Pale Kings (Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  Using his dragon’s night-sight the Siren explored, looking for anything they could use to make a fire. It did not take long to gather a bundle of split chair legs and a broken shelf, and soon he was climbing the stairs with his arms full.

  They’re coming said a voice in his head, echoey and distant.

  How long? he asked.

  Ten minutes away Brightshow replied.

  Good said Lakkin. Just long enough to get this fire going.

  Avoiding the drips and juvenile waterfalls falling from the broken ceilings, the Siren quickly found a dry spot in a corridor between the main hall and a doorway to the outside. From there he could see the edges of the forest, where the dark woods shook and trembled and creaked in the tumultuous winds. The sound of their swishing branches and quivering limbs sounded like ghostly applause, as if unseen hands clapped at the darkness and the moaning wind.

  Brightshow landed outside with a thud and a little growl. She poked her head through the door to give her rider a little fire, and in a matter of seconds they had a warm and crackling blaze. Lakkin smiled and rubbed his hands together over the flames, and together they waited patiently for the vampyre and the mage.

  Thankfully they did not have long to wait, for two figures soon emerged from the forest’s edge and jogged quickly across the grass. Brightshow spread her giant wings over the two approaching men like an umbrella and they ran inside, huffing and puffing. The dragon sat in front of the door to keep the wind out, while Lakkin poked and stoked the fire, adding a few more chair legs. ‘Looks as though our luck with the weather has run out,’ he said. Farden nodded.

  ‘Looks like it. It was good while it lasted,’ he said, catching his breath. Shaking off his hood, he rubbed his hands together to coax some warmth back into them. Durnus kept his hood up and crouched by the fire in silence.

  Brightshow rested her chin on the stone floor. ‘How did it go?’ she asked. ‘What did the Duke of Leath say?’

  The vampyre said nothing, so Farden answered for him. ‘Apparently it worked. We will see in the morning.’

  ‘So we’re done then. Back to Nelska. And a day early as well,’ said the dragon. Farden couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad to leave. A shiver ran through him.

  ‘Back to the war,’ mumbled Durnus, as if reading the mage’s mind.

  Lakkin and Farden traded glances. ‘Where’s Ilios?’ asked the mage.

  ‘He’s out hunting. He was hungry,’ said the dragon.

  Durnus abruptly got to his feet. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ he said, and without another word he wandered into the gloom of the main hall and disappeared, leaving the others to themselves. Nobody said anything. The rain hammered the grass outside. Drips pattered on the stone floors. The fire crackled submissively between them. The wind howled like a lost wolf, eager claws reaching into the corridor and snatching at the flames, making them shake.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Lakkin, after the silence. The mage shrugged and wriggled out of his wet cloak. He sat beside the Siren and fished out a few bits of hard bread and cheese from his haversack. In front of them, the orange flames licked at the hissing chair legs and splintered bits of wood, eating the moisture out of them. Farden put his hands in the flames to warm them up, oblivious to the heat. ‘You’ve noticed it too, then,’ he answered.

  ‘Hard not to. He’s been like this since we came to Albion,’ Lakkin replied. He reached inside his cloak and dug out his pipe and a box of tobacco. Farden looked in the direction Durnus had gone. The mage sighed. He had enough to think about besides his old friend. ‘I’ve never seen him like this before. There’s definitely something wrong with him, but he’ll be damned before he tells me anything.’

  ‘Sounds like someone else we know,’ said Brightshow, softly. Farden shrugged and took a thoughtful bite of his bread. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he admitted. Lakkin held out his pipe towards the mage. ‘Would you mind?’ he asked Farden, and the mage shook his head. He clicked his fingers over the bowl of the pipe and a flame hovered on his thumbnail. Lakkin put the pipe to his lips and exhaled a bulbous cloud of grey smoke. He took his turn to sigh. ‘Well, I’m sure he will tell you if you ask him,’ he said, brushing crumbs of tobacco from his armoured knees.

  Farden snorted. ‘You haven’t known us long, have you?’

  Lakkin, knowing the mage did not mean to be so rude, shook his head. ‘I thought Farfallen had rid you people of your secrets, but here they are still clinging to you like vermin. Eyrum said as much.’

  Farden looked at the dragon-rider. ‘Just when I think you Sirens have run out of wisdom to dispense…’

  Lakkin offered the pipe to Farden. ‘Would you like some? It’ll clear your head.’

  Farden hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. He took the pipe from the rider and put it to his lips. Breathing in deeply, he let the richness swirl around his nose and felt the warm smoke fill his throat and lungs. Thankfully, it tasted nothing like nevermar. Misgivings erased, Farden felt himself relax slightly, and took another drag from the pipe before passing it back to Lakkin. He went back to his bread, savouring the taste of the woody tobacco on his tongue.

  ‘Well, I think our work here is done,’ said Brightshow. ‘The Dukes agreed to help. We’ll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings. Let us hope they keep their promises.’

  Farden pointed at her and her rider with his crust of bread. ‘You two might as well head back to Nelska. Ilios can carry Durnus and me. We’ll probably be back a few hours after you.’

  Lakkin sniffed. ‘Are you sure?’

  Farden nodded. ‘Positive,’ said the mage, turning his gaze to the mouldy ceiling above. ‘I think you’re right. I think Durnus and I need to have a talk.’ Lakkin got up and stretched. His wet leather armour creaked. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘To all of us. I think we’re going to need it.’

  Brightshow blew rainwater from her nostrils. In the firelight her scales glistened. ‘Let’s hope the gods are with us, at least one more time,’ she said, and somewhere, faraway in the dark night, someone heard her, and quickened their pace.

  Farden tossed the rest of his bread into the fire. As Lakkin and Brightshow made ready to leave, Farden added a few more bits of wood to the fire and stoked the flames with his finger so he would have a warm fire to return to. The Siren stepped out into the pelting rain storm and hoisted his hood over his head. With all the poise and grace of practice, he leapt onto his dragon’s back and fastened his feet into the stirrups on either side of her saddle. He held up a hand as Brightshow backed away from the door. ‘We will see you later!’ he shouted over the cacophony of wind and rain. Farden waved back. A flash of light shattered the darkness and for a split second every raindrop, every blade of grass, every twig and branch was illuminated and exposed. Thunder rolled in its wake and made the walls of the Arkabbey tremble. With mighty flaps of her wings Brightshow rose into the air and disappeared into the stormy darkness, leaving the mage alone. Farden sighed and went off to find his friend.

  Farden wandered through the upper halls, poking about in the shadows. It had been eight months, nine maybe, since he had trod the Arkabbey floors, and the dead bodies still lay where they had fallen, dusty arrows poking out of pallid and rotten skin. Dead eyes watched him. Farden occasionally met their gaze and wondered if he had killed them. He didn’t care if he had. They were Vice’s men. What bothered him were the tortured corpses cowering in the corners, hiding under chairs and tables, the ones in tattered nightdresses and servant’s clothes. Their faces were unrecognisable, smashed and broken. If he had no other reason to hate Vice, this would have been enough. The mage walked on.

  At the end of a gloomy corridor high in the belltower, Farden found the splintered mess of wood that had once been Durnus’s door. Inside the room, a weak candle fluttered, taunted by cold draughts. Strange shadows danced on the mouldy walls. Farden stepped over the broken door and entered his friend’s old room. He looked around at the room he had spent many a long night
in, swapping stories and glasses of wine with his superior and friend. The armchairs were in their favourite places by the fireplace; a cold and quiet quickdoor lurked in the corner by the window; tables and desks and bookcases heavy with dusty books and wet scrolls lined the walls. Water dripped steadily from a crack in the ceiling. The constant thawing and melting of the surrounding forest had probably split the stone. It was as though the room had aged a hundred years in less than one.

  Durnus stood with his back to the door, poring over something on a desk. The candle sat beside his hand. It tried its best to hold back the shadows. Farden perched on the arm of one of the chairs. ‘Lakkin and Brightshow have gone,’ he said quietly. Durnus said nothing. Farden coughed to clear his throat and the vampyre looked briefly over his shoulder. ‘Mm,’ he replied, distracted again.

  Farden prodded the soggy cushion of the nearest armchair. ‘I miss this place, in a strange way,’ began the mage. ‘It was simpler here, I think, uninvolved. At least, it was before any of this started. Before we knew about Vice, or Bane, before Cheska.’

  Durnus looked up from his book and sniffed the damp air. ‘I never realised how much of a prison it really was,’ he replied. ‘We came here to get away from the city and all the rumours, away from the politics and the pressure of Krauslung, and that’s what I got. I was trapped. I used to think living on the fringes mattered in some way. I’d convince myself that the missions we were given were of some great importance, and that we were integral to the Arka. But for too many years I’ve languished in a chair instead, fuzzy-minded, weak, old, useless, picking on poor peasants and driving an old man to his sick-bed.’ Durnus lifted up his hand and clenched his fist, watching the way his muscles contorted beneath his paper-like skin. He prodded one of his fangs with his tongue. ‘And Lerel’s message changed all of that,’ he whispered.

  ‘And what of me? Did I become useless?’

  ‘No,’ whispered Durnus. ‘It seems you were of great use to Vice.’ He sighed. Behind him, Farden glared at the back of his friend’s head. ‘Your uncle charged me to look after you and it dawns on me now that I even failed at that. I thought bringing you here would keep you from harm’s way.’

  ‘Obviously we didn’t get far away enough, then,’ Farden replied.

  The vampyre shook his head. ‘We could have buried ourselves at the bottom of the ocean and fate would still have dragged us ashore by the scruff of our necks, just as it has now.’

  Farden was confused. ‘What’s going on Durnus? What aren’t you telling me?

  Durnus closed his book with a loud thud and turned around. Farden had never seen his face so full of emotion before, pained by something he couldn’t fathom. ‘What is it?’ he asked. Durnus took a step forward. The vampyre’s pale blue eyes burnt like two frozen suns wrapped in grey skin. Farden found himself unable to tear his gaze away from them. Durnus’s voice was ironclad. ‘I wish things had been different for you Farden. I wish it had never come to this. I wish that I had the strength to rip that Book from your back and save you the years of strife and misery that have been and gone and are still to come. And I am sorry, Farden, that we are standing in this mouldy shell of a life we once had, but the good news, if it can ever be called that, is that your work here is already done.’ Durnus took another step forward. Farden opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out. Speechlessness, it seemed, always saves itself for the most profound of conversations. His old friend had never spoken to him like that before. He was confused and worried.

  The vampyre continued. ‘I know you inside and out, mage, and call it love or cowardice, I know you won’t kill Cheska or the child. Tyrfing and Farfallen were wrong. I can see it so plainly on your face. I am right or am I not?’ Farden’s heart throbbed doggedly against his ribcage, full of something that might have been guilt, or shame. Even then his stubborn mind was trying to justify its intentions. He winced and stared at the floor. His head moved with something that might have been a nod.

  Durnus took his last step forward. He looked down at the mage and bit his lip. He knew he was doing the right thing, but it was close to impossible to say it. ‘Farden,’ he said, and the mage looked up. The vampyre’s words pelted him.

  She doesn’t love you.

  She never has and she never will.

  The child will die at my hands instead.

  Anger and grief surged through Farden’s body, but before he had time to say or do anything, Durnus seized the mage’s head with both hands and there came a blinding flash of electric-blue light and a deafening crack. Farden cried out, eyes rolling up inside his skull, and he fell to the cold floor, thoroughly unconscious, swimming in a pool of impenetrable darkness.

  Durnus quickly knelt to check the mage’s pulse. Once he was satisfied, he leant close to his ear. ‘Every story needs its hero,’ he whispered. ‘I guess this just isn’t your story any more.’ With the back of his hand he wiped away a trickle of blood that was worming its way out the mage’s nose.

  Durnus stood and sighed. He put his hand to his mouth and tasted the warm blood with the tip of his tongue. It was bittersweet, coppery, and bursting with sour, fierce, magick. He shuddered at the sharp taste of it. Durnus wiped the rest on his shirt, and reaching for a coat and his book, walked to the shattered doorway. Before he left Durnus paused to reach into his pocket. Slowly, he lifted out a slender silver mirror, old, scratched, and dented in the corners. He looked down at his reflection for the first time in months, for only a silver mirror could show the face of a vampyre. He flashed his fangs and noted the dark, weary bags drooping under each eye with a sad grimace. Durnus looked back at the unconscious mage, once and once only, slid the mirror back into his pocket, and then left without another word. Had Farden been conscious, had the light been better than a single candle, he might have spied a glimpse of the title on the dusty spine; it said Treatises on Shapeshifting.

  Then again, he might have missed it altogether.

  High above in the stormy sky, a gryphon soared on the raging winds. Below him the forest was spread out like a dark carpet. It swayed and convulsed like a living thing, its threads taunted by the greedy wind and the freezing rain. The gryphon was oblivious to all of it, and instead his keen eyes picked out a tall thin figure in a cloak, hood up and hurrying south through the trees, clutching something to his chest. Ilios whistled a sad and troubled whistle, and gradually began his descent. The winds tugged at his ruffled feathers. There was a mage that needed his attention.

  ‘Almost there,’ said a deep, thunderous voice. A pair of tawny eyes stared at the twinkling sapphire of the world below. There was something lacking in its usual sparkle. Heimdall did not have to squint. He could see everything. Somebody cleared his throat beside him. Heimdall sighed. The smaller god picked a speck of dust from his wing and flicked it into oblivion. ‘About time.’

  ‘Patience, Loki,’ rumbled Heimdall. The smaller god sniffed and shrugged his wings, his eyes following the speck of dust as it drifted towards the plain of darkness and shadow below. Something there moved, swayed, and then disappeared, and the god looked away. A shiver climbed his back like a spider. The small god folded his wings around him and put his hands on the cold translucent stone of the wall and closed his eyes to listen to the whispers of the others behind them. ‘Where are they?’ he asked.

  ‘She is very close. He is not far behind, pursuing the other mage, the uncle,’ he muttered, concentrating. When staring at something so infinitesimally small, the tiniest movement of the eye make for the biggest differences, even for a god. Heimdall paused.

  ‘We’re wasting time and prayer. The mage will never listen, as usual, and this other one, well who knows what he will do. I don’t understand why we can’t just leave it to the third.’

  Heimdall sighed and growled in the same breath. ‘Because he doesn’t have the daemonstone. The mage does. Your lack of faith is tiresome, Light-bringer. Evernia and Thron know what they are doing. It is better to try to kill one giant with three stones, th
an three giants with one, after all.’

  Loki sighed. ‘So again we leave our fates in the hands of a gaggle of useless pawns.’

  Heimdall shook his head. ‘Even a pawn can kill a king, Loki.’ The whispering stars crumbled into a hushed, nervous silence. The sky took a deep breath.

  Chapter 18

  “Believe me, I have tried for decades to remember my past life as a normal man. Beyond the day I was bitten on the ice fields, I cannot remember a single thing. Therefore, one can imagine why it has been the subject of my research for as long as I can recall, that of course, and the possibility of removing the vampyre curse. So far I have found nothing. The assorted letters I gathered from the wild vampyre coven last year turned out to be no more than the illiterate ramblings of a drunken madman; the family of so-called ‘tame’ vampyres in the book ‘Married to a Vampyre’ are nothing but a bunch of fictitious dolts; and that fortune-teller in Fidlarig had never even seen a vampyre, never mind cured one. She wasn’t completely useless, mind you, she gave me something to nibble on for the return journey.

  “And so for the moment, my only hope seems to reside in the old spell book ‘Treatises on Shapeshifting,’ the origin of which is still rather suspect. Judging by what I have translated so far, there seems to be a dark relationship between the wolf and vampyre curses. Like two opposing armies the curses are at violent odds with each other, yet somehow the same, and related, strangely, to daemon blood and the nefalim, as if they were connected by some sort of triad. Alas, according to this somewhat dubious book, there seems to be but one option to release me from this body, and the consequences of that method terrify me…”

  Taken from the diary of Durnus Glassren, written in the year 886

  Elessi was bored. Nobody had spoken to her in what felt like days. Not that they were being rude, no, on the contrary, they had just been busy with things; getting things ready, polishing and sharpening things, carrying things, stacking heavier things in piles, banging hot things with hammers, cooking things for the journey, and every other manner of things and activities a nation needed for war. Unfortunately, she was not a part of any of it. With no mage and no vampyre to look after, she found herself at a loose end.