Midnight Over Sanctaphrax
Contents
• CHAPTER TWO • THE WEATHER VORTEX
• CHAPTER THREE • THE LOFTUS OBSERVATORY
• CHAPTER FOUR • THE STONE GARDENS
• CHAPTER SIX • INSIDE AND OUT
• CHAPTER SEVEN • THE SHOOTING STAR CHART
• CHAPTER EIGHT • THE LULLABEE INN
• CHAPTER NINE • THE CLODDERTROGS
• CHAPTER ELEVEN • THE WESTERN QUAYS
• CHAPTER TWELVE • THUNDERBOLT VULPOON
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN • INTO THE GREATSHRYKE SLAVEMARKET
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN • THE WIG-WIG ARENA
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN • THE WELL-TRODDENPATH
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN • THE DEEPWOODS’DARK HEART
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • RLVEERISE
• INTRODUCTION •
F
ar far away, jutting out into the emptiness beyond, like the figurehead of a mighty stone ship, is the Edge. A great torrent once poured over this overhanging lip of rock. Now, however, the Edgewater River is shallow and sluggish. Its source, known in myths as Riverrise, is drying up, and the streams and tributaries which used to feed it are dwindling.
Straddling the river's broad and increasingly marshy estuary, is Undertown, a sprawling warren of ramshackle hovels and rundown slums. Its population is made up of strange peoples, creatures and tribes from the Edge, all crammed together into its narrow alleys.
Dirty, over-crowded and often violent, Undertown is also the centre of all economic activity - both above board and underhand. It buzzes, it bustles, it vibrates with energy. Everyone who lives there has a particular trade, with its attendant league and clearly defined district. This leads to intrigue, plotting, bitter competition and perpetual disputes - district with district, league with rival league. Yet there is one matter which binds them all together: their freedom.
Everyone who dwells in Undertown is free. Born out of the second Great Migration, Undertown developed as a haven for those who had escaped a life of servitude and tyrannical bondage in the Deepwoods. Its founding fathers enshrined the principle of free status for all in the constitution. Today, that principle is still guarded fiercely. The punishment for anyone who attempts to enslave an Undertowner is death.
In the centre of Undertown is a great iron ring to which a long and heavy chain extends up into the sky. At its end is an immense floating rock.
Like all the other buoyant rocks of the Edge, it started out in the Stone Gardens - poking up out of the ground, growing, being pushed up further by new rocks growing beneath it, and becoming bigger still. The chain was attached when the rock became large and light enough to rise up into the sky Upon it, the magnificent floating city of Sanctaphrax has been constructed.
With its elegant schools and colleges, Sanctaphrax is a seat of learning, home to academics, alchemists and their apprentices. The subjects studied there are as obscure as they are jealously guarded and, despite the apparent air of fusty, bookish benevolence, the city is a seething cauldron of rivalries and rancorous faction-fighting. For all that, however, the citizens of Sanctaphrax have a common aim: to understand the weather.
To this end the academics - from mist sifters and fog-probers, to windtouchers and cloudwatchers - observe and examine, calibrate and catalogue every minute feature of the ever-changing climatic conditions which roll in from open sky, far beyond the Edge.
It is out there - in that vast, uncharted void where few have ventured and none returned - that the weather is brewed up by the Mother Storm herself. White storms and mind storms, she concocts: rains which bring sadness, winds which cause madness, and dense, sulphurous fogs which steal the senses and play tricks with the mind.
Long ago, the ancient scholar, Archemax, wrote in his introduction to the Thousand Luminescent Aphorisms that ‘To know the weather is to know the Edge.’ The current academics of Sanctaphrax would do well to heed his words for, cut off in their floating city, they are in danger of forgetting the link between the two.
The Deepwoods, the Stone Gardens, the Edgewater River. Undertown and Sanctaphrax. Names on a map.
Yet behind each name lie a thousand tales - tales that have been recorded in ancient scrolls, tales that have been passed down the generations by word of mouth -tales which even now are being told.
What follows is but one of those tales.
• CHAPTER ONE •
OPEN SKY
O
ut in the vast cloudscape, a lone sky ship in full sail cut through the thin air. Ahead, at the end of a rope-tether, a gigantic bird flapped its mighty black and white wings as it led the ship ever further into that place of terror for all the creatures from the Edge - open sky
‘Weather vortex straight ahead,’ the small oakelf shouted from the caternest at the top of the main-mast. His voice was shrill with fear. ‘And it's a monster!’
Down at the helm of the Edgedancer, a young sky pirate captain in a hammelhornskin waistcoat raised his telescope to his eye with shaking hands. As he focused in on the dark, swirling air, his heart missed a beat. The approaching vortex was indeed monstrous. It was as if the great milky clouds were curdling and falling in on themselves, swirling into a great blood-red throat at the centre of which was an inky blackness that threatened to swallow the tiny sky ship whole.
‘I see it, Spooler,’ the young captain called to the oakelf. It's coming in at a rate of about a hundred strides per second, Captain Twig, sir,’ Spooler shouted, panic plain in his voice. ‘We've precious little time till impact.’
Twig nodded grimly. Already the currents of air around them were beginning to spin unpredictably. They were passing in and out of great banks of cloud; plummeting as they went in, soaring up again as they emerged on the other side. With the binding tether taut, the caterbird continued its steady, relentless flight.
‘Surely this is madness!’ complained the wiry weasel-faced quartermaster in the gaudy brocaded coat. He pulled the large tricorn hat from his head and wiped his sweaty brow. ‘It's heading straight for the vortex.’
‘We must follow where the caterbird leads, Sleet,’ Twig shouted back.
‘B … but…’ stuttered Wingnut Sleet, his voice a thin whine.
