Freeglader

Contents

INTRODUCTION

• CHAPTER ONE • THE ARMADA OF THE DEAD

• CHAPTER TWO • EXODUS

• CHAPTER THREE • MUD-MARCH

• CHAPTER FOUR • THE EDGELANDS

• CHAPTER FIVE • THE SEPIA STORM

• CHAPTER SIX • DUSK

• CHAPTER SEVEN • THE IRONWOOD STANDS

• CHAPTER EIGHT • BLOOD FRENZY

• CHAPTER NINE • NEW UNDERTOWN

• CHAPTER TEN • LULLABEE ISLAND

• CHAPTER ELEVEN • COCOON DREAMS

• CHAPTER TWELEVE • PASSWORDS

• CHAPTER THIRTEEN • TEA WITH A SPINDLEBUG

• CHAPTER FOURTEEN • THE NEW GREAT LIBRARY

• CHAPTER FIFTEEN • CHINQUIX

• CHAPTER SIXTEEN • CANCARESSE

• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN • GLADE-EATER

• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN • SUNSET IN THE FREE GLADES

• CHAPTER NINETEEN • INFERNO

• CHAPTER TWENTY • THE THREE BATTLES

EPILOGUE

For Anna, Katy, Jack, Joseph and William

INTRODUCTION

A
monstrous pall of swirling cloud hangs over the Edge, obscuring everything below. At its centre, a mighty storm fizzes and crackles with a deadly, destructive energy.

Like some evil demon, this dark maelstrom is devouring its prey, the once great city of Undertown. Yet even as the city crumbles and is washed away by the seething torrent the stormlashed Edgewater River has become, hope lives on in the hearts of the Undertowners – the cloddertrogs, gnokgoblins, lugtrolls and all those others who had once thronged the busy streets – fleeing down the disintegrating Great Mire Road. Led by the Most High Academe, Cowlquape Pentephraxis, and the librarian knights, their tethered skycraft bobbing behind them, they dream of a new life in that beacon of freedom and knowledge nestling in the far-off Deepwoods, the Free Glades.

Ahead of them lies the Mire, a treacherous wasteland of bleached mud and seething blow-holes, which is home to a host of fearsome creatures that prey on the weak and unwary. And then beyond that, beckoning from afar, the Edgelands, a place of swirling mists, where demons, spirits – and even the terrible gloamglozer – are said to torment those who venture into its barren landscape.

Further still lie the Deepwoods themselves, with their swarms of snickets, packs of wig-wigs, poisonous plants and venomous insects. Bloodoaks that would swallow you whole, and reed-eels that would bleed you dry. Rotsuckers, halitoads, logworms … Not to mention the primitive tribes that live there – the skulltrogs and gahtrogs; brutal, speechless creatures that hunt in packs and devour their kill while it is still warm.

But there is no going back. Not now. Every one of the fleeing Undertowners understands this to be true. For many, this is the beginning of the greatest adventure of their lives.

In this, they are not alone, for Undertown is not the only place to be affected by the dark maelstrom. At the far end of the Mire Road, the remnants of the Shryke Sisterhood of the Eastern Roost realize that their lucrative trade with Undertown is over. They, too, must seek a new life, but instead of hope, there is bloodlust and vengeance in their hearts.

News of the great disaster is also reaching the villages of the Goblin Nations, never slow to spot and exploit the weaknesses of others. Talk in the tribal huts, with their heaped skulls and dangling skeletons, is of war and conquest.

And they are not the only ones with grand designs. In the smoky, fiery hell that is the Foundry Glades, Hemuel Spume is hard at work on plans of his own. He is waiting impatiently for his business partner to join him. When he does, Hemuel Spume has a surprise waiting for him. He permits himself a thin smile.

‘I'll give them Free Glades,’ he mutters scornfully. ‘Long live the Slave Glades!’

As the dark maelstrom grows and spreads, the vast multitude of Undertowners struggles on along the Great Mire Road, and all the while driving rain beats against them mercilessly, chilling them to the bone and dampening their spirits.

They are fighting a losing battle. Ahead, sweeping across their path, bordering the Edgelands, are the beguiling yet treacherous Twilight Woods, a place that none but a shryke might journey through unscathed. All round them, the road is collapsing…