to guess once he saw that Lex was not permanently cringing in terrified preoccupation with the Space Ladders. Then Schmidt spoke again with a smirk and Lex couldn’t help but gasp when he said, ‘It’s okay, Lex, I know it’s you. You can stop trying to think up a convincing lie.’
Lex’s mouth dropped open in stunned disbelief. ‘How did you know?’ he demanded.
‘I’ve known since last night,’ Schmidt said smugly.
‘ What? ’
‘I’ve always been able to see through you,’ Schmidt said, clearly well pleased with himself. ‘I can tell the difference between you and Lucius. I admit the hair threw me at first, but I’m accustomed to it now.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I wanted to see what would happen. So where is Lucius, anyway?’
‘On the boat,’ Lex said moodily. ‘Hiding in the enchanter’s cupboard.’
Schmidt laughed. ‘Yes, that sounds about right.’
‘Well, thank you for not telling her Ladyship.’
‘I thought you might be forced to play a penalty round for cheating and that I’d have to accompany you,’ Schmidt said dismissively. ‘That’s the only reason I didn’t say anything.’
‘Huh. Well, what do you think? Rope ladders or metal ones?’ Lex pointed at the ladders leading away from their platform.
‘The metal ones look more stable,’ Schimdt said. ‘Do you know where the griffin is?’
‘No. She used to live on a big chunk of comet that got tangled up in the Space Ladders but she’s probably moved on since then. I think the metal ladders look better, too.’
He walked over to the nearest one and started to make his way down it with Schmidt following behind.
‘How do you know where the griffin used to live?’ Schmidt asked.
‘My grandfather told me.’
‘Just what exactly did your grandfather do?’
‘He was a Chronicler,’ Lex replied.
Well, that explained a lot, Schmidt thought, remembering how Lex had seemed to know so much about magical sky castles and enchanted forests and the Golden Valley. Although Chronicling was now a dying profession, Schmidt knew that in the olden days well-read, well-educated men had often travelled with exploring Adventurers to Chronicle their adventures and expand their native libraries with knowledge about faraway lands. A lot could be learnt from reading the old Chronicles and the Chroniclers were well respected as explorers and glorified storytellers.
‘From what Lucius told me about him, he sounded like a good man,’ Schmidt said as they continued their rather treacherous climb.
‘Yes,’ Lex replied. ‘He was.’
‘I’m sorry about what happened to him.’
He sounded like he meant it, but Lex couldn’t bring himself to reply. The subject was much too painful for him. Besides which, the climb was becoming more frightening now that they were getting further and further away from the Lands Above. The ladders felt less stable and it was colder. The space frost did not stick to their hands like normal ice, but it did cover them like chalk dust, making them sneeze as they went. The one and only blessing about Lex’s whiskerfish problem was that it had completely eradicated his nasal lice without Schmidt ever managing to find out about them.
‘I realise this is a stupid question, but do you have a plan?’ Schmidt asked after about ten minutes. They were clinging to rope ladders by this time. ‘Or are we just going to keep climbing down these ladders in the hopes that we’ll eventually stumble upon the griffin?’
‘I think she’s over there,’ Lex took one hand away from the ladder to point but hastily put it back when the ladder began to turn beneath his weight.
There was an area to the right of them that seemed to jut out beyond the main mass of ladders so that it had been far more ravaged by the elements and was coated in the chalky, glittering space frost.
‘What makes you think that?’ Schmidt asked.
Lex pointed down. ‘The suns,’ he said.
Griffins were attracted to brightness, although they were more comfortable in colder temperatures. Holli’s sun had been rising when they went down into the Space Ladders. But Mahara’s, Heetha’s and Saydi’s suns were all still down below the Lands Beneath, waiting for their turn to come up.
‘That outcrop of ladders should give quite a good view of the other suns,’ Lex said. ‘Plus, it will let the griffin watch them rising and setting.’
‘You don’t seem very worried about the prophet getting there first,’ Schmidt said. ‘He did get a head start after all.’
‘Yeah, but he won’t be able to get the feather from the griffin very fast,’ Lex said, grinning. ‘There’s only one way a griffin will willingly let you take one of its feathers and that’s if you ask it very politely by name. I very much doubt that the prophet knows this griffin’s name but, luckily for us, I do.’
‘How do you know?’ the lawyer asked suspiciously.
‘Because my grandfather was the one who named her. She’s called Zoey.’
‘That’s a ridiculous name for a griffin,’ Schmidt said bluntly.
‘I know,’ Lex shrugged. ‘It was my grandmother’s name. He named her after her.’
‘Oh,’ Schmidt immediately looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-’
‘No need to be sorry, sir,’ Lex said, smiling at the lawyer’s embarrassment. ‘Zoey is — as you say — a ridiculous name for a griffin. I suppose my grandfather thought it was romantic to name a huge, hulking wild beast after the woman he loved.’
The climb down the ladders was… not a pleasant one. In fact it was a harrowing, terrifying, terrible journey, and Lex couldn’t help but have the teensiest, grudging glimmer of respect for the old lawyer that he managed it at all. They both kept their eyes fixed very firmly on the ladder in front of them, taking it one rung at a time in an effort to fool their brains into believing that they weren’t really dangling from a ladder between two halves of the same planet with cold black space pressing in against them. If this technique had been working in any small way, it ceased to do so rather spectacularly when Lex and Schmidt reached the bunch of ladders that jutted out in a cluster on their own. For then there were quite clearly three huge, brilliant suns glaring up at them from below.
They were standing on a wooden platform now, their feet leaving footprints in the deep, chalky frost. The Lands Beneath was a vague blur below them, although most of it was blocked from view by the mass of ladders. But they could now quite clearly see the three suns belonging to the two Goddesses and the one God. The sheer enormity of their size made them look closer than they really were. Lex had never seen more than one deity’s sun in the sky at any one time and so had never noticed that they all looked slightly different. The first huge, fiery ball of heat was clearly Heetha, the God of War’s sun. The second sun was so pure that it was almost white, sparkling like a perfect, heat-emitting diamond. There was no mistaking that this was Saydi’s beautiful sun. Mahara’s abandoned sun was not as bright as the others. Indeed its outer rim seemed to have cooled enough for space frost to settle on the surface, although there was enough heat left in the core for it to give out a feeble glow.
The sight of those gigantic, majestic suns burning away below them made both Lex and Schmidt feel tiny and unbalanced. The lawyer decided it would be prudent to sit down before he tipped over the edge and Lex followed his lead, sinking slowly to his knees, enthralled laughter bubbling up incredulously in his chest.
‘Why would anyone choose to miss this?’ he asked, gazing down at the spectacular sight below. ‘How could Lucius actually prefer hiding in a cupboard to this? You must be glad you came now, Schmidt? What life would be complete without that sight in it? Come on, you must agree that this has made the whole thing worthwhile? I would have eaten muggets for a year to get to see this.’
‘It is… humbling,’ Schmidt agreed, gazing down at the suns.
Although Lex himself did not feel particularly humbled by the suns, he did feel an immense swell of pride that he had managed to get there. He was probably one of the only humans ever to have set foot on the Space Ladders. Even his grandfather had never been on the ladders themselves — he’d simply assisted Carey East in sending Zoey down to guard them after the previous griffin died of old age.
‘Well, I think she’s over there,’ Lex said at last, pointing over to their left, where there were two wooden platforms, one on top of the other, connected by ladders on either side so that it looked like a square, wooden cave.
