Stormchaser (38 page)

Vilnix frowned and looked round, puzzled. ‘What in Sky's name…?’ he muttered.

At that moment, the rock lurched and the mirror – the second mirror, the mirror which was leaning up against the wall – abruptly slid back, over the thick white carpet and down to the floor. Vilnix sighed. At least it hadn’t smashed. But what had caused it to fall in the first place? The weight-fixers and chain-clampers weren’t due to start work for another two hours and anyway, the floating rock was now gripped by judders and jolts far more severe than anything their drills could cause.

Horrified, Vilnix Pompolnius clung on to the window sill as the Inner Sanctum shook more violently than ever. Priceless objects were crashing to the floor all round the chamber – the porcelain vases and ivory figurines, the ornate carvings and the time-pieces, the leatherbound books.

Is it a storm? Vilnix wondered. Or an earthquake? Or has the floating rock finally become so buoyant that it is tearing away from its moorings?

At that moment, there was a loud cracking sound and the chandelier abruptly broke free from the ceiling moulding and hurtled to the floor. It landed with an almighty crash – on the mirror. Shards and splinters of crystal and glass flew all over the chamber, embedding themselves in the panelled walls.

‘What is going on?’ Vilnix screamed. ‘Minulis!
MINULIS
!’

But, on this occasion, the personal manservant to the Most High Academe failed to appear.

‘Minulis, where are you?’ stormed Vilnix, and strode furiously towards the door of his servant's spartan ante-chamber. He’d show the impudent wretch that he wouldn’t be kept waiting!

Vilnix hadn’t got more than half-way across the glass-strewn carpet when, all at once and with no warning, the entire chamber dropped down. He stumbled and fell to the floor. Above his head, a crack opened from one side of the ceiling to the other, and a massive section of gold-embossed plaster came crashing down about him.

When the dust settled Vilnix raised his head, stood up and shook the powdery fragments from his robes. Sanctaphrax, he realized, was now steady again. Rock steady. ‘And yet for a moment we were falling,’ he whispered. ‘Which can mean but one thing…’ His sallow face reddened with fury. ‘That odious sky pirate must have returned with the stormphrax undetected.’

His head spinning with decisions and imperatives, Vilnix pulled his gown of office over his hair-shirt, fixed the spiked steel skull-cap into place and swept from the chaos of the chamber.

‘I’ll show him,’ he muttered furiously. ‘I’ll show them all! They’ll see what happens to traitors who meddle in the affairs of the Most High Academe.’

It wasn’t only the Inner Sanctum which suffered damage. In every corner of every room of every tower of
Sanctaphrax, the story was the same. Instruments slipped from worktops; books fell from shelves. Walls cracked, windows broke, stonework and plaster tumbled to the ground as the vibrations had grown more violent.

Shrieks of terror and howls of pain rose up above the rumbling, crashing roar, and the citizens of Sanctaphrax – young and old, venerable and lowly – spilled out from the towers and into the squares and streets. For a moment they stood there, at a loss to know what to do as minarets and castellations came crashing down around them.

‘What's happening?’ ‘What's going on?’ they screamed at one another. ‘’Tis the end of Sanctaphrax!’ Then someone called out, ‘To the Great Hall!’ and, as one, they all surged along the main avenue towards the oldest and most solid building in all of Sanctaphrax, the place where they always took to in an emergency.

The crowd arrived at the hall, angry and loud. They poured inside and were outraged to discover that even this ancient place of sanctuary had not been spared the consequences of the terrible shaking that had gripped their floating city. Fallen blocks of stone littered the cracked marble floor; a pillar lay on its side while a second one looked ready to topple at any moment. And, as they watched, a jagged crack zig-zagged its way up across the back wall from the foundations to the roof.

‘Not here,’ they cried out. ‘Not the Great Hall!’

By the time those at the back of the crowd were at last entering the building, the rock was once again still – yet no-one's rage had abated. Not a jot. From the academics, crushed together at the front of the hall, to the servants and guards, packed in around the walls, the cries were the same.

‘Where's Vilnix?’ they demanded. ‘He's the cause of all this.’ ‘That sanctimonious scoundrel!’ ‘That accursed usurper!’ ‘That treacherous villain who cannot see beyond the lining of his own pockets!’ ‘Where
is
he?’

Then, as two figures strode out on to the podium, the questions abruptly changed. ‘What's the Professor of Darkness doing up there?’ ‘And who is that with him?’

The professor raised his arms and appealed for quiet. ‘Friends,’ he cried. ‘Friends.’ A hush fell. ‘I understand your distress. I share your pain that our beloved Sanctaphrax has been so sorely wounded. And yet,’ he went on, ‘there was no way that it could have been avoided.’

A growl of discontent rumbled round the room. This wasn’t what they had come to hear. Twig stared at the sea of angry faces before him and trembled. If the professor wasn’t careful, the crowd would rip them apart first and ask questions afterwards.

‘What about my laboratory?’ demanded the Professor of Windtouchers.

‘And who's going to replace the windows of my observatory?’ added the Professor of Cloudwatchers.

‘Buildings can be repaired,’ the professor continued, undaunted. ‘And now there is no further need for chains, there will be hands enough to effect those repairs.’

An anxious muttering started up. ‘No chains?’ everyone was saying to everyone else. What madness was this? Of course they needed chains!

‘No chains save the one ancient Anchor Chain which keeps us from drifting,’ the professor explained.

‘Clarify!’ called the Professor of Cloudwatchers.

‘Elucidate!’ demanded the Professor of Windtouchers.

‘What do you mean?’ a gruff voice shouted from the back.

‘I mean this,’ the professor said. ‘That the crisis which has been hanging over our heads for so long is, at long last, over. Sanctaphrax is once more in equilibrium.’

His words were greeted with absolute silence. Could it be true? they all wondered. Could it
really
be true?

‘But what about all that jolting and juddering?’ asked the Professor of Cloudwatchers.

‘And the shaking and shuddering,’ added the Professor of Windtouchers.

‘That,’ said the professor, turning to them, ‘was the rock being weighed down by the cargo of stormphrax.’ He looked up. ‘It will not happen again for as long as any of us shall live. Of that, I give you my word.’

A murmur went round the hall; a murmur which grew louder and louder, until everyone seemed to be talking at the same time. Then a solitary cheer went up from the back. Others joined in. And the next moment, the entire hall was resounding with the exultant whoops and cries of unbounded joy.

‘To the Professor of Darkness!’ someone yelled.

‘Yes, to the new Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax!’ cried the Professor of Cloudwatchers, waving his arms in the air.

‘Or should that be, to the
old
Most High Academe?’ said the Professor of Windtouchers.

‘Old or new, I would be honoured to resume my responsibilities as the Most High Academe,’ the Professor of Darkness announced, to rapturous applause. ‘And yet,’ he continued, ‘it is not I you have to thank for all that has taken place. I was not the one who ventured forth to the Twilight Woods and who risked all to return to Sanctaphrax with a cargo of precious stormphrax.’

‘Then who? Who?’ the crowd called out. Surely not the bony youth who hovered by his side.

The professor took a step towards Twig, seized him by the wrist and raised his arm high in the air. ‘Professors, academics, citizens,’ he announced. ‘I give you Captain Twig.
He
is the person you must thank.’

Twig turned as red as a woodsap as the crowd whooped and whistled and cheered, overwhelmed by the waves of gratitude that washed over him.

‘Thanks to this brave and valiant youth, we will no longer have to lie in our beds, quaking with fear that the floating-rock might break its moorings and fly up into open sky,’ the professor said, raising Twig's arm still higher.

‘Hooray!’ cried the delighted crowd.

‘Thanks to him, we have been freed from our dependence on the greedy leaguesmen for our well-being.’

‘
Hooray
!’ they bellowed, louder still.

‘By all that is wise, he served us with heart and mind, forswearing all loyalties other than to Sanctaphrax,’ the professor announced.

Twig trembled at the words. Where had he heard them before? he wondered. Why were they so familiar?

‘He dedicated his life to the finding of stormphrax. He chased a Great Storm and did not return until he had completed his sacred – aye, Twig, your
sacred
– quest.’ The professor smiled. ‘Kneel my boy,’ he said.

That was it! Twig remembered. They were the words used at his father's Inauguration Ceremony. ‘But … I … you…’ he blustered, and swallowed hard. Then, lowering his eyes to the floor, he dropped down onto his knees.

The crowd fell silent as the Professor of Darkness walked towards the back of the hall and removed the ceremonial sword from the cracked wall. Twig was trembling; he was trembling so badly he was sure everyone
must be able to hear his teeth chattering. The next moment, the professor returned with the sword and stood before him. Twig looked up to see the great gold blade coming down slowly through the air as it dubbed him, first on his right shoulder, then on his left.

‘I pronounce you to be an honorary Knight Academic,’ the professor said. ‘Arborinus Verginix be your name. Arise!’

For a moment, Twig did not move. He could not. His legs had turned to jelly. Only when the professor reached down and took his hand did Twig manage to climb shakily to his feet. A mighty, clamouring din was echoing round the Great Hall, so loud it made his head spin.

‘Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!’ the assembled company yelled, and they skipped and jumped and danced for joy, academics with servants, professor with professor, each putting away their grudges and grievances – at least for this one wonderful moment.