Stormchaser Read Free

talker.’
    Flabsweat chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Oh, you’ll get nothing out of that one,’ he said scornfully. ‘Thick, it is. Still, you’re welcome to try … I could let you have it for a very reasonable price.’ He turned abruptly. ‘I’m with another customer at the moment,’ he called back. ‘Give me a shout if you need any help.’
    ‘Thick, indeed!’ the caterbird exclaimed when Flabsweat had gone. ‘The cheek! The audacity!’ Its eye swivelled round and focused on Twig. ‘Well, don’t just stand there smirking,’ it snapped. ‘Get me out of here – while the coast is clear.’
    ‘No,’ said Twig.
    The caterbird stared back at him, nonplussed. It cocked its head to one side – as far as the cage would allow. ‘No?’ it said.
    ‘No,’ Twig repeated. ‘I want to hear that “long story” first. “The situation is reaching crisis point”, that's what you said. I want to know why. I want to know what's happened.’
    ‘Let me out, and then I’ll tell you everything,’ said the caterbird.
    ‘No,’ said Twig for a third time. ‘I know you. You’ll fly off the moment I unlock the cage door, and then I won’t see you again till Sky knows when. Tell me this story first, and then I’ll set you free.’
    ‘Why, you insolent young whelp!’ the caterbird shouted angrily. ‘And after everything I’ve done for you!’
    ‘Keep your voice down,’ said Twig, looking round nervously at the doorway. ‘Flabsweat will hear you.’
    The caterbird fell still. It closed its eyes. For a moment, Twig thought that it was going to remain stubbornly silent. He was on the point of relenting, when the caterbird's beak moved.
    ‘It all started a long time ago,’ it began. ‘Twenty years, to be precise. When your father was little older than you are now.’
    ‘But that was before you were even born,’ said Twig.
    ‘Caterbirds share dreams, you know that,’ it replied. ‘What one knows, we all know. And if you’re going to interrupt the whole time…’
    ‘I’m not,’ said Twig. ‘Sorry. I won’t do it again.’
    The caterbird humphed irritably. ‘Just see that you don’t.’

• CHAPTER TWO •
T HE C ATERBIRD'S T ALE
    ‘P icture the scene,’ the caterbird said. ‘A cold, blustery, yet clear evening. The moon rises over Sanctaphrax, its towers and spires silhouetted against the purple sky. A lone figure emerges from the bottom of a particularly ill-favoured tower and scurries across the cobbled courtyard. It is an apprentice raintaster. His name, Vilnix Pompolnius.’
    ‘What, the Vilnix Pompolnius?’ Twig blurted out. ‘Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax?’ Although he had never seen the lofty academic, his reputation went before him.
    ‘The very same,’ said the caterbird. ‘Many of those who attain greatness have the humblest of origins – in fact he used to be a knife-grinder in Undertown. But Vilnix Pompolnius was always ruthlessly ambitious, and never more so than on that night. As he hurried on, headdown into the wind, towards the glittering spires of the School of Light and Darkness, he was plotting and scheming.’

    Twig shuddered, and the fur of his hammelhornskin waistcoat bristled ominously.
    ‘For you see,’ the caterbird explained, ‘Vilnix had the ear – and an indulgent ear, what's more – of one of the most powerful Sanctaphrax scholars at that time. The Professor of Darkness. It was he who had sponsored Vilnix through the Knights’ Academy. And when Vilnix was later dismissed for insubordination, it was he who had secured his place in the Faculty of Raintasters rather than see him cast out of Sanctaphrax completely.’
    The caterbird took a breath, and continued. ‘Once inside the opulence of the professor's study, Vilnix held up a glass beaker of liquid dramatically. “The rain coming in from over the Edge is becoming more acidic,” he said. “This is due to an increase in the number of sourmist particles in the raindrops. It was thought you might be