Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Toskig?’

  ‘Yes, my lord?’

  Malvus walked forward and put his arm around the sergeant’s ample shoulders. ‘I want you to build me an army I can take to war, Toskig. An army that can make the Arka into the power it can be.’

  ‘War, my lord?’ Toskig looked. ‘Against whom?’

  Malvus smiled along with Jarvins. ‘Why, General Toskig. Against everyone.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Colder than ice. Stiffer than a board.’

  Durnus shook his head.

  ‘Can you keep trying?’ Modren pleaded.

  Durnus hesitated. ‘This spell is dangerous, Modren. I have only dared to use it once, and that was on Farden, a long time ago,’ he said.

  ‘Just do it.’

  ‘Hmph,’ Durnus sighed. He stretched his hands out again and felt Elessi’s cold and clammy forehead. Her hair was tangled, the texture of straw. Durnus felt a stab of iciness in his veins as he felt the heat flow from him. His fingertips burned.

  But it was no use. After a few seconds he let go, and rubbed his fingers together. ‘That is all I dare to use, Modren.’

  ‘Fine.’ Modren slumped back against the wall. He felt almost as blind as Durnus in the gloomy dark of the cell. Their only light was a tallow candle that sputtered fitfully in the corner, and a narrow shaft of pale light that poured from the barred grate in the door. It fell directly on Elessi’s face, making her skin seem even paler, if that were possible.

  His wife was the living dead, and Modren hated it.

  There hadn’t been a single flutter of an eyelash. Not a hint of a mumble. Even when the soldiers had moved her to the cell, she hadn’t stirred. The only thread of hope that Modren could cling to was the faint and sporadic thumping of her heart, and the even fainter breath that he could watch mist his armour. That was all he had left. Even that was slipping away.

  Their surroundings were no solace. The damp holes were good for two things: confining miscreants and growing mould. Durnus had barely managed to keep Modren from exploding when they had brought Elessi in, late the previous night. Many a prisoner had caught their death in those dank surroundings. It was all Elessi needed.

  ‘We have to get out,’ Modren said, for the tenth time that hour.

  ‘As I have repeatedly said, Modren, be my guest. You know as well as I do who built these cells, and what spells still bind them.’

  Modren got up to challenge the doors again, but all he managed was a sour grimace and scowl as he stared at the faceless door. ‘They’ve never had to confine a pale king before.’

  ‘I have already tried.’

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Modren,’ sighed Durnus, his patience wearing thin. ‘Enough. I cannot take any more of this.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of this futile griping. Our current circumstances are these,’ Durnus gestured to the darkness around him. ‘I dislike them as much as you do, but I cannot change them one iota. Be calm.’

  ‘You try keeping calm when it’s your wife on the slab,’ Modren muttered darkly to himself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  There was a grim silence in the cell, filled with only breathing and the creaking of the Undermage’s knuckles on the bars. A moment filled with quiet desperation, swirling with frustration.

  ‘What of that woman? The blind one?’ Modren asked, from between his teeth.

  ‘Jeasin?’ Durnus sighed. ‘I do not expect her to materialise any time soon.’

  ‘Another casualty fallen to Malvus’ guile.’

  Durnus contemplated trying to get some sleep. What else was there to do in confinement such as this? Sleep, and wait. Wait, and sleep. The poor excuse for a cot in the corner of the room could only sleep one, and most of its dirty hay had gone to keep Elessi warm. Durnus didn’t quite relish the thought.

  ‘How did this happen so easily? So suddenly?’ Modren hissed, staring out of the bars. He could see a trio of soldiers milling in the distant hallway. Their slouching, armoured figures were framed by the elusive daylight. ‘How did he get away with it?’

  Durnus grimaced. ‘It has been brewing for years, right under our very noses, like mould under floorboards of an old house, rotting away the foundations until one day it all comes crashing down. Malvus saw his chance and took it. We were too preoccupied with greater evils to notice.’

  ‘It sounds all very neat when you put it like that.’

  ‘Well, it is. Neatly done on Malvus’ part. He has played his hand very well indeed. Using the discontent of the masses and the greed of the ambitious,’ Durnus quietly replied, trying to mask his true contempt. He had cursed himself repeatedly for letting Malvus manoeuvre them like this, for tipping them from the throne so damn easily, so succinctly. He had never even expected it.

  Malvus throttled the bars. ‘You speak as if it’s just a pile of coin in jeopardy, instead of a country and a pair of thrones.’

  ‘All that matters is stopping Farden’s daughter. And Elessi of course,’ Durnus added, as he felt Modren’s hot eyes on his back.

  Modren was about to reply when a shadow darted in front of the bars of the grate, interrupting the shaft of dim daylight. He quickly pressed his nose between them. ‘Who’s that?’ he hissed. To his surprise, a sheaf of papers slapped him in the face.

  ‘Here!’ hissed a female voice, rife with urgency.

  Modren barely had hold of the papers before they were rammed through the rough steel bars. ‘What in gods’…?’

  ‘Jeasin?’ Durnus’ ear pricked up at the sound of crackling paper and the urgent voice.

  ‘Count yer lucky stars I’ve still got a scrap of conscience in me, Arkmage. Here’s what you asked for,’ snapped the voice, unmistakably Jeasin. Before either of them could say anything she was gone, marching past the guards with a wave and a sly nod. They didn’t stop her, and she disappeared from view.

  Modren held the crumpled pages up to the narrow beam of light. ‘Looks like she delivered after all,’ he muttered. Durnus had gotten to his feet. He felt for Modren’s shoulder. ‘Will any of it help us get out of this godsforsaken hole?’ Modren asked.

  Durnus shook his head. ‘I will not know until you read it to me, mage. Get to it.’

  Modren squinted at the scribbled lettering. It was spidery, faint too, thanks to a rushed hand and cheap ink. ‘Spare no expense, Malvus, why don’t you?’ muttered Modren as he leafed through the pages, trying to make sense of them. He caught little snippets and read them aloud:

  ‘ “Yet another day, and yet another magick market poisons our streets with its greed and undeserved filth…” blah blah blah. “Magick has long been squandered by the common, undeserving man. Magick is for the master, not for the peasant in the field. It is time this Arkathedral ruled with the iron fist it used to…” gods, this is Marble Copse through and through.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Diary entry, diary entry, waffle, waffle, feckless bullshit. Deluded grandeur…’ Modren paused as he flicked to another page. A word, or rather a name, caught his eye very quickly indeed. ‘Saker?’

  ‘What?’

  Modren read it aloud.

  Malvus,

  I trust this message finds you comfortable in your new surroundings.

  The Ship and its crew will be dealt with, as requested. You shall Consider it a favour to be returned later. I will take the mage’s head as a gift of our alliance. What a trophy it will make.

  I will need a month or two to secure my position here, then we shall be ready to move east, as planned.

  Have you Heard from the Dukes? The rumours say Kiltyrin has lost his mind. Wodehallow it shall be. One duke’s army is better than none, and there will be more for the taking.

  What of the fallen ones?

  Until then,

  Saker, Lord of Nelska.

  Modren looked up from the letter. ‘Well, fuck me…’ he muttered.

  Durnus sought th
e coolness of a nearby wall. He silently began to curse himself again. ‘That man has his eyes set on more than just my throne,’ he replied. ‘And it appears the Copse has deep roots indeed.’

  ‘And the ship?’

  Durnus rubbed his eyes. ‘The Waveblade,’ he nodded.

  ‘And what’s this “Lord of Nelska” business all about? What is going on, Durnus?’ Modren crumpled the papers in his fist.

  ‘If only I knew, Modren,’ Durnus could barely talk. For the first time in his life, he felt truly, truly blind. ‘If I only knew.’

  Modren turned to look at the pale face of his wife, framed by the shadows of the bars and the papers in his hand. Very slowly, he began to curl his fingers to a fist. Durnus didn’t say a word as the Undermage began to pound on the door. He let him pound until his knuckles bled. Until the bones began to splinter. He would have done the same, if he wasn’t so numb himself.

  Chapter 12

  “As a land, Dromfangar, without a shadow of a doubt, is simply bloody boring. There, I’ve said it.”

  An excerpt from Wandering Wallium’s bestseller ‘Travels in Emaneska’ - first printed in the year 882

  Desolation was the business of this land. A hundred miles it stretched, in every direction the compass had to offer, barren as the mind of a fool. Its skin was endless dust and tawny shrub, occasionally puckered by the picked-clean bones of creatures that had ventured their luck on the wastes, and failed. Deer, sabre-cat, cow, donkey, man; it was a land where even the maps walked in circles. Only the buzzards and gulls dared to brave it.

  Them, and two stubborn women.

  Perhaps stubborn wasn’t quite the word. Eager, was more apt. One was eager to please. The other was eager to stay alive. So it was that Samara and Lilith tread the Gordheim wastes.

  They had been silent for a day or so. Hokus and Valefor had visited them twice since the mountains. The first time they had appeared from the smoke of their meagre campfire, giving Lilith quite the fright. The second time they had had the decency to wait by a waterfall, idly turning the water a filthy rust-colour with their claws as they had delivered their directions and orders to hurry. Their complaints were simple. They were not moving fast enough, and Samara was painfully aware of it.

  The girl looked back at Lilith. She was in the middle of negotiating a patch of dried brambles. She was wobbling back and forth as she tried to avoid the finger-sized barbs. Samara shook her head. The years in the wilderness had made the seer hardy, but at the same time they had taken their toll. Every mile that the wastes offered them, the slower her feet moved and the more her chin rested on her chest. Every mile north.

  To Lilith’s credit, she hadn’t made a sound. Not a word of complaint had passed her lips in the last two days. She had soldiered on with quiet resolution. She may have slowed, but she hadn’t stopped. Her face was an unwavering mask of iron determination.

  But it was exactly that: a mask.

  Underneath the facade, Lilith was slowly but surely crumbling away.

  ‘Come on, old woman,’ called Samara. Something resembling either impatience or pity made her scrunch up her face. ‘By the time we reach the Spit it’ll be dark.’

  Lilith nodded and momentarily increased her pace. She tugged her cloak free of the bramble and trudged across the sandy earth towards her young companion. She spared her a quick look. Samara was looking fresher than ever. The only hint of the long miles they had travelled was the thin film of dust and road-grime covering her clothes and face, painting her a sandy grey. Samara was barely sweating. Her hair wasn’t tangled or greasy. She walked like her feet had never known a blister. Her breathing was light and the wind had even caught her humming something a mile or two ago. Such were the benefits of being young, and daemon-blooded. Lilith shook her head and just kept moving. She distracted her aches and dark thoughts by counting the clanking sounds her heavy pack made.

  The pine tree was a monstrous, lonely thing. They had spied it twenty miles back. Such a huge and vertical thing was hard to miss on such a flat, barren wasteland.

  It must have been a practical joke of nature, or of some wisecrack god, to put such a giant tree in such an empty place. The tree must have been a hundred feet tall at least, leaning at a slight angle to the east like a solitary tower with questionable foundations. It was a pine tree through and through, with a sharp point and gently sloping sides. Its needle foliage was a dark, dark evergreen, almost black in the places where the sun couldn’t reach, and it was bristling with gnarled, mahogany cones the size of a man’s head. A few that had fallen littered the dusty earth like forgotten boulders.

  They had smelled the tree from a mile away; it gave the wasteland breeze the sickly-sweet smell of thick, dripping resin and warm wood. It mingled surprisingly well with the sulphurous stench of the two daemons lounging against its enormous trunk.

  Samara marched towards them eagerly, while Lilith did her best to keep up. She counted her blessings as she walked. There weren’t many to count. A spot of shade, courtesy of this lonely tree. Maybe a rest. Some food if she was lucky. Having the daemons in plain sight rather than having them explode out of a campfire. Thin comfort, Lilith sighed quietly to herself.

  When she arrived at the tree, Samara was just getting up from her knees. The daemons smiled when they saw Lilith. They had taken to goading her mercilessly about her abilities as a seer, her age, her slowness, and, most disturbingly, how rotten she would taste when they finally ate her. It was the subject of her impending doom, and that subject alone, that was the reason behind her dark mood, and her crumbling resolve.

  Hokus rubbed his hands. ‘Well, Valefor, if it isn’t our favourite fate-juggler. You almost looked surprised to see us.’

  ‘Never trust a seer who’s surprised to see you, Hokus.’

  Valefor ‘How right you are, brother.’

  ‘I’m surprised to see you standing still and waiting for us for a change, rather than ruining my campfires,’ Lilith replied acidly. At a sharp look from Samara, she quickly added, ‘my lords.’

  The two daemons shrugged at that. She was poor sport today.

  Samara smoothed the dust from her knees. Her hair was reflecting the green tinge of the light falling through the pine. It gave her a haunted look. ‘How are we doing?’ she asked. The question, so high-pitched in her young voice, veritably begged for approval. Samara couldn’t help but notice it herself. She inwardly cringed.

  Valefor snorted smoke. ‘Terribly,’ he said. ‘You are days behind the others, and they are supposed to be chasing you.’

  ‘It will not do,’ Hokus shook his head. He sounded angry. ‘Our plans cannot wait for mortal feet to tread. He grows impatient.’

  Samara nodded. She couldn’t help but feel her burden grow even heavier at the mention of him. ‘Well…’ she ventured.

  ‘Well what?’ Hokus snapped, biting off a flash of flame in his blast-furnace mouth.

  ‘Is there a faster way we could travel? A ship? A dragon? Anything?’

  ‘She catches on quickly, does this one.’

  ‘For her age.’

  ‘She has our blood in her, after all,’ Hokus nodded. He looked to the south and east, where a faint strip of darkness smudged the horizon. Mountains, cloud, or a forest maybe. ‘The growing magick is calling to the dark places of this world. There are things burrowed in the earth that escaped our fate. Things that have been forgotten and lost. Some have already answered its call. They head north, like you.’

  ‘Things?’ asked Lilith, unnerved.

  Valefor sniggered. ‘We have a few ideas.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Samara, intrigued.

  ‘Walk until the sun sets. Make a fire. There is a hill, to the north. We will meet you there,’ instructed Hokus. Lilith inwardly groaned. The daemons made scraping noises as they hoisted themselves off the tree. Where they had been leaning, great char marks and resinous bruises tarnished the red-brown trunk.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘The magic
k has its call. We have ours.’

  ‘It has been centuries since the presence of daemons have been felt. Already, creatures are coming to pay their respects.’

  ‘Choosing sides, so to speak,’ Valefor smiled as he sent a pine cone tumbling with a vicious kick. The parts that didn’t wither into splinters soared high into the open grey-blue of the barren sky. ‘Nature is always first to choose. That’s why the gods were so eager to master it.’

  Hokus nodded. ‘Even now I can hear the rustling of rocks, the chattering of teeth and nails, drawing near.’ Lilith stared out into the wilds, as if she could spot these chattering, rustling beings. There was nothing to be seen, but the daemon’s words still sent a little shiver up her arched spine. ‘Sunset,’ he ordered. Samara bowed as they turned to walk away, then instantly began snapping twigs from low-lying branches.

  Lilith waited until the daemons had gone. For some reason, they had taken to walking instead of disappearing in a cloud of smoke and ash. She wasn’t sure which she found more disturbing, the power of their spells, or the casual, brazen way they plodded across the wastes, leaving burning footprints in their wake.

  ‘How can you trust them?’ Lilith sighed. She didn’t care to whisper. If the daemons could hear the chattering and rustling of unnamed horrors from gods knew how many miles away, then no amount of whispering would help her.

  Samara shook her head. ‘Not this again, Lilith,’ she hissed. ‘I told you, they’re flesh and blood.’

  ‘Fire and ash, more like,’ replied the seer. ‘They have it in for me. I can tell. It’s fine for you. They need you. You’re useful. I’m surplus to requirements. They’ll be rid of me as soon as it bloody suits ‘em.’

  Samara shrugged. ‘Not my problem,’ she said.

  Lilith scowled. ‘No, ‘course it ain’t. You’re fine.’

  Samara dropped her bundle of sticks and turned around. Her hands were glittering with frost, turning an artic blue. She pointed a finger clad in ice. ‘You sound as if you want out, Lilith? Had a change of heart? Going back on your promises to Vice?’

  Lilith couldn’t help but look back the way they had come. She licked her dry lips.