The Winter Knights (19 page)

‘Silence!’ roared the Hall Master of High Cloud, and levelled his staff at the gantry. ‘You, Philius Embertine, are a disgrace to the Knights Academy! Gatekeepers! Take him away! Take them
all
away!’

The gatekeepers sprang forward, their swords drawn, only to be confronted by Screedius, his own sword unsheathed.

‘Screedius Tollinix, knight academic-in-waiting!’ Hax's voice boomed out from the buoyant lectern. ‘Before you defy my orders, I must remind you of one thing.’

Screedius turned to Hax, his eyes blazing. ‘And that is?’ he snarled.

‘A Great Storm is approaching, and Sanctaphrax has need of the talents of her finest knight academic. Think carefully before you make your next move.’

Screedius glared at the hall master, then down at the slumped figure of his friend, Philius Embertine. The old knight looked up and searched his young colleague's face as if reading his thoughts. Then, slowly, he nodded his head. Screedius turned, sheathed his sword, and stepped aside as the gatekeepers led the three hall masters away.

‘Fellow sky-scholars, the Purge has begun!’ announced Hax Vostillix. ‘Sanctaphrax
shall
be saved!’

On the floating bench, Quint looked down miserably as the lecture hall resounded to the cheers of the academics. Being a member of the Knights Academy didn't seem to feel quite so good any more.

•CHAPTER TWELVE•
THE WINDCUTTER

T
he mechanism of the great telescope screeched in protest as the Professor of Darkness attempted to adjust its focus.

‘It's no good, my friend,’ he called down from the glass-domed roof of the Loftus Observatory to his colleague, the Professor of Light, who was peering up at him from the foot of the ladder. ‘Frozen practically solid. It's all I can do to turn the blasted thing.’

He rapped a knuckle against the shaft of the great brass telescope and, getting up from the padded seat, began to climb back down the ladder.

‘I don't like it, old friend,’ his colleague began, the moment the Professor of Darkness had rejoined him. ‘The sourmist particles certainly denote the arrival of a Great Storm, but these cloud formations …’ He shook his head. ‘Too compact, far too little drift, and I for one am not at all convinced by the mist density …’

‘Neither am I, dear friend,’ the Professor of Darkness agreed. ‘Neither am I. Yet no such doubts seem to afflict our esteemed colleague, the Hall Master of High Cloud. Every school and academy seems to be hanging on his every word.’

That,’ said the Professor of Light grimly, ‘is the power of rabble-rousing. He's got half the academics in Sanctaphrax looking in their sleeping closets for earth-scholars, and the other half convinced of the imminent arrival of this Great Storm of his …’

‘And in the meantime, he can do what he likes,’ added the Professor of Darkness with a heavy sigh. ‘I thought our dear friend Linius Pallitax, Sky rest his soul, had put an end to these absurd sky- and earth-scholarship divisions.’

‘Talking of which,’ broke in the Professor of Light, as the two Most High Academes made their way down the long spiralling staircase of the Loftus Observatory, the tallest tower in Sanctaphrax, ‘how
are
the hall masters?’ ‘
Ex
-hall masters, dear friend,’ replied the Professor of Darkness. He sucked in air noisily through his teeth. ‘Well, Fenviel Vendix has taken to hanging about at the treadmills on the West Landing. Can't bear being parted from his beloved prowlgrins, I imagine – but Hax has threatened to set his gatekeepers on him if he should ever show his face in the Hall of Grey Cloud again. Arboretum, poor chap, has fled to Undertown in complete disgrace. It seems his gambling debts were far bigger than anyone realized, and he owes money everywhere. Several of the viaduct schools turned particularly nasty over it, I understand.’

‘And Embertine?’

‘Ah, yes, poor Philius. It's really so very sad,’ said the Professor of Darkness. ‘He's taken to his bed, still protesting his innocence. They say he's fading fast and not even Hax is hard-hearted enough to throw him out. But it's a bad business,’ he muttered as they reached the bottom of the tower. ‘A bad business all round.’

‘And I'll tell you this,’ said the Professor of Light, as they stepped out into a blizzard of snowflakes, ‘Hax Vostillix might seem like the saviour of Sanctaphrax right now, but if he's wrong about this Great Storm, the academics will turn on him quicker than the Chorus of the Dead at a funeral.’

You hardly ever saw the Hall Master of High Cloud in the great Lecture Dome these days, thought Quint, leaning back against the padded cushions of the floating bench.

Beside him, Phin's head was drooping over a tattered barkscroll, which was covered with spots and smudges of black ink.

Poor old Phin. Quint smiled. He just didn't seem to be able to get the hang of cloudwatching at all.

‘I mean to say,’ he'd whisper to Quint – protesting as loudly as he dared, given the tell-tale acoustics of the egg-shaped hall. ‘If I'd wanted to stare at the sky all day long, I'd have stayed at the Academy of Wind. At least you could talk there!’

‘
Sssshh!
’ Quint would hiss in reply. ‘Someone will hear.’

That ‘someone’, they both knew, was Vilnix Pompolnius, hovering high above the others, a solitary figure on a floating bench all to himself. The other squires now shunned him completely, not only in the lecture hall, but also in the Eightways
and
the dormitory closets.

Not that the sour-faced young squire seemed to care. He was too busy sucking up to Hax Vostillix on those rare occasions when the hall master made an appearance in the lecture hall; or snooping about, eavesdropping on the conversations of the other squires when he wasn't. Indeed, many of them were so convinced that Vilnix was spying on them, searching for signs of earth-scholar sympathies, that they refused to say a single word in his presence. Quint wasn't as certain, but even he thought it best to watch what he said, just in case.

Every day, high professors from the Upper Halls came down to the domed hall to deliver lectures, and the squires’ heads were filled with new equations and fresh formulae, each one more complicated than the one before. Using the sectors and lines etched into the glass dome, they learned of ocular swirls, eddies and flows, drift measures and drizzle patterns. Then, with the long complicated lectures over, they would switch from theory to practice. The high professors would set them navigational problems – everything from mist-shift and billow-swell to graded transits and hover feints. Most afternoons, the only sound to be heard was a faint scratching, as the squires scribbled furiously on their barkscrolls.

There was no let-up. From dusk till dawn they laboured, and often late into the night – so that they might examine the effects of darkness on the increasingly turbulent cloud formations coming in from Open Sky.

Although Phin often grew bored and restive, beside him, Quint found himself swept up in the beauty and mystery of the sky. Some days, it was all he could do to drag himself away from the mesmerizing spectacle unfolding through the crystal panes of the great dome. Yet as he studied the cloud formations, day after day, nagging questions and uncertainties began to drift through his mind, as dark and ominous as the clouds above – until one afternoon, he could help himself no longer.

At the end of a long lecture on low cloud clusters given by High Professor Graydle Flax, Quint raised his hand.

‘Please, Professor Flax,’ he began. ‘There's something that's been bothering me … It's about the Great Storm …’

Around him, several of the squires suppressed nervous giggles, and Phin gasped. Questions were only permitted if a high professor specifically asked for them. Graydle Flax turned from adjusting the buoyant lectern's weights and stared at the squire, his mouth set in a tight, grim line.

‘The mist density of the anvil formations seems far too great,’ Quint said. ‘And, according to my calculations, there's insufficient drift to denote the arrival of a Great Storm. I mean, I know I'm only a Lower Hall squire, but …’

‘But nothing, squire!’ a voice boomed across the lecture hall. ‘How dare you question the considered judgement of the Hall Master of High Cloud?’

The buoyant benches clattered and buffeted each other as the squires upon them turned to see Hax Vostillix standing on a flying-jetty at the entrance to the lecture hall. His face was drawn and tired, and the spider-silk robe was so creased it looked as though the hall master had slept in it.

‘Professor Flax,’ he barked, outraged, ‘what kind of lecture are you running here, where squires are allowed to shout out whatever comes into their heads?’

He swept along the jetty and, brushing the high professor aside, stepped onto the buoyant lectern, which rose back into the air.

‘Now, who amongst you can correct this impudent youth?’ he demanded, and glared round at the squires in front of him.

‘Please, Hall Master Vostillix, sir,’ Vilnix's thin, ingratiating voice sounded from behind Quint's back. ‘As you've already made clear, the increase of sourmist particles in the air shows the build-up of a Great Storm beyond any doubt. And the anvil formations – despite the masking effects of snow and ice – herald its imminent arrival, Sky be praised!’ His eyes narrowed. ‘To believe otherwise is earth-scholar talk!’

His voice sank to a low hiss as he uttered the words ‘earth-scholar talk’, and Quint flinched as he heard them, wishing he hadn't spoken out. The former hall masters weren't the only ones who needed to watch their step in this new charged atmosphere.

‘Excellent, young Pompolnius! Excellent!’ Hax enthused, ‘a Great Storm
is
imminent!’ Yet as he spoke, the anxious, fretful look on his face showed that even he was having doubts. ‘Squires, dismissed!’ he barked. ‘And you, Quintinius Verginix …’ Hax fixed Quint with an icy stare. ‘The high professors tell me you are clever.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Far too clever, I trust, to be taken in by earth-scholar lies …’

‘N … n … no, sir,’ stammered Quint. ‘I … I mean, yes, sir …’

‘Just watch what you say in future!’ The hall master yanked the lectern round and descended to the jetty, then stormed out.

Quint was just about to return to his studies, when he caught Professor Flax's eye. There was a faint smile playing on the high professor's thin lips and, before Quint could look away, he winked at him. Clearly Quint wasn't the only one with doubts about the Great Storm.

*

High in his tower in the Knights Academy, Screedius Tollinix rose, crossed to the window and threw it open. Outside, dark clouds in anvil formations billowed across the sky, but at least the blizzard of the past three weeks seemed to have abated.

His green eyes scanned the sky, noting every detail. His nostrils flared. There was definitely sourmist in the air, and stronger than ever. Yet, something wasn't right. Was it the cloud density, or the lack of cloud drift? He shook his head. Even though he couldn't put his finger on it, something was causing the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Screedius wished he could talk to his friend, Philius Embertine, the old knight academic.
He
would know what this baffling weather meant … But that was impossible. Philius was delirious in his quarters in the Hall of White Cloud, calling out to his long-dead prowlgrin and reliving his famous stormchasing voyages over and over in his poor, fevered imagination.