Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  Before he could get comfy, Farden went to the bed to open up his haversack. He fished around in between clothes and supplies until he found his vambraces. Rolling up his sleeves, he swiftly put his hands into both of them and felt the cold metal contract around his skin, pinching it ever so lightly until it adjusted to him. Farden stood there for a moment, letting the cold seep across his forearms.

  When he was done, he knelt down and used his fingernails to pry one of the rickety floorboards from its rusty nails. The floorboard came up easily, and he rolled it aside to reveal four pieces of red and gold armour: a pair of greaves and a pair of gauntlets, all covered in a thin film of dust. Farden grabbed them greedily. He clapped the greaves to his legs and then slid the gauntlets over his hands. They were cold too, and the mage drank it in.

  He lingered there for a few moments, eyes closed and savouring the metallic kiss of his armour against his rain-battered skin, before getting up and sitting himself in front of the fire.

  About nine years before he had somehow managed to salvage an armchair from a ship that had wrecked itself several miles down the coast. If one had looked very closely at the shack and its innards, they probably would have spotted several more things that had been pilfered from the stricken ship, such as the ropes tying the roof together, the glass from an iron porthole, a lobster trap serving as a basket. Farden had liberated them all. The armchair had been in the captain’s cabin, with a dead captain in it. It had taken several months to get the smell out of the threadbare cloth.

  Farden sat down with a groan and kicked off his boots so he could warm his toes on the growing fire. He was teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Even the cold, sweet feeling seeping into his veins from the Scalussen armour could not stop his eyelids from drooping. He let his fingernail wander between the folds and scales of his left vambrace. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the breastplate Kiltyrin had somehow got his claws on, but all he could see in his tumultuous mind was the Duke’s smug face, and the etching of a beetle.

  Farden clenched his fist and listened to the cold metal whisper. Was it all a dream? A psychosomatic effect from his intense desire for them to be something special? Farden had asked that question countless times. From what he remembered, his uncle had been oblivious to the feeling of the gauntlets and the greaves. Farden pinched the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb and tried to clear his busy mind. Exhausted he might have been, but he needed to write this down before he forgot. With a sigh, he reached down the side of the armchair and felt around for his notebook and his stick of charcoal. But instead of a notebook, he found something hairy instead. He tested it with a squeeze and was rewarded with a squeak.

  Whiskers.

  The rat scuttled up the side of Farden’s armchair and onto his rain-wet lap. It sat back on its haunches and tail and sniffed the air in the way that rats do: head back, snout out, bobbing up and down. Farden reached out and cupped his hand and the big rat jumped in. He was getting fat in his old age. And old he was.

  Whiskers had come with the armchair. It had shocked Farden no end to find a rat perched on his shoulder one afternoon. The beast had seemed perfectly tame, and industrious too. It had fashioned itself quite a warren in the bowels of the chair. He had often wondered if the captain of the ship had known about him, trained him even. Now he was Farden’s tailed nuisance. The animal had refused to leave, no matter how many times the mage had shooed him off or tried to scare him away. He had even carried him back to the ship and left him there, but lo and behold, three days later, the rat turned up again, sitting comfortably inside one of Farden’s Scalussen gauntlets. And that was how Farden had been given his idea.

  Farden put the black rat on his shoulder and reached down to the side of the armchair where he kept his notebook. He lifted it up with a heave and laid it out on the nearby lobster pot. The notebook was more of a tome than a book. It bulged with scraps of parchment and snippets snatched from scrolls. Places, names, histories, all here, and every single word pointing in one direction of thought and one direction only: Scalussen. Durnus would have been proud.

  Farden lifted its fraying cover and pried a small scrap of charcoal from a pouch glued onto its underside. He thumbed through the bedraggled and mouldy pages until he finally got to where he had left off, only a month before. With Whiskers watching intently, the mage began to scribble:

  Whiskers still as fit as ever. No more grey in his coat. His nest inside one of my gauntlets seems to have stopped him ageing for good. It must be at least nine years now. For all I know, he’s the oldest rat in history.

  The bastard duke has found himself some armour. breastplate no less. Says it was a present from somebody in the Crumbled Empire. Lies. I don’t trust it for a second. I’ll have to add him to the list of owners and possibles.

  Is it real? one of the nine? I can tell if I can touch it, but he watches me like a hawk. He knows something. Be careful.

  He knows the pieces of the Nine are somewhere, and they exist. Don’t know who he’s been listening to, but he’s right. Dangerous.

  Need to examine the sketches for any sign of beetles on armour. Never seen that before. Usually bastions, sabre-cats, wolves. Only have four pictures so not impossible.

  Must keep mine as hidden as possible.

  If only I had the grimsayer… I could see if his body had the armour… where he might be…

  That last sentence surprised him. He had thought of that strange book many times in the past, but it hadn’t crossed his mind in years. He could barely remember what it looked like. It was a silly notion, anyway. The book was locked up in Nelska. Even if he did have it, he didn’t know the name of the Knight whose armour he wore. Useless.

  Farden shook his head and reached down to the other side of the armchair to retrieve a broken, jagged slice of mirror. He grimaced, but forced himself to check his temples, hair, and face before putting the mirror aside and scribbling some more notes:

  few more greys. Skin fine. Scars still there. Time running out. No magick still. Good. Will scribe more tonight.

  Farden tossed the charcoal into the centre of the page and slammed the book shut. Whiskers squeaked in his ear. The mage sighed and stared out of the window at the wind-blown sea. His mind was still churning. Usually the note taking, like his counting of his steps, kept him distracted for a while. The sad truth of it was this: that if a man was bound by his actions, then Farden was tethered and chained by his thoughts.

  Three things cleared his mind those days: the cold, quiet purpose of a kill; Jeasin, his blind favourite who looked like his lost Cheska; and lastly, the bitter acridity of a mouthful of nevermar smoke. His old favourite. The first two, aside from mental distraction, were means to his ends.

  His work for the Duke gave him an iota of purpose at least. Even as questionable as it was, the mage had become used to it. It kept him busy. He had lied to Kiltyrin in Tayn. Whatever morals and sense of higher calling he’d had before had all but been numbed. Numbed as a blizzard numbs a lost traveller. It simply put coin in his hand. Coin that made the other two possible.

  Jeasin satisfied the cravings that any lonely man felt and more besides. Somehow, his times with her managed to patch the gaping, dusty hole in his heart, if only for a little while. None of the other girls over the years had quite managed it. Maybe it was because of her appearance, maybe her brusque coldness, but somehow, she did.

  But it was the third of these things that formed his true crutch, his true bolt-hole and sanctuary, as it always had been through the years. Nothing decimated thoughts and dark minds like the intoxicating, smoky tendrils of nevermar. Most of all, it kept his magick away, and that alone was precious. Farden had realised a long time ago that magick had been the root of all his problems. The wheels of the cart of sorrow. Without magick, he would never have been in this position. He wouldn’t have been sat there, hunched over a lobster pot, staring out at the waves rolling back and forth like windblown shale.

  Farden growled bitterl
y at himself, and stood up. Placing Whiskers gently on the arm of his chair, he briefly stoked the fire and then wandered to the opposite end of the shack, where a large cabinet had been nailed to the wall. Farden took his knife from its sheath and then opened the cabinet doors. Inside, fifty candles had been crammed onto four shelves, and almost all of them had a face.

  Some were long faces with bulging eyes, earlier attempts by the looks of them, while later ones exhibited freckles, wrinkles, even hair. Some stern looking ones had been half-melted, so that their faces were caught in the midst of their ghastly death-throes. Their eyes sagged, their features twisted, globules of wax residue clamping their mouths shut.

  Farden used his knife to pry a chubby, half-melted one from the shelf. Squinting, he examined its unfinished features and then closed the cabinet. He walked to the back door and undid its latch. The mage kicked it open with his heel, and then, ignoring his lack of boots and the wild weather, he sauntered out onto the rocks and down onto the sea-battered spit of sand that arced into the frothing sea. The wind tugged at him, but he ignored it too. He paced across the gritty yellow sand, making sure to stamp on every single discarded seashell he could find, and then stood at the water’s edge, where the olive seaweed desperately tried to escape the pounding of the waves. Farden stood there for a moment to eye the receding storm, and then began to whittle the unfinished face of his fat little candle.

  When his feet had gone numb, and the stump of the finger on his left hand throbbed with the cold, he wandered back indoors. He shut the door firmly behind him and slumped into his armchair. Whiskers had nibbled the twine from the pot of stew and was currently fishing around inside it, using his tail to hook himself to the side of the pot lest he fall in. Farden snorted. Clever rat.

  It was growing dark outside now, and the fire was going out. Farden examined the face he had carved into his candle. It was a chubby face, with jowls that hung beside its pursed mouth like curtains. A bulbous nose hovered above them, and squinting eyes above that. It stared at the mage with a mixture of distaste and judgement. Farden returned its haughty gaze and set it on the upturned lobster pot while he stoked the fire and removed his cloak. He returned to the armchair with a pipe, a length of smouldering twig, and a cloth bag.

  Farden had made himself wait long enough.

  He lit the candle with the twig and tossed it back in the fire. The little face began to sweat. It was the work of a moment to fill the bowl of his pipe with the precious nevermar. He made each little movement of his fingers meticulous and careful, in case he accidentally lost even the tiniest scrap. The smell of it, even now, made his mouth water. Farden took the candle, its face already sagging, and held it over the bowl.

  Farden took a deep breath, and after setting the dying candle back onto the lobster pot, he melted into the armchair. Fingers of warm smoke clutched his brain, and he felt his face go numb as the feeling of the nevermar spread outwards from his lips, to his cheeks, to his neck, and down. Down. Down into his chest, until he was staring at the molten face of the candle through blurry eyes. It curled its lip at him until the very last moment.

  Chapter 7

  “Today a council member asked me an intriguing question. Are the Written getting more powerful? I had to say yes.

  If Modren and Tyrfing’s observations are accurate, the Written, like the rest of Emaneska, are experiencing a surge of magick like never before. I must say it is an exciting time, if not one that is a little worrying. Even I can feel it in my bones, my blood. I can feel it humming in the air on certain nights. Spell books are coming alive by themselves, whispering to scholars. The magick markets and caravans and trade ships bring stranger and stranger things every week. Quickdoors spontaneously open. Ordinary soldiers are using magick like the mages. Written are suddenly wielding spells that would challenge the skills of Tyrfing or I. It seems that the Written are only now reaching their full potential. How painful it is then that we are losing so many of them to the murderer in the wilds.

  Emaneska’s magick has truly been set aflame. The question is why? I dearly hope it is not something to do with Farden’s murderous spawn. The search for her continues.”

  Taken from Arkmage Durnus’ diary, Firstdew 904

  Hide! Screamed the voice inside his head.

  The hand of fear ran its razor around his heart once again. His breath came in ragged slurps. Knees ached. Feet blistered. Owls and other night things screeched and laughed at him. Spirals of mist rose from the spiny loam, early wreaths to a grave not yet dug.

  Hide where?! Vossum shouted at his own useless thoughts. He blinked. More blood. The cut must have been deep indeed. Vossum quickly clamped a hand over his forehead and rushed on. Trees groped at him and scratched his neck and bare arms with their long fingers. Pine cones splintered under his pounding boots.

  Hide!

  Vossum peered through blood and darkness for a place, any place that could offer him sanctuary. The night was thick, the forest too, and the trees were thin and arrow-straight. No gnarled fallen trunk for him. No void in the earth to curl up in. The ground was flat and its only foliage needles and cones. He crouched, tempting the mists to swallow him, but they were still too thin and timid.

  And then he saw it.

  A fist of rock half-sunk in the earth, surrounded by trees. Narrowly missing a tree trunk, he veered violently towards it, grazing his shoulder in the process. He barely felt it. The mage hurtled on towards the rock, his sanctuary, his hiding spot. Breathless prayers fell from his lips and wafted into the cold night air.

  Skin met dirt as he skidded and crumpled into a foetal position underneath a jutting lip in the rock. Vossum held his lips tight and forced himself to breathe through his nose, slowly, gently, as quiet as he could. His lungs were on fire. Darkness clutched him close.

  Who was she?

  What was she?

  Somewhere in the screeching darkness a twig snapped, and Vossum held his breath tight in his throat. Behind closed lips, he slowly began to weave together another spell with his tongue. Something with light and noise, a distraction maybe, something to give himself time to escape. Curse his lack of meld magick, he thought, fingers probing the stone around him, trying to dig into it, become it.

  Another twig split in twain, closer too. A foot scuffed a pile of leaves while the trees whispered above, as if telling the hunter where her prey hid. Vossum peered into the shadows, lit only by the curious, bony fingers of a half-moon delving into the pine woods. Tonight the sky was picked clean of stars. Ambitious fog graced the sky like ghostly entrails. Sunken clouds and spiny trees obscured all but the aloof, phantom moon. Vossum glanced up, moving his head slightly to see if he could catch a glimpse of her. He couldn’t, and it made him shiver.

  Something was watching him, in the misty folds of night.

  Two pinpricks of sheer darkness, even blacker than the night around them, hovered by a tree a painfully short distance away. They tugged and pulled at the night around them, as if sucking it in and feeding off it. Grey smoke leaked from their corners.

  Vossum’s breath caught in his throat. He stared at them, desperately trying to decide if they were human or beast, or both, or whether his mind had finally snapped. When they inched closer, accompanied by the sound of crunching pine cones, he felt his veins fill with ice. By the hands of the gods, they were eyes! Black, terrible eyes, swallowing what paltry light the moon offered.

  Vossum felt naked. He wilted into the loam as the ghastly black eyes marched forward. A shape emerged behind them, with a waterfall of black hair and a pale face as hard as the steel in its hand. He lashed out wildly, but the girl was too quick. His spell sprang half-formed from his mouth, and as light and magick sputtered, Vossum saw the blade plunge into his stomach. He crumpled to the ground again, moaning a brief prayer as a slender hand wrenched his head backwards by the roots of his hair, and a blade slipped into his throat.

  The girl stood upright and wiped the wet blade on her leather sleeve. She closed her pit
ch-black eyes, squeezing them as tightly as she could. When she opened them again, the hungry darkness in them had died, and the trails of grey smoke had evaporated. She didn’t need her eyes now; she cast a spell that burnt away the shadows with a bright white light.

  The girl stretched, making her back click in several places, and then knelt to the needle-strewn ground so she could begin to cut the man’s sweat-drenched leather jerkin from his back. The seasoned blade took a few moments to bite through the tough leather, but with a swift yank it came free, and was tossed aside. The strange girl paused then, hand hovering, knife wavering, as she stared at the dead man’s back. He wore a thin yellow shirt under his thick jerkin, again soaked with fear and sweat. But something was missing.

  Knife forgotten, the girl seized the shirt and ripped it off his still-warm skin. No light, no runes, no Book, nothing. She grabbed the man’s nearest arm to examine it again. There it was: a tattoo in the shape of a long, skeletal key. This man was a fake.

  Fuming, the girl got to her feet again and stared down at the corpse. She spat on it, and then kicked it in its lying face; once, twice, three times, pounding it viciously with the toe of her thick boot. She stopped only when she heard the sick crunch of a skull cracking. Sheathing her knife, the girl marched north into the misty darkness lurking between the pine trees, eyes black and smoking once again.

  The frail half-moon looked on, confused.

  A crimson stone landed in the dust, rosy with the dawn glow. Then a black stone, chipped and scarred with age and use, landed next to it, rolling in a circle before it waddled to a stop. The last stone was a milk-white, like an eyeball that had misplaced its pupil. It fell between the other two and shoved them both aside with a sharp crack.