The Winter Knights

For William, Joseph, Anna, Katy, and Jack

INTRODUCTION

A
cloud of uncertainty hangs over Sanctaphrax, the magnificent centre of sky-scholarship. Perched high up on top of the great floating rock, the city has been in a state of crisis ever since its Most High Academe – Linius Pallitax – fell mysteriously ill.

Since that time, the academics have talked of little else. Rumours are rife that Linius Pallitax did things he ought not to have done – that he gleaned forbidden earth-scholar knowledge from the Great Library; that he ventured down inside the rock and broke into the Ancient Laboratory, which the First Scholars had taken such care to seal up; that he used their scientific paraphernalia and, in an act of terrible folly, attempted to create life.

Of course, no-one has any proof that this is what actually happened, but the further the rumours spread, the more certain they seem until the whole city is convinced that Linius Pallitax is to blame for his own illness. And after all, what
was
the Most High Academe doing up on the rooftops the night the Palace of Shadows burned to the ground?

There are two individuals who are especially concerned about the ailing High Academe's health. One is his daughter, Maris, who loves him deeply and can't bear to think about what will happen to her if he should die. The other is Quint Verginix, son of sky pirate captain, Wind Jackal, and the Most High Academe's former apprentice.

The youth has been promised a place in the prestigious Knights Academy as Linius Pallitax's protégé. Without sponsorship Quint will have to leave Sanctaphrax once and for all, and learn instead to be a sky pirate.

Of course, there would be no shame in this. As a young lad, Quint often dreamed of standing up at the helm beside his father, the wind in his hair and sun in his eyes as they sailed high above the Edge. Indeed, the pair of them have already had many adventures together as they voyaged between the dark Deepwoods and bustling Undertown, the hold of the
Galerider
laden with all manner of illicit cargo.

Quint, though, has tasted the heady excitement of life up in the floating city in the service of the Most High Academe, and knows that this is only the beginning. He dreams of entering the Knights Academy and learning how to become a full knight academic who, Sky willing, might one day be sent off to the Twilight Woods on a stormchasing voyage – the greatest adventure of them all.

For the great floating city depends for its very survival on the amazing properties of stormphrax -tiny shards of lightning found only in the far-off Twilight Woods, that in darkness weigh more than a thousand ironwood pines. Used to weigh down the Sanctaphrax rock, stormphrax is the prize that has been sought by the Knights Academic on their solitary storm-chasing quests ever since the days of their illustrious founder, the great Quode Quanx-Querix.

But now, with Linius Pallitax's life hanging in the balance, all that has suddenly been thrown into doubt. All Quint can do is hope and pray that, for Maris's sake and his own, and for the good of Sanctaphrax itself, the Most High Academe will recover. Yet as Linius's eyes dim and his breathing becomes ever more laboured, the signs are not looking promising.

The Deepwoods, the Stone Gardens, the Edgewater River. Undertown and Sanctaphrax. 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.