Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  Samara sighed as she watched the old seer draw circles around her stones with a long fingernail. Lilith had raised her, after all. For whatever reason, be it her selfish, thirsty ways, or a promise to her dead father, Vice, or maybe even something resembling fondness, Lilith had taken Samara under her dusty wing, and taught her everything.

  The girl reached for her knife and a flask of water. The glint of the steel in the morning sunlight caught Lilith’s eye and she looked up, wary. Samara held the knife with its blade pointing down and dug it into the soft flesh of her palm. She barely winced. Blood sprang into the sunlight, eager to escape, and began to pool in her hand. Samara put the knife down and reached for the flask. Holding the mouth of it between her fingers, she tilted her hand so that the blood dribbled down its throat. She held her hand there for several minutes, until the cut began to close up of its own accord. The blood dried a purplish-brown on her skin.

  Lilith could already feel the saliva flooding her mouth. When Samara silently handed the flask to her, she couldn’t help but snatch it from her young hands. The girl went back to her cooking, and said nothing. Lilith turned away from her and began to sip, and then gulp, and then slurp at the bloody water. The pain came as it always did, and Lilith curled up into a convulsing, sweating ball for the rest of the afternoon.

  When she awoke, night had fallen, and there was a shred of blanket covering her shoulders. The fire was still burning and the second chicken was now rotating above it. Samara sat on the opposite side of it. She was hunched over but wide-awake. Her face was expressionless.

  Lilith, on the other hand, was not herself. The grey had disappeared from her hair and face, and now pinpricks of crimson dotted her cheeks. Her skin had pulled itself together. Her eyes had lost some of the dull mistiness they had been clutching. Lilith looked down and attempted to wiggle the fingers of her withered arm. Rewarded by a faint twitching, she cackled quietly to herself. Then, remembering her seerstones, she cast about frantically for them. ‘Where are they?’ she hissed. Samara pointed to the side of the fire and Lilith scrambled to grab them. She clutched them in her hands for a moment, warming them, whispering to them, before throwing them to the charcoal-speckled dirt. Samara looked on.

  Lilith moved her head from side to side, as an owl would look at a blind mouse. She looked up at Samara. ‘So, you want to go south, do you?’ she asked, quietly.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Want to do what you were made for?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine.’ Lilith nodded and sniffed. Her fingernail caressed the red seerstone. Visions sprang before her eyes. She saw a mage walking out of the fog. She scowled at him, shuddering. Him. That face had invaded her dreams many a night, haunted her for years now. He was in a city. Krauslung called to her like a shout caught on a breeze. Another face appeared as the city faded, one she had never seen before. Strong, proud, scheming. Her stones whispered frantically. Years flashed by before her, unveiling futures she had never grasped at before. It must have been the magick. Lilith began to smirk, then smile, then grin, as decades flew before her eyes. They all came crashing to a glorious, bloody end.

  Lilith leant back, and sighed contentedly. ‘Then I think I’ve just found the perfect opportunity,’ she said.

  Chapter 8

  “Take two hens and the finest goat, and make of them small chunks. Wit’ the innards, set aside for a-later. Their bones and skins make the most mouth-pleasing of broths. Boil them so wit’ a fistful of hewn onion, a basketweight of peelt soil potato, and half that again of carrot. Be sure to remember the herbs: cragleaf, rosemary, rockthyme, and most of all, garlick. Seethe for a two-hour, perhaps three. Once thickent, take the bones and skin away, and add yon meats, the goat, the hens. Boil them ‘gain for an hour, and whilst it boil, grin’d the innards to a dust, and add a-halfway. Stir one last time. Crack one hen’s egg atop the dish, and serve wit’ fresh bread.”

  Translated from a very old cookery manual found in a cellar in Krauslung

  If cities were people, then Wodehallow would be a corpulent, bloated slob, slumped and half-sunk in a marsh, still waving its goblet at the world with a sneer. It was a pit painted gold. A gash covered with a silver plate. Farden had half a mind to burn the whole place to the ground and put Albion out of its misery.

  In the last ten years, Wodehallow had grown fat off the spoils of the magick trade. No wonder then that its walls had been moved twice to accommodate its swift and greedy expansion. But it was not just magick that flooded the purses of Wodehallow’s finest. Slavery had come galloping to the marshes, poisoning its waters. Albion’s unofficial capital now had another dark feather in its ill-fitting cap. Slave labour: hired to the highest bidder, and all for a gross profit. Farden loathed many things. Slavery lingered near the top of his list.

  Well, at least it would make killing the man responsible all the easier.

  He might even enjoy this one.

  The mage sat on a rock near the north wall of the city, munching on an apple and watching a gang of poor souls working on Wodehallow’s latest venture. It was a huge canal, being dug one mile at a time, like a festering scar ripping south through the marshes and down to the mountains. No doubt Kiltyrin had been eager to congratulate this latest plan. Shake with the right, stab with the left, thought the mage. And he was the left.

  Beneath his muddy rock and a stone’s throw away, the clang of hammers and picks and chains was painfully constant. Farden remembered seeing the children digging for clay the day he, Durnus, and Lakkin had come to ask the Dukes for help. He remembered the man in the top-hat standing on the bridge, with his callous laughter. If he had known that this would be the result of those poor children, he would have drowned that man there and then. Hindsight was a wonderful thing, after all. Everybody is an expert at it. Farden didn’t dare look too closely. There was enough disappointment in this city.

  Above it all, night was falling. In the west, behind the walls and spindly cranes, the sky was still alight with the dying glow of the sun. In the east, stars had ventured out, warming up for their nightly dance, looking west for their tardy partners. Streaks of cloud stretched out between them like rafters to the sky, the colour of a bruise. Farden looked up from the busy slaves and tried to see the beauty in it all. It wasn’t easy when his eyes throbbed with the pounding of the headache behind them. Nevermar wasn’t without its consequences.

  It had been three days since he had last touched his drug. His body now felt weak and tired. The long trek from Fleahurst hadn’t helped matters. At least the weather had been kind to him; there had only been a little drizzle to contend with. Now, he had a headache which would have embarrassed even the mightiest of hangovers. It threatened to hammer Farden into the ground. All he wanted to do was sleep, but he had a Duke to kill.

  Ignoring the pain in his jaw that sparked every time he chewed, Farden bit through the core of his apple and put the two halves in his pocket for later. He didn’t want to add insult to the slaves’ injury. He had already caught the eye of a few, glimpsed their pronounced ribs, hips, and every other bone they had to offer him.

  Farden picked his way down the sloping side of the granite lump and hopped onto the wooden walkway that provided the digging pit with access. It was covered in muddy footprints from the slaves.

  The mage set his sights on the glittering structure dominating the centre of the city. Wodehallow’s keep, like the walls surrounding it, had also bulged and swelled like the pockets of its more ruthless inhabitants. It had almost doubled in width and girth since the last time Farden had seen it. Fresh stone jostled with old masonry, making its walls a patchwork of construction.

  Farden tucked the corners of his hood into his collar and stuck his hands in his pockets. In the twilight and amongst milling throngs of people, the mage was almost invisible. Just another weary visitor on his way to gawp at the keep and the rich folk. Just the way he liked it. He closed one eye to keep the headache at bay and walked on.

  To peel back his
cloak, however, would have told a different story indeed. Underneath it, Farden was carting around a veritable armoury. Knives, daggers, vicious spikes, poisons, a shortsword in the small of his back; he could have supplied a small army with what he had brought. It was his way of preparing for every eventuality. Without his magick, he had only his hands and whatever they could hold.

  When Farden reached the sloping road up to the keep, he was a little surprised, and a little gladdened, by the lack of guards standing at the narrow gates. Albion was obsessed by class. It wasn’t unusual for cities to have concentric sets of walls to divide the echelons, to keep the peasants and the beggars from offending the eyes of the rich. That night, however, the guards were nowhere to be seen. There was even a group of beggars hovering at the empty, open gate that led up the hill. They were muttering agitatedly to themselves and peeking around its corner, as if afraid to set foot across its threshold. As the crowd around him thinned out, some disappearing down side roads, others in their finery continuing up the hill, Farden quickly fell in with the beggars, hunching over and rubbing some dirt on his cheeks so he would blend in. He listened to their eager whispers.

  ‘I’m telling you, there ain’t a soul in sight. None of the spears tonight, lads and ladies,’ hissed the apparent ringleader.

  ‘Tonight we get to see what the rich scraps taste like,’ said another, a leper by the looks of his scarf and gloves, and the way he stood to one side.

  ‘I heard that if just one thing in their cupboards spoil, they throw out the entire cupboard.’

  ‘Full bellies tonight then.’

  One of them, a woman wrapped in a blanket turned to grin at Farden, and was immediately crestfallen to find a grim and dangerous-looking man lurking behind her. His grimy face was hidden from the evening’s torches by a hood. ‘Ere, who’s this?’ she said, backing away.

  One of the younger ones piped up. ‘You a guard, sir?’ he asked.

  Farden opened his dry mouth, feeling his head pound with every fraction his jaw moved. ‘I look like one?’ he rasped.

  The ringleader, a man with a shock of bright red hair and a face that had seen the underside of a boot a few too many times, moved forward. ‘No, but you ain’t one of us either.’

  Farden produced a handful of silver coins. He winced as he held them out; his coffers were already dwindling. ‘Let’s just say I don’t want to venture up the hill alone. Pretend I’m not here.’

  The beggars didn’t argue with that. In wide-eyed silence, each of them took a coin. Some bit them to test their worth, others bowed or curtseyed, and then, as if some lever had suddenly been pulled, they turned their backs on the mage and pretended he was invisible. Farden smiled. At least beggars knew the value of inconspicuousness, he thought.

  The ragged little group finally moved forward through the gate, wary and careful, as if they had suddenly been shown into a poisoned larder and left to their own devices. The guards of inner Wodehallow were paid well to keep riffraff out of sight and mind. Were these poor souls, little better than slaves, caught lingering in this part of the city it would be boots and clubs for them, and a swift trip back the way they had come. Farden didn’t care. He wasn’t there to beg. He wasn’t one of them.

  However, discretion was his top priority, and to clash with a pack of guards was the last thing he wanted to do. He might have been searched, or worse, forced to fight, and that would raise an alarm quicker than a dragon could light a campfire. Farden kept his head down and his eyes peeled for quick exits and alleyways.

  But much to his surprise, they saw not a whisker of a single guard. Farden began to wonder whether there had been some sort of trouble in another part of the city. He had been prepared for a night of sneaking about, flitting from shadow to shadow. How fortuitous, thought the mage. The only thing they had to deal with was the wrinkled grimaces from passers-by, curled lips and shivers. The beggars and the mage kept their faces down and their hands out for alms. Farden did the same, muttering with the best of them.

  The group of beggars shuffled on, deeper and deeper. With every passing street, one or two of them would peel off, licking their lips at the sights of bins and buckets nestled beside back doors. Farden soon found himself alone with the leper, who, like the mage, seemed to be heading straight towards the keep itself.

  Farden hung slightly behind him, staring at the stars emerging from the velvet bruise that was the darkening sky. The sunset was fading away. Wodehallow had begun to glitter and glow with torches. The leper turned around to look at Farden over the lip of his scarf. The mage couldn’t help but wince at the scars and open sores on his face. ‘You got a name, stranger?’ he asked.

  Farden shook his head. ‘No,’ he grunted.

  The leper chuckled. ‘So be it. I’m Beren. I’d shake your hand, but, well… you know.’

  Farden said nothing for a while. Curiosity finally loosened his tongue. ‘Where you headed, then?’

  Beren pointed up at the building dominating the evening sky with a hand wrapped in dirty bandages. It loomed above them. They were getting closer now. The road had become steeper and cobbled. ‘The keep. Same as you, by the looks of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Could ask you the same question. Something tells me I don’t want to know.’

  Farden narrowed his eyes at the man. ‘Mark my words; you don’t.’

  Beren held up his bandaged hands with a chuckle. ‘No good threatening me, man-with-no-name, I’m one step away from the grave as it is.’ He lowered his scarf to taste the night air. It wasn’t an inspiring taste. ‘Some men in this city think we don’t exist. Others’ll tell you it’s the way of things. But it ain’t. Cities need schools, hospitals, places for people like me. We’ve got none of that. Wodehallow is blinder than a mole in a sack, he is.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, I’m going to tell him.’

  Farden fought the urge to laugh. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the man, shrugging off the sarcasm. He coughed then, a horrible choking cough that shook his body. Farden paused by his side while he recovered, though he wasn’t sure why. He could feel the looks of disdain and disgust from passers-by. ‘Getting worse by the day.’

  ‘You or the city?’

  ‘Both.’

  Farden nodded.

  Beren took a few deep breaths before they walked on. He sighed. ‘I’ve asked the gods every day to heal me. Put those marketplace priests to shame, I do, the amount I pray.’ Men with death sentences always do, thought Farden. He snorted and spat on the cobbles.

  ‘I learnt a long time ago that the gods only care about themselves. They’re meddlers and time-wasters.’

  ‘Is that so, stranger?’

  ‘Trust me. I heard it from a good source.’

  ‘You blame the gods for who you are? Whatever that may be?’

  Farden shrugged. ‘I am what time and circumstance have made me,’ he replied, echoing words a certain goddess had hissed to him long ago, in another life.

  ‘As am I, man-with-no-name. The gods didn’t do this to me. Way of the world. But what good would light be without shadow to show it, eh? Look at these torches.’ Beren flapped his hand. ‘They only come alive in the dark. Wouldn’t know they were here if the whole world was on fire, would you?’

  Farden stumbled over that last sentence, the leper’s words tugged on a long-buried memory. His headache suddenly jabbed him, and the moment was forgotten.

  Beren continued. ‘At first, I blamed myself for catching the rot. Then I blamed the gods. Then I blamed myself for getting others sick, and they blamed me too. I spent years on my own, just wandering about the marshes. I was lost in more ways than one, I was, but then I had one of those things that scholars have. Epiphanies, I’m told they’re called. Why was I spending the time I had left moping about in bogs when I could be helping others? Hmm? Even a life as cursed as mine is precious, so who am I to squander it? Life deserves better than that. It deserves to be lived, not endured.’

/>   ‘So that’s why you’re here,’ replied the mage, trying to ignore the wisdom in the man’s words. ‘To help someone?’

  Beren nodded. ‘More than just someone. As I said, one step closer to the grave than the rest of us. What have I got to lose?’

  ‘Your life?’

  ‘Overrated, in the face of the cause. There are others in this city that deserve better. If I can make a little difference, then that’s all that matters.’ Farden resisted the urge to snort again. Morals and causes. Overrated, in the face of reality. The leper must have spent his youth inhaling books of philosophy and wise words, he surmised. He’d plenty of it to regurgitate.

  Farden looked up and noticed how near they were to the keep. Its main entrance, a huge set of double doors, was only a few hundred yards away. Here there were guards. Throngs of them, and plenty of people too. The babbling brook of fortuity had finally dried up. Farden slowed to a halt. Beren turned around and watched the mage tuck himself into a doorway and begin to plot his entrance. There appeared to be only one way in, and that was out of the question. Unless… Farden’s gaze roved over the roots of the keep and the cluster of buildings that had been built around it. A drainpipe. A skewed roof, bristling with wind-torn tiles. Scaffolding. A balcony… There. It clung to the side of the keep walls, only two levels above the street, far enough away from the main entrance. The mage lifted up the back of his cloak and began to feel around in his haversack for his coil of rope and the hook.