The Winter Knights (35 page)

Quint stared back into her eyes and, without saying a word, nodded grimly.

‘Oh, Quint,’ Maris sighed.

‘It still isn't too late for us to drop you off somewhere safe,’ said Quint. ‘If that's what you'd prefer.’

But Maris shook her head. ‘I thought you knew me better than that, Quint,’ she said sharply. ‘When I make up my mind about something, I don't change it …’ Her voice dropped to a low whisper. ‘By using the Great Laboratory, my father not only summoned up a gloam-glozer, but because of his experiments …’ She looked down at the barkscroll and traced a line with her finger.
The sky has sickened over Sanctaphrax,
she read,
the balmy breezes and fragrant zephyrs have curdled into blizzards of snow and ice that have no end.

Quint nodded. ‘And it's up to me to put that right,’ he said, his voice low, yet determined.

‘It's up to all of us, old chap,’ said Raffix. ‘Now look lively, everyone. We're passing over the Stone Gardens!’

Quint and Maris crossed the deck and, hands resting on the balustrade of the port bow, looked below them. The great stone stacks were buried in snow, pitted here and there with holes made by rocks freezing and breaking free. Quint turned to Maris and, seeing her eyes full of tears, remembered the last time the pair of them had been in the Stone Gardens.

‘You're thinking of your father, aren't you?’ he said, putting his hand on hers and squeezing it warmly.

She nodded. ‘I used to think he was so clever, so brave … Yet he died because of that monster he created. And now this …’ She swept her arm in a wide arc that encompassed the snow-covered scene below them. ‘If he truly
was
responsible for this endless winter, then instead of uniting Sanctaphrax by bringing earth- and sky-scholars together, he succeeded only in’ – her voice faltered – ‘destroying everything he cared for most …’

She stopped, unable to go any further.

Quint put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Not everything,’ he said. ‘
You're
still here …’

‘We're approaching the Edge!’ Phin's agitated voice rang out above the sound of the gathering wind that whistled through the hull-rigging and set the mainsail slapping against the mast.

Quint looked down. Sure enough, far below them, was the Edge itself. Snow had started falling once again – a swirl of huge, feathery white snowflakes that clung to the hull-rigging and coated the decks. The fire floats whirred and hummed round the rapidly cooling flightrock like angry wood-wasps and a shudder passed through the beams of the old sky ship. Quint's heart missed a beat.

Mark well, the three rules of sky sailing, Quint
, his father's voice echoed in his head.
Never set sail before you've plotted a course. Never fly higher than your longest grappling rope. And on no account venture into the uncharted areas of Open Sky.
Yet that, Quint realized, was precisely what he and the other Winter Knights were about to do.

Below them now, at the very tip of the jutting rock, was the Edgewater River, frozen solid in its cascade. Like the drippings of some mighty candle, the frozen river had formed a vast colonnade that stretched from the lip of the rock down into the void below. For a moment it stood out, sparkling and clear, before swirling mists and thickening blizzards closed in around the
Cloudslayer
and, like a dream, the vast pillar of ice faded from view.

Quint gripped the balustrade as the
Cloudslayer
began to buck and sway. Despite the best efforts of Stope's fire floats, it was clear that the old sky ship couldn't withstand the icy onslaught much longer. The snow on her decks thickened as the howl and wail of the snow-laden winds rose, until all other sounds – even the shouts of the
Cloudslayer
's crew and the splintering creaks of its protesting timbers – were drowned out.

A bank of freezing mist shot by and the heavy clouds abruptly parted. It was at that moment that Quint looked up and saw a sight that only Quode Quanx-Querix, founding Knight-Scholar of Sanctaphrax, had ever seen before …

•CHAPTER TWENTY ONE•
CLOUDEATER

T
he massive eye – as big as the great oval window in the barracks hall of the Knights Academy – swivelled in an ice-pitted socket, the light glistening on its gelatinous surface. A thick filmy mucus swam across it, and gathered in a claggy mass in one corner.

A moment later, with the sound of splintering icicles, a huge snow-encrusted eyelid peeled back to reveal a second eye, then a third and a fourth – until there were a dozen bulging eyeballs clustered like glistening wood-grapes around the first. At the centre of each sphere was a pulsating indigo circle, which contracted, then dilated – spreading out like an ink blot on yellowing parchment – as it focused on the tiny sky ship hurtling towards it.

‘Raff! Watch out!’ screamed Quint. He tore himself away from the balustrade and dashed towards the helm, where the young knight academic was standing transfixed by the monstrous, staring eyes in the sky ahead.

Pushing Raffix aside, Quint yanked the flight-levers back, and spun the heavy lufwood wheel hard to the right. Suddenly the massive eyes blurred as the
Cloudslayer
lurched violently, keeled over to one side and swerved upwards in a squeal of creaking timbers and flapping sails.

‘Hold on!’ Quint shouted, his breath billowing in the freezing air, as the old sky ship went into a near vertical climb, the wind whistling through its rigging, and jagged shards of ice and swirls of snow buffeting its pitted hull. He battled against the wheel in his hands, which bucked and juddered and fought to break free - but Quint maintained his grip.

He knew that if he let go, the
Cloudslayer
would turn turvey And if that happened, the ascent would become uncontrollable and the whole sky ship would tear itself apart …

Slowly, straining to hold the wheel steady with one hand, Quint reached out with the other towards the flight-levers. One by one, he pushed them forward, gingerly adjusting the sails and realigning the flight-weights, a fraction of an inch at a time. As he did so, the sound of the wind roaring past his ears gradually began to subside, as did the sound of the protesting timbers. And, by degrees, the
Cloudslayer
's wild, hurtling ascent began to slow.

Soon, Quint was able to make out the resonant hum of the glowing fire floats as they swarmed busily around the flight-rock; that, and the excited shouts of the Winter Knights.

‘Phin, are you all right?’

‘I'm fine, Mistress Maris. Where's Stope?’

‘Here, Master Phin! With Master Raffix – he's hit his head.’

‘It's nothing, dear chap,’ Raffix's voice sounded from the quarterdeck, below the helm. ‘Thank goodness for armour …’ There was a clanking sound as he scrambled back to his feet. ‘I say, sorry about that, Quint. Taken by surprise just then …’

Looking up from the bone-handled flight-levers, Quint saw Raffix's rueful head appear at the foot of the stairs. His spectacles were lopsided and there was a red bump on his forehead, but otherwise he looked none the worse for his fall.

‘Never mind that, Raff,’ he said, turning the wheel to starboard. The
Cloudslayer
levelled off, a stiff breeze setting its patched and tattered sails fluttering. He brought it gently round until the prow was dipping down. ‘Look at that!’

The other Winter Knights scrambled up to the helm, clustered round Quint at the wheel and peered down.

‘What in Sky's name … ?’ breathed Raffix.

Far beneath them, hovering in the sky, was some kind of monstrous creature. It was lumpy, ill-shapen and encased in a glistening carapace of ice and snow – its surface scarred and pitted with what looked like weeping sores and oozing boils. The creature was massive. Its bulbous head alone was twice the size of the Sanctaphrax rock, while its coiling, sinuous body, which trailed back across the sky towards the Edge, could have circled Undertown three times over. The creature's immense, frozen body tapered into gigantic fraying strands which ended in wispy tendrils, stretched taut in the sky, as if held by some invisible force.

Beyond these tendrils, in the distance, as the clouds thinned, the great gleaming column of ice hanging from the Edge cliff shone out for a moment. And beyond that, the hazy outline of the Stone Gardens and the floating rock could just be glimpsed.

With a sigh – a dry, rasping sound like the wind blowing through ironwood pines – the immense creature curved round in the sky, its numerous eyes glittering hungrily. Approaching it was a mountainous bank of silver-edged clouds, billowing in from Open Sky towards the Edge on a balmy breeze as warm gusts enveloped the
Cloudslayer
, so different from the freezing winds Quint had become used to in the ice-bound floating city. The words of the ancient barkscroll came back to him once more:
The balmy breezes and fragrant zephyrs have curdled into blizzards of snow and ice …

Just then, with a deep and sonorous cry – like a muffled clap of thunder – the creature swung round, drifting across the sky, until its great head was hovering just ahead of the approaching cloudbank. Its jaws opened wide and, with a thick, gurgling sound, the creature began to swallow the cloudbank.