the Most High Academe's plans from Forficule.’

‘Then who?’ Mother Horsefeather demanded to know.

‘From someone who has sworn allegiance to the position of power, rather than the individual who holds it,’ the professor explained. ‘His name is Minulis,’ he said. ‘He is personal manservant to Vilnix Pompolnius – and he senses that changes are coming.’

Mother Horsefeather cackled with delight. ‘Then it's up to us to ensure that he senses right!’

• CHAPTER FIFTEEN •
D
EAD OR
A
LIVE

T
wig stopped mid-stride and peered up into the golden sky. Had he noticed something moving, something flying overhead? Or was it just another illusion, another cruel trick of the watery light?

‘Father,’ he cried out. ‘Is that you?’

‘You … you … you…’ the woods cried back.

Twig shuddered miserably. There was nobody there – there was
never
anybody there. The mocking faces that he saw, sneering and jeering at him out of the corners of his eyes, vanished each time he turned to confront them. Nothing remained but wraith-like twists of mist. He was alone. Quite alone.

And yet, as he turned back and continued on his solitary journey, the feeling of being watched persisted. It gnawed at his mind relentlessly.

‘Over here,’ someone or something whispered. ‘Here!
Here!’ Or was it just the sound of the rising breeze, warm and oily, lapping at the ancient trees?

Twig felt dizzy, disorientated, unable to trust what his ears or his eyes were telling him. The trees swayed and the branches reached out towards him, their long woody fingers plucking at his clothes, pulling his hair.

‘Leave me alone!’ Twig howled.

‘Alone … alone…’ the woods called back.

‘I won’t stay here for ever!’ he screamed.

‘For ever…’

Twig thrust his hand into the knight's gauntlet, reached round and pulled his father's sword from its scabbard. Grasping the hilt helped him to hold on to who he was – Twig, son of Cloud Wolf. In the Twilight Woods, he needed all the help he could get to remember even that. Yet the sword brought with it guilty memories, shameful memories.

Cloud Wolf had blamed Slyvo Spleethe for kidnapping him and dragging him reluctantly on board the
Stormchaser
. Twig knew that wasn’t what happened. He had gone willingly. More than that, it was he who had revealed to the treacherous quartermaster that Cloud Wolf was his father. In so doing, he had betrayed the captain's greatest weakness. He might as well have stabbed him in the back.

‘I didn’t mean to,’ he mumbled. ‘Really, I didn’t. Oh, Father, forgive me for my wilful ignorance, for my utter stupidity, for my lack of thought …’

The gleaming eyes and glinting teeth emerged from the shadows and hovered at the edge of his field of
vision once more. Twig raised his gauntleted hand and rapped it sharply against his head. It didn’t pay to dwell on
lack of thought
in the Twilight Woods.

As he lowered his arm, he watched the coating of fine dust slip around on the polished surface of the gauntlet, and fall from the metal fingers like droplets of liquid. It was only by this piece of armour which had been left behind, that he knew his encounter with the sepia knight had been more than a mere figment of his imagination.

‘You are searching for stormphrax,’ Twig told himself as he set off once more. ‘You are searching for the crew of the
Stormchaser
– you are searching for a way out.’

On and on he stumbled. On and on and on. So far as Twig was concerned, time might as well have stopped completely. He didn’t feel hungry. He didn’t feel thirsty. He didn’t feel tired. And yet, as he continued on through the bright and shadowy depths, in the grip of the enchanting torpor, Twig's apprehension grew.

‘Twilight Woods,’ he snorted. ‘
Nightmare
Woods, more like it.’

The wind rose higher, rustling the leaves and sending their coating of glistening crystals showering down to the glittering ground below. Twig stared, mesmerized by the scintillating display. And as they fell, he became aware of a sound – light and delicate – like the soft tinkling of wind-chimes.

As it grew louder, Twig stopped and cocked his head to one side. What could be making such sweet and melodious music? It seemed to be coming from his left.

‘I am Twig,’ he reminded himself as he raised his sword in his gauntleted hand. ‘I must leave this place. I will not become like the sepia knight.’

‘… like the sepia knight…’ the woods whispered back.

Twig followed the unearthly music, picking his way through the trees and undergrowth, trying his best to ignore the cries of disbelief that echoed just out of earshot. Up ahead, a bright, silvery light gleamed from the shadows. Twig broke into a run. He slashed impatiently at the undergrowth with his sword. He held back the razor-sharp creepers with the gauntlet. Closer and closer he got. A sweet almond-like perfume wafted around him. The light intensified, the jangled music grew louder.

And then he saw it…

There, with one end buried deep in the ground and the other rising zig-zag high up into the air, was a tall and magnificent crystal. It was the bolt of lightning, now solid, which Twig had watched being discharged from the Great Storm.

Twig gasped. ‘Stormphrax,’ he whispered.

Close to, the lightning bolt was even more remarkable than he had imagined. Flawless, unblemished and as smooth as glass, it pulsed with a pure white glow. The noise, he realized, was coming from the top of the jagged bolt, far above his head.

‘It's cracking,’ he murmured in alarm. ‘It's … breaking up!’

At that moment, there came a loud sound, like bells tolling, and a huge chunk of the crystal hurtled down through the air towards him in a shower of tiny glittering particles. Twig leapt back, fell to the ground and stared in horror as it landed, with a heavy thud and a puff of sepia dust, exactly where he had been standing.

The bell-like ringing sounded again and two more, even larger pieces of stormphrax landed beside the first. They too embedded themselves in the ground, and all three promptly disappeared.

‘They’re burying themselves,’ Twig realized.

He remembered, of course, that in absolute darkness a thimbleful of stormphrax was as heavy as a thousand ironwood trees – now he could see what this meant in practice. The dark and immeasurably heavy underside of each of the giant pieces of crystal was dragging the rest down.

Thud, thud, thud. Thud. Thud-thud.
Several more blocks fell. Twig scuttered backwards on his hands and feet, terrified that one of them would land on him. Some were small. Some were very large. All of them buried themselves where they landed, deep down in the absolute darkness below.

Then, in a grinding symphony of noise, the lightning bolt gave a lurch, and Twig saw that it, too, was sinking beneath the surface. It was this downward movement which was causing the top to splinter and crack – and the more crystal that disappeared into the darkness, the stronger the pull became.

Twig shook his head in dismay. Even if the
Stormchaser
had been anchored right there above the clearing, how difficult it would have been to retrieve the pieces of stormphrax. Suddenly, with a final
shwooohk-POP
! the final section of stormphrax sank down out of sight.

‘Gone,’ he whispered.

He stood up and looked around the clearing. Apart
from the burnt and broken branches, there was no sign that the bolt of stormphrax had ever been there. Distant laughter echoed.

‘Gone,’ he said again, hardly able to believe his eyes.

All those years of waiting for a Great Storm. And all the dangers that chasing the storm had involved. The broken mast. The abandoning of the sky ship. The loss of his father. And for what? For a bolt of lightning which had disappeared within hours of reaching its destination – and almost killed him in the process!

Except, thought Twig with a shudder, it wouldn’t have killed me, would it? A piece could have broken my back or stoved in my skull – but I wouldn’t have died. Icy fingers strummed up and down Twig's back at the macabre thought of what
might
have happened.