The Ice Gate of Spyre (5 page)

Having kicked out the fire, they gathered up Ishmael and headed off into the jungle. They were very careful to give the dark lotus plants a wide berth—and they also kept a keen eye out for any fearsome beasties or low-flying vampire bats that might have been up and about. Trundle led the way. He had a pretty good idea where he thought he had seen the windship—the non-existent pirates had come streaming out of it.

He was right! They had not gone very far at all before they saw a huge gray shape through the trees. Pressing on, they pushed lianas and ferns aside with a growing sense of excitement as they approached the curious windship.

At last they found themselves in a clearing among the long-fallen trunks of ancient trees, gazing up spellbound at the huge hulk of a great stone windship. It was of an old-fashioned, highly decorated design that Trundle had previously seen only in history books: fully rigged, with its sail belling and its powerstone clearly visible between the bars of the mast-top cage. Without the strange and uncanny attributes of powerstone, no windship could fly the skies of the Sundered Lands, but why that particular detail needed to be so exquisitely picked out on a vessel carved from solid stone was anyone’s guess.

The windship had obviously been there for some time, as the jungle had moved in on it. Tendrils and creepers laced the tall sides of the hull, threading in and out of the scrollwork rails and festooning the vessel in lush greenery and exotic and colorful blooms. Thriving plant life could even be seen higher up, twining in leafy green loops around the masts and the rigging.

“It’s like a windship from the old days,” Trundle breathed, goggling up at the towering hull. “The really old days, I mean.”

“I know,” said Jack in awe. “It’s the sculpture of a windgalleon from the very dawn of time.”

Esmeralda looked at them. “But who could have carved it?” she asked. “And how did it get here, in the middle of nowhere?”

Those seemed to Trundle to be very good questions indeed.

S
omething about the massive sculpture of the windgalleon puzzled Trundle enormously. “Why did the sculptor carve it with a broken front end?” he asked.

It was a good point, as everyone admitted.

The stone windgalleon looked as if it had come crashing down from the sky, coming to a sudden stop when its prow struck the solid rock wall of a steep hillside. But the damage to the prow wasn’t what they would have expected from one stone thing hitting another. There were no lumps and chunks of stone strewn about. In fact, the split stone planks and boards and rails of the bashed-in prow had been carved to resemble broken and splintered timbers.

“It’s as if …” Esmeralda began hesitantly. “As if the sculptor
wanted
the windgalleon to look like it had crashed into the rock face.”

“Except that doesn’t make any sense,” said Jack.

“And there’s no point putting a statue in the middle of the jungle,” Trundle added. “No one comes here—it said so in the guide.”

“Why spend months and months on such an amazingly detailed sculpture if no one’s going to see it?” Esmeralda agreed.

“I see it!” said Ishmael. He rubbed his bulging eyes and stared up at the windgalleon. “Clear as day, it is! Don’t you see it?”

“Yes, we all see it,” said Jack. “That’s not the point. The point is—what’s it
doing
here?”

“I don’t see it doing anything at all,” said Ishmael.

Trundle pointed at the buckled prow. “Is that a name plate I see up there?”

The crawling tendrils had half hidden the name, but now, as they all looked, they were just about able to make it out.

The
Gallant Four of Six
.

“Well, that’s an odd thing to call a windgalleon, I must say,” said Jack. “I wonder what it means?”

“Who’s for going aboard to find out?” asked Esmeralda. She pointed to a stone rope ladder hanging from the windgalleon’s side. “There might be a plaque or something to tell us who made it and why.”

“Mince me giblets and call me Petunia!” said Ishmael. “You’ll not get me aboard that thing!”

“Then wait here for us like a good loony,” said Esmeralda. “We won’t be long. Trun? You coming?”

“You bet,” said Trundle, his curiosity well and truly piqued.

Jack went up the stone ladder in no time, but it took the two hedgehogs a good deal of puffing and blowing before they finally made it up to the windgalleon’s rail.

Jack was perched there, his eyes like saucers.

He had good reason to look stunned and amazed.

The deck and rigging of the windgalleon swarmed with a stone crew, all of them hedgehogs, and most of them carved as though going about their ordinary duties: climbing up the stone rigging, sewing canvas sheets, swabbing decks, polishing the masts, and undertaking every other kind of windship endeavor that could be imagined. A few were even gathered around a stone musician playing a stone concertina, singing along.

“They’re all wearing very old-fashioned clothes,” Trundle said, stepping gingerly among the bizarre statues. “I suppose that’s so they look right to be on board such an old windgalleon.” He peered into the face of one of the sailor hedgehog statues. “Life-sized,” he murmured. “And so detailed! Every prickle, every whisker …” He shook his head. “It’s almost as if …”

“As if they aren’t statues at all,” finished Esmeralda, walking toward a raised rostrum amidships. She glanced over her shoulder at them. “I was thinking the same thing. And have you noticed? Some of them look frightened.”

She was right. Although many of the hedgehog sky sailors had normal expressions, a few looked terrified, and now that Trundle looked more closely, some were cowering on the decks with their arms over their faces. A few were even sprawled on the deck as if they’d been knocked clean off their feet by some terrific impact.

“Just the way you’d look if you were about to crash prow first into a hillside,” commented Jack. “Is it just me, or is there something very creepy about all of this?”

“Creepy’s the word,” said Esmeralda, climbing the three steps up to the rostrum. “Hmm. There’s something up here you’ll want to see.”

Trundle and Jack joined her on the small rostrum. It contained a lectern, over which leaned the statue of an elderly hedgehog with a furrowed brow and a quill in his paw. He had been carved as though in the middle of writing in a large open book. At his feet, under the lectern, was the carving of a box with its lid open.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” muttered Jack as the three of them leaned in to see what had been written in the book.

“It’s a windship’s log,” said Esmeralda, brushing dirt and dead leaves off the stone pages. “Hmm. Interesting …”

They all rose on tiptoe to read the first entry, way up in the top left-hand corner.

16
^th
of Greengrow

The Spell of Unbinding has unleashed terrible supernatural storms that have caused us to run aground at the wrong end of this benighted rock. We must somehow strive to get our precious cargo up to the snow pinnacle before the midsummer melt is over and the Ice Gate freezes again. That means reaching the Ice Gate by sunset on the 21
^st
of Greengrow. A daunting endeavor!

“What does it mean?” Trundle asked uneasily.

“The Spell of Unbinding,” murmured Jack. “Lawks! That was the spell the Badger Lords of Old were attempting when the whole world blew up in their faces.”

Esmeralda nodded solemnly. “The spell that went horribly wrong and caused the creation of the Sundered Lands—thousands of years ago.”

Trundle’s mouth fell open. “So … this sculpture was put here to commemorate the creation of the Sundered Lands?” he ventured.

Esmeralda looked at him. “Read on,” she said.

17
^th
of Greengrow

Terrible tidings to relate! Originally we thought only a few of our crew had been affected when we crashed. But it has become clear that the magic is leaking from our powerstone into the surrounding rocks and—oh, the horror!—there is a mystical feedback that is turning the
Gallant Fourth of Six
and everyone aboard into stone!

“Not a sculpture at all,” gasped Trundle. “Real people … turned to stone … oh, my! Oh, dear! Oh, no, no, no!” He put his paws up over his eyes, not wanting to look into the dreadful stone faces anymore.

“Stout heart, Trundle, my lad!” said Jack. “All this happened thousands of years ago. And that explains the windgalleon’s name: the
Gallant Fourth of Six
. D’ you see? This must have been one of the six legendary windgalleons that carried the Crowns of the Badger Lords to the far-flung corners of their blown-up world. Uncover your eyes, Trundle. Take a look at what was written next.”

18
^th
of Greengrow

I, Ramalama, make this last entry. So few of us are left alive now. I hold the precious Crown of Ice between my mortal hooves! As the Keeper of the Crown, it is for me to make my way alone up to the snowy peaks while the Ice Gate remains open. I have only three days to reach the summit! The Gate of Ice is only melted between the 19
^th
and 21
^st
of Greengrow each year. I go now, leaving only faithful old Buffer Trug here to keep a final record of our doomed voyage. Farewell!

There was only one entry after that—and Trundle could hardly bear to read it.

19 Gr’grow

All is stone now. I can barely lift my arm to write. Must trust that R succeeds. Our only hope now is

And that was it. The stone quill rested still on the stone book, the bent figure of Buffer Trug stooping forever, staring down with his blind stone eyes on an entry he would never ever finish.

Trundle shuddered from snout to toe.

“My guess is that the Crown of Ice was kept in this box,” said Jack, tapping the stone box under the lectern with his foot. He frowned, scanning the book again. “There’s something strange about the entry made by the keeper, though.”

“Different writing, that’s obvious,” said Esmeralda.

“But that’s not all,” said Jack. “Look. He writes: ‘I hold the precious Crown of Ice between my mortal hooves!’ Do you see? Hooves!”

Trundle wrinkled his brow. “Hedgehogs don’t have hooves,” he said. “Paws, yes—hooves, definitely not.” His eyes widened. “So Ramalama, the Keeper of the Crown, wasn’t a hedgehog like everyone else here. But what
was
he, then?”

“Plenty of people have hooves,” said Esmeralda. “My guess he was someone high up in the Badger Lords’ court. A horse, maybe? A goat, or a pig, even? Who knows? Anyway, I think we’ve seen all we need to see up here. Who’s for getting off this horrible windgalleon before we all die of the terminal creepies?”

“Count me in!” said Jack.

Trundle was as glad as the others to clamber down the stone rope ladder and leave the stone vessel and its forlorn, frozen crew to be slowly engulfed by the jungle. Theirs was a fate that was altogether too sad even to think about.