‘No,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘No, Quint, you can’t take my child.’

  ‘Maris,’ he said, gently prising the bundle from her grip. ‘The woodtrolls mustn’t see you – not with fever – or they won’t accept the baby. Here, let me have him. It’s for the best. Believe me . . .’

  Just then, the little baby stirred. He squirmed and wriggled, then let out a plaintive cry. I moved forward and, Earth and Sky forgive me, I helped Quint take her from Maris’s embrace. Maris was sobbing quietly now, and the baby had started to cry out loud.

  Quint took him and placed him down gently at the foot of a tall copperwood tree beneath a cabin, its windows stained with the purple glow of the lufwood logs burning inside a stove. He quickly stepped back, and the three of us crouched down in the shadows, watching.

  We didn’t have long to wait. As the infant’s cries grew louder, the little door of the cabin opened and a woodtroll matron stuck her head outside. She was short and round, and as she looked around, the moonlight shone on the plaited spikes of her hair and on her small rubbery nose.

  The woodtroll matron came tentatively down the stairs, then let out a cry of shock and wonder as her gaze fell upon the little bundle. Looking around over her shoulders, then stooping down, she gathered the baby up in her arms and soothed him.

  ‘Oh, my sweetness,’ she cooed. ‘Where on Earth and Sky did you come from?’ She looked around again, then pulled the shawl up over the baby’s little head. ‘Best keep out that chill air,’ she said. ‘Are you hungry? I bet you’re hungry, aren’t you? Where’s your mother, you poor little thing?’

  Maris clamped her hands over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks as the woodtroll turned and carried the little baby back up to her cabin, then crumpled to the ground in a dead faint.

  ‘Tuntum,’ we heard the woodtroll calling, as she stepped inside. ‘Tuntum, seems some desperate soul has delivered us a baby to care for . . .’

  Then the door shut, and her voice fell still.

  With Quint carrying Maris in his arms, we returned the way we’d come. I stopped at a mighty ironwood pine and climbed up its rough-barked trunk, while Quint laid Maris down at the foot of the tree and waited, stroking her head and whispering soothing words. She was in a fever-dream, weeping softly and calling out for her child in a hoarse, tear-soaked voice. I worked as quickly as I could, filling the buckets with oozing, amber ironwood resin.

  Finally, after several hours, the buckets were full, and I went back to Quint. He picked Maris up and, together, we walked back along the path. Then, where we had joined it, we did what no woodtroll would ever do – we strayed from the path, and we returned to the Reaper of Plenty.

  Gobtrax was there to greet us on board. ‘About time,’ he snarled. ‘The dawn is breaking. We set sail immediately.’

  ‘Earth and Sky curse you,’ Quint hissed as he brushed him aside, Maris in his arms, and headed down to their quarters in the cargo hold.

  I feared that the superstitious captain might be angry at Quint’s words, but he simply turned away. ‘Brought it on yourself, Captain Quint,’ he muttered, disappearing into his cabin.

  When Quint returned, he went up to the bridge and I went to the flight-rock platform. I saw that Kelter had been hard at work, hacking through the saplings that were snaring the Reaper of Plenty and making makeshift repairs to the hull. When the last sapling was chopped, the cold flight rock, chipped and damaged as it was, lifted the battered skyship into the air.

  I turned on the refilled burners and brought us to a steady hover. Quint raised the sails, and the Reaper of Plenty sailed off across the sky as dawn broke over the Deepwoods.

  Once he had set the flight levers, Quint made his way down from the bridge. Kelter was dozing in the league captain’s chair on deck at the foot of the stairs and didn’t stir as Quint crept past him. Glancing up, he saw me watching from the flight-rock platform, and nodded. He looked hollow-eyed and grief-stricken as he quietly entered the little ante-chamber next to the captain’s cabin, and I knew he was going to mark the position of the woodtroll village on the sky chart.

  ‘Sky protect the little one,’ I breathed as I turned back to the flight burners.

  Chapter 5

  Three weeks we sailed, back over the seemingly endless expanse of the Deepwoods in that battered old leagueship with its damaged flight rock. It needed constant tending, but with Quint’s navigation and careful sail-setting, we made remarkably good progress, considering.

  Maris was severely weakened by the fever and kept to her quarters for the most part, only venturing out in the early hours to stand at the balustrade and gaze mournfully back the way we’d come. She never spoke, not even to Quint, who’d grown steadily more gaunt and careworn as our journey continued. I suspected that neither of them were eating properly.

  Not that Gobtrax cared. He spent most of his time poring over the sky chart in the ante-chamber, calculating how much the information it contained was going to make him once we got back to Undertown. More than once, I caught sight of him doodling designs for magnificent high hats on scraps of barkscroll, and cackling to himself.

  Quint saw him too, for he’d taken to hanging around on the aft deck outside the ante-chamber when he wasn’t on the bridge. Now that we were heading back, and the Mire and the two cities were only a few days away, Gobtrax had barred Quint from the chamber and denied him access to the chart.

  ‘You endangered my ship with that whelp of yours!’ Gobtrax had thundered. ‘Did you really think I’d reward you with access to my sky chart?’

  Quint was caught like an oozefish on the end of a line. Gobtrax knew that without the sky chart, the chances of Quint ever finding that little woodtroll village were practically non-existent. His jotted sky-compass reading only made sense if plotted on the chart – which is why Quint had sneaked into the ante-chamber on that first day of our return voyage. But since then, Gobtrax had set Kelter on guard, and Quint couldn’t get in.

  ‘I’m a fair captain,’ Gobtrax had said, loud enough for both me and Maris to hear. ‘You’ll get your cut of the profits when I auction the sumpwood locations. But what use is a woodtroll village . . .?’ He’d paused for effect, enjoying the taunt. ‘Wouldn’t it be a shame if that last location you plotted on my chart were to be erased?’

  The effect of these words on Quint had been dramatic. He had drawn his sword and would have run the league captain through if the cowardly Gobtrax hadn’t retreated quickly behind his bodyguard.

  ‘Of course, you can give up your share of the profits in return for the location,’ Gobtrax had wheedled.

  Quint could only wriggle on the end of the league captain’s line. With no profits, the Stormchaser would remain grounded, all our hard work would have been for nothing, and Quint’s promise to Maris to return for their son would have to wait. We would have to start all over again. I could see his desperation growing with every passing day.

  Finally, two days out of Undertown, Quint made his move. Gobtrax was slumbering in his wing-back chair on the aft deck and Kelter was over at the prow, hauling up bait logs. I glanced back at the bridge and saw that Quint wasn’t at the wheel.

  Suddenly, the door to the ante-chamber opened and Quint emerged, clutching the sky chart in one hand and his sword in the other.

  Gobtrax opened his eyes, bloodshot and bleary from too much sapwine, and took a moment to understand what he was seeing. When he did, he leaped from his chair, full of indignant rage.

  ‘How dare you!’ he thundered. ‘Kelter! Kelter!’

  Quint had had enough. Stuffing the chart inside his jacket, he lunged at Gobtrax, the tip of his blade ripping open the league captain’s fancy skycoat, sending the mire-pearl buttons flying off in all directions.

  ‘Help!’ Gobtrax squeaked.

  Kelter was there in an instant, pushing past me on the flight deck and leaping down onto the aft deck, cudgel in hand.

  Quint turned to meet him. He was wiry, fit, strong, agile – yet compared with Kelter, he looked puny. The hulking great cloddertrog towered above him, barrel-chested, legs like tree trunks, fists like rocks. He swung his great cudgel double-handed, slamming it into Quint’s sword. There was a horrible splintering crack of bone and the sword went flying.

  Quint ducked down as the cudgel swung round a second time, this time the blow aimed squarely at his head. He dropped to the ground and rolled over, then, just as I had once done, struck Kelter’s legs and sent him toppling backwards. The lumbering cloddertrog landed heavily on his back. The air was driven from his lungs; the cudgel went scudding across the deck.

  And Quint was upon him. Pinning the winded cloddertrog to the deck, his knees pressed down on his chest, he raised his fist and punched him in the face- once, twice, three times . . .

  ‘Quint,’ came a voice. It was Multinius Gobtrax.

  Quint paused, looked up, and I saw his face drop as he saw what I saw.

  It was Maris. She must have come up from her cabin at the sound of the fighting – and the captain had grabbed her. He stood there now, one arm tight around her throat, the other pressing the glinting blade of a knife to her exposed neck.

  ‘The sky chart. Now,’ he said coldly. ‘Or your precious Maris dies.’

  Quint looked at the captain. At Maris. He climbed up off Kelter and reached inside his jacket for the sky chart, only for Maris to cry out.

  ‘Don’t give it to him, Quint. I don’t trust him,’ she wailed. ‘We’ll never find our baby if you do, and . . . and . . . I’d rather be dead than live my life without ever seeing him again . . .’

  Gobtrax laughed cruelly, tightening his grip round Maris’s neck. ‘Your choice, Quint,’ he said. ‘Wife . . .’ He pressed the blade more firmly against her neck, then nodded at the rolled parchment in Quint’s hand. ‘Or sky chart.’

  ‘The baby!’ Maris howled. ‘Save our baby . . .’

  But Quint had already made up his mind. Leaning forward, he held out the sky chart to Gobtrax – who snatched it out of his hand, shoving Maris aside as he did so.

  Kelter was just climbing to his feet when I stepped over him, knocking him out cold with the heavy cooling rod. Then, gripping it tightly in my hands, I swung it round and drove it into the captain’s side.

  Gobtrax was looking down at the sky chart just then, that smirk of his on his lips. He never knew what hit him. With a high-pitched yowl of pain, he staggered to one side – slamming into the mast and the rock burners. The flames of one of the burners licked against his sleeve, setting it alight. Screaming with shock and horror and pain, Gobtrax stumbled across the flight deck.

  Quint leaped towards him, desperate to wrest the sky chart from his grip – but it was already too late. The parchment was ablaze!

  Staggering backwards, Gobtrax struck the deck balustrade which, battered like everything else on the rickety Reaper of Plenty, gave way under his weight. With a screech of despair, Gobtrax, now burning like a torch, hurtled down to the forest below.

  ‘No . . . NO!’ Maris screamed.

  She raced towards the edge of the ship and would have thrown herself off as well, if it hadn’t been for Quint, who grabbed her arm, swung her round and held her in his tight embrace.

  Maris struggled, but weakly, all the while sobbing inconsolably, ‘My baby . . . my baby . . .’

  ‘We’ll find him, Maris. We will,’ Quint told her. ‘We’ll search the Deepwoods, locate that woodtroll village and find our son again . . .’

  I pulled my hood from my head and dashed it to the deck in helpless frustration.

  As Quint continued, trying his best to calm Maris down, he caught my eye and I trembled at the despair in his face. Quint knew, as I knew myself, that for all his reassuring words, without the sky chart, their child was lost for ever . . .

  Chapter 6

  The spindlebug placed the glass beaker of tea carefully down on the darkwood table. He hadn’t touched a drop.

  ‘That explains so much,’ he said softly. As he shook his great glass-like head from side to side, a tear ran down his angular cheeks. ‘The mistress’s mission . . .’

  Maugin leaned closer. ‘Her mission?’

  ‘Every night she goes out alone,’ Tweezel said. ‘She wanders the streets and alleys of Undertown, seeking out the waifs and strays, the urchins and orphans, and bringing them them to the cellars here at the Bloodoak Tavern. She gives them broth and somewhere safe to sleep.’

  ‘Mistress Maris was always caring,’ said Maugin. ‘I remember how she saw to my wounds when Quint first rescued me from the slavers.’ She smiled. ‘She would sit at my bedside, stroking my hair and singing sweet soothing lullabies till I drifted off to sleep, then she stayed with me all night.’ She pushed her long red hair back off her face. ‘Rescuing lost and homeless young’uns sounds exactly the sort of thing that she would do.’

  The spindlebug was nodding. ‘But that’s not the end of it,’ he said. ‘Mistress Maris has plans. She’s chartered sky barges. Loaded them with hammelhorn-drawn wagons, food and drink for a long journey . . .’

  ‘She’s leaving?’ said Maugin, horrified.

  ‘She plans to fly to the edge of the Deepwoods, then set off on foot into the Deepwoods with the young’uns, gathering up more on her journey. The abused. The homeless. The abandoned and unloved. And they will keep walking until they find a place where they can settle down, make a new home – a new life – far away from the harshness and brutality of Undertown.’ He smiled. ‘She plans to call it the Free Glades. I think, by doing this, she hopes one day to find her son.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Maugin.

  ‘Because,’ said Tweezel, ‘I shall be going with her.’ He leaned forward. ‘Now you know the mistress’s plans, tell me about Captain Quint. He visits us here, but Maris won’t see him.’

  Maugin nodded. ‘She blames him for losing her son,’ she said. ‘Mother Horsefeather has become part owner of the Stormchaser, so Quint has been able to pay for repairs and recruit a new crew.’ She smiled. ‘I am his stone pilot,’ she added.

  ‘I knew he was intending to get into the timber trade,’ said Tweezel. ‘Now, Maugin, thanks to you, I know why. He must be hoping one day to stumble across that woodtroll village. And find his son . . .’

  ‘But the Deepwoods are so vast,’ Maugin said bleakly, tears welling up in his eyes. ‘It’ll take a lifetime . . .’

  ‘Yet if I know Quintinius Verginix,’ said Tweezel, ‘he’ll never give up.’

  ‘And nor will Mistress Maris by the sound of it,’ said Maugin.

  ‘Aaah,’ said the spindlebug, and he sighed, long and deep. ‘With two such parents, that baby will surely grow up to be someone very special. I only wish I could meet him one day.’

  Maugin the stone pilot smiled. ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Me too.’

  About the Authors

  PAUL STEWART is a highly regarded author of books for young readers – everything from picture books to football stories, fantasy and horror. Together with Chris Riddell, he is co-creator of the Far-Flung Adventures series, which includes Fergus Crane, Gold Smarties Prize Winner, and Corby Flood, Silver Nestlé Prize Winner. They are of course also co-creators of the bestselling Edge Chronicles series, which has sold over two million books and is now available in over thirty languages.

  CHRIS RIDDELL is an accomplished graphic artist who has illustrated many acclaimed books for children, including Pirate Diary by Richard Platt, and Gulliver, which both won the Kate Greenaway Medal. Something Else by Kathryn Cave was shortlisted and Castle Diary by Richard Platt was Highly Commended for the Kate Greenaway Medal.

  Also by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

  THE EDGE CHRONICLES:

  The Quint Trilogy

  The Curse of the Gloamglozer

  The Winter Knights

  Clash of the Sky Galleons

  The Twig Trilogy

  Beyond the Deepwoods

  Stormchaser

  Midnight over Sanctaphrax

  The Rook Trilogy

  The Last of the Sky Pirates

  Vox

  Freeglader

  Join the Edge fanclub at www.edgechronicles.co.uk

  BARNABY GRIMES:

  Curse of the Night Wolf

  Return of the Emerald Skull

  Legion of the Dead

  Phantom of Blood Alley

  For younger readers:

  FAR-FLUNG ADVENTURES

  Fergus Crane

  Corby Flood

  Hugo Pepper

  For older readers:

  WYRMEWEALD:

  Returner’s Wealth

  Bloodhoney

  www.stewartandriddell.co.uk

  THE SKY CHART

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 19431 5

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2014

  Copyright © Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, 2014

  Cover illustration copyright © Jeff Nuntrup, 2014

  The right of Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S PUBLISHERS UK

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  www.randomhousechildrens.co.uk

 

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