Pale Kings (Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

Soon, they came to the main stairwell and they jogged down the steps two at a time, armour clanking and boots thudding. There was a large crowd of Arka guards gathered at the bottom, in the main entrance hall, dressed in the full gold, green, and black armour of the Arkathedral and Evernia guard, armour that had been specially commissioned and forged by the finest blacksmiths the Arka had ever employed, armour that could deflect the spells of even the hardiest mage. Mages, yes, but not Written.

  The guards stood in tight ranks with their circular shields held tightly and their sharp spears pointing outwards like the spines of a quillhog. The front rows crouched behind iron barriers bolted into the marble floor, arrows nocked to their tall longbows. Every man had his eyes fixed on the huge doors of the Arkathedral. Something was trying to get in.

  Bangs and crashes shook the iron doors, making them quiver and tremble. The hinges creaked and whined to the muffled sound of yelling from outside. Booming echoes flew like bats around the cavernous atrium.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ barked Agfrey, wiping sweat from her brow. Strands of hair pestered her eyes. One of the men, a sergeant from his insignia, turned around and looked her up and down. His magick armour hummed. He pointed at the door. ‘They’re in the city, General Agfrey, and now they want in here. Not going to happen!’ Behind him, his men grumbled in agreement and shuffled their feet, their magick shields clinking and vibrating.

  Just then, as if to prove him wrong, one of the gigantic hinges supporting the left door suddenly twisted with a metallic squeal. The sergeant yelled orders at his men. ‘Left flank, barricade that door! The rest of you, fill the gap!’ Forty Arka guards ran to brace the door, while the rest quickly shuffled into position. The door jerked wildly under the soldiers’ hands. The iron moaned and complained.

  ‘Where are the Written?’ somebody shouted.

  ‘They were all outside!’ came the reply.

  Another crash shook the door and a hinge popped from its enormous fixings. The layers of lock spells the Written had placed on the door groaned under the strain of whatever was attacking it. The soldiers shoved their shoulders against the iron as hard as they could, but it was no use. Before others could run to help them, the door collapsed inwards, crushing half of the men underneath it.

  In the dusty half-light of the broken doorway stood a dozen brazen figures. Before anyone could launch a spear, or even take a step forward, forks of lightning and rivers of fire filled the atrium. The guards hid behind their shields and grit their teeth as their spell-proof shields took the brunt of the attack. Longbows thudded.

  Modren and his Written tried to hold their ground as the two mages at their centre unleashed whirlwind after whirlwind of spells. Had they time to gawp, they would have done so; Farden and his uncle were incredible, and the uncle especially. The old mage’s scarred wrists glowed like blazing torches. The combined force of their magick was dizzying. Modren felt his ears pop with every spell they cast.

  Eyrum, Lerel, and the bloodthirsty rebels quickly seized their chance. They surged past the mages, swarming like bees. They threw themselves wildly at the ranks of shining Arkathedral guards. Screams and yells filled the air. The white marble floor was quickly redecorated with gore from both sides.

  Stupefied and surprised by the sudden storm of action, Agfrey, the battle-hardened general of the Skölgard army, abruptly found herself in the grip of panic. Over the heads of the battling men, she met the eyes of a fierce blonde mage whose face flashed in the light of the whirling spells. Modren spied her, and flashed teeth. Agfrey began to run. ‘This way!’ she yelled at the seer and her soldiers. They needed no further encouragement. They ran back up the stairs and scurried down an adjoining corridor, heading for the dark, honeycomb corridors that were the bowels of the Arkathedral.

  ‘Where are you going?’ yelled Farden above the battle-noise, as Modren began to pick his way across the smashed door. Beneath it men groaned and gasped for air.

  ‘Unfinished business!’ Modren shouted over his shoulder. He jumped to the blood-streaked floor and sprinted across the marble atrium. Managed to hack his way past the left flank of the guards, he quickly ran in the direction Agfrey had escaped. It was time she paid for what she and her army had done to this city, he muttered himself. He wanted her either dead or dying at his feet.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ yelled Tyrfing. Farden shrugged and simply followed suit, sliding down the broken door to the floor, boots squeaking on the marble. Tyrfing, grimacing, had no choice but to follow, and together the two mages drew their swords and dove into the fray. Eyrum was there whirling his axe, splintering spear shafts and crushing shields, while Lerel bravely darted in and out, stabbing and thrusting with her shortsword. The fear on her bloodied face was palpable.

  Farden longed to help them, but he couldn’t waste any more time that he already had. Instead, he and Tyrfing viciously chopped their way through the spears on the left flank until they made it to the open hallway. Modren was nowhere to be seen. Farden looked up at the main stairwell, glaring at each marble step in turn. The dread was like a boulder in his stomach. Beside him, Tyrfing felt it too. His determination had suddenly wilted. Perhaps it was the long-forgotten surroundings, or the feel of a very familiar magick in the air. He looked around him, a hint of fear in his wizened features. ‘Farden… I…’ he began, but his nephew cut him off.

  ‘Now or never, uncle,’ he snarled, and strode forward, praying he wasn’t too late.

  Tyrfing reluctantly in tow, Farden ran up a set of stairs and took a right down a wide corridor. The noise of clashing metal and boots thudding on marble filled the air. Behind him, Tyrfing ran a hand across the nearest wall. ‘It’s been so long since I was here,’ he said.

  Farden sighed and kept running. ‘No time to be sentimental, uncle,’ he shouted.

  Tyrfing twitched and said no more. Without warning, a guard jumped out of an alcove and swung a knife at the older mage. Tyrfing cried out, surprised, and managed to bat the blade away with his shield and head-butt the guard hard in the nose. The man reeled backwards for a moment, then, snorting blood, he charged headlong at his foe, aiming to tackle the mage to the floor. Tyrfing was almost bowled over as the man flew into his stomach, but somehow he kept his balance, and with his free hand he flicked an intricate-looking lever on the top of his breastplate, and there was a sudden, sickening, twanging noise. The man slumped to the floor, dead as a nail. His face was a contorted and bloody mess. One of his eyes had disappeared inside his skull.

  Farden looked on, sword at the ready, and slightly confused. He noticed the sharp spikes sticking out of his uncle’s armour like displaced ribs. Two of them glistened wetly. With a turn of a little wheel and a mechanical clicking at the small of his back, the spikes were wound back into place. Tyrfing kicked the body aside and ran on. Farden jogged alongside him. ‘Vice will be in the great hall,’ he said, quietly.

  ‘Cheska is more important,’ said his uncle, twitching at Vice’s name.

  His nephew swallowed. ‘I know.’

  ‘Let’s just hope we’re not too late.’

  Farden said nothing.

  ‘Gods,’ Tyrfing muttered. ‘Where are you Durnus?’

  Chapter 22

  “…when the sons of gods went to the daughters of man and had children by their wombs, they became the giants of old, the nefalim, “men” of renown and infamy, dangerous like wolves amongst sheep…”

  From the ‘Gathered Prophetics’

  In Albion, the rain had never stopped. Heavy drops pelted the grass as though they were punishing the world. It was like the sun had never risen, and instead had become stuck beyond the mountains. Darkness was at the mercy of the lightning.

  Beneath the grinding, rumbling clouds, two figures lay on a hillside, one dead and broken, one broken and undecided, duelling with death. Poison contorted his face; it was obvious in the milky whiteness of his eyes, the gaping purple of his lips, and the swollen, angry gashes on his shoulder and neck. His ruptured veins no l
onger throbbed. Rainwater had washed them clean hours ago.

  Nothing but the wind-blown grass moved.

  Thunder rolled overhead, and suddenly the dying man convulsed as though an invisible hand had picked him up and shaken him. The skin around his wounds began to knot itself together and slowly but surely, the blood began to flow. Out of his nose and ears and trickling from the corner of his eyes, dark blood started to dribble down his rain-lashed skin. The man began to wretch and roar like a strangled sabre-cat. He vomited then, a terrible raw heaving, and soiled his shredded clothes.

  A force unknown wrenched him upright and again he vomited, this time in the grass. Lifting shaking hands to wipe the seeping blood and poison from his face he raised his milky eyes to the stormy sky. Lightning coursed through the roots of the clouds, yet the man did not flinch. Not a muscle.

  Durnus dragged himself from the grass and ripped the clothes off his drenched skin. Thunder chased the lightning then, and he bellowed with it, a yell of wretchedness and pain and desperate relief. With shaking hands, he felt for the lump of metal hidden deep in his pockets, screwed shut his pale eyes and vanished with a boom and crack.

  ‘It worked,’ said a deep voice. ‘It actually worked.

  ‘But what have we unleashed?’ replied another. The sky held its breath a little longer.

  Agfrey skidded to a halt at the end of a dark corridor devoid of windows. ‘What now?’ Behind her, Lilith scowled and narrowed her eyes like a greedy magpie. ‘Where have you taken us now?’ she spat.

  Agfrey ran her hands over the wall frantically. ‘Vice told me this was a way out!’

  One of the mages barged past her. ‘It’s a secret exit, a corridor into the mountain,’ he muttered behind his visor. Agfrey glared at him as she was pushed aside.

  ‘And how do you know about it?’ she asked.

  ‘How do you think, General?’ replied the mage, snatching the torch from her. ‘His Mage entrusted it to me.’ He held the flame close to the granite wall. He squinted at the seamless bricks and rubbed the dust away with a finger. It took a full minute to find it, and when he did, he smacked his fist on the wall and prodded the place he had found. His fingertip sank into the stone and with a magickal hum the wall began to slide apart, brick by brick, to revealed a slim passage leading into the rock of the mountain. Agfrey looked to Lilith.

  ‘He must have forgotten to tell me.’

  ‘Yes, he must’ve,’ sneered Lilith, as she pushed past her. The soldiers and the other mages filed silently past, but when it was Agfrey’s turn, she found a knife waggling dangerously under her chin. The Written, the one who had opened door, shook his head as her. ‘Not you. You’ll attract too much attention,’ he whispered, waving the blade.

  ‘You insolent bastard, how dare you…’ swore Agfrey, vehement, but the knife prodded her chin.

  ‘Arkmage Vice’s orders. Take it up with him,’ shrugged the mage, slowly receded into the darkness of the secret passageway. His hand found a lever and he yanked it, and the bricks slid back together with a mocking whisper, leaving Agfrey all alone in the dark, speechless and shaking. She slammed her fists on the stone and shouted, but nobody answered, and she was left alone with muffled echoes. In the silence, a deep boom reverberated through the Arkathedral. For the first time in her life, Agfrey whimpered. She was trapped.

  The general swiftly retraced her steps, careful to mind the stairs lurking in the dark, until she found a familiar-looking door. She barged it open with her shoulder and hurried through. Her walk soon turned into a jog, and her lumbering jog quickly turned into a run, until soon she was barrelling down corridors and hallways trying desperately to find another exit, expecting at any moment to find Modren hot on her tail. Her breathing came in laboured gasps, and her heavy armour clanked like a marching band. Fear snapped at her heels.

  Agfrey came to the end of a corridor and lunged through another door, barely touching its handle. She looked to the left and saw an empty corridor. Sadly for her, she never got a chance to look to the right.

  The giant axe blade whistled through the air and embedded itself in the top of her skull, almost slicing her head in half. Blood gurgled against the steel. Agfrey’s eyes rolled up into their sockets and for a brief moment, before her nerves stopped working and her heart stopped pumping, her hands flailed about in the air and tried hopelessly to prise the axe from her skull. Her mouth flapped gasping and wordless like a suffocating fish.

  Eyrum twisted the handle and heard the splitting of bone. The soldier’s skull cracked open like an egg and he wrenched the blade upwards. With a clang, the body slumped to the floor and the blood began to pool around her ruptured head. Eyrum sniffed. By his side, Lerel leant over and stared at the face of the dead soldier, face still frozen in surprise.

  ‘Is that a man or a woman?’ she asked, squinting.

  ‘Man I think. It’s hard to tell with these Skölgard bastards,’ said Eyrum, holding his axe on his shoulder. There was a bang and a crash and suddenly Modren came tumbling out of a doorway, wild-eyed and tense. Sparks crackled in the gaps between his fingers. His eyes met the Siren’s, and then fell to the floor, where the sightless eyes of Agfrey stared back at him. Modren sighed a sigh of mixed feelings, disappointment and satisfaction rolled into one breath.

  ‘At least she got what she deserved in the end,’ he said.

  Eyrum nodded, and beckoned to the mage. ‘Come on, this way,’ he said.

  Leaving General Agfrey to bleed on the floor, the three of them ran deeper into the Arkathedral, ready for anything.

  The sound of the mages’ footsteps were drums, setting the beat. Behind them on the stairs and in the corridors lay a trail of dead men strewn like grotesque breadcrumbs. They slumped in awkward positions, or lay stretched out and gaping, reaching out for lost limbs or spilt entrails. For the lesser-hearted man it was a stomach-churning sight. But this was war, after all. The mages had precious little mercy to spare for the Arka guards. It was not them they had come to fight.

  The corridors leading to the great hall that perched on top of the mighty Arkathedral looked out over the warring city. Had the mages had a chance to take a peek, they would have seen a city where the streets ruptured like bloated veins, bursting with blood and brick and fire. Men surged down alleyways and streets like floodwater. Rank and file had given way to a messy, vicious battle between the narrow capillaries of Krauslung’s streets. Houses rocked and shook. Dragons perched on rooftops and turned the alleyways into blast furnaces.

  It was a stark contrast to the perfect white walls of the upper hallways, the gold trimmings, and the ornate doors. Their bloody footsteps looked so out of place on the polished floors, like the dead guards dotted hither and thither. The mages crept on towards the great hall. Farden’s heart hammered. Now that he was finally in the Arkathedral, he would have given anything to be anywhere else. By finding Cheska and his child, it meant he had to face it, recognise it. It would suddenly become real, and that meant one thing and one thing only. It scared Farden more than anything else in his life ever had.

  The mage couldn’t have told his uncle even if he wanted to. The older mage at his side stalked the empty corridors with a solid determination in his wide eyes. He looked as mad as he had the first day Farden had found him in the desert, flinching with every sound, eye twitching. Farden knew what his uncle, the Sirens, the gods, and Emaneska were expecting of him, and what would happen if he couldn’t finish it himself. Had he truly made up his mind yet? Farden steeled himself, the little voice spoke for him. If anyone were going to put an end to this, it would be him.

  Farden suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. Between the pealing of the bells he had heard something. Farden held his breath and listened hard.

  There it was, the squeak of a sob, the muffled whine of someone or something crying. Farden felt his stomach sink like a lead boat. There was a door nearby, a door inlayed with silver. The mage rattled its handle. It didn’t budge. Farden put his hand on the door and the lock
spell bit his finger. He winced and hit the wood with the pommel of his sword. Gingerly putting his ear to the ornate wood, he listened again.

  Another sob.

  Another snivel.

  A sharp intake of pain.

  Farden slammed his sword on the door again and still it didn’t budge. The mage dropped the sword with a loud clang, making Tyrfing spin around, and pressed both hands on the door-frame. It whined under the pressure of the opposing spell but still it didn’t move. ‘Help me!’ hissed Farden to his uncle.

  Tyrfing joined him at the door and put his ear to the wood. ‘Is it her?’

  Farden’s head was torn. Part of him begged it to be her, the other half prayed that she were somehow far, far away and safe. The former half was in charge of his tongue. ‘I hope so,’ he grunted, shoving his shoulder futilely against the door.

  Tyrfing pressed his finger to the wood in several places, turning his head as he did so, as if listening for something, a change in the magick frequency perhaps, or something different. ‘It’s Vice’s spell,’ he mumbled, recoiling at the feel of it.

  Farden was becoming frantic. ‘Why would he lock her in?’

  ‘Who knows…’ replied his uncle, he spread his fingers over the centre of the door and closed his eyes. Farden joined in, uttering his own spells, and ever so slowly, the door began to twist and buckle against its frame, warping like a taut sail.

  ‘Almost there,’ said Tyrfing, shaking now with the effort. His nephew was a sweating wreck beside him. Suddenly the door splintered in half, straight down the middle, and Farden began to kick and hack wildly at the wood with his boots and his sword. When his sword blade became stuck, he resorted to ripping the wood apart with his armoured hands until he managed to fit through. Tyrfing hovered in the doorway, and sniffed the air. Blood.

  Tyrfing was right. Opposite a fractured windowpane lay a bed pushed against the wall. Its sheets were stained a dark, deep red, so much so that at first glance it might have been their natural colour, but they were sticky to the touch, and now the blood was beginning to pool in the middle of the bed. Cheska lay in the centre of it, surrounded by a crimson tundra of sheets and towels that looked like some sort of strange and tangled tapestry. She was the colour of snow and sweating feverishly. Her legs, still propped up and open, were unable to move and they trembled with the strain. Muscles twitched. Only her eyes and fingers moved. She stared at the man standing in her room, and a tear rolled down her cheek.