The Last of the Sky Pirates (7 page)

The High Librarian raised his head. ‘Do you, Stob Lummus, Magda Burlix and Rook Barkwater, swear to serve Edge Scholarship, both Earth and Sky, for the good of all?’

Three voices rang out in response. With his eyes fixed on the High Librarian’s face, however, Rook was aware of no-one but himself. He heard the words come out of his mouth – words he’d always longed to say, but never dared to imagine that he ever would.

‘With my heart and my head, I do.’

The Most High Guardian of Night, Orbix Xaxis, was standing on one of the uppermost gantries of the Tower of Night. A tall, imposing figure, he was wearing the heavy black robes of public office – and the dark glasses and metal mask of his own private fears. The glasses, he hoped, would repel any who would try to curse him with the evil eye, while the mask – which had a filter of phraxdust behind the muzzle – purified the germ-laden air he breathed.

From below him there came the clanking and clunking of the mounted swivel telescopes turning this way and that as the Guardians scanned the early morning sky for any sign of illicit skycraft in flight. Sky flight, both in Sanctaphrax and Undertown, was strictly forbidden.

Xaxis stared out into open sky. The high winds and driving rain which had been forecast only the day before had, once again, failed to materialize. ‘Surely a storm must come soon,’ he muttered to himself. He looked up at Midnight’s Spike, the tall, elegant lightning conductor which pointed up to the sky from the top of the tower, and shook his head. ‘Fifty years, and nothing. But soon. Soon a storm is bound to come,’ he hissed, ‘and when it does, the great Sanctaphrax rock will be healed, cured, restored …’ His eyes glinted unpleasantly behind the dark glasses. ‘And when
that
happens—’

Just then there was a knock at the door. Xaxis turned and, with a flourish of his cape, stepped back through the open window and into his reception chamber.

‘Enter,’ he called, his imperious voice muffled somewhat by the mask.

The door opened, and a youth dressed in the black robes of the Guardians of Night walked in. He was pallid, angular, with shadowy rings beneath his violet eyes and his hair shorn to a dark stubble.

‘Ah, Xanth,’ said Orbix, recognizing the youth at once. ‘What brings you here? Has the execution taken place already?’

‘It has, sir – but that is not the reason for my visit.’ He paused. There was something deeply disturbing about never being able to see the Most High Guardian’s eyes. It was only his rasping voice that gave any clue as to what he was thinking.

‘Well?’ Orbix demanded.

‘I have information,’ said Xanth simply.

Orbix nodded. Xanth Filatine was, without doubt, the most promising apprentice to have come his way in many years. Now that Orbix had prised him away from that obese fop, Vox Verlix, the youth was shaping up well. ‘Information?’ he said. ‘What information?’

‘It concerns the librarian knights,’ he said, and spat on the floor. ‘A recently captured prisoner has just revealed some interesting facts about them under interrogation.’

‘Go on,’ said Orbix, rubbing his gloved hands together.

‘They are about to send three more apprentice treatise scholars off to the Deepwoods. Tomorrow morning, when—’

‘Then we must seize them.’ Orbix smiled behind the metal mask. ‘Three more traitors to add to the hanging gantries.’

‘If you please, sir,’ said Xanth, his nasal voice little more than a whisper, ‘I think I may have a better idea.’

Orbix glowered at the youth. He didn’t like his plans being questioned. ‘A
better
idea?’ he growled.

‘Well, not better, as such,’ said Xanth, back-tracking. ‘But an alternative that you might like to consider.’

‘Go on,’ said Orbix.

‘Sir, if the renegades were followed, in secret, this could be the chance we have been waiting for to uncover the entire network of traitors. We could expose each and every enemy of the Tower of Night operating between Undertown and the so-called
Free
Glades.’

‘But—’ Orbix began.

‘As I see it, the choice is this,’ Xanth went on hurriedly. ‘The three apprentices now. Or the whole treacherous set-up tomorrow.’

Orbix raised an eyebrow. ‘And who might be the spy to carry out such a task?’ he asked.

Xanth lowered his head modestly.

‘I see,’ said Orbix. He tapped thoughtfully on the muzzle of the mask with the tips of his bony fingers.

The proposal was interesting, very interesting. For so long now, he had dreamed of capturing those two turncoats, Ulbus Vespius and Tallus Penitax, the treacherous Professors of Light and Darkness – and torturing them until they repented for going over to the other side and begged for his forgiveness. He
would
forgive them, of course. He would forgive all those who fell into his clutches – even Fenbrus Lodd.

And then he would have them executed.

‘Very well, Xanth,’ he said at last. ‘I give you my permission to go.’

‘Thank you, sir. Thank you,’ said Xanth, emotion sounding in his voice for the first time since their meeting had begun. ‘You won’t regret your decision, sir. I give my word.’

‘I hope not, Xanth,’ came the icy response. ‘Indeed, I make you this promise. If you should let me down, then it is
you
who will live to regret my decision.’

With Orbix Xaxis’s doomladen words echoing round his head, Xanth left the chamber and headed back down the flights of stairs. Hood raised and gown wrapped close about him, he kept to the shadows and out of sight. Past the look-out gantries he went; past the guards’ quarters and great halls, the laboratories and kitchens, and on down into the dark, dismal dungeons in the lower reaches of the sinister Tower of Night.

All round him he heard the low, whimpering moan of the prisoners. Hundreds of them, there were – earth-scholars,
sky pirates, suspected spies and traitors, even Guardians who had fallen from favour. Each one had been locked up, pending a trial which would take years to come – and almost certainly end up with an execution. In the meantime, they had to remain in their cells – if cell was the right word for the precarious ledges which jutted out into the vast atrium at the centre of the tower.

Xanth stopped on a half-landing, where one of the descending flights of stairs became two, and turned to the door facing him. He slid the round spy-hole cover to one side and peered through. The prisoner was still sitting in exactly the same position as when Xanth had left him, nearly two hours earlier.

‘It’s me,’ he hissed. ‘I’m back.’

The hunched figure did not move.

‘You were right,’ said Xanth, louder now. ‘It worked.’ Still the prisoner did not stir. Xanth frowned. ‘I thought you might be interested in my good news,’ he said peevishly.

The figure turned and stared back at the spy-hole. He was old. His eyes were sunken; his cheeks hollow. His thick, grey beard and thinning hair were dark with years of filth. He raised one shaggy eyebrow. ‘Interested?’ he said. ‘Aye, Xanth, I suppose I am.’ He looked round his cell and shook his head wearily. The small ledge, sticking out into the cavernous, echoing atrium, had no walls, yet escape was impossible. Apart from the door, which was kept securely bolted from the outside, the only way out was down – down to certain death on the ground, far below. He turned back to
the spy-hole. ‘But I am also envious beyond words.’

Xanth swallowed with embarrassment. Here, deep down in the stinking bowels of the atrium, the cell was about as bad as it could be. There was a table where, being an academic, the prisoner was forced to do work for the Guardians, and a filthy straw mattress. And that was it. For as long as Xanth had been alive, and many, many long years before that, the cell had been the prisoner’s entire world. ‘I … I’m so sorry,’ said Xanth. ‘I didn’t think.’ ‘You didn’t think,’ he murmured. ‘How ironic that is, Xanth, for I do little else
but
think. I think of everything that has happened – of what I have lost, of what has been taken from me …’ He paused, and when he looked up again he was smiling. ‘You will enjoy the Deepwoods, Xanth. I know you will. It is dangerous there, of course, with more perils than you could imagine. Yet it is a wondrous place – exciting, beautiful …’

Xanth nodded enthusiastically. It was, after all, their long conversations about the endless forest which had triggered his interest in the Deepwoods in the first place. They’d talked about woodtroll paths and reed-eel beds, about waif country and (Xanth’s favourite) about sacred Riverrise, high up in the distant mountains. Yet it was a place the prisoner would only ever visit again in his memory, for Xanth knew that the Most High Guardian of Night considered him too important ever to be released – and no-one had ever escaped from the dungeons of the Tower of Night. Just then a pair of soiled ratbirds landed on the corner
of the prisoner’s sleeping ledge.

He flapped his thin, grimy hands at them, sending them screeching back into the air. ‘And stay gone!’ he shouted after them.

‘I’m not dead yet.’ He snorted. ‘There’ll be time enough to pick my bones clean when I am. Eh, Xanth?’

The young apprentice Guardian winced uneasily. ‘Please don’t talk like that,’ he said. ‘Something’ll turn up. I know it will …’

‘Hush now, Xanth,’ the prisoner cautioned. ‘Such words are treason. If you do not wish to end up on your own dungeon ledge, you’d better be careful.’ He returned his attention to the barkscroll. ‘I will be thinking of you,’ he said.

The following morning Rook Barkwater stood in the cold, damp dormitory, stuffing all his belongings – which were few – into a backpack. He untied and reknotted the black scarf around his neck. He inspected the talisman. He rubbed the two sky-crystals together and watched the sparks tumble down to the floor, where they fizzed and disappeared.

‘Where is Felix?’ he wondered. He hadn’t laid eyes on him since the moment his own name had been announced from the Lufwood Bridge. He had found his
sleeping chamber empty, the hammock unslept in – and none of the other senior apprentices seemed to have seen him. Rook was confused. Surely, desperately disappointed as he was, Felix wouldn’t let him leave without saying goodbye.

Would he?

As he pushed the last of his meagre belongings into the backpack and tightened the drawstring, Rook sighed unhappily. Just then there came a noise from the end of the long thin room, and the door burst open. Rook spun round.