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had looked from the window of the Loftus Observatory to see a nearby tower swaying precariously, to and fro.
    ‘The Raintasters’ Tower,’ he murmured, and swallowed nervously. ‘Thank Sky I was not in it.’
    Up until only a few days earlier, his own study had been situated at the top of the tower. But what had caused it to rock so? He looked down. And there, halfway up, he saw a gleaming spike of metal and wood buried deep in the shattered stonework.
    The professor scratched his head. ‘It looks like a sky ship harpoon, but… whooah! ‘
    He stared in horror as the great harpoon juddered, slipped and, in a flurry of rocks and mortar, tumbled down through the air, landing with a loud crash on the roof of the covered cloisters far below. The first stone pillar crumpled; the rest toppled, one against the other like a line of dominoes, until all of them were down.
    Then, just as the air was clearing, the weakened wall of the tower finally gave up the struggle to remain standing, and the whole lot came tumbling down to the ground in an explosion of rocks, rubble and dust.
    The professor's jaw dropped. Deep furrows crisscrossed his brow. He was recalling the sky ship which had disappeared so mysteriously. The curious falling debris. The shooting stars …
    The sound of insistent tapping interrupted his musings. He spun round and there, perched on the broad sill beyond the window, was a white -bird with yellow eyes and a vicious-looking beak which it was hammering at the glass.

    ‘Kraan!’ said the Professor of Darkness. ‘
    Years earlier, he had found the bird as a bedraggled fledgling, half-dead in a snowstorm. He'd taken it back to his warm study where he'd both nursed it back to health and taught it the rudiments of speech. Now Kraan was fully-grown and powerful, and despite - or perhaps because of - its unpromising start in life, it had gone on to become leader of the flock of white ravens which roosted in the Stone Gardens, right at the tip of the Edge.
    The professor hurried to the window and pushed it open. The gale-force wind burst in, ruffling his beard and setting his black robes flapping. ‘Kraan, my loyal friend,’ he said. ‘How good to see you - but what has brought you here in such terrible weather?’
    The white raven cocked its head to one side and stared at him with one unblinking yellow eye. ‘Strange lights in sky,’ it said, its voice raucous and rasping as it shouted above the noise of the storm.
    ‘Shooting stars,’ the professor nodded. ‘I saw them too. I…’
    ‘Shooting stars,’ the white raven repeated. It turned its head and fixed him with the other eye. ‘One in Stone Gardens.’
    The professor started with surprise. ‘You mean … You're saying …’ A broad grin spread over his face. ‘One of the shooting stars has come down in the Stone Gardens, yes?’
    ‘Stone Gardens,’ Kraan repeated.
    ‘But this is wonderful news you bring,’ the professor said.
    ‘Stone Gardens,’ Kraan called for a third time. It flapped its heavy wings, launched itself off from the sill and swooped away into the night.
    ‘Quite so,’ said the professor, as he hurried across to the top of the stairs. ‘I must go and investigate for myself at once.’

• CHAPTER FOUR •
THE STONE GARDENS
    T he Stone Gardens lay at the very tip of the jutting L Edge promontory There were no plants there. No shrubs or trees. No flowers. Nothing grew in this ghostly place but the rocks themselves.
    Seeded long long ago, they had been growing in the Stone Gardens for as far back as anyone knew. The Elemental Treatise itself made several mentions of ‘The wondrous spheres of rock which do grow and, in their immensity, float skywards.’ The great floating rock upon which Sanctaphrax had been built had its origins there.
    New rocks appeared beneath the old ones, pushing those above them higher as they grew. Over time, stacks had formed with the rocks standing one on top of the other, and each one larger than