Paul Stewart - Edge Chronicles: Stormchaser (The Edge Chronicles)

F ar far away, jutting out into the emptiness beyond, like the figurehead of a mighty stone ship, is the Edge. A broad, swollen river the Edgewater pours endlessly over the lip of rock at its overhanging point and down into the void below. Its source lies far inland, high up in the dark and perilous Deepwoods.

On the fringes of this great forest, where the clouds descend, lie the Edgelands, a barren wasteland of swirling mists, spirits and nightmares. Those who lose themselves in the Edgelands face one of two possible fates. The lucky ones will stumble blindly to the cliff edge and plunge to their deaths. The unlucky ones will find themselves in the Twilight Woods.

Bathed in their never-ending golden half-light, the Twilight Woods are enchanting but also treacherous. The atmosphere there is intoxicating. Those who breathe it for too long forget the reason they ever came, like the lost knights on long-forgotten quests, who would give up on life if only life would give up on them.

On occasions, the heavy stillness of the Twilight Woods is disturbed by violent storms which blow in from beyond the Edge. Drawn there like moths to a flame, the storms circle the glowing sky sometimes for days at a time. Some of the storms are special. The lightning bolts they release create stormphrax, a substance so valuable that despite the awful dangers of the Twilight Woods it acts like a magnet to those who would possess it.

At its lower reaches, the Twilight Woods give way to the Mire. It is a stinking, polluted place, rank with the slurry from the factories and foundries of Undertown which have pumped and dumped their waste so long that the land is dead. And yet like everywhere else on the Edge there are those who live here. Pink-eyed and bleached as white as their surroundings, they are the rummagers, the scavengers.

Those who manage to make their way across the Mire find themselves in a warren of ramshackle hovels and rundown slums which straddle the oozing Edgewater River. This is Undertown. Its population is made up of all the strange peoples, creatures and tribes of the Edge crammed into its narrow alleys. It is dirty, over-crowded and often violent, yet Undertown is also the centre of all economic activity both above-board and underhand.

It buzzes, it bustles, it bristles 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 league, tradesman with rival tradesman. The only matter which unites all leaguesmen is their shared fear and hatred of the sky pirates who dominate the skies above the Edge in their independent boats and prey off any hapless leaguesmen whose paths they cross.

At the centre of Undertown is a great iron ring, to which a long and heavy chain now taut, now slack extends up into the sky. At its end is a great 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 float up into the sky. Upon it, the magnificent city of Sanctaphrax has been constructed.

Sanctaphrax, with its tall thin towers connected by viaducts and walkways is a seat of learning. It is peopled with academics, alchemists and apprentices everyone has a title and furnished with libraries, laboratories and lecture halls, refectories and common rooms. The subjects studied there are as obscure as they are jealously guarded and, despite the apparent air of fusty, bookish benevolence, Sanctaphrax is a seething cauldron of rivalries, plots and counter-plots and bitter faction-fighting.

The Deepwoods, the Edgelands, the Twilight Woods, the Mire and the Stone Gardens. Undertown and Sanctaphrax. The River Edgewater. 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.

I t was midday and Undertown was bustling. Beneath the pall of filthy mist which hovered over the town, fuzzing the rooftops and dissolving the sun, its narrow streets and alleyways were alive with feverish activity.

There was ill-tempered haggling and bartering; buskers played music, barrow-boys called out unmissable bargains, beggars made their pitiful demands from dark, shadowy corners though there were few who paused to place coins in their hats. Rushing this way and that, everyone was far too wrapped up in their own concerns to spare a thought for anyone else.

Getting from a to b as quickly as possible, being first to nail a deal, obtaining the best price while undercutting your competitors that was what succeeding in Undertown was all about. You needed nerves of steel and eyes in the back of your head to survive; you had to learn to smile even as you were stabbing someone else in the back. It was a rough life, a tough life, a ruthless life.

It was an exhilarating life.

Twig hurried up from the boom-docks and through the market-place not because he was in any particular hurry himelf, but because the frenzied atmosphere was contagious. Anyway, he had learned the hard way that those who dont adjust to the breakneck pace of the place were liable to get knocked down and trampled underfoot. Along with avoid all eye-contact and do not display weakness, go with the flow was one of the cardinal rules of Undertown.

Twig was feeling uncomfortably hot. The sun was at its highest. Despite being obscured by the choking, foul-tasting smoke from the metal foundries, it beat down ferociously. There was no wind and, as Twig dodged his way past the shops, stands and stalls, a bewildering mix of smells assaulted his nostrils. Stale woodale, ripe cheeses, burned milk and boiling glue, roasting pine-coffee and sizzling tilder sausages